New York Mets CF Juan Lagares is a finalist for a Gold Glove Award, along with Washington’s Denard Span and Cincinnati’s Billy Hamilton.
If Lagares wins the award, which is determined by advanced defensive statistics as well as voting by National League players and managers, he will be the third Mets outfielder to achieve this distinction.
Carlos Beltran and David Wright were the last Mets players to win a Gold Glove in 2008.
With spring training nearing an end, the New York Mets and other teams are making their final preparations for the regular season.
Dillon Gee will make his last Grapefruit League start tonight against the Houston Astros to get ready for his first career Opening Day assignment.
Ike Davis and Lucas Duda will both make the Opening Day roster, though it’s still up in the air which one will get to face Stephen Strasburg on March 31st. (I don’t think it matters that much. As long as Terry Collins sticks with a platoon of Davis or Duda and Josh Satin at first base – something he’s probably not going to do – the Mets should manage to get some production out of the spot. If he decides one is an everyday player, I expect to see a repeat of last year’s performance.)
Sandy Alderson suggested that Juan Lagares would get the nod over Eric Young Jr. for the third spot in the outfield. If that decision lasts longer than Collin Cowgill’s status as the everyday centerfielder did last year, the Mets are making the right call – defense is worth more than stolen bases.
Continue reading “Wednesday morning roundup as the Mets move towards Opening Day”
Word comes this morning from New York Post writer Josh Kosman that New York Mets owners Fred Wilpon and Saul Katz have made their biggest move of the off-season. Thanks to an increase in franchise value as a result of the record sale price of the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2012, Wilpon and Katz had no difficulty finding banks willing to refinance a loan weeks ahead of the due date of a $250 million principal payment.
The new loan still has to be approved by Major League Baseball, but with Fred Wilpon’s good friend Bud Selig still in charge, that’s likely to be a formality.
What this means: Wilpon and Katz, who might have been forced to sell the team if the refinancing negotiations went badly, will continue to own the Mets for the foreseeable future.
The payroll will continue to hover around its current range, and Sandy Alderson (or whoever takes over for him if his contract is not extended) will have to continue to look to the Oakland Athletics and Tampa Bay Rays for a blueprint to possible success. Not ideal, but not quite completely hopeless.
Continue reading “3 things: Mets money, projecting Juan Lagares’ value & a Stephen Drew update”
I have not been in a store that sells baseball cards in a few weeks, so I had more or less overlooked the release of this year’s Topps Update series.
Fortunately, one of my friends gave me most of the Mets cards that are included in the basic series.
I think this is the first year I’ve ever cared about any of the All-Star Game Home Run Derby cards Topps throws into the update series. (Then again, this summer was the first time in years I actually watched any portion of the Home Run Derby.)
The mandatory All-Star Game cards are a bit cooler this year because of the game’s location, too. (Not cool enough for me to worry about chasing down the short-print variations, though.)
Juan Lagares and Zack Wheeler both get official “Rookie Cards,” though I was hoping Lagares would get a cooler photo on his.
Although he’s now a Pittsburgh Pirate (for a few more days, anyway), Marlon Byrd finally gets his first (not counting an online-distribution only relic card featuring a piece of a Chicago Cubs jersey)
The Target-exclusive parallel version of Eric Young Jr.‘s first Mets baseball card. Young did get a cool photo, probably from his walk-off home run against the Kansas City Royals.
There are two more Mets cards in the update series base set: a second one for Zack Wheeler and one for Shaun Marcum. I suppose I need to track them down at some point for completeness, along with the regular version of Young’s card.
Note: if you’re seeing the baseball card images with rounded corners, that’s because of the display theme of the blog – they have standard corners and have not been trimmed.
PaulHadsall.com 