Your Friday dose of New York Mets and MLB news, notes, and links.
Meet the Mets
Peter Gammons reports that the Mets are only feigning disinterest in free agent shortstop Stephen Drew in order to gain leverage on super agent Scott Boras. This is according to a National League GM who says that the Mets are concerned with their inexperience at the key defensive positions of catcher, shortstop, and center field.
Around MLB
To the disdain of most baseball fans who believe in common sense, veteran baseball writer Murray Chass is using a guilty-until-proven-innocent mindset to decide his Hall of Fame ballot. Chass also takes those pesky bloggers to task for trying to tell him how to vote.
In bullpen news, the White Soxhave signedScott Downs to a one-year, $4 million dollar contract. The veteran lefty had a 2.49 ERA but also a 1.48 WHIP with the Angels and Braves last season.
Adam Eaton is just the type of gritty grinder that the Diamondbacks have been fond of recently, so it is kind of surprising to see him getting anonymously badmouthed a month after he was dealt to the White Sox as part of the Mark Trumbo trade.
Yesterday at AA
Brian A. Wright examined David Cone's incredible 19-strikeout game from 1991 as part of his series on the 10 best Mets pitching performances. I'm interested to see if Johan Santana's no-no gets ranked number one just because, or if it gets downgraded because of Santana's subpar strikeout-to-walk ratio that night.
On this day in the year 2000, Bobby Bonilla was released by the Mets for the last time. Of course, the team is still paying him for past services.
