Your Saturday morning dose of New York Mets and Major League Baseball news, notes, and links.
Meet the Mets
The Mets avoided arbitration with three players yesterday. Dillon Geesigned a one year deal worth $3.625 million, Bobby Parnell got a one year deal at $3.7 million, and Daniel Murphy agreed to a one year deal at $5.7 million. This leaves Lucas Duda as the Mets' last arbitration eligible player and the two sides are $550,000 apart. Adam Rubin projects the Mets payroll as currently sitting at $86.2 million.
There's good news on Parnell, as the righty is already throwing in Port St. Lucie as part of his return from surgery. Parnell is joined by Jenrry Mejia, who also recently arrived in St. Lucie to begin getting into shape.
2013 first rounder Dominic Smith was named the 2nd best first base prospect in all of baseball by MLB.com, behind Astros prospect Jonathan Singleton. He's still far away so we shouldn't get ahead of ourselves yet but the early reports on Smith have been exciting.
According to Matt Eddy of Baseball America, the Mets have inked infielder Jairo Perez to a minor league contract. The 25-year old Perez played with Kansas City of the independent American Association last year and hit .309/.359/.539 with 19 home runs. Before that, he played in the Twins organization.
Around the Majors
The Cubs have apparently made a real offer to Japanese pitcher Masahiro Tanaka.
Did Alex Rodriguez really try to bribe Tony Bosch with close to $50,000? The evidence looks to say no.
A trio of Jeopardy contestants were stumped by a question about Roger Clemens.
Eno Sarris wrote about the difficulty in projectingWhite Sox first baseman Jose Abreu.
At Beyond the Box Score, Andrew Ball wonders how sabermetrics has changed baseball.
Ted Berg wrote about 16-year old lefty pitching prospect Julio Urias, who dominated the full season Midwest League with the Dodgers.
Yesterday At AA
Is Bobby Parnell prone to meltdowns? Jeffrey Bellone asks the question.
James Kannengieser reviewed the community projection on Lucas Duda.
How many of the 2006 Mets can you remember? Chris McShane gives us a Friday Mets Mind Boggler.
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If you read an article or find a link that you think would be a great addition to a future edition of Mets Morning News, please forward it to our tips email address tips@grission.com and we'll try to add it in.
