Your Saturday dose of New York Mets and Major League Baseball news, notes, and links.
Meet the Mets
Daniel Murphy is out with a leg injury but not yet concerned about Opening Day.
Dillon Gee is cautious when talking about his potential Opening Day assignment since he hasn't been formally named by Terry Collins yet.
Ike Davis and Lucas Duda had big days on Friday and are ready to compete for the first base job. Both will be on short leashes, regardless of who wins the position.
The Mets are set to experiment with hitting the pitcher eighth in the lineup and the alignment has some merit statistically.
Bobby Parnell's velocity has seen a bump recently, a good sign in his recovery.
Around the Majors
Actual Major League Baseball action has taken place as the Dodgersbeat the Diamondbacks 3-1 in Australia early this morning behind Clayton Kershaw. Here's the first pitch of 2014.
Grant Brisbee wrote about playing around with service time, using Noah Syndergaard and the Astros' George Springer as example.
Fangraphs came out with their positional power rankings for shortstop and the Mets ranked pretty low, unsurprisingly.
Jeff Sullivan wrote about bunting against the infield shift.
Phillies infielder Freddy Galvis is out indefinitely with MRSA. That means ex-Met Ronny Cedeno or Reid Brignac could make the roster.
Yesterday At AA
Greg Karam wrote about what the Mets have done this offseason in trying to solve the riddle of Citi Field.
Matthew Callan previewed the 2014 Nationals, who are probably the favorites to win the division even after a disappointing 2013.
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.