Random News

So, the NL Manager of the Year was announced yesterday. Joe Girardi, whose Marlins finished 19 games behind the Mets won. WIllie finished second. Can someone explain to me how a guy with a losing record can win this award? I know tha tthe Marlins were picked to lose like 100 games last year, but for pete's sake, did any of these voters look beyond the wins the Mets put up and see what WIllie had to deal with?

Lets take the bullpen first shall we? Besides Wagner and Heilman, the rest of the pen were question marks. Bradford? Feliciano (who was about to retire)? Oliver? Sanchez? None of these guys were expected to perform as well as they did. Yet, they made up one of the top bullpens in the majors last year. Even after Filthy went down, they performed well, even stepping it up.

Then you have the starting rotation. Pedro won 9 games, and missed a lot of time. Zambrano goes down early. Maine gets called up and hgets hurt. Bannister pitches OK and gets hurt. Glavine goes a month without a win. Steve freaking Trachsel leads the team with 15 wins. The Mets used LIma Time! for a few starts. Yet the team wins 97 games.

What the hell does a Mets manager have to do to win this award? Davey never won it, despite the runaway 86 season. Now Willie gets shafted. I call shenanigans.

In other Mets news, they traded Heath Bell and Royce Ring to the Padres for reliever Jon Adkins and outfielder Ben Johnson. Adkins is OK, and will probably be insurance if some of the pen free agents are not resigned. Johnson is intruiging, as he is 25, has shown flashes in the past (he was the Padres top-rated prospect a couple of years back) and is a right handed bat. The last time the Mets got a right handed bat from the Padres, Xavier Nady acquitted himself well. Hopefully the same result happens here. What this means for Milledge is anyones guess, though I think if they are going to trade him, with Carlos Gomez and Freddy Martinez, they are in pretty good shape in a couple of years. Platooning Endy and Johnson might work.

In Jets news, Eric Mangini is banning the use of the word "playoffs", so as to not get the team thinking too high. Good for him, though he better hope the ACLU does not come after him on freedom of speech grounds.

In Islanders news, they won again last night, 3-0 over the Dallas Stars, behind 35 saves from Rick DiPietro. They killed off a 5-3 powerplay in the first period. Mike York scored a PP goal in the first, Jason Blake scored on a beautiful passing sequence with Alexei Yashin, and Trent Hunter scored in the third. Nice to see York and Hunter get off the snide. Hunter has been playing well in terms of taking the body, but he needs to put the puck in the net as well. That second line needs to get going, or else teams will key on the Yashin line. Then again, as well as Alexei is playing, it may not matter. He made a great defensive zone play on Blakes goal, breaking up a cross ice pass, then lept into the play to recieve a pass from Blake, then returned it on a nice tape to tape pass in front of the Dallas net. Blake had time to go to his forehand, and potted it. For all the past complaints of Yashin not skating hard, he is doing so now, and that play shows it all.

DiPietro played well, not straying too far from the net, and letting his defense do their job. He made several nice saves, including a few post to post jobs. He needs to continue to do a better job of picking his spots to play the puck. He has great reflexes, he just needs to keep in position to use them. And the defense is rounding up nicely. Bruno Gervias, a rookie, has settled in. Brendan Witt is improving. Sean Hill needs to imrpove though. We may see the return of Chris Campoli soon, back from an injury.

As you may have noticed, the blog looks a little different. I moved over to the beta version of blogger, which allowed me to change some colors and so forth. I apologize if anyone is having issues posting comments. Please keep trying, hopefully it will work. Reminder, if you want to use a name instead of anonymous, choose "Other" and type a name.

That's all for now. Thanks for stopping by.