WEEKEND THOUGHTS

The Mets split their first two spring training games with the Cardinals. Saturday, they played the Nationals, and for what it's worth, Aaron Heilman, Brian Bannister, Chad Bradford, and Duaner Sanchez all pitched effectively (I think, according to the pitching schedule). Mike Venafro, who I like to watch, but I'm not sure will make the Major League team, (he's formerly of the Oakland A's) gave up three runs in the sixth....again, I think.

The eventful news from Friday night's game is that Steve Schmoll blew an 8-7 lead in the 9th inning - as the Mets lost 11-8. Good thing we now have Billy Wagner.

I imagine, since Wagner didn't pitch Saturday, we'll probably see him on Sunday in the ESPN-televised game against the Puerto Rican WBC team. Although, now that I've written that, he could be pitching in the other split squad game, meaning we wouldn't see him.

The other thing from spring training is that it seems if Kaz Matsui makes an error or doesn't get a hit, it's a big deal. If he does OK, it's not worth mentioning. I know Matsui is making a lot of money, and he hasn't performed well yet - but I really hope he wins the job, and plays well. He's got a lot going against him right now...I want to see him do well. Incidentally, I never mentioned how the Bret Boone retirement affects Matsui - it doesn't guarantee him a job, that's for sure. Anderson Hernandez (who had three hits and three runs on Saturday) is getting a real shot, and Jeff Keppinger has been cleared by doctors to start playing again. So it's still wide open.

2 NOTES FROM 'WALDENBOOKS': I was out shopping with the wife on Friday night, and we stopped into Waldenbooks. As I am wont to do, I went straight to the sports section. I saw a prospects report, and picked that up to read - I think it was from Baseball America. A couple of things caught my interest. No surprise that Lastings Milledge was rated the best prospect in the Mets' system - but I didn't realize he has a sketchy past - accusations of sexual misconduct in high school. Apparently he's been a model citizen in the Mets' organization, so that's good news. And I know Cliff Floyd has set a good example when they've been together in spring training situations, so that's good. I was a bit surprised that 2B Anderson Hernandez was only the fifth-highest ranked prospect in the organization. He's apparently all-glove, no-hit...which was pretty much the case during his 1-for-18 September call-up last year. Finally, I went to the Orioles page to look up John Maine, the prospect the Mets got in the Kris Benson trade. He wasn't ranked very high in their organization, and his numbers haven't been great in a couple of years at the Major League level. Here's the thing I'm haning my hat on with Maine, though - he now gets to work with Rick Peterson. I have yet to see Peterson fail (we'll see what Victor Zambrano looks like this year), and maybe Maine lives up to his potential by working with Peterson this spring.

The other note from Waldenbooks is that they are selling a coffe table-type book on the history of the World Series. It's basically a photo book, with pictures from every World Series. (For some reason, though, the most recent World Series have only a couple of pictures, as opposed to 10 or so from the others. Not sure why.) It's on clearance for about 15 bucks - even though it includes last year's World Series. Here's my problems with books like this, though. They're full of errors. As I usually do with books like this, I turned to the 1986 World Series page, and in one of the captions it says something like, "Mookie Wilson dodges wild pitch....he would later hit the game-winning single that forced Game 7." Game-winning single?!?!?!?! The whole premise of that World Series is that Bill Buckner made an ERROR!!!!!! My problem with books like that is if I can find an error on the one page I looked carefully at - how many other pages in the book have mistakes?! There is another case like this - a big Baseball Encyclopedia-like book, which I don't remember what it's called...but I'll find out. It noted year-by-year, day-by-day events in baseball. I looked at the October 25, 1986 entry, and it said something like the error by Buckner came in the bottom of the 9th inning (it was really the 10th). So factual errors like that in these big ol' books make me believe the authors are trying to make a quick buck, without getting all of their facts straight.

PLUG FOR NO REASON: I'm not too big on giving other people plugs, because there's no way they would ever link to my site, but I think I may have found the Saint Louis Cardinals fan version of me. I was going through some other blogs, and came across a Cardinals one: bellyitcher.blogspot.com. (I'm not making it a link - you're going to have to go through the effort of putting it in your browser if you're going to check it out.) Apparently the guy is in downtown Saint Louis, because he has pictures from his window of the new stadium - it actually looks great. Worth a trip to Saint Louis (like I wasn't going to go anyway...). He loses a bit of credibility, though, with that lineup for Saturday's game - he doesn't know who Kit Pellow is? Did he not see a Colorado Rockies game at all last year? I thought Cardinals fans were supposed to be knowledgeble about baseball. (Upon further review - Pellow was with the Rockies in 2004 - in the Mariners organization last year. My bad. But he still should have heard of him.)

That's all for today - tomorrow I'll update after the game on ESPN.