Mets will meet with…

• John Lackey’s agent
• Bengie Molina’s agent
• Joel Pineiro’s agent
• Randy Wolf’s agent
• Jason Marquis’ agent

And probably every other decent free agent’s agent that is in Indianapolis this week.

Link: David Wright’s path to the pros

Take a break from Winter Meetings rumors and read this profile of David Wright’s  path from the minor leagues to being the All-Star third baseman of the New York Mets.

Best quote…

"I thought he was going to be real good. I thought he would be an All-Star, an impact player at the MLB level. And that's what he became," said Ken Oberkfell, who first worked with Wright in 2003 as manager of Class A Advanced St. Lucie. "He just stood out, he was a very good player."

Sherman: Mets targeting Willingham and Rivera [Winter Meetings]

With Jason Bay and Matt Holliday on the free-agent market and fairly free to set their own demands, the Mets may look to trade for a player to fill their hole in leftfield.

Josh Willingham from the Nationals and Juan Rivera from the Angels are two players they have interest in, according to Joel Sherman.

River has two years left on his contract, worth a combined $9.5 million.  Willingham is still under control by the Nationals, and earned $2.95 million last season.  He is a free agent following the 2011 season.

I think the Mets should take a look at both of these players, though I prefer dipping into the free-agent class first.  Both would be decent additions to the club.

I like Rivera.

NL East: Bruney traded to Nats

Two things…

1. How many times do Francisco Rodriguez and Brian Bruney argue/fight/whine in 2010?

2. Are only NL East teams making moves?  That’s what it seems like so far.

Update: PhillyBurbs.com: Pat Burrell traded to Mets [Winter Meetings]

Updated – 12:39 p.m.: 610 AM is talking about socks.  Steve Popper cites two Mets sources as saying it’s false.  David Lennon says, “not in 3-way, not in any way.”  This one’s dead.  Let’s move on.

Updated – 12:19 p.m.: Tim Haines, on PhillyBurbs.com, now attributes the report to WIP-AM 610, a Philly radio station.  But nothing is on WIP-AM’s Web page.  I’m tuning in to the station to see what’s up.

Updated – 12:12 p.m.: Sweeny Murti on WFAN spoke to a Mets official who vehemetly denied the rumor.

Congrats, PhillyBurbs.  You just had you 15 minutes of fame.

Original Post: Here’s a short, quick blurb from PhillyBurbs.com (a conglomeration of a few Philly-area papers) that claims the Rays have traded Pat Burrell to the Cubs who then traded him to the Mets (via Retire31).

Former Phillies outfielder Pat Burrell has reportedly been swapped twice this morning, eventually landing with Phils division rival the New York Mets.

The Tampa Bay Rays traded the slugging left fielder to the Chicago Cubs then the Cubs dealt Burrell to the Mets. Names of other players involved in the deals were not immediately available.

Aside from the validity of the report, if the Mets end up with Burrell and consider him their guy for leftfield, something is seriously, seriously wrong.

But let’s be real about this.  There is no story here.  Not even an anonymous source.  Come on, really?  Even the best out there can make up a source.

This is the only story on this, anywhere and coming from a fairly unknown source.  Take with a big grain of salt.  Like, Citi Field big.

Welcome the the Winter Meetings.

Mets considering lowering outfield walls

According to a blurb in the Daily News today, the Mets have looked into the possibility of lowering a portion of the walls in Citi Field (via The Mets Police).

Here’s what Adam Rubin wrote…

Daniel Murphy had the most homers of anybody in a Mets uniform with 12 last season. That actually has prompted team brass to revisit the issue of Citi Field's dimensions - or at least the wall heights. Mets officials are considering removing the second level of padding in center field to make the wall eight feet in the area Carlos Beltran patrols. They had maintained late in the season that the stadium would remain identical in 2010.

Taking a look back at some of my photos from Citi Field last year, I happened upon this photo…It seems the Mets would lower the walls out there to stop at the top of the Nikon sign, instead of the addition second level of padding.  If that’s the case, what happens to the apple?

It seems the Mets would have to seriously adjust the “house” for the apple, or have it more than partially exposed as it sits in waiting, which would be a little odd.

I truly believe Citi Field is getting a bad wrap due to a sub-par Mets team in 2009.  Too many people believe that the poor team performance by the team last season reflects the face that Citi Field is where home runs go to die, which is simply not true.

As I’ve stated before, Citi Field surrendered the 12th most home runs per game of all stadiums last season, to the tune of 1.057/game.

Added from the comments, by dances_w_vowels:

The actual number of HRs given up by Citi Field is 130, 6th from the bottom in MLB, partially because of the Mets' ineptitude, partially because the park IS huge. It also gave up 42 triples, tied for 4th in the ML. To that, the Park Factor in your link shows that 20% more triples were hit in games played at Citi over games the Mets played on the road. That, more than the HR stat, shows the park plays really big.

Park factors on ESPN have the park listen at .943. (Anything below 1.000 favors the pitcher.)

In that case, why aren’t pitchers lining up to pitch half their games in Citi Field?

Meche and the Mets? [Winter Meetings]

Could Gil Meche be a target for the Mets as they move forward in the off-season?

Meche, 31, has two years left on his contract and is owed $24 million.  According to Joel Sherman, the Kansas City Royals will listen for deals on their pitcher and the Mets may be interested.

But is Meche worth dealing for?

With four question marks already behind Johan Santana in the rotation, would Meche compound an already very-apparent problem?

In 2007 and 2008, Meche started 34 games.  Last season, he started only 23.  In the last three seasons, he started 91 games, throwing 555 innings.  He posted a 4.12 ERA, 109 ERA+ and a 1.367 WHIP.

As Nick Migliore points out on Twitter, Meche has a full no-trade clause for 2009.  That would have to waived before any trade, obviously.

Would you make a deal for Meche?  Hit the comments to vote and comment.

Link: Omar interview in Indy

Head over to Surfing the Mets to read the transcript of a quick interview with Omar Minaya in Indianapolis for the start of the winter meetings.

Best part…

Is there pressure on you to pull the trigger on something and satisfy the fans?

There’s no doubt because of last year—I don’t want to say you feel pressure to do something—but there’s no doubt we have to find a way to improve our club if possible. -snip- But as far as the pressure, I don’t feel like I have to do something.

Is this good or bad for the Mets? Share your thoughts in the comments.

Bloomberg’s player-evaluations a match for the Mets? [Quote]

Bloomberg L.P. will be entering the player-evaluation market for baseball on Monday.  And guess who’s interested…

For Jeff Wilpon, the chief operating officer of the Mets, the value in the software will be in evaluating free agents.

“If you take X player on another team who’s around a great cast of players,” he said, “we want to look at him in our ballpark with different players around him to see how he will fit in.”

This makes me happy.

Can they have the software shipped to Indianapolis for the start of the winter meetings tomorrow?  I’ll personally install whatever needs to be installed onto Omar Minaya’s computer.

(H/T Jeremy Schilling)

How to follow and interact with The ‘Ropolitans

With the winter meetings about to kick off tomorrow, signaling one of the busiest times of the year for baseball, I thought it would be a good time for a friendly reminder about all the way to follow and interact with The ‘Ropolitans.

(Side note: Rumors-for-the-sake-of-rumors anger me.  If I post a rumor, I’ll try my best to analyze it as a hypothetical for the team.)

Site: Obviously, there is the old-fashioned way of simply clicking into your browser, typing in theropolitans.com and hitting enter.

Comments: Every post has it’s own dedicated comment section.  If you click “Join the discussion!” you will be taken to the comments.  You can log in with your IntenseDebate account, Twitter name or just your name and e-mail.

Chat: There is always a chat box in the sidebar to talk Mets, no matter what topic you’d like to discuss.

RSS: Add the blog to your favorite RSS reader (mine is Google Reader) to have the feed of The ‘Ropolitans aggregated for any new content.

Twitter: If you use Twitter, follow me here.  Not only does every post go onto my Twitter, but I also post a lot of other stuff that doesn’t make it onto the blog.  It’s a great way to converse with me and other Mets fans.  I also post Twitter polls, that I feature on the blog, so you can contribute to those.  Be warned: I post a lot on Twitter.

YouTube: I have a YouTube account where I mostly post the audio from The ‘Ropolitans Radio.  I also have videos from when I attend games and The State of the Mets videos.

Tumblr: If you tumbl (I guess that’s the verb?), you can follow The ‘Ropolitans Tumblr right here.

E-mail: If you have any tips, questions or suggestions, never hesitate to e-mail me.  TheRopolitans@gmail.com

I hope you use whatever you feel most comfortable with and continue to visit and interact with this site.  Thank you to all my readers.  This site wouldn’t be anything without you.