For the purposes of speed (remember when I said I came to the office to work?), here are the short versions of the two criteria for which MLB games are blacked out (per Wikipedia):

1. “A local broadcaster has priority to televise games of the team in their market over national broadcasters…MLB’s streaming Internet video service is also subject to the same blackout rules, although in the near-future, MLB is rumored to be looking into the possibility of teams and their local broadcasters cutting deals with cable/satellite providers to permit in-market streaming.”  (Note the last part needed citation and a quick search did not provide me with anything even insinuating deals in process.
2. “Fox has certain rights for afternoon MLB games on Saturdays, and ESPN has the same rights for night games on Sundays. Broadcasters cannot show games of in-market teams, regardless of whether the game is home or away, if the game of the local team has a certain start time.”

Regarding the first criteria, this makes little to no sense. While I can force myself to try to understand it for the purposes of the television broadcasts, I cannot for streaming.

I am a Mets fan that lives and works in Brooklyn. I pay for cable at home (which includes costs for SNY, ESPN, FOX and TBS), but can’t always be there. Sometimes I work really late hours and sometimes I work weekends. I pay the $124.99 per year for MLB.tv so I can watch the sport I love when I have five minutes to spare at my desk. Despite all the money I pay into the system, the Mets are blacked out because I’m not watching “my local broadcast.” Newsflash: I actually AM watching my local broadcast. I’m just not watching my locally paid advertising.

The second criteria makes me want to vomit — the exclusive time slot. “Park yourself in front of the TV, boys and girls! It’s time to watch Uncle Joe and “Uncle” Tim banter about what a balk isn’t for three hours!” Why can’t I park myself in front of my iPad and do that?

The solutions here for local broadcasts seem relatively simple — work out a deal where streaming viewers are watching the local advertising. If you can pinpoint my location to inform me that I’m in a blackout restricted market, certainly you can pinpoint it and blast Giuseppe Franco commercials my way. Naturally there are some more complicated markets like parts of Ohio and Maryland. Give them local ads as well based on the broadcasts they get per current televised area restrictions.

FOX broadcasts should receive similar treatment. Pinpoint where I am, give me the Yankees playing the Red Sox or whichever of the other two you want to give me based on archaic regional restrictions, and throw ads in my face. I don’t fucking care about being shown ads. I tolerate them on TV, I tolerate them on the subway, and just like I tolerate the blue screen MLB uses instead of commercials now, I will tolerate them on my computer/phone/tablet. I pay for cable, Internet access in multiple locations, MLB.tv, merchandise and tickets to around 20 games per year at different stadiums. What more do you want from me? I just want to see my team play.

MLB, ESPN, FOX, TBS, local networks and advertisers everywhere need to get their heads out of their collective asses. Blacking out these games does two things very well: limits exposure for ALL OF THEM and pisses people off. If they want to cap growth at where they’re at then they are foolish. It’s an arcane system that needs a fix, and just like the game has evolved, so to should the way league and its media affiliates broadcast it.

• The real life baseball clips were great, especially the opening scene. It is never not a good thing to portray the Yankees as bad guys.

• Jonah Hill’s Peter Brand is almost a pitch perfect character. The awkwardness around Pitt’s Billy Beane and then the scouts is great. I liked the scene in the scouting room where Billy Beane asks Brand a question and Brand says, “You want me to answer?” and when Beane says yes, Brand says, “He gets on base.”

• And speaking of those scouts, the movie probably overdid its portrayal of those grizzled tobacco spitting men who look down on advanced stats. But the exaggeration was probably necessary to promote the sabermetric viewpoint to a mass audience with a lot of non-baseball fans.

• While Moneyball rightly highlighted small market Oakland’s money struggles through the loss of big name free agents Jason Giambi, Johnny Damon, and Jason Isringhausen, it skipped over good players still on the team like shortstop Miguel Tejada, the eventual 2002 AL MVP, and the superstar pitching rotation of Tim Hudson, Mark Mulder, and eventual 2002 Cy Young winner Barry Zito. I know those players were beside the point of Moneyball’s main thesis, but it probably wouldn’t have hurt to mention that Oakland had some pretty good players to begin with and Beane’s underrated additions like Scott Hatteberg, Chad Bradford, and David Justice helped their highly talented teammates reach the playoffs, instead of hinting that the sabermetric heroes were the major reason for Oakland’s success.

• I loved that Scott Hatteberg was played by Chris Pratt, who plays the hilariously goofy Andy Dwyer on Parks and Recreation, and I got chills when he hit that game winning homerun. But you could argue that stubborn manager Art Howe was right to ignore Beane and play Carlos Pena at first base over Hatteberg, since Pena did go on to become an All-Star, and has had the type of career Billy Beane would be proud of as a power hitter who walks and is wrongly looked down on by the anti-SABR traditionalists who obsess over batting average.

• I liked the scene where Beane and Brand are talking to the players and opening their eyes to how the new stats can help them. “No bunting.” “If they bunt, we throw it to first base and say thank you for the out.” If just one high school coach stops sacrifice bunting because of this scene, then Moneyball will be a success.

• The closing was poignant. The radio talking heads bashing Billy Beane after Oakland’s divisional series loss highlight how people will always resist new ways of thinking, using the tiniest failure as a trump card over vast evidence of success, as if a five game series playoff loss is a better measure than 162 games of regular season greatness.

• One message I hope people don’t take away is the (false) idea that Moneyball is just about getting fat players who walk a lot but can’t field. Moneyball is about exploiting market inefficiencies. Great players like the 2002 version of Jason Giambi will always be in demand; that’s why rich teams like the Yankees will overpay and poor teams like the A’s will let him leave thru free agency. But at the time, flawed players who got on base a lot were undervalued. Someone like Scott Hatteberg could provide a few million dollars worth of value for $900,000. Now, everyone values on base percentage, so the smart teams, the new Moneyball teams, are teams like the Tampa Bay Rays, who realized that defense was undervalued and put together playoff teams in 2008, 2010, and 2011. Moneyball is about teams finding undervalued players and getting more production than they paid for.

I’m not here to reopen or continue the grating debate about Morris’s candidacy. I’m with Joe Posnanski; I think Morris is a very good player who falls short. But two out of three Hall voters think Morris should be in and next year he’s going to get in, even if his supporters have unfortunately used lazy arguments like Jon Heyman’s “he pitched to the score” and Dan Shaughnessy’s “you had to be there.” (To be fair to Heyman, he’s a “you had to be there” guy too.)

But this isn’t about Jack Morris, who, either way, should be celebrated for having a wonderful career, a Swanson-esque mustache, and, yes, that defining Game 7 masterpiece. Morris is a borderline Hall candidate, no better, no worse, than Andre Dawson and Jim Rice, two recent electees, or Dale Murphy and Don Mattingly, two candidates still waiting on the outside. These and other very good players of Jack Morris’s caliber are elected and not elected every year. They’re not so great as to hurt the Hall of Fame by their absence but still good enough players that their enshrinement would bring honor upon the Hall.

Here’s what Jack Morris and Jim Rice and Dale Murphy are not, though. They are not among the very best baseball players of all time. Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens are. Bonds has a case as the greatest hitter ever, Clemens as the best pitcher in history. Even the writers who did vote yes for Morris (many of whom won’t vote for Clemens or Bonds) would concede that Clemens, Bonds, and probably ten more players on the ballot are better than Morris. Jack Morris, himself, would concede that, too.

***

My high school had a sports banquet each spring to honor all of the JV and varsity sports teams. Each varsity coach awarded one player on his team an MVP trophy. Officially, the MVP was for the best player. In reality, it went to the best player who happened to be a senior. Usually the best player on your high school basketball or football or baseball team is a senior. Sometimes it’s a junior or sophomore. But the idea was that a deserving underclassman should wait his turn because he would get his chance as a senior.

Of course, when undeserving seniors did get MVPs, everyone knew what it meant, especially the honored award winners.

***

There’s not much that hasn’t been said about the steroid issue. Some, myself included, see the PED controversy in the context of its era and, absent clear evidence of absolute guilt or innocence, believe it’s best to pick Hall of Famers based on what happened on the field. Some try and figure out which players needed steroids to post Hall of Fame caliber stats and which players were already Hall worthy before they started doping. Jon Heyman, despite his poor “pitchin’ to the score” Jack Morris advocacy, intelligently argues this nuanced position and says he will give a yes vote to Barry Bonds, because Bonds had a Hall of Fame career before he allegedly started roidin.’ Others take the Shaughnessy approach and think all confirmed steroid users should be banned from the Hall. I don’t agree, but I can respect this argument. Some go further and say anyone accused or circumstantially linked to PEDs should be barred, an argument even harder to justify. And finally there are those who take the Ken Gurnick approach and won’t vote for anyone from the steroid era.

Many more voters fall into the Shaughnessy camp than the Posnanski or Rob Neyer camp. We’re going to see a lot of great players like Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa never get inducted. The Hall of Fame is going to be without Manny Ramirez, one of the greatest right handed hitters of all time. Unless more of the anti-steroid folk take the Heyman position than the Shaughnessy stance, even Bonds and Clemens, Hall-caliber players before they (allegedly) ‘roided, will be on the outside looking in. And Jeff Bagwell, the best first baseman between the careers of Lou Gehrig and Albert Pujols, who has never been connected to PEDs, is still waiting for the Cooperstown call, because he has big muscles (I kid you not).

Today’s Hall of Fame voters have chosen to do with steroids what voters from previous generations chose (I believe rightly) not to do with greenies and amphetamines and ball scuffing. Because of the current voting pattern, most of an entire generation’s best players will be left out of the Hall of Fame.

It’s a shame that when Ken Griffey Jr. and Derek Jeter and Greg Maddux and Pedro Martinez get elected to the Hall, the first thought won’t be “baseball is honoring some of the greatest players of all time” but “these are the ‘good’ guys who played the ‘right’ way,” which is patronizing because it turns these living legends into gritty Ecksteins (and besides being patronizing, has no guarantee of accuracy, since they did play during the steroid era, so there’s no telling for sure than any given player didn’t cheat). And it’s a shame that when, yes, Jack Morris gets elected next year, the first thought won’t be “a very good career is validated as something special,” but “Jack is the token good guy that had to be elected to have a 2013 Hall of Fame ceremony  because a bunch of better players used steroids.” Jack Morris, borderline Hall of Fame candidate, deserves better than being the token senior who gets an MVP over the arbitrarily ineligible sophomore.

The “Beltran’s value” piece has been written about numerous times by people that are far better equipped to analyze baseball than I. Let’s just consider this a bit of an update for dummies.

According to Fangraphs, Carlos Beltran has been worth 27.6 29.2 WAR since he joined the Mets in 2005. If you prefer Baseball Reference’s calculation he’s been worth 30.6 WAR by their math. I’m going to use the more conservative estimate.

The supposed whale of a contract signed by Beltran was worth $119 million over the course of seven years. Converting fWAR to dollars, he has been worth $113.3 ~$119.8 million . If we take into account the theory that the team may have had to overpay to get Beltran, then the man has already been worth the deal if he opts to stop playing today. (Note: Fangraphs updated some numbers that weren’t there the time this post was written. Updates as of 5/25 next to figures that have been struck-through.)

But he won’t stop because he’s Calos MF’n Beltran! If we extrapolate Beltran’s current season (1.7 1.8 fWAR) based on his play and the number of games he’s started (40), he could potentially be worth ~5.9 ~6.2 fWAR over the course of 2011. How much is that worth? Around $26.6 ~$27.9 million, and that’s using the estimate that a win in 2011 is worth ~$4.5 million dollars. Should that happen, Beltran will have been worth $132.2 ~$147.7 million over the course of his contract, or $13.2 $28.7 million more than he signed for.

Let’s say 6.2 fWAR is a bit on the optimistic side. If Carlos were to only be worth another 1.8 fWAR over the rest of this season, his 3.6 WAR year would be worth ~$16.2 million. That would bring his value to ~$136 million over his full contract term, or $17 million more than he was paid.

So please mongos, enough with #BlameBeltran contract talk. Get your “called-third-strike-blinders” off and enjoy the man while he’s here. You’re going to miss that contract when he’s gone.

Creative Commons photo by Keith Allison.

Did you know that Joe Buck, my partner, the man standing piously beside me, is the only announcer in the world to see ARod eating popcorn from Cameron Diaz and fastballs from Brad Penny? It’s true! He’s unique. It’s probably why he was a Twitter trending topic during Saturday’s FOX Saturday baseball game. He hasn’t had a moment this big since he shit his pants after Randy Moss’ fake mooning.

Oh did I tell you about my partner down on the field Ken Rosenthal? Ken’s doing a good impression of Charles Osgood. Get it? He’s wearing a bowtie. (Look how cultured I am for watching CBS Sunday Morning, the closest network television ever comes to PBS. And speaking of bowties, there’s no way I’m mentioning that blue jean hating, “look at me slumming it and writing about baseball,” George Will.)

During Saturday’s telecast I mentioned that just five players have reached the 3000 hit club playing for one team. They’re all Hall of Famers, of course. Derek Jeter will be the sixth. And best.

Oh, what’s that? Some people are saying Jeter will be the 10^th guy to get 3000 all with one team? Or that Jeter will only be the 14^th to get 3000 with his first team? Stop it! Jeter will be the sixth! I don’t care what all those guys in their mothers’ basements say. As lead baseball broadcaster in America, I have the right to not do a simple Google search before I speak authoritatively.

And that Austin Jackson on the Tigers. Oh what a player! Two from the field. One if by sea, two from the field. I’m the Paul Revere of baseball announcing. What the heck am I talking about? Oh that’s right, Austin Jackson, coming off a great rookie season. The last time a Detroit rookie scored that many runs, it was 1939, and Ted Williams was a rookie in the American League, not just a disembodied head in a jar.

Oh I talked to Hall of Famer Jim Palmer the other day. He told me something striking. It’s the most profound insight I’ve ever heard. He says one thing pitchers try not to be is a carousel on the mound. They try to be a Ferris Wheel. Tune in next week to FOX Saturday Baseball and listen to me over explain.

First guessing every play is getting old. So, yes, my knew shtick this season is going to be name dropping old baseball guys I talk to and sharing their anecdotes as if it’s groundbreaking knowledge. And Charles Osgood bowtie references!

Oh, I forgot to make my 2011 season predictions. Here goes:

NL East – Phillies

NL Central – Reds

NL West – Giants

MVP – Pujols

AL East – Yankees

AL Central – White Sox

AL West – Rangers

MVP – Jeter♥

Best Smile – Jeff Francoeur

Grittiest – David Eckstein

And, of course, I predict the Yankees will win the World Series thanks to the intangible drive of Derek Jeter, who will become the 6^th (10^th?) (14^th?) player to get 3000 hits with one team as he continues his drive to become my most beloved player ever.

Tim McCarver is a former Major League baseball catcher, and a current sportscaster for Fox Sports. During the off-season he resides in Maine, where plays the open mic every Wednesday at Roscoe’s Rocking Railroad Buffet, where it’s “all-aboard” for reasonably priced entertainment.

“When I was a kid we had a rotary phone. We had a phone that you had to stand next to, and you had to dial it. Do you realize how primitive that is? You’re making sparks in a phone — and you would actually hate people with zero’s in their numbers because it was more [work]. ‘Ah that guy’s got two zeros, screw that guy!’ And then if they called when you weren’t home, the phone would just ring lonely by itself…

…Now we live in an amazing, amazing world, and it’s wasted on the crappiest generation of just spoiled idiots that don’t care. Because this is what people are like now: they got their phone and they’re like ‘Ewwww, it won’t [whines]…’

Give it a second! It’s going to space! Can you give it a second to get back from space?! Is the speed of light too slow for you?!”

This morning when the Jason Bay news broke, my Twitter feed was sated with whiny comments. Go ahead and search “Jason Bay” on Twitter and see what you come up with:

“Mets 2011 season over before it starts….goodbye Jason Bay.”

“So the Mets season didn’t start yet and Jason Bay is already on the DL. I give up man, I really do…”

“Jason Bay: Making me want to kill myself since 2010.”

Really?

When I questioned the general malaise surrounding the news as premature, Joel G. of Roto Hardball tossed back a response (in two parts) after some back and forth:

“I want to see how Emaus does, see if Ike mashes taters even more frequently, see Thole become a solid backstop, see Niese grow…I could go on. But none of it would involve an overpaid aging corner outfielder with underwhelming power.”

Joel nailed it. Isn’t this what we should all be feeling right now? We’ve ditched our conjectured rotary phones. Right now we’ve got something decent going on with people in charge that seem to know what they’re doing. “Plan B” means more than just a hypothetical morning after pill we wished existed to rid ourselves of “that’s baseball” stupidity. It means options abound should the need arise. Considering where we were on Opening Day last year, we as fans should be happy with how this team stands now.

Games haven’t even started yet; can we give this team a second?

Thanks to the Internet, news from Mets spring training camp can be viewed all over the world, even from call centers in India…oh, did I tell you about how I called the Mets’ ticket office for game info and who answers the phone but Raji from Bangalore? He makes $2.50 an hour, which is like CEO pay over there, and he’s paying his way through college, all while getting to watch his favorite team, the Mets. He grew up watching Mike Piazza thanks to SNY: Masala, the web based digital outlet SNY placed in its Asian markets.

But Raji’s Met fandom hit the apex of the ice cream sundae when young Jose Reyes joined the team in 2003. Raji felt a connection to a player with a similar complexion. Reyes’ story is fascinating because he grew up playing in one of the Dominican’s famed baseball academies. The American educational system has a lot to learn from the Dominican Republic.

As I walked back to my hotel room while pitchers and catchers finished their afternoon workouts, I began thinking about how 9 different teams have won the World Series in the past 10 years. Mets VP of player development Paul DePodesta said something striking to me this morning as we watched Mets ace Johan Santana, first discovered by an Astro scout who spotted him pitching in Venezuela through a webcam in his Houston apartment, throw warmup tosses to catcher Josh Thole, who learned to play baseball as a teenager watching the Japanese World Series online at 3 a.m. in his Breese, Illinois bedroom.

We were discussing Billy Beane’s sabermetric revolution, which fought for the freedom of small market teams to compete with the big money market Yankees and Red Sox. DePodesta said to me, “Tom, the baseball playing field is being leveled.” As I rode the elevator up to my Marriott third floor hotel room suite with its eco-friendly hot tub, I had a brilliant idea. Level playing field…level…hmm…flat. Aha! The baseball world has been flattened. Ole Christopher Columbus discovered that our world is round. But now the baseball world is flat.

The next morning I took part in a charity run around the bases at New York’s Port St. Lucie complex. David Wright placed a mock tag on me just after I slid into third base. I was safe—but impressed. Think of how great American industry could be if businesses modeled themselves after Major League Baseball’s flat world.

Thomas Friedman is a bestselling author and award winning columnist for the New York Times. When not on assignment in Israel or Egypt, he can be seen every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon at Six Flags in Bowie, Maryland, where it’s “all aboard” for Tommy’s famous mustache ride.

The supposed difference between amphetamines and steroids is that one is a performance enabler and the other’s a performance enhancer. Performance enhancer. Performance enabler. Whichever phrase you choose, it’s the same thing (ask any old man who uses Viagra). Stupidly, the Baseball Hall of Fame voting instructions include a character clause: “integrity, sportsmanship, (and) character” are to be considered, in addition to the only thing that really matters, a person’s playing career. Thankfully, most baseball writers have rightfully ignored this clause over the years, otherwise the Hall of Fame would be missing the plaques of guys like Babe Ruth, noted womanizer, drunk, and glutton; Ty Cobb, inveterate racist and all around jerk who probably murdered a man; Ted Williams, surly dick; Mickey Mantle, alcoholic, God among men, and the boyhood hero of every current middle aged baseball fan; and  many other Hall of Famers who used amphetamines, the good kind of cheating.

Yet, now, of all times, baseball writers have taken it upon themselves to ignore the stats and decide, with their superior moral introspection, which sinners to keep out of Cooperstown. Mark McGwire, one of the greatest home run hitters of all time, only got 20% of the vote and will probably never reach Cooperstown. Jeff Bagwell, who has never tested positive and repeatedly denies using steroids, and is probably the best first baseman baseball saw between the careers of Lou Gehrig and Albert Pujols, only got 42% of the vote, because look how big his muscles are; He must be cheating. Hall of Fame voting has turned into a freaking witch hunt. I will quote Joe Posnanski, one of the few sane baseball writers, because I can’t improve on his words. “I would say this to the people who would not vote for Jeff Bagwell because they simply believe he used steroids, based on how he looked or some whispers they heard. I have a better idea: Let’s just burn him at the stake. If he survives, you will know you were right.”

Chances are Roger Clemens, maybe the greatest pitcher ever, and Barry Bonds, the home run king and possibly the greatest player ever, won’t get elected. And, yeah, Clemens is a royal asshole, and Bonds is a socially awkward emotional midget, and both probably used PEDs, but a Hall of Fame without baseball’s greatest players is a whitewashing of history, character clause or not. These insufferable sportswriters are trying to make the Hall of Fame meaningless, just for their own smug self-satisfaction.

And, yet, Frenchy had enough of a bullshit reputation that I was afraid Jerry might play him over Angel Pagan after the All-Star break when Beltran returned, despite the fact that Pagan has probably been the Mets second best player all season. There’s just something about Frenchy that causes people to overlook his obvious suckitude. It happened again on Thursday, after the Mets finally washed their hands of Frenchy and shipped him to Texas, when Bleacher Report ran a shortened opinion piece titled New York Mets Send The Wrong Message by Trading Jeff Francoeur, which linked to the full version of the article at Mets Gazette, written by Mets Gazette correspondent Armando Diana. However, I think a better title for this piece of published diarrhea would be: The Dumbest Fucking Article I’ve Ever Read. But I digress. Let’s join Diana as he takes us on his Frenchy ass-kissing journey.*

*Excerpts from Diana’s turd nugget will be in bold. My thoughts will be italicized. And Diana’s thought process will be in regular font.

Jeff Francoeur certainly has his free-swinging ways.

I certainly know how to begin a bullshit defense of a shitty player by pointing out the most obvious facet of Francouer’s ineptitude, as if this will butter up my readers to buy my forthcoming craptastic argument.

Sure enough, he displays poor plate discipline. Couple that with his low on-base percentage and you have the reasons why he couldn’t stay in the lineup.

So you’re saying he sucks, then? Thank goodness the Mets shipped him to Texas. Wait, what?

Yet, he has talent

He’s good! I swear! You have to look past his shitty stats. He has a smile that could light up a room. Hell my grandma was ready to blow him when he winked at her.

And it seemed to me that he was making a concerted effort to change his approach.

He’s trying to change. I can tell. I can see into his heart. Those walks were about to start coming in bunches!

On one hand, a guy like Oliver Perez

Sucks too. But more importantly, I’m gonna slam him to try and make Frenchy look good.

(whom the Mets have tried to part ways with, but still have on the current roster) frustrates Dan Warthen and Jerry Manuel to no end with his refusal to do even the basics, such as repeat his pitching motion. In addition, Perez demonstrated what an awful team player he was in refusing a Minor League assignment.

What a sulker. What a crybaby. He’s no team guy like Francoeur. Did I tell you Frenchy’s got a smile that can light up Citi Field?

By contrast, in 2009, with the season in complete tatters and devoid of hope, Jeff Francoeur played out the season with torn ligaments in his thumb.

Or maybe it’s fucking stupid to play injured and delay your healing time when the team is already out of the pennant race. But what do I know?

Isn’t that the type of player us Met fans should want to root for?

He tries hard! He looks so dedicated swinging at balls eight feet outside of the strike zone. He’s gritty. He’s scrappy. He tries harder than Eckstein! And look at his clubhouse presence. He gives everyone backrubs and even threw in a happy ending for Johan that game he hit his first home run.

Is this the message the Wilpons want to send the fans as to the type of character they endorse? They’ll trade players who care in order to try and improve weaknesses, but will keep lazy players that rob them blind and spit in their eye?

Will these rhetorical questions mask the fact that I’ve written another “I’d rather my team sign white guys like Eckstein who look like they try hard than guys like Manny who may sometimes jog out a ground ball but are actually good at fucking baseball” column?

With work and dedication, a willing player can be taught to adjust their approach to hitting.

I believe Jeff Francoeur will magically become a useful big league ballplayer, despite a .309 OBP over more than 33oo plate appearances. Sometimes you can turn chicken shit into chicken salad!

It’s true that winning brings more fans and having a player that swings at just about anything is not a way to produce a winner.

But don’t you dare trade him away. His smile and grit are worth at least 100 walks.

But building a loyal and happy fan base begins with assembling a team of players that fans want to watch. It then continues with success.

The Mets moved a player they felt was not living up to his potential. Fair enough. But they also told the fan base that they are tolerant of laziness and selfishness.

Okay, I can’t parse any more of this bullshit. Yes, Mr. Diana, we Mets fans will be happy if we have  a team of players we want to watch. But we want to watch guys that are good at baseball. I don’t give three shits if they smile and take extra BP.

And the Mets did not move a player that wasn’t living up to this potential. The truth is he played up to his potential. Jeff Francoeur fucking sucks at baseball. Stop this stupid fucking Frenchy vs. Ollie morality tale. They both suck. I’m sure Ollie tries hard, too. Trying hard is more than just smiling. Why is Frenchy gone and Ollie still in New York? Because no one is stupid enough to take Ollie away from the Mets. But the Rangers were stupid enough to take Frenchy. That’s it. Now will you please go kiss Frenchy’s ass all the way to Arlington?