The Mets Doing Business

The Mets traded Angel Pagan to the Giants for Ramon Ramirez and Andres Torres. They also signed Frank Francisco to a 2 year $12 million deal, and Jon Rauch to a 1 year $3.5 million deal. The signing of Rauch and Francisco are great moves, helping their horrendous bullpen greatly, without long term commitments or overspending on a flooded relief pitching market. This will certainly help their bullpen greatly along with Ramon Ramirez acquired in the trade with the Giants. This is a good sign for the Mets as they are making quality moves, and with their organization in shambles that is a nice thing to see. Getting Andres Torres is certainly a downgrade over Angel Pagan in my mind, but a worthy downgrade with the addition of Ramirez to the deal, so the Mets may not be getting big named players like they tried to do in the recent past, but they are building a team that might not lose every single game next season. They likely don’t have much more money to spend this offseason though as they’ve said they had $20-25 million and they are at like $20 million, but it’s been money well spent. Unrelated to the Mets (I’m assuming they aren’t in on one) there are rumored to be some blockbusters in the work. Whether they get done or not is uncertain, but the Indians seem they might be involved in one so watch out for that. Also Andrew Bailey might be on his way to Boston in a package with Josh Reddick and some prospects. This would mean the Sox are relying on Darnell McDonald, and or Ryan Kalish in right field, unless they go out and get someone. I suggest they get someone else if they lose Reddick. Also Gio Gonzalez could be leaving Oakland as Bailey might, but it would take 3-4 very good prospects, but Gonzalez is the kind of pitcher you expect to give up top prospects for, although 4 would be a lot. Stay tuned, I think the next day or two will have some good action. If you want to hear about it, come here because I give you what you need to hear.

$$Money$$Ball$$

I just wanted to do a quick post on my view of the Moneyball, movie and book. First of all I like the book better, for a baseball nut like me there’s more detail, I love that! Also, as good as the movie was, I feel there were some things that you probably don’t see in the right light. First of all I don’t think Art Howe is the bad guy they made him out to be in the movie, but then again it makes the movie a lot funnier when Billy Beane trades Giambi and Pena, forcing Howe to play Hatteberg. Also on a side note, Jonah Hill and Brad Pitt were great in this movie. Back to what you miss out on, the whole Jeremy Brown scene at the end is kind of out of the blue without mentioning him for the whole movie. He had a lot of mention in the book, and the chapters on the draft, which weren’t in the movie, were actually my favorite ones. I think the book is just more complete, and the movie is adapted for entertainment purposes, which I understand. I’m just saying, if you haven’t read the book, go take a peek, it’s my favorite book and really just a great read. Great concept, exciting as far as a baseball book goes, and is very well written. I did enjoy the movie as well, so seeing that should also be on your to do list. To anyone who has read the book and seen the movie, what do you think?