Terry Collins told ESPN New York this afternoon that the oblique injury to top prospect Zack Wheeler is “not very bad.” Adam Rubin also reports that “the hope is to get Wheeler back on a bullpen mound in five days.” As MMO’s John Delcos pointed out this morning, Wheeler sounds like he’ll miss just one more start before he appears in another Grapefruit League game. As they should, the Mets are handling this one with [...]

With Grapefruit League action now in full swing, here are some news and notes from around Mets Spring Training camp. Tonight, Rafael Montero will make his first start and will face off against the Nationals’ Stephen Strasburg, who pitches against the Mets for the second time in the last six days. Montero, who has opened many people’s eyes this spring, will begin the season at Double-A Binghamton. If you would like to check out the exciting young [...]

Prospect maven John Sickels really loves righthander Noah Syndergaard, who he ranked #12 on his Top 50 Pitching Prospects list inside his 2013 Baseball Prospect Book.  He shared what he wrote about Syndergaard on his site Minor League Ball this morning: Noah Syndergaard is one of my very favorite prospects. A supplemental first round pick in 2010 from high school in Texas, he’s thrived thus far in pro ball, generating very enthusiastic scouting reports to go along [...]

In a conference call Wednesday evening, Mets GM Sandy Alderson addressed several issues surrounding the team. Here are some of the things he told us: Catching prospect Travis d’Arnaud will not be allowed to block the plate. The reason for that is obvious – his health. The leadoff spot is still up in the air but Kirk Nieuwenhuis, who is the leading candidate, still has a lot of work to do. If Nieuwenhuis plays full-time [...]

Updated by Joe D. on 2/27 We may hear those words blare over the Citi Field PA system one day in the near future during a Mets game… Maybe… Whether or not Wilmer Flores should be handed an outfield glove has been debated quite passionately on MMO many times over the last several months. We’ve all debated the pros and cons of such a move, and obviously so have the Mets. As Andrew Keh of [...]

It wasn’t too long ago that when the subject of top Mets pitching prospects came up, the first two names that jumped to mind were righthanders Jenrry Mejia and Jeurys Familia. As a matter of fact, going into the 2011 season, both were still ranked as the two best pitching prospects in the Mets system. Anthony DiComo wrote a little about that this morning on Mets.com and it reminded me of how quickly and easily [...]

I probably wasn’t the only person frustrated last year watching Kirk Nieuwenhuis, or Lucas Duda, or Ike Davis appearing to take fat pitches down the middle of the plate only to see them swing at a breaking pitch in the dirt or a fastball at eye level. On several notable occasions Keith Hernandez himself went off on hitters taking 2-1 fastballs “right down the pike” as he’d say. There was a perception among many fans [...]

Last season, the New York Mets answered the pleas of Mets fans everywhere and gave us the blue walls we so desperately wanted at Citi Field. As a show of good faith, this season, the Mets have graciously decided to add a matching blue awning to go with the blue outfield walls… And the best part is that we didn’t even have to beg for it… Ain’t she a pretty site? I know what you’re [...]

I expressed my concerns about Lucas Duda’s 0-7 start late last night, which you can read below. I was not surprised by what I predicted would be an avalanche of “it’s only two games” rebuttals. There they are for all of you to see. It seems like many readers chose to ignore that it was Terry Collins who referred to Duda as a “work in progress” and that those were his words and not mine. But, [...]

Many Mets fans have extremely passionate opinions about how well the Mets drafted and signed International free agents during the Omar Minaya era. It is a hotly debated topic, but after every heated debate, there are never any clear answers to how the Mets drafted during this period. Because of the lack of clarity, I felt this would be a great subject to research extensively. With help from Satish Ram, I compiled the draft results [...]

Josh Kosman of the NY Post is reporting that the Mets won’t have much money to play with this season and are expecting to lose more than $10 million this year as well as suffering a fifth straight year of declining attendance. “There is little room this year to raise salaries,” said a source familiar with the team’s finances told the Post. Last week, principal owner Fred Wilpon told reporters that the Mets’ money woes were over [...]