The majority of the Mets are off today, except for those who have a “B’’ game in Jupiter later this afternoon. Pitchers Shaun Marcum, Pedro Feliciano and LaTroy Hawkins will each log some innings.
The projected fifth starter, Marcum, raised concerns when he didn’t report to camp in shape. Here is a guy trying to hang onto a major league job and got a $4 million guaranteed contract from the Mets. He doesn’t come to camp ready to pitch and says he only needs four exhibition appearances to get ready for the season.
Guys like that are hard to cheer for and you only hope he’s right about the four games. Somehow, I doubt it. Hawkins, 40, is competing for a bullpen spot, and as a veteran supposedly requires only a minimum amount of innings.
Feliciano, once a Mets’ workhorse out of the pen, was sidelined with a heart ailment and is required to wear a monitor.
Considering all three could make the staff, that’s not a good sign for the Mets’ pitching.
MORE WBC NONSENSE: It’s one thing when a player leaves a team to participate in the World Baseball Classic, but a coach? Bullpen coach Ricky Bones left the Mets to be Puerto Rico’s pitching coach.
Here is a team, the Mets, whose biggest concern is arguably its bullpen, and with a handful of new faces, I would have hoped Bones’ priority would have been with the Mets.
I realize this is about marketing the sport globally, but I am waiting for a team with enough guts to call out Major League Baseball and say: “Enough, our priority is getting ourselves ready to play and not to sell T-Shirts abroad.’’
WHEELER UPDATE: Zack Wheeler, out with a strained oblique is tentatively scheduled to throw on the mound on Thursday, and possibly get in a game in seven days. For those scoring at home, it is now three starts and counting Wheeler will have missed.
SPRINGING INTO ACTION: I’m in Florida today and I’m going to speak with Joe who wants to do some new stuff here at MMO including a live chat perhaps on Monday. I will field questions from the readers here about your Mets spring training concerns along with Joe.
I have several series features I am researching along with some interviews we will be posting shortly. I have also reactivated a Twitter account, or as my friend Joe said, I have joined the 21st Century. My handle is @jdelcos and I hope you sign on as followers. It has laid dormant since I began it over a year ago, but Joe has configured it to my phone so I can provide live tweets as things happen and the occasional picture or two.
I spoke with the Mets a few times in the last few days and am happy to say I am back on the beat and will again have a regular presence at Citi Field this summer. Joe had wanted to do away with game recaps and leave them for the other sites to dabble with them. However I insisted that they are an essential part of covering the beat and to let me take care of them from MMO. My game summaries will be much like what you recall from my time at The Journal News or what you see now from my friend Adam at ESPN. I hope you enjoy them as I would like to prove my know-it-all friend, Joe, wrong on this. Much more to come later.
