M * E * T * S or M * A * S * H

Although official records on the disabled list go back only about 15 years, that's far enough to show how the number of disabling injuries has increased dramatically in recent years.

Not only are players getting hurt more often (despite supposedly being better conditioned with superior offseason training regimens), but because of the money invested in them, teams are quick to throw them on the disabled list rather than have them play through their injuries.

In the first 80 years of baseball, players were loathe to go on the DL for fear of losing their jobs. Who knows how many pitchers plugged on in pain with torn elbow ligaments, before the advent of Tommy John surgery?

Strained quads? Back then they called them "Charley horses" and they'd get 'em rubbed down for a couple of days and be right back out there.
In any case, in 1996 there were a total of 398 DL stints in baseball, an average of 14.2 per team. Over the next decade that number gradually increased until 2007, when it suddenly spiked from 413 to 480 or 16 per team. Last year, the number jumped to 532, or an average of 17.7 per team, with the Nationals surpassing the 2004 Texas Rangers' record of 29 stints on the list.

But the news on the Mets just gets worse and worse and, for them, this season can't end soon enough.

It seems no matter what it is, the Mets come up losers, mired in misery. Would you believe, after all the carnage at Citi Field, the Mets can't even claim the title of the most injured team in history?

Depending on how you choose to look at it, that dubious distinction goes either to the Washington Nationals of last season, who had 30 players go on the disabled list, or the 2004 Arizona Diamondbacks, whose players lost 2,167 days to the DL.

So far this year, the Mets have had 22 players land on the disabled list, which ties them with the Texas Rangers (who, by contrast, have somehow managed to remain squarely in the American League wild-card hunt.) In addition, Mets players, entering the weekend, lost 1,095 days to the disabled list, second to the San Diego Padres' 1,151 days.

But no matter how you look at it, a distinction must be made in the case of the '09 Mets. There has been no team that on Sept. 1 had three of its Opening Day starting pitchers, its first baseman, shortstop and center fielder all on the disabled list and done for the year.

There has been no team that had eight former All-Stars (David Wright, Carlos Beltran, Carlos Delgado, Billy Wagner, Johan Santana, Gary Sheffield, J.J. Putz and Jose Reyes) who all spent time on the DL in the same season.

M * E * T * S  or  M * A * S * H- Blake Kearny

Blake Kearny is a retired baseball scout from Los Angeles, California. He currently runs a baseball school for children in Los Angeles

He needed a day off!?

A day after hitting a home run against the San Diego Padres, Manny Ramirez sat out of yesterday’s game. Why? His legs were sore.

Are you kidding me? Your legs are sore!? You had 50 games off, you played two games and your legs are sore! It’s your third day back and you need a day off!? Did getting your hair done last week somehow put too much stress on your legs?

This takes ‘Manny being Manny’ to a new level. Moreover, manager Joe Torre will now ration Manny’s playing time until the All-Star break. No one will ever question his ability to hit a baseball, but I can’t take much more of this guy. – Vincent Purosi

The above post was sent in by reader Vinnie Purosi who must have been shunned ny Manny for an autograph at some point.

Hide the women and children, they are letting him out!

Last night New York Mets mental patient, I mean pitcher, Oliver Perez allowed three runs in five-plus innings of work in a Triple-A Buffalo rehabilitation start. Today the Mets announced that Perez will rejoin the Mets for a start against the Los Angeles Dodgers Wednesday, July 8. Tim Redding will be moving to the bull pen.

Memo to the NY Mets: The guy should be in Creedmoor Psychiatric Center not on a MLB field! He’s lucky he doesn’t hurt himself, or worse, someone else!

Look, no one ever questioned Ollie’s talent. No one ever said that he wasn’t one of the very best pitchers in baseball on days that he threw consistent strikes. Barry Bonds was once quoted as saying that Oliver Perez was the toughest pitcher he had ever faced!

But his career has been filled with too many ups and downs, too many peeks and valleys, too many raw shock tests.

The Padres thought so much of his stuff that had all but declared him as their closer in waiting ready to replace Trevor Hoffman when he first came up. He was going to Mariano Rivera taking over for John Wetland. Then it happened. HE BACAME A BASKET CASE.

They could base an entire episode of “Mental” on him!

He started jumping over the foul lines between innings, talking to himself on the mound (sometimes disagreeing with himself I think?), chewing on the baseball, throwing the ball with a different arm slot each time (just because he could). Then came the walks…. When he gets in one of those (oh my god, I have no idea where this ball is going to go) moments it’s almost Rick Ankiel-like. Remember how uncomfortable that was to watch?

He can be going along mowing down people left and right like Cy Young for 4 innings and then it happens……. a walk on 4 pitches to open the 5th….. then another….. then a dribbler to the mound that the guy beats out to load the bases…. Now it’s 3-0 on the next guy with the bases loaded and then he groves one right down the middle for a blast…. a grand slam. But wait, he strikes out the next three guys! Then the 6th comes along and there is an error behind him to open the inning (now he’s done – he’s lost any ability to focus). A single, a 4 pitch walk, a double clearing the bases……… a 3-0 lead is now a 3-7 deficit. The pitching coach comes out to talk to him……… he speaks but no one is home….. he has no idea where he is at this point…. A 4 pitch walk…… a bloop hit…… a hit batter……. And another bases clearing HR. Inside of 15 minutes the Mets went from up 3-0 to down 3-11.

They run him out there for the next start and he throws a gem……… go figure……. then the cycle starts over.

The Padres couldn’t take it anymore and sent him to the Pirates. He teased the Bucko’s with a GREAT SEASON and then reverted to mental patient form exiling him all the way back to the minors. The Mets were able to have some success with him and now he’s gone off the deep end again.

It’s too much. Too much to take. And all the while I’ve been sticking with this nut job. Ladies and gentlemen, the allure of having Oliver Perez pitch well and his ability to stick it up my ying-yang with no Vaseline when I activate him has probably been the single biggest reason that I annually end up in last place.

God, help me. Please don’t let me activate him this coming week. - Peter Costa

Pete is a serious Rotisserie participant playing the same league with the same guys for 17 years. Not only has Peter never finished in the money; he’s finished last 13 times and no higher than 10th (in a league with 14 guys). Join us in following Peter’s trials, tribulations and frustrations, as he attempts to navigate his way out of the basement in 2009.

Good riddance Matt Clement...

Did anyone see the reports that Matt Clement has been hired as the boys’ varsity coach at Butler High School in Pittsburgh? My thoughts about his career change are the following:

Too bad for me that Matt didn’t choose coaching boys basketball before 1998 when I picked him up as a prospect! This guy was touted by the scouts as a CAN’T MISS prospect. Like Oliver Perez, the San Diego Padres thought that they had hit the jackpot (at least Ollie put together one stellar year for Pittsburgh in 2004 with a 2.99 ERA, 239K’s and a WHIP of 1.15 before he became a basket case.)

Clement ended his career with an unfulfilling 87-86 record, a 4.47 ERA and a WHIP of 1.4. He did in fact have electric stuff, and his ball moved quite a bit (he averaged 8.6 strikeouts per 9 innings.) But his WHIP is what constantly killed my chances of winning a title (or even finishing above last place for that matter.)

I’m always mesmerized by these guys that have electric stuff and I HAVE TO HAVE THEM. But I can tell you that having guys that strike out 12 one game and pitching a 7 inning shutout followed by walking 5 guys and getting pulled in the 4th inning of your next start is no way to succeed in Fantasy Baseball.

I’ve learned quite a bit from getting my ass kicked over the years. I can tell you this. If you have a rookie pitcher that you like who has talent and is very successful one outing and walks the ballpark and gets shelled the next, that is expected from a rookie and you can justify sticking with him to see if he pans out.

However, if you have a veteran pitcher that exhibits those traits and has not figured out how to keep his team in the game when he doesn’t have his best stuff, no matter how good his stuff his cut him because he will screw you in the end.

Good riddance Matt Clement. I sincerely hope that you stay in your new profession and not attempt a lame comeback. I hope you coach a really talented kid who puts up 40 points for you one night, having you design a specific play for him that you pull out at crunch time only to have the kid throw up an air-ball in the big spot. I want you to feel the pain of counting on a player to live up to his potential and having that dependency cause you many sleepless nights.

Also, I hope you are not mad at me for cheering in July of 2005 when you were struck by that line drive. It was a heat of the moment thing and I was upset with you after years of depending on you and you almost never coming through.

If I had it to do over I certainly would not have wished that you got hit in the head with the ball. That’s just plain mean and I’m not like that. I WOULD HAVE WISHED THAT YOU HAD TAKEN ONE ON THE KNEE CAP!

Oh Matt, I almost forgot - I wish you the best of luck in your endeavor…………….. – Peter Costa

Pete is a serious Rotisserie participant playing the same league with the same guys for 17 years. Not only has Peter never finished in the money; he’s finished last 13 times and no higher than 10th (in a league with 14 guys). Join us in following Peter’s trials, tribulations and frustrations, as he attempts to navigate his way out of the basement in 2009.

Padres Management - Do your job.....

So I’m looking through the list of available free agents for a hitter to place a FAAB bid on tonight. The first thing I did was sort the players by at bats. I wanted to see what full time players were out there.

At the top of the free agent list in my league with 225 at bats was Brian Giles. At first I didn’t think anything of it, but then I looked at the stats. Brian has had no injuries to speak of this year and is clearly (from a performance standpoint) the worst everyday player in MLB this year.

From 1999 through 2002 Brain was one of the better all around player in baseball. He was definitely an All-Star. If you owned him on your rotisserie team during that time, you can’t possibly have had any complaints.

He’s no longer that All-Star player and until this year, had drifted into a nice complimentary veteran player to have on a MLB roster to help the younger players and to fit in among All-Stars of today that may be on his team.

Brian is now 38 year old. He’s had a significant chance opportunity to show that he can still play this game. He faltered at the start (it happens to the best of them) and he’s had ample opportunity to get his season back on track. He couldn’t. He can’t. He won’t.

I’m sure Brian is a nice guy, (never any reports to the contrary that I know if) but he needs to be removed from the everyday line-up. It’s not fair to his teammates, the Padre fans or even the competitive balance of the league.

Brian now has more than 250 plate appearance this year and is hitting .191 with 2 HR’s, 23 RBI, 1 SB and 18 runs scores. There is no way that you can tell me that the San Diego Padres can’t fill the right field position with someone who can perform better. It could be someone that is currently a reserve player on the Padre roster, someone in their minor league system, or someone currently belonging to another MLB team.

Memo to Kevin Towers – You are the General Manager. You need to do your job and remove Brian Giles from your 40 man roster. If you want to be polite (he probably deserves it), make him a coach, offer him a cushy executive or scouting job or let him be the ball boy (if he still wants to fraternize with the guys).

Memo to Bud Black – If Kevin Towers doesn’t do his job, you need to do yours and make Giles strictly a reserve player from here on out.

On June 1st I penned a post “Adrian does it himself.” It talks about how Adrian Gonzalez is a one man show and the lack of production around him. It was that way then, it 3 weeks later nothing’s changed. Brian Giles is probably the biggest reason for the anemic support that Adrian gets.

This is got to stop. Everyone needs to do their job. It’s time for Padre’s management to do theirs. - Josh Bolan

Josh Bolan is a retired AP baseball reporter and now works as a freelance writer in Fresno California. Josh has been contributing to baseball publications as a writer since 1996.