Give Me Your Hungry, Your Tired, Your Pedros
"And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom." -- Anais Nin

Well, here's some funny thoughts on precedents where Pedro is concerned:

Back in 1996, the Red Sox let go a 33 year old starter who they said had seen better days. Roger Clemens signed with the Toronto Blue Jays on December 13, 1996 having completed two relatively subpar seasons which saw him start 57 games, complete 6 of them, 2 for shutouts, pitched 382.2 innings, struck out 389, walked 166, won 20 and lost 18 and had a 3.83 ERA. We all know what Roger Clemens went on to do.

Now, almost 8 years to the day, the Red Sox let go another 33 year old starter who they say may have seen better days. Pedro Martinez signs with the New York Mets having completed two seasons which saw him start 62 games, complete 4 of them, 1 for a shutout, pitched 403.2 innings, struck out 433, walked 108, won 30 and lost 13 and had a 3.12 ERA.

Sound familiar?

There's been a little more time to digest the Pedro signing now and frankly, whatever trepidations being felt when the rumour of Omar chasing Pedro first broke, are now gone. There are two irrevocable realities about this transaction:

1. The starting rotation of the Mets, with Pedro, is stronger than it was with Al Leiter, is stronger than it would have been had they'd been forced to sign someone along the likes of Odalis Perez and creates an aura about the franchise that hasn't existed since they first traded for Mike Piazza in 1998.

2. The starting rotation of the Red Sox, without Pedro, having allowed Pavano to slip to Yankees and with nothing but a desperate hope to link themselves with the Oakland A's to get Tim Hudson, is weaker than it was with Pedro. If the Red Sox don't pull off a late and unexpected deal, they have weakened themselves by allowing Pedro to leave. Boomer Wells is not the kind of top of the line pitcher the Red Sox need to follow Schilling in the rotation.

We hear the scare tactics about Pedro's inevitable decline, how Pedro is not the pitcher he once was, how absurd it is to guarantee a 4th year and frankly, I don't really care what happens three or four years and $40-50 million later. I've never even really liked Pedro and his strange, prima donna maddening ways and I'm excited about this. Pedro in a Met uniform. Wow.

*****

The rumours are still flying around Sammy Sosa, not just to the Mets, but several other teams, sniffing around to find out just how much of his salary the Cubs are willing to eat. One thing that might be interesting to note, especially now in conjunction with the Pedro signing: If you compare Sosa's relative production over the last three seasons with the three big ticket players the Mets might be interested in, you see that Sosa has nearly outperformed them all:

NAME AVG. HR RBI

Delgado .284 107 352
Sosa .274 124 291
Alou .283 76 258
Sexson .273 83 249

Now, one step further, you see that Sosa has numbers comparable to even the majesty of Anti-Christ Boras' holy trinity of free agents:

Beltran .281 93 309
Sosa .274 124 291
Beltre .278 92 276
Drew .283 64 191

I haven't heard much more about a trade to move Sosa to the Mets but having two players come to Shea with chips on their shoulders and something to prove, cannot be a bad thing for Mets fans next season.

Perhaps even more remarkable still, it appears that Manny Ramirez is still being dangled as trade bait for some combination of Cliff Floyd, Mike Piazza or Kaz Matsui.

Sosa .274-124-291
Ramirez .325-113-341
Piazza .276-64-186

Clearly the Pedro signing can only be the beginning because if the Mets go to the mat with Pedro, a defensive liability like Piazza at catcher, a pathetic bullpen, no outfield, a dodgy second baseman/shortstop combination and no power to speak of in the spine of the lineup, Omar may as well have saved us all the heartbreak of believing in the first place. This can only be the first step and there will have to be many more to come.

*****

Why won't this nasty rumour about pitching in the National League go away? How many times have we heard or read in the last several weeks that pitching in the National league, without a DH, blablabla, turns Pedro's 6 inning outings into 7, stretches 100 pitches, turns ordinary pitchers into great ones, water into wine, and can create Cy Young candidates out of aging vets.

C'mon. If pitching in the National League were so much better than pitching in the American league, why doesn't every free agent pitcher on the market flock to Shea? Why have Wells, Pavano, Jared Wright and probably Eric Milton all made moves FROM the oh so weak and watered down NL pitching Babylon to the denizens and caves of evil, cynical pitching netherworld like the AL East? Are they merely masochists or are they really that stoopid?

There is no magical formula. Pedro's pitch count isn't really "worth" more in the National League than the American League - true, he doesn't have to pitch to DHs but he will have to pitch to more PHs and worse still, he will have to bat himself, he will have to face pitchers after buzzing hitters near the ear and get the same medicine in return. You've got to wonder if Pedro is tough enough to continue pitching in the same aggressive fashion knowing he might get some of the same treatment himself.

*****

My favourite quote of the week to date comes from Tony Kornheiser, who normally isn't worth quoting but today's nattering about the Nat's GM and the Nat inactivity in the winter meetings, bears repeating, if only because it ends the world's longest streak of unfunny quips in human history:

"...What was Bowden waiting for, Monty Hall to come down the aisle and say, "If you have a hard-boiled egg in your pocket, I'll give you Al Leiter"?

*****

I think we can all agree that the current ruling triad of NFL super powers are New England, Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, and probably in that order.

What appears to be more interesting to the casual fan these days is what is happening in places like Cincinnati and Buffalo, two franchises that are not headed for the Super Bowl but who are breaking out like acne across a greasy teenage pore.

The Bengals have won 4 of their last 6 games and the two losses were by a combined 8 points to none other than Pittsburgh and New England. Over that 6 game span, they've scored 170 points and even managed to knock off the Ravens AND score 27 points at the same time. Currently 6-7 after a slow start, they aren't really in the hunt for a playoff spot in the AFC but they are definately being groomed as a force to be reckoned with in the seasons to come.

The Bills have won 6 of their last 7, losing only to New England along the way and have outscored opponents 154-65 in those six victories. They are currently 7-6 with a vague chance at earning an AFC wildcard.

Guess who meet next week: why it's the Super Bowl of the Up And Coming, Buffalo Bills at the Cincinnati Bengals.

Unless, of course, you believe the Carolina Panthers, finally having righted themselves after suffering an untold score of injuries, have reeled off five in a row and are moving rapidly towards possible post season contention despite starting the season with a 1-7 record. 1-7 and still playoff eligible!

I've said before that Washington Redskins are the most underrated 4-9 team in the NFL and I stand by that if that is indeed anything to stand by at all. They are still better than 4-9 Tennessee, Arizona or Oakland. I watched them give the Eagles all they could handle on Sunday night. I watched them mangle the Giants and give the Steelers all they could handle two weeks before that. Their record doesn't indicate it, but this is a team on the move. Joe Gibbs' last run at head coaching started off miserably as well but I think this guy's ability to succeed at everything he does goes far beyond whatever it means to come back to coaching in the NFL after such a long layoff.

Because there are only three weeks left in the season, it's clearly a little late to speculate on who it is I might have thought would appear yet again in the Super Bowl this season. Instead, I offer you my prediction on the dodgiest playoff chase in the NFL, the NFC wildcards:

So we know Philly and Atlanta are probable first round byes. After that, there are probably only 10 teams out of 12 who have playoff possibilities and even one of the ones who probably don't have playoff possibilities aren't even mathematically eliminated yet. Only the San Francisco 49ers are completely and irrevocably out of the picture.

Of these 10 teams, two will make it in as division winners and two as wildcards. The Pack should coast in at 11-5 and Seattle will redeem themselves in typically haphazard fashion to win their division at 9-7. The Vikings will make one WC and the other will fall to a tiebreaker between division rivals, the hard-charging Panthers and Tampa Bay. The Panthers get a slight edge because the adversity overcome this season plus last season's experience, makes them the better team in the end.

*****

Lastly, as Shaq says, the sunglasses are off now and you can see the source of the problems in LaLaLand. Not that anyone doubted it. But none of that really matters so much as the weird exchange that was reported to have gone on at the Lakers game between Kobe's rather fit looking wife Vanessa and the rapidly aging but gigantically svelte Karl Malone.

For some reason, Vanessa is to have asked Karl courtside at the Lakers game, dressed up in cowboy boots, something along the lines of hey cowboy, what are you hunting?
Now Karl, if you didn't already know, is quite a hunting freak. No kidding, Karl is one of hunting's embassadors so frankly, even if it were wrapped in some sort of LA-Weird sexual innuendo, at least Vanessa could always say her question seemed legitimate.

And of course, Karl, big game hunter that he is, replies "I'm hunting for little Mexican girls" which is FAR more information than any of us want to know about how Karl Malone is spending his first season away from the NBA and probably has very little to do with the NRA.

Now I don't know about you, but I don't reckon this is what Uncle Karl had in mind.

So regardless of whether Karl was kidding or Karl is really some sort of weird deviant or Karl just fancies Kobe's missus, we'll probably never know, but whilst Shaq is having a great time laughing it up in Miami, Kobe is looking like he's wound just a little too tight.

As always, if you're interested in Mets-specific language, come and check out my new Mets blog, Archie Bunker's Army.