Or things I’ve read recently and want to pass along. First, Mark Simon of ESPN explains why Jon Niese may have a better year in 2012:

Something jumped out at us when we looked at that, along with some hit-location charts for all the fly balls and pop ups Niese allowed.

The average pitcher allows hits on about 10 to 12 percent of soft/normally hit fly balls and pop ups.

Niese’s rate last year? A whopping 27 percent.

That led to his batting average on balls in play (BABIP) being among the highest in the majors — .333.

- Mark Simon, “What’s Next for Jonathon Niese?”
ESPN New York

If you’re optimistic about Niese, then hang your hat on this. (Note: I don’t hang my hats anywhere. They sit on my desk.) On the other hand, as Simon also points out, Niese has always given up an enormous number of hits, even in the minor leagues. So maybe he just gives up a ton of hits. This coming season should be a tipping point for Niese, with regards to whether his high batting averages against are the result of bad luck or just a lack of skill.

Hey, let’s talk about money for a second:

Noreen Harrington, a 20-year hedge-fund executive and former Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch employee who was trying to match the returns of the Madoff funds, quit her job as chief investment officer of Wilpon-owned Sterling Stamos in protest in 2003. That came after the Wilpon-owned funds placed money with a Madoff feeder fund over her strenuous objections, the trustee suing the Wilpons for $386 million claims.

- Adam Rubin, “Filing: Wilpons Were Alerted to Returns”
ESPN-New York

At this point, most Mets fans seem to be rooting against the Wilpons retaining control of the team. So here are my three questions for Mets fans:

- Which is better for the New York Mets — the baseball team that actually plays baseball games — over the next five years: Ownership retaining control of the Mets — this is presumably a slow, messy process — or Ownership selling the team — again, a slow, messy process?

- If you are rooting against the current ownership group, why? Is it because you think that someone else owning the Mets will ultimately be better for the team, and you’d like to see that outcome? Or it is because you want ownership to lose something they seem to enjoy, because that seems fair (and it seems fair either because so many other people lost things with Madoff, serious financial things and money and the likes, and anyone who benefited should also lose something; or because you blame ownership for taking away something you enjoyed, i.e., a good Mets team or a certain star shortstop, so that they can hold on to the things they enjoy)?

- Is anyone just rooting for a knockout punch either way? Either the team is sold quickly or the financial situation clears up quickly, just so long as it’s over.

Real questions. I don’t have a solid answer for any of them, but I’d like to hear some fan voices.

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The Newest of the Mostly Mets Podcasts, this time with guest Joe Drugan of The Nats Blog. Joe fills us in on the goings-on in D.C. this winter, and Ted, Toby, and I talk about etymology of the Ancient Greek language . . . oh, wait, the Mets. We talk about the Mets. The iTunes link for rating, subscribing and other general iTunes stuff, is here. If you like, send us questions for the show by email (MostlyMetsPodcast at gmail), voicemail (347-915-METS), or by twitter (@PatrickJFlood, @tobyhyde, @OGTedBerg). And thanks for listening, those of you that do.

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This post is inspired by Aaron Gleeman’s review of the Johan Santana trade over at Baseball Prospectus earlier this week, as well as Ted Berg’s earlier look back at the same trade. Basically, the idea is that the trade hasn’t worked out ideally for either side — none of the four players the Twins acquired developed into stars, while Johan Santana is now racking up medical bills and not pitching and taking up a lot of payroll for the Mets. Nothing is awesome and no one is happy.

But let’s look at the trade through a different lens: What would the baseball universe look like had the Johan Santana trade fallen through? How would the paths of the Mets and Twins differ? That is: Would the Mets really be better off had they never traded for Johan Santana?

My guess is the Mets would actually be worse off, while the Twins would be better off. Here’s how I see it playing out in hindsight: Click Here to Continue Reading

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Or, really, some things I read over the past few days that I’ll pass along to y’all. Let’s look back at the Johan Santana trade, four years later:

Minnesota had failed to get an elite prospect for Santana, but two top-100 prospects and two other quality minor leaguers certainly wasn’t a disastrous return. Of course, most Twins fans were still very disappointed by a package built around Guerra and Gomez instead of Ellsbury and Lester or Hughes and Cabrera, and most Mets fans were thrilled to land an in-his-prime ace without surrendering Martinez.

Four years later, it turns out no one should have been happy.

- Aaron Gleeman, “Lose-Lose Situation: Revisiting the Johan Santana Trade”
Baseball Prospectus

I started to write a reaction to this, but it’s going to be too long so I’ll just post it later. So: I’ll have more on what-ifs surrounding the Johan Santana trade later.

Okay, second link. If you follow the Mets on the internet, you may have seen this already:

So it was odd that last week, Sean received a call from Jay Horwitz, the Director of Media Relations for the New York Mets, telling him that while the Journal News can continue to receive credentials, the Mets would not be credentialing me.

Sean asked why that was, and Jay responded that the Mets “don’t like his reporting”. The team declined to respond to my multiple attempts to reach them for a fuller explanation.

- Howard Megdal, “A Note on Access and the Mets”
The LoHud Mets Blog

Sports are a business, and teams really only let reporters and bloggers in because reporters and bloggers offer free publicity for the team. I write dumb jokes about Jason Bay, and then someone watches a Mets games and buys some Mets tickets. Or something like that. It’s like monkeys: I pick and eat bugs off your back, you pick and eat bugs off the Mets’ back, and then the Mets pick and eat bugs off my back. Everyone gets bugs. That’s how the relationship is supposed to work, but if a team feels that it is working otherwise . . . no more credentials, I suppose. (And fewer bugs for, uh . . .  you guys? Did I get that right?) So that’s the Mets’ side of things.

That said, as an easily-marginalized blogger with access to the team, I certainly don’t like this story. I don’t know if the Mets pay any attention to me — Hey, Mets, do you guys read this stuff? Do any famous sorts of people read this? — but I dislike the notion that the Mets may be trying to intimidate bloggers. Plus, whatever gains the Mets make (or believe they are making) by keeping Megdal out of the clubhouse, it certainly seems as if those gains are being offset by coming off as petty.

Whatever. I guess the moral here is that everything is better when the Mets have money.

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This one is fresh from the podcast oven. Do we make podcasts in the oven? Podcast skillet maybe? Podcast skillet.

Special thanks to Bill Baer, of Crashburn Alley fame and author of 100 Things Phillies Fans Should Know and Do Before They Die, who joins us to preview the 2012 Phillies and makes us very sad to be Mets fans. The iTunes link is here, if you’d like to subscribe, rate, or download. This is a long one, so there’s a rundown after the jump:

2:00 – Rapid responses to many, many Twitter questions, including R.A. Dickey as a candy bar, the next Met traded, and the 2014 infield. And much more.
37:00 – Bill Baer from Crashburn Alley – NL East Preview Part 2: Why are the Phillies so good?
1:07:00 – The Most Valuable Met in 2014 Will Be
1:28:00 – Obligatory Bacon Discussion
1:36:00 – Ted proposes a revolutionary new sandwich
1:41:00 – Superbowl predictions

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Want some hope for the Mets? Some things I’ve learned clicking around Baseball-Reference’s Play Index:

1. Since 1901, there have been 213 major league baseball players to receive 500 plate appearances before their age 22 season. Ruben Tejada is one of those 213 players. So you can probably guess where this is going.

2. Of those 213 players, 116 were All-Stars at some point in their career, or 54%. Since we’re counting from 1901, and the first All-Star game took place in 1933, the percentage of All-Star caliber players is probably even higher than 54% — for example, between 1951 and 2001, when there was an All-Star game every year, 72% of the players receiving 500 plate appearances before their age 22 season ultimately made an All-Star team during their career. So over that fifty year stretch, seven of every ten players who became major league regulars at a young age also became All-Stars.

3. Also of those 213 players, 48 are in the Hall of Fame. That’s 23%.

4. The percentages for players who go on to become All-Stars and Hall of Famers remain similar if you narrow it down to just middle infielders. The percentages do drop slightly if you eliminate great young players, and only look at those “bad” players with three or fewer career Wins Above Replacement by age 21. But still, 58% of the “bad” young players who debuted between 1951 and 2001 ultimately became All-Stars. Even if a player fails to impress in the majors at a young age, he has a better than 50% chance at becoming an All-Star at some point in his career.

So just playing the percentages, if all you know about a player is that he has 500 major league plate appearances and is 21-years-old, you can estimate that he has a two-thirds shot at becoming an All-Star, and a one-in-four shot at going to the Hall of Fame. If a player is talented enough to play in the majors at a young age, he has a good chance of growing into a star.

We do know a little bit more than that about Ruben Tejada, of course. He has held his own, though perhaps not impressed during his time in the big leagues. But even adding in that information, there’s a better than half chance Tejada makes an All-Star team during his career, and a 10% shot he’s a Hall of Famer.

What about bust rate? As far as I know, there isn’t a great way to search the bust rate on these guys using Baseball-Reference. But I can make a list of players from the last 20 years to have 500 big league plate appearances by age 21: