Word came down that Beltran offered himself to the Yankees for the same price tag as the Cards got him for.

PHEW! It would have been torture to watch him put up monster numbers in Yankee Coors Stadium.

It would’ve been worse to see Reyes in Yankee pinstripes but Beltran would’ve been plenty painful.

***

Lastings Milledge is headed to Japan to play for the Yakult Swallows. Wow, how the mighty prospects have fallen. BMF was so high on ’stings and I really thought he was destined to be a spark to the entire franchise after he hit that game tying HR at Big Shea… but it wasn’t meant to be. 

Good luck in Yakult ‘Stings!

***

More bad news for the Wilponzis as people are now openly questioning whether MLB should seize control of the team. 

The owners inability, not unwillingness, but INABILITY to sign Reyes is incredibly damning when it comes to ownership’s ability to field a competitive team. 

I guess all attention now turns to Wright who if dealt at the deadline will save the Mets 16M in 2013. 

I don’t care how much of a Wilpon sympathizer some fans may be - if they are unable to keep Reyes and Wright in back to back years they should be forced to sell. 

Carlos Beltran signed a two-year, $26 million contract with the Cardinals - it contains a full no-trade clause.

In some strange way I’m actually NOT surprised Beltran will be a Cardinal. It makes too much sense in the perverse world of everything goes wrong with the Mets.

LosB will probably be the WS MVP for St Loo. 

Oh well, Happy Holiday Holidays !!!

Wayne Hagin seemed like a nice enough guy and there’s really nothing wrong with his announcing but his mid-west twang (do mid-westerners even have twangs? Well you get the point) never seemed to fit in the big city.

Won’t be sorry to see him go but Jim Duquette, who’s allegedly in the running, seems like another odd choice. 

Personally I’d like to see Eddie Coleman get the gig. He’s the perfect choice and a great guy.

Meanwhile along with Hagin the Mets Rookie level Port St. Lucie is also history.

I guess they still have another rookie team and most organizations only have 1 so there’s a valid argument that 2 is overkill but it sure does come at a bad time for PR reasons. 

This is a cost cutting move and there are no 2 ways about it so the Mets are either losing so much money they straight up can’t afford this team or it was a poor business decision to have 2 rookie teams in the first place.

Probably both.

***

And whats up with the lame perks the Mets are offering minority owners. OK a luxury box is nice, and 1 parking spot is good but then are you expected to pay for a second vehicle? 

Batting practice with other minority owners on a “non-game” day is no big deal at all. In fact I believe they hold these events for big sponsors anyway.

But the best of all is the business card with your name and “owner” embossed on it. WOW a business card?!? 

I could go to Staples and get business cards that says anything I want in less than a day.

Ahhh the Mets - gotta love ‘em!

I almost missed this story in the NYP but I think it’s a VERY telling look into our intrepid owners.

Our old buddy Howard Megdal, if you recall he once campaigned for Met GM, wrote a book called Wilpon’s Folly where he reports the Wilpons ran to their old buddy Selig for help escaping the fate of eventually selling the team to Einhorn. 

To recap Einhorn was set to plunk down 200M to help bail out the cash strapped Wilpons.

Earlier this year, hedge-fund titan David Einhorn would get a 17 percent minority stake in the Mets and the caveat that if Einhorn wasn’t repayed in five years, he could a majority stake for not much more.

Wilpon agreed but then must’ve realized he likely wasn’t going to be able to pay back that 200M, panicked and ran to Selig to have MLB veto the deal so Fred could say “sorry wasn’t me, not my fault” 

Sure does sound like something the Wilpons would do right? Make a terrible deal with a much savvier business man than themselves. Of course everyone denies:

MLB lawyer Rob Manfred said, “I don’t believe the account in the book is accurate. I think the reason the deal did not come to fruition is the two parties did not have a meeting of the minds on a key provision in the deal.”

Well that’s a pretty tepid denial, “I don’t believe”… “I don’t think”… pretty wishy washy and def sounds like the MLB lawyer is stopping short of denial.

Of course the Mets weren’t so non-committal as a team spokesman said, “The author’s desperate self-promotional campaign for relevance has led to perpetuating baseless speculation and complete inaccuracies.”

Pretty angry words from the Mets…

Megdal told The Post he stands by his reporting and I gotta say I believe him simply because this sounds like it’s got Wilpon move written all over it.

I’m just sayin’…

Word came down Sunday that the beloved ex-Met Endy Chavez has signed with the Baltimore Orioles for 1.5M with incentives that could bring him up to 2M in a 1 year deal.

In my heart I would love nothing more than to see Endy back in Flushing. Longtime BMF’ers know we used to call him the “BLBB” around here cuz he was quite simply the “Best little Bastard in Baseball” (shout to BlondiesJake who coined the term)

Endy coming home would be a great reason to watch the Mets in 2012, even go to a game, but while that’s a very romantic notion my head sez otherwise. 

It pretty much never works out when a team brings back an old hero. You want to recapture the magic from the past but almost without exception it’s never there.

Instead we’re left with an older, less effective, watered down version of the hero we once loved and that doesn’t serve anyone well.

I would prefer to remember Endy for that game 6 beyond and back grab to send us to the World Series. Never mind we lost the following game, when he made that catch I celebrated like we won the NLCS… Hell, I celebrated like we won the WS!!!

I’d rather just leave my Endy Stupendy memories at that because I’ll always love him for hustling his ass off every single time he touched the field.

The Mets were magic back then why would we want to soil Endy’s legacy with the bad mojo the Wilponzi’s have created these days?

Endy deserves better.

Word is J-Roll is resigning with Philly for 3 years at 11M per with a vesting option for a 4th.

Rollins isn’t the only one happy about this deal BMF is also. Say what you want about the Mets biggest rivals but Rollins is a Phillie through and trough and I hate seeing elite players change teams years after coming up in a particular.

Just because Met ownership is so screwed up that we can’t manage to keep Reyes doesn’t mean I want Rollins leaving Philly, or Howard either for that matter.

I’m definitely old skool like that