Sunday, December 28, 2008

Brett Favre triggers Tom Glavine flashback

At the end of the 2007, the Mets' late-season choke culminated with future Hall of Famer Tom Glavine closing out his New York career on the lowest of notes at home against a team from Miami.

This afternoon, future Hall of Famer Brett Favre most likely closed out his New York career (and his career overall) on the lowest of notes at home against a team from Miami.

At least Glavine and the Mets weren't defeated by a pitcher the team had released to make room for Glavine.

Though, come to think of it, a year later, the Marlins did close out the Mets with New York discard Matt Lindstrom on the mound.

The real pain of the Jets' season came last week when the Jets lost to Seattle, making their playoff chances a real longshot. But today the ugliness is starting to set in. Last week, I was comparing Favre to Pedro Martinez. This week, it's the unlamented Glavine.

It's probably just as well the season is over - if the Jets were playing next week, I'd probably end up comparing Favre to another great thrower who didn't know when to stay retired - Roger Clemens.

I still think the Jets had to make the move to get Favre. But the current Jets management is too quick to devalue players that don't fit into Eric Mangini's plans. Players such as Kevin Mawae, who made the Pro Bowl this year, Pete Kendall and Jonathan Vilma. At least the Jets got a top draft choice for John Abraham.

But not only did the Jets give away Chad Pennington for nothing, they let him go to a division rival. Compare that behavior to the Packers, who made sure Favre didn't end up on the Minnesota Vikings.

And to make Favre's day - and year - even worse, the Vikings also made the playoffs today behind mediocre quarterback Tavaris Jackson, whose QB rating today of 88.5 was almost double Favre's horrific 45.1 against the Dolphins.

If you add Jackson's and Favre's ratings together, the total is only slightly higher than Chad's division-clinching 113.2.

At least the Patriots missed the playoffs.

*

Aside from that, the only bright spot from today came when I looked at the box score from Glavine's last Met game and saw that of the eight pitchers the Mets used that day: Glavine, Jorge Sosa, El Duque, Scott Schoeneweis, Joe Smith, Pedro Feliciano, Guillermo Mota and Aaron Heilman, only one of them, Feliciano, will still be with the Mets next year.

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