On Cole, Cashman, choke artists and crummy uniforms

Squawker Jon, I just listened to WFAN's broadcast of Cole Hamels calling the Mets "choke artists." And I am disappointed that you weren't more "worked up," as you put it, over it. I expected you to destroy a water cooler, or overturn a buffet table or something. Instead, you were all "meh" about what the Phillie said. What's up with that?

Hamel's comments reminded me of the way Red Sox players Curt Schilling, Trot Nixon, et al spent the first few days of spring training after the 2004 World Series bashing A-Rod. And you know how annoyed I was over that! I expected more of the same peckishness from you. But it does say something about the rivalries - in both cases, you'd expect the winning players to be above it all, but they still took potshots at the losers.

Then again, Red Sox fan site Surviving Grady tweaked the Yanks this week, and instead of being outraged, I kind of nodded my head in agreement.

The site featured the latest edition of the "Cashman-Headwarmer Dialogues," called "Haven't We Been Here Before?" where Brian Cashman and his infamous Adidas headband talk it out about each year of the Yanks' free agent signings. Here's a snippet:

2002:

Cashman: Well, it's done.

Headwarmer: Excellent. If I had hands, I'd be rubbing them together, doing a sort of menacing laugh.

Cashman: Indeed. Now that we've signed Jason Giambi, who can stop us?

Oh, and not that I get a vote on these things, but the new Red Sox primary road jerseys are hideous (click here to see what I'm talking about). Newsflash - when your team is called the Red Sox, you might want to have some, well, RED on the uniform!

Come to think of fit, the uniform looks like a poor imitation of the Yankees' road jersey. I guess the Yankees really are in the Sox's heads. Maybe now's the time where I should rub my hands together in glee and do a menacing laugh!

What do you think? Leave us a comment!

Cole in Mets' stockings

I'm having trouble getting worked up over Cole Hamels calling the Mets "choke artists." (Click here to go to WFAN and hear the broadcast.) It doesn't matter what players say in the offseason - it matters what they do during the season. People got excited last year when the normally reserved Carlos Beltran pronounced the Mets the team to beat in 2008. And at the end of the year, it didn't matter.

Last offseason, the talk was that the Phillies had the Mets' number, since the Phillies beat the Mets seven times in a row down the stretch in 2007. In 2008, the Mets beat the Phillies, 11-7, in the season series. And that didn't matter, either.

What really mattered was that the Mets' bullpen threw away the season. ESPN's Jayson Stark offers several startling statistics to make this point, including:

If all games had ended after seven innings, the Mets would have finished six games ahead of the Phillies.

Stark goes on to say:

The Phillies lost no games they led after eight innings. The Mets lost seven of them -- and lost 13 games they led after seven innings.

Thanks to Omar Minaya's moves, the Mets are extremely unlikely to blow 29 saves again. And Brad Lidge is just as unlikely to go the whole season without blowing a save, as he did last year.

On paper at least, the Mets have closed the gap with the Phillies, and maybe that's why Hamels seems to be worrying about the Mets rather than enjoying his own team's success.

The Phillies dominated the postseason, winning 11 games and losing only 3. They won both the World Series and the NLCS by a three-game margin, 4-1. Over the 162-game regular season, they only beat the Mets by that same three-game margin. suggesting that the Mets were the Phillies' toughest opponent of the year.

Shouldn't Hamels believe that the Phillies won because they were the best team, not because the Mets choked? Ultimately, calling the Mets choke artists only demeans the Phillies.

But the only way for the Mets to remove that stigma is to do it on the field.