SLACKISH REACTION: Hey there’s actually a lot today. Let’s start with this which is what everyone is talking about.
TL;DR version: Yoenis Cespedes got injured. He said he stepped in a hole. There was reason to believe that wasn’t the case. Mets withheld salary in 2019, threatened to do same in 2020. Rather than go to a potentially all-or-nothing grievance, Cespedes settled for reduced salary.
— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) December 13, 2019
First of all, I want to put that tweet in the Twitter HOF. It gives us all the information with no nonsense. Kinda like the morning laziness one might say. Get to it and don’t waste everyone’s time with clickbait and ten paragraphs saying nothing.
As for the meat….
- You know, when you play well you can do stuff like ride a horse into Spring Training and everyone thinks its funny. I don’t know what Cespedes was doing that wa so reckless, but I’m sure if he did it when hitting 40 HRs nobody would have cared. Seriously, if Pete Alonso skydives into pitchers and catchers do you think the Mets are going to say anything? This is like the old days when I said Matt Harvey could have punched Terry Collins in the face and gotten away with it.
- The small minded parts of Mets Twitter (a term I hate but in this case it I economical) think that now the Mets will spend more money. They didn’t pay Cespedes last year and didn’t spend the money. They aren’t going to spend more money.
From Awful Announcing…remember the Mets had that idea for a paywall blog?
Yahoo hired four writers (Wallace Matthews, Matt Ehalt, Mike Mazzeo and Gerard Gilberto) ahead of Opening Day, and said they would be focused on the Mets.
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But the specific subscription site they were supposed to be working for still hadn’t launched by May, with Bob Raissman of The New York Daily News writing that that was about MLB intervening to try and strike similar deals for other teams. And in July, Yahoo decided to cancel the site, but said they planned to keep the writers they had hired to cover sports in general (with a focus on baseball). Well, Yahoo parent Verizon Media Group is laying off 150 staffers this week (as per Kerry Flynn of CNN), and all four of the former Mets writers tweeted Friday that they’re no longer with the company.
So wow the Mets had a disaster with this one. It’s not as sexy as many other Mets disasters but wow the Queens Baseball Club was a complete utter failure. Just a failure. Not to mention there were times when I would have the stories faster than one of the writers..except I was sitting home grilling chicken on my deck, not actually in the stadium. So I don’t know what the $9 plan was every going to be fore regardless. That said, I am a jerk but not that kind of jerk so let me add that I am sorry people lost their gigs, and I hope they find steady work and happiness very soon.
From a beat standpoint…let’s be real…it’s been a disaster since Rubin left. I was rarely getting any news from Yahoo so it’s probably a net zero.
Meanwhile, Forbes has an article with the sexy headline Why Steve Cohen May Write $1.5 Billion Check For Mets And Never Gain Control. I’m not dumping on the article but I have read it twice and haven’t understood it enough to recap it for you, so click the link.
Today is the Media Goon Memorabilia Market…..
