BTW I was also one of the few people elated to get Ollie last year, and was continually brownbeaten when I sang his praises on MetsBlog in August and September of last year.

(http://www.metsblog.com/blog/_archives/2006/8/28/2272848.html)

Every good arguement deserves a counter arguement.

To deal or not to deal: The sunday night baseball/or sunday morning sports reporters (? )Made this notation, the teams that have hitting are most likely to going into a slump, teams with good pitching are LEAST likely to slump over a long period.

So how does that factor? I have only been arguing with you a short while, but I was ELATED when Omie picked up Ollie. In his debut he piitched no hit ball untill losing his release point and then Ryan howard grand slammed him. My point is Omar went out and got someones ACE pitcher. If he did not where would we have been in October? That said we have Ollie, Maine and Glavine as a starting core. We have the Duke who is a swingman that starts, and a revamped Sosa who is sitting in the seat meant for Pelfrey.

So why make a deal. I’m old and my memory is short, so I will use the last 2 weeks as my samples:
a. 8-4 loss to Cincy. 3 runs scored in the 4th, if El duque is in the Pen, maine has a shorter leash and possibly does not start the 4t5th inning at all.

in colorado, again, the lack of depth in the pen, and especially a multi innings guy hurt badly.

All the extensions to buerle & vaz do is make them ineligble for FA. Thats it. And that is actually more valuable. Last yr if not for the dreaded cab ride, Omar probably makes the milledge for Oswalt trade OR the milledge for Zito trade. Zito now has $125M reasons why he is happy that trade does NOT go down, (so does Omar). And now Ken Williams is using this occurence to sign Vaz and buerle, so teams cannot say I’ll give up a B-prospect because a Vaz/buerle walks as a FA. Most teams know that they are going to rent a player, the last case being Beltran, who took houston from 13 games out to the playoffs and singlehandedly deposed the Braves dynasty.

BOTTOMLINE: If you put Vaz (Oswalt/buerle….) with Maine, Ollie and Glavine the Mets not only get a pitching boost by adding El duque to the pen but they become that much stingier for runs….needing less runs to win…and with this offense lately, having to score less runs is a very good thing.
The Mets have the cash and Glavine goes away this off season, (when Pedro realistically returns). I They rushd Pedro last year, I hope they take pressure off him and bring him back after a full year and a Spring training.

Look at our chasers: one is built with pitching the other hitting. The Phils can get hot but a hot pitcher will beat that line up.