I'm really bummed to see that J.J. Putz has signed with The Chicago White Sox. Last year, after the Mets announced the trade that brought Putz and Sean Green to New York, I was so looking forward to the concept of two lights-out relievers pitching in the 8th and 9th innings.
As we all know, Putz was never able to fill that role -- due in part to injury and perhaps in part because he wanted to close. Regardless, I thought it would've been a wise choice for the Mets to try to bring J.J. back on an incentive-laden one-year contract to act as a setup man for K-Rod and to basically audition himself to be a closer again in 2011.
Now that Putz has signed with Chicago, my fantasy of the one-two punch in the bullpen is down the toilet. Who is our setup man now? Pedro Feliciano? Bobby Parnell?
Is this just more bad luck for the Mets? Takashi Saito went from saving 40+ games for the Dodgers in 2007 and 2008 to being a setup man for The Boston Red Sox in 2009, and he pitched beautifully there. Now Saito is in Atlanta, acting as the setup man to Billy Wagner. Could it be that the Braves will successfully implement the lights-out 8th-9th bridge that we aimed at in 2009? And how painful will it be to see Wags closing things out for them?
On the bright side, we did make an encouraging offer to sign Jason Bay -- 4 years, $65 million. Not an overblown offer at all. Shocking for Omar. Granted I'd rather have seen an offer made for John Lackey, but I can't have everything.
And now to bring things down a notch again, it's being reported that The Phuckin' Fightins are the front-runners to obtain Roy Halladay. I'm not even kidding when I say I'll kill myself if he's the ace of that staff and Cliff Lee is their #2.
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