OH MY GOD!! THE METS ARE (NOT) HAVING A FIRE....sale....

"Just another hold, what now bitches"

When I'm on the ball, my morning routine consists of rolling out of bed at 5 AM, gulping down half a mug of cold coffee, and starting my daily hour on the exercise bike.  To keep my mind off of the fact that I am exercising when the rest of the sensible human race is asleep, I usually boot up my computer for music and to read the news.  

As a matter of chance, I picked last night as my Google Reader cleanup night, and went through, weeding out feeds that I never read anymore, catching up on various saved items, and reducing that bold number of Unread Items to zero, perhaps for the first time since I started using Google Reader.  Therefore, it was my dismay to see that I had awoken to 400 new Unread Items.  

One of the most recent was a post from one of the approximately one trillion Mets blogs that I subscribe to proclaiming that the fire sale had started, and K-Rod had been traded to Milwaukee.  

My first order of business, after securing 102 mph-hurling Bobby Parnell to my saves-starved fantasy team, was to marvel at how GM Sandy Alderson had managed to jettison Rodriguez, who needs to finish just 24 more games this season for his vested $17.5 million option to kick in.  The countdown to the magic 55 number has been a distraction all season, to the point that Adam Rubin has been keeping track of it in each of his postgame write-ups, and Alderson was questioned about it when he appeared with Gary Cohen and Ron Darling during SNY's broadcast of last Thursday's game.  

Now it's gone.  We don't have to worry about Terry Collins bringing in Rodriguez with a five run lead because he needed the work, or sweat out a tie game with Rodriguez pitching in the ninth, hoping that the Mets DIDN'T score in the bottom half of the inning, so that another pitcher could come in and THEN they could win. It was all so ridiculous.  So now Rodriguez is off to Milwaukee, where he will setup for the immortal John Axford and try to resist punching the Chorizo sausage in the face.  Melvin has already said there is no closer controversy, and nor should they be.  Rodriguez's velocity is in decline, he has posted the highest WHIP of his career during this season, and to call him a closer "in his prime," as Craig Carton did on WFAN this morning is completely laughable.  

This move is wonderful news.  It gives the team a chance to see what they have in Bobby Parnell, and whether or not he has the makeup to close, and frees up some extra money to put towards attempting to retain Reyes during the off-season.  One shaky closer isn't going to make or break a potential playoff run, no matter how long the odds.