5:00 P.M. DEADLINE

Yu Darvish

If you are the Blue Jays or maybe even the Red Sox, get your $30 million bid in before the deadline at 5:00 p.m.! For what? Yu Darvish of course.

Seems that Bobby Valentine knows Darvish from his Japanese baseball days and Darvish’s with the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters.

A. J. Burnett

I know I spoke about his reliability in the major leagues, but I can’t help but wonder why the Yankees don’t consider him in place of A. J. Burnett? I would think it a worthwhile gamble for the Yanks since they had major issues with Burnett last year. If I’m correct in my memory, every outing in the year from about the All Star game onward was becoming a make or break game for him in the starting rotation. If you look at his numbers, they are anything but stellar! In three years with the evil empire, he is 34-35 with a 4.79 era. His K’s to walks was pretty good, but he was imploding it seems towards the end of his games. In those 3 years he went from under 3.75 to over 4.75 in his era. He is 34 and getting older as we write this. His confidence has been shaken from last year and I bet there is now a psychological factor coming into play: that of his no confidence in him from his manager and GM.

TIME TO SELL THE FARM

Field of Dreamers

Like I stated before, the Mets need to get new ownership, as they go deeper into debt. Aside from the $25 Million they owe Selig and Co., they go further into never land with another $40 Million bridge loan from the Bank of America! They hope to sell bits and pieces of the club as shares and that will be a temporary fix. Meanwhile they lose $50 to $70 Million a year and say they are going to be competitive! They are in so much debt with building CitiField things will only get worse.

Bernie Madof

Building the new ballpark based on Pre-Madof plans now seems like such a bad idea. On top of that, they price the tickets so high that for two straight years they had to reduce the prices. My suggestion is to price them low enough to fill the seats, get the revenue from concessions and parking based on full house attendance. Get them into the ballpark, and quick.

RE-ACQUAINTANCES…

Jamal Crawford

Or is Jamal Crawford coming back. Since the Knick have such a fine front-court, it is a shame that there is nothing behind it, and no real bench to speak of. They could use a scorer to come off the bench and fill in with points. In 2010 Jamal Crawford won the ‘Sixth Man of the Year Award’ for the Hawks. Do the Knicks have the money to lure him back? Is Jamal my pal willing to come to NY once more and experience the excitement of being on a winner, in the Garden no less?

JETS LOOK FOR ANSWERS

Brodney Pool

With Jim Leonhard gone for the year once more, Brodney Pool has the experience at that position. Can he replace Leonhard, and if so will the Jets really need to look at him, since Leonhard and his contract could be gone in a walk year? They may want to look at Eric Smith more closely too, and for the same reasons. Leonhard says he wants to stay with the Jets, I guess you might say like Jose’ Reyes wanted to stay with the Mets. I think the only thing that would allow Leonhard to leave would be –you ready for this? MORE MONEY!

Speaking of the Jets, they are in playoff contention for the moment. But they journey to Philadelphia where they are 0-4 lately, and face a team that is starting to come alive even though they are out of contention for all intents and purposes at 5-8. They (the Jets) claim to be looking only at Sunday’s game and not beyond that. Somehow I find that hard to believe, and I would expect a big letdown because they romped over KC last Sunday.