A Joey and Iggy Beartran Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving, Mets fans!  This is Joey Beartran, along with my sister Iggy Beartran.  Today is not a day to criticize the non-spending habits of the Wilpons or why Sandy Alderson pauses or clears his throat after every other word he utters.  Today is about family, food and all the things we have to be thankful for in our lives.

Iggy and I have many things to be thankful for this holiday season, and we'd like to share those things with you today.  It won't take long to share, so you can read this during halftime of today's various football games or during the ten minutes your Aunt Bea takes at the dinner table to complain about anything and everything when she should really be saying what she's thankful for.  (Here's a tip - next year, skip Aunt Bea when it's her turn to speak at the dinner table.  Turkey doesn't taste as good when it's cold.)

Enjoy your holidays, everyone!

Joey:  I'm thankful to have Iggy in my life.  She's the best game day partner I could ever hope for when I go to Citi Field and can't finish my basket of chicken tenders and fries.

Iggy:  Aw, thanks, Joey.  I'm thankful for you for sharing those chicken tenders and fries.  I'd be more thankful if we got one basket for each of us.  Yelling at Lucas Duda after he butchers another fly ball gives me quite an appetite.

Guess Lucas Duda made an error before this photo was taken.

Joey:  I'm thankful I waited until all those large contracts came off the books so I could see the plethora of wonderful players Sandy Alderson would bring into the fold for the 2014 season.  I'm looking forward to Chris Young's speech when he wins the 2014 National League MVP Award.

Iggy:  I'm thankful for the internet, because without it, I would never have heard of Chris Young or have been able to read why he was being compared to Mario Mendoza.

Thanks to the internet, Iggy now knows who this is.  She just read the name on his bat.

Joey:  I'm thankful for all the extra promotions and concerts the Mets are going to have in 2014, especially on the weekends.  I've been waiting my whole life to relive the 1986 World Series championship by dancing to the music of Huey Lewis & The News.

Iggy:  I second that.  And I love that the Mets made their souvenir collector's cups in the size of my head, so they can double as party hats when I'm shuffling my feet to "Hip To Be Square".

Is Huey Lewis on stage yet?  I've got my party hat on.

Joey:  Finally, I'm thankful for my Mets fan family.  Seeing them on the Shea Bridge always warms up my heart and reminds me just why I became a Mets fan in the first place.

Iggy:  Me, too!  Also, by meeting them on the Shea Bridge, it puts us closer to Shake Shack, Catch of the Day, Blue Smoke, Box Frites, El Verano Taqueria...

When I'm not dressed for Huey Lewis, I've got my sombrero ready for the Taqueria.

That's all for this special Joey and Iggy Beartran Thanksgiving post.  Thanks so much for reading what we're thankful for.  If you'd like, why don't you share what you're thankful for in the comments section?  Just click below where it says "no comments" or "1 comment" or whatever it says at the time and share your Thanksgiving thoughts with us.

From the two of us to all of you in reader land, we'd like to wish you a very happy Thanksgiving, and to all our Jewish readers (we know you're reading this, Ike Davis and Josh Satin), we wish you a wonderful Hanukkah.  Thanks so much for your continued support!  And as always...

LET'S GO METS!

Happy holidays, everyone!  We tip our ski caps to you to thank you for your support.

A Rock N' Roll Pitching Matchup In Cleveland

In 2004, general manager Jim Duquette thought the Mets were a playoff contender, as the team was just three games out of first place on July 22.  But one week later, the Mets were seven games off the pace and falling fast.  Not wanting to give up on the season, Duquette traded away the team's top pitching prospect, Scott Kazmir, to the Tampa Bay Devil Rays for pitcher Victor Zambrano.

The Mets finished the year with a 71-91 record, a full 25 games behind the division-winning Atlanta Braves.  Kazmir went on to become a two-time All-Star (2006, 2008), strikeout champion (2005) and helped lead the Rays to an unexpected American League pennant in 2008.  Duquette was replaced by Omar Minaya by the end of the 2004 campaign.

Fast forward seven years later.  The San Francisco Giants were the defending World Series champions and had a 4½-game lead in the NL West on July 20.  A week later, the lead was down to three games.  At the time, Pablo Sandoval was the only player on the team with more than nine homers.  The Giants were also last in the league in runs scored.  They needed an offensive upgrade, and they needed it fast, especially with the high-scoring Arizona Diamondbacks closing ground.  They thought they had that upgrade when general manager Brian Sabean acquired Carlos Beltran from the Mets on July 27.  To complete the trade, Sabean sent the Giants' top pitching prospect, Zack Wheeler, to New York.

Beltran performed well for the Giants, batting .323 with 20 extra-base hits in just 44 games, but his teammates did not.  San Francisco went 25-32 over the final two months of the season to finish eight games behind the Diamondbacks.

Both Jim Duquette and Brian Sabean parted ways with their best young hurlers, each of whom were former first-round draft picks, to acquire players they thought would help them in the short term.  Neither move worked.  But they did work for the teams who dealt for the minor leaguers.

Although Kazmir's wildness cost him a job in Tampa in 2009, he finally made it back to the majors this year with the Cleveland Indians.  Kazmir is 7-7 with his new team and is posting the lowest walk ratio (3.0 BB/9 IP) of his career.  He is also playing for a team that has remained in contention for a postseason berth all season.  Meanwhile, Wheeler is off to a fast start with the Mets, going 7-3 with a 3.36 ERA in his first 14 starts.  Wheeler has been particularly effective over his last five starts, striking out 31 batters and walking only six.  The Mets have won four of those five games.

On Friday night, the Mets will be traveling to Cleveland to take on the Indians in their final interleague series of the season.  Barring injury or bad weather, the pitching matchup for the series opener will be Scott Kazmir vs. Zack Wheeler.  Yeah.

Kazmir will be making his first start against the team that traded him before giving him a chance in the majors.  Wheeler will be taking his unblemished 5-0 road record (and 2.19 ERA) to Cleveland to face the Mets' former hotshot prospect.

Scott Kazmir was once traded away by the Mets to acquire a player who was supposed to help the team make a playoff run.  That move failed for the Mets.  Seven years later, the Mets fleeced the Giants by sending them a player who was supposed to help them defend their World Series title.  That moved failed for the Giants.

Friday night, both storylines will collide in Cleveland, when the phenom the Mets traded away in 2004 faces the phenom the Mets traded for in 2011.  Huey Lewis used to remind us in song form that "the heart of rock n' roll is in Cleveland".  Well, from what I see for Friday's pitching matchup, I believe him.

Scott Kazmir vs. Zack Wheeler.  It will truly be a rock n' roll pitching matchup Friday night at Progressive Field in Cleveland.