FanHouse Mets

Last offseason, in an effort to bolster their ineffective late-inning relief, the Mets made a three-team, 12-player trade of which J.J. Putz was the centerpiece. Putz had previously been a very effective closer for the Mariners, but he would get eighth-inning duty for the Mets, considering they paid a hefty sum to bring in Francisco Rodriguez to close.

Less than one year later, it appears Putz and the Mets will go their separate ways. According to Ben Shpigel of the New York Times, the Mets will decline Putz's $9.1 million player option for 2010 and instead buy his contract out for a cool million -- making him a free agent.

The first season at Citi Field will mostly be remembered for failed expectations and roughly 500 different players donning a Mets uniform at some point during the season due to the amazing string of injuries suffered during the season. In other words, they're memories that many would probably rather forget about altogether than attempt to hold on to.

So the Mets will be looking for a fresh start in 2010, and according to rumors coming out of New York, the changes the team makes this winter might not be solely roster based. There's talk that the team may be making some changes to their uniforms as well.

Starting Five is our wrapup of the previous day's baseball action, with a quick nod to what is ahead.

You Oughta Know ...
This Jurrjens kid is pretty good.

Jair Jurrjens threw seven scoreless innings on Monday as the Braves downed the Marlins 4-0 and climbed within two games of the Rockies for the wild-card lead.

Atlanta has two more games with Florida and then four against Washington. Colorado hosts Milwaukee for three before finishing with three games at the Los Angeles Dodgers.

"Right now we feel like we're in control," [Chipper] Jones said. "We're dictating at-bats whether it be on the mound or whether we're hitting. And a lot of good things are happening."

---

---

Things aren't getting any better for Lenny Dykstra. On top of being in financial ruin and living out of his car, a collection of memorabilia he accrued throughout his career is expected to go on the auction block in the near future. That collection will include the World Series ring he won with the Mets in 1986. Making matters even worse, it's not Dykstra himself that's doing the selling; it's the pawn shop he pawned the items to, then subsequently left unclaimed.

The published reports say the auction is slated to take place on Oct. 1 and 2, but you can, in fact, see the ring up for auction right now (via Darren Rovell's Twitter) and the current bid is at $9,000 and it's been steadily raising from the $7,500 it started at earlier this morning. The auction page estimates the value of the ring at $20,000- $30,000, which is where most published reports also place the value.

Every Sunday, MLB FanHouse empties out its notebook in Baseball Brunch.

Cody Ross blames his mom.

"My dad was a really good athlete (Kenny Ross, who played safety at New Mexico in the late 1960s)," said Ross, the Marlins' right fielder. "My dad was all right[-handed]. My mom's a lefty, so maybe I got that gene from her."

Ross and St. Louis' Ryan Ludwick are the only two active position players who throw left and bat right. Just 14 such players in baseball history have gotten as many as 1,000 at-bats -- and that list now includes a Hall of Famer, Rickey Henderson.

"He kind of put us on the map," Ross said.

Not to ignore everything else that is happening in the world of baseball, but Jim Thome and Manny Ramirez are on the same team and you should be reading about it.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5

Part four of the quest to reunite the entirety of the 1997 Cleveland Indians on the 2009 Los Angeles Dodgers takes us places we never dared go, to a post-apocalyptic wasteland where humanity is depraved and the skies are filled with ash.

Tonight's Dugout is after the jump.

The inaugural season of Citi Field in New York, one filled with injuries and losses, has been one that the Mets and their fans would like to end as soon as possible, so everybody can forget about it and move on.

But along with the seemingly bad luck, the new stadium seems to possess special powers.

Not only can it suck all the power out of David Wright's bat, it also picks up the tendencies of the life that inhabits it: much like the Mets roster, Citi Field is already falling apart.

Starting Five is our wrapup of the previous day's baseball action, with a quick nod to what is ahead.

You Oughta Know ...
Jon Garland couldn't beat them. So he joined them. And then he beat the old them.

Traded from the fourth-place Diamondbacks to the first-place Dodgers earlier in the week, Garland on Friday faced Arizona in his first start for Los Angeles.

"It was fun. I grew up coming to games here, and getting a chance to pitch for this team is definitely a dream come true," Garland said. "It's kind of awkward the way it happened -- but nevertheless, it did -- and I was able to throw a good one up. I didn't leave too many tickets. I cut the phone off and told people if they want to come, they can pay for it and support the team."

---

---

Much has been made of the way the new dimensions and fence heights at Citi Field suppress home runs this season, but the Mets don't have any plans to make their park more homer-friendly. That's probably not good news to David Wright, who has expressed some frustration about the way the new park is configured, but there's no reason why it should be bad news for the Mets.

Just because Citi is averse to home runs doesn't mean that it is averse to offense. HitTrackerOnline told the New York Daily News that Wright missed out on eight homers he would have had at Shea, but all eight of those balls wound up as hits which, as you surely know, are also offensive statistics.

No one can accuse Carlos Beltran of being a bandwagon jumper. The Mets center fielder, last seen in late June, has been cleared to start a rehab assignment. Beltran has been suffering from a bone bruise in his right knee, but the Mets' team doctor said he is ready to play after an examination on Monday morning.

He won't be wearing a knee brace, which would seem to indicate that his bone bruise has gotten smaller over the past six weeks. It didn't show much improvement when Beltran had an MRI in July, but the word was that things hadn't gotten so bad that Beltran needed microfracture surgery, which could put his 2010 season into jeopardy.

So why risk things by allowing him to come back now?