Meet the scrubs!

The New York mets 2008 opening day 25 roster has been set, or so presumed by Metsblog, so we might as well take a closer look at those nameless bench players about whom no shits are given.

Due to Ramon Castro's injury, it looks like the Mets will be using 35 year old Rual Casanova as their back up catcher. Baseball Prospectus' 2008 weighted mean projections for Casanova's EqA and WARP* are .244 and 1.4, which is actually not as bad as I expected. He should be able to fill in just fine until Castro and his enormous melon get healthy.

Here's the rest of the position players who made the final cut, one of whom will be starting in place of Moises Alou as he struggles to recover from a recent bout of Alzheimer's.

Name Age EqA WARP
Angel Pagen 26 .249 1.6
Endy Chavez 30 .256 1.3
Marlon Anderson 34 .273 0.9
Brady Clark 35 .259 1.6
Damion Easley 38 .259 1.6

So these guys most likely won't contribute much, but that's not really a concern, since no one's bench is going to be all that sweet. What worries me is how old the bench skews. The starters are old enough, and I would've preferred Omar and the front office to favor younger crappy players that have at least the possibility of a break out season. And, outside of Endy, none of these guys can be used as a defensive substitution.

Also competing for, and failing to secure, one of the final spots were Ruben Gotay - 25 - .260 - 1.8 and Fernando Tatis - 33 - .271 - 4.2. Tatis had the steroid specter and the fact that he can really only play a position that quite spoken for (3B) working against him. I have a tougher time explaining Gotay. While not as despondent as some over the sad fate of young Ruben, I do think Omar blundered. The lack of minor league options and a crowded infield ultimately doomed Gotay and so the geriatric movement continues.

Just for perspective: Ryan Church - 29 - .283 - 3.6 and David Wright - 25 - .319 - 8.4.

In conclusion, DWright is to baseball what Robocop is to cybernetic crime fighting.

*I picked EqA because its a good over all assessment of offensive skills that's adjusted for park and league. For reference, .260 is league average and .300 is totally rad. WARP is a good metric for our purposes because it stands for Wins Above Replacement Player, which is exactly what we want to know about our bench players. Presumedly you can always find someone to provide a zero WARP from either waivers or AAA at anytime during the season. Worthless piles of shit like David Newhan and Brian Lawrence have Negative WARPs because they fucking blow.