Yesterday was Jose Reyes 1,000th career game in the big leagues. We learned that only Ty Cobb has more hits/triples than Reyes after 1,000 games since 1898. You may have heard that Reyes is a free agent after the season, and will probably demand a major payday. Ty Cobb‘s highest salary came in 1927 when, according to Baseball-Reference, he made $85,000 dollars. What does that translate to in today’s economy? A little over $1 million dollars. In other words, Ty Cobb in his highest paid season made about as much as Scott Hairston this year.

By the way, Cobb made that salary as a member of the Philadelphia A’s, not his long time team the Detroit Tigers.

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After giving up 7 runs in 2 innings, Zack Greinke has a 11.29 career ERA in the Bronx. When Bob Klapisch brought this up on Twitter, he followed the stat by bringing up the old question about whether Greinke could have handled the pressure of pitching in the Bronx.

We talked about this during the winter, and yes, passing on Greinke was a smart decision by Brian Cashman. The anxiety is not a straw man argument; it’s a real issue the Yankees couldn’t afford to take a risk on. The sabermetric crowd needs to start to grow up and realize the mental side of the game exists. It doesn’t discredit their statistical analysis, but the stats are a derivative of the person, not the other way around.

By the way, Greinke has a 5.63 ERA on the season in Milwaukee.

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Earlier in June, I speculated about whether the Yankees dodged a bullet by not signing Cliff Lee. During the spring, I spoke to someone in baseball who I respect immensely, and they told me they had concerns about Lee going into the season. Mainly due to a decrease in swings and misses and fly ball rate.

After shutting out the Red Sox 5-0 last night, Lee has given up 1 earned run in 42 innings this month, and is now 8-5, with a 2.87 ERA on the season. Since that June comment I made, Lee has gone from a below league average pitcher to the ace the Phillies thought they signed. Halladay and Lee at their best make these guys virtually unbeatable in a short series.

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Omar Minaya was in studio at WFAN with Mike Francesa yesterday. It appears Mike is trying to revive the career of Minaya, just like he did with Steve Phillips a year ago. Phillies broadcaster Tom McCarthy and FAN contributor Peter Gammons called in and did a short roundtable with them as well.

Minaya admitted he traded Cliff Lee to Cleveland when he was in Montreal without ever seeing him pitch, thinks the Phillies should focus on beefing up their bullpen for the stretch drive, and talked about why he thought the Mets were an 85 win team since the beginning of the season (who else has been saying that?). The ignorant Francesa laughed in amazement at that statement. Why would he? Mike doesn’t do much analysis anymore and only rates teams on their “designer ranking.” You could get virtually the same thoughts pulling any sports fan out of the bar on a Friday night. They would do it for $5 million dollars less as well.

Francesa was at his condescending best with Minaya, acting like the paternal figure, and talking down to Omar with a similar tone. Now do you see the agenda Francesa has with the Mets? Don’t you think Minaya was feeding him information all these years? If you were a lazy talk show host wouldn’t you want the “ultimate leak” to stay employed? Remember, Francesa is not about giving you honest sports analysis; he is about pushing his agenda on a daily basis. No different than some of the hosts who talk politics.

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NYBD contributor Joe Delgrippo has long felt Minaya is the worst GM in baseball history. Back in 2008, he wrote about why he believes this to be the case:

In Minaya’s six years as GM he has traded away almost twenty young players for expensive older talent (and 9 since last year’s trading deadline), oversaw terrible drafts and spent untold millions on expensive free agents. And all his teams have failed to even REACH the World Series, let alone win one. Again, how much know how does it take to spend tons of money (and not even your own money!) on other team’s players?

Of course, Francesa couldn’t ask many questions about what went wrong with the Mets. Remember, Minaya is still under contract and he probably has the same confidentiality clause that he reminded Willie Randolph and Rick Peterson about when they were fired.

Hearing Omar back on the air in New York brings up memories of his most famous moment, which turned out to be the beginning of the end.

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Matthew Collier of WGR 550 in Buffalo has been a friend of the show for a while. He tweeted an interesting conversation with a Cardinals scout who had the following to say:

“Instructor (scout) slightly under rates certain tools like arm, power so when guys go up they will surprise rather than disappoint.”

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If you are interested in hearing me talk about the Mets after last night’s win, I appeared at 11 pm on Steve Keane’s show “This Call to the Bullpen,” which you can listen to here.

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Last night was the first time both the Mets and Yankees blew out teams by 10 or more runs in the same night since 1985. These are the type of games you want to get over quickly, and not waste an unnecessary bullpen arm. Maybe even just throw a pitching machine out there to get the final outs.

Mike Silva is a freelance writer and radio host since March of 2007. This website is his own personal "digest" of New York Baseball He's also hosts NYBD Radio on Blog Talk Radio and 1240 AM WGBB. Check out his sports media commentary at www.sportsmediawatchdog.com. Check out his official website, www.mikesilvamedia.com

Mike Silva

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Tags: Adam Rubin, Boston Red Sox, Cleveland Indians, Cliff Lee, Detroit Tigers, Jose Reyes, Kansas City Royals, Mike Francesa, Milwaukee Brewers, Montreal Expos, New York Mets, New York Yankees, Omar Minaya, Peter Gammons, Philadelphia Phillies, Roy Halladay, Scott Hairston, SNY, St Louis Cardinals, Tom McCarthy, Ty Cobb, WFAN, WGR 550, WGR 550 AM, Zack Greinke