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With camps opening up next week and me dying of boredom, I'm gonna go ahead and take a way-too-early guess at the Mets' Opening Day roster:
LINEUP
1. SS Jose Reyes (S)
2. 2B Luis Castillo (S)
3. 3B David Wright (R)
4. LF Jason Bay (R)
5. 1B Daniel Murphy (L)
6. RF Jeff Francoeur (R)
7. C Omir Santos (R)
8. CF Angel Pagan (S)
ROTATION
9. LH Johan Santana (Opening Day Starter)
10. RH Mike Pelfrey
11. LH Oliver Perez
12. RH John Maine
BULLPEN
13. RH Francisco Rodriguez (Closer)
14. LH Pedro Feliciano
15. RH Ryota Igarashi
16. RH Kelvim Escobar
17. RH Bobby Parnell
18. RH Sean Green
19. RH Fernando Nieve
BENCH
20. C Henry Blanco (R)
21. UTIL Fernando Tatis (R)
22. IF Alex Cora (L)
23. OF Gary Matthews, Jr. (S)
24. UTIL Frank Catalanotto (L)
25. 1B/OF Chris Carter (L)
LHP Jonathon Niese wins the 5th starter spot, but he has options remaining so they carry Chris Carter as the 25th man until they need to activate Niese.
I think Nieve would have to fall flat on his face to not wind up on the pitching staff in some capacity since he's got good stuff and is out of options, but if Niese pushes him to the limit in the 5th starter chase I can see them both making the team. Not too thrilled about only having one lefty in the bullpen again, but I just really can't see any of the nobodies in camp impressing...I have some small hope that Igarashi will pitch well against lefties just due to the fact that nobody has seen him. I dunno.
I picked Pagan to win the Opening Day CF job but really all of April is going to feel almost like extended ST for him, GMJ, and Frank the Cat...because somebody's gotta go when Beltran is ready to come back (this, of course, is me being hopeful that there are no injuries early in the year).
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