Notes from Mets Camp

This is for the Mets fans out there, yes there are actually some. I am going to try and put some notes at least every other day and don't worry during the season I expect to cover all of their games also pre and post to some degree. You can get a lot of Mets info over at http://metsblog.com Luis Castillo is looking pretty good so far, not limping at all which is a good sign. I am not so sure I like the idea of him leading off though and Reyes batting third, but we will see how this goes. Jerry Manuel has been impressing on the team a team first attitude and it seems to be working so far, camp seems to be fun and upbeat and everyone is just encouraging each other. The Mets are doing this drill where they face 80 breaking ball pitches in a row, the idea is that sometimes you have to hit when you are very tired but you just have to concentrate and not think of being tired. Tim Redding had surgery in November to repair a stress fracture in his foot. When he started throwing again he felt soreness in his shoulder and just recently started throwing again. It looks like he is about a week or so behind everyone else which may open up the 5th starter role to others. He looked like the leading candidate but they also have Freddy Garcia,Livan Hernandez and Jon Niese in the mix. John Maine and JJ Putz threw today and both felt good and looked good. Jerry Manuel said he is confident that Luis Castillo will bounce back and Daniel Murphy will be successful. He thinks Ryan Church will have a breakout year. Jerry seems pretty confident but they have to deal with the 2 straight years of failure and also do they have enough starting pitching?? They also have to stay healthy, no one is betting on Delgado to be as good as he was in the 2nd half and who knows what you will get out of Luis Castillo and LF with Daniel Murphy and Fernando Tatis.