Busy morning.

-Ike's back; had a lung infection, will clear up on its own, feels fine.

-Mejia throws a bullpen today. Story keeps changing on him it seems. Warthen wouldn't answer whether he was a starter or reliever moving forward.

-Tim Byrdak has an epic, Hulk Hogan-esque Fu Manchu. I'd reckon its the best we've seen since Piazza left. https://twitter.com/#!/mets/status/172676467656892416

-Beltran has received Niese's rhinoplasty bill and says he will pay it later this spring.

Please keep the goatee like that!. MJ according to McCullough, Warthen simply laughed at the Mejia question. If that's the exchange you are referring to I'm not sure that's the same as "wouldn't answer". DePo said Mejia will start this year about 2 weeks ago so I doubt anything has changed. No upside to moving him to the pen now anyway. Even if the long term plan was pen he needs innings.

- Rubin

Just in case anyone flips out when they say he only threw 15 pitches and stopped

This kinds sounds like the game of catch I play with my 5 year old. AKA, not really a news item either way. Bet someone makes a big deal about it, though.

I think Santana's session today is a much bigger deal - looked like he threw pretty well last week, came back Tuesday and, from the clips they showed on SNY, did not much more than throw some lobs off a mound, so I assume today is more of a ramped up session again. I'll be somewhat surprised if he really does stay on track to make the first ST game start like TC penciled him into, but if he's out there letting it go today, probably a good sign he's on his way.

Let's see him make it to 15 first.

If he stops at 6 I think we can legally freak.....

MJ,
Agreed but 15 pitches is better than "Mejia is a little bit tight and will start throwing a little later this spring". Like I said before... it's been 9 months since he had surgery. The list of guys who were ready this quickly is very, very short (I'm not sure there has been one starting pitcher come back this quickly) a few relievers and a few position players maybe. I mentioned it the other day but Joba Chamberlain is a reliever, had TJ in June and is PROJECTED to come back in June. So the Yankees (with a reliever) have his optimistic return as 12 months. No reason to believe Mejia would take less time than that. If he's starting games by mid-June I'm happy.

As for Santana I agree today's session will be interesting. The SNY clips I saw from the other day looked like me trying to throw lefty. I know 100% the intention was him to not throw overly hard but they didn't tell us much either way.

I know I will

Haha, very well put.

Either the guys who were reporting on the session saw something the cameras didn't catch, or they're feeding everyone some serious KoolAid down in the PSL early on this year. That clips that they had on SNY told you absolutely nothing about his progression.

Again, lets not forget that Santana's situation is far different than, say, Mejia's. Santana has been having throwing sessions for almost a year now. He's been doing ramped up bullpens since, what, May of last year? He got into games already. He's done all this stuff, and had setbacks or however they want to phrase the fact that he couldn't bounce back after moderate ramped up workloads. So him doing the things he's doing, so far anyway, simply means he hasn't actually regressed from where he was almost all of last year. Throwing on a regular schedule, like they seem to have him doing, is a good sign. Hopefully he's ramped up a bit today and stays on track to start that March 5 game.

Mejia warming up!

https://twitter.com/#!/DPLennon/status/ ... 94/photo/1

Its official. Coutinho is in the house.

Rich Coutinho @coutinho9 Reply Retweet Favorite · Open
Watching harvey boy he has great mechanics can really see pedigree

Johan is beginning to throw right now