SNY.tv: Online Home of All Things Sports

I'm not entirely sure why the Devil Rays would place Carvajal on waivers, especially when they still have pitchers like Scott Dohmann on their active roster (though I imagine headline writers all over the Tampa area love employing the inevitable Homer Simpson shoutout whenever the D'oh Man gets lit up). Granted, Carvajal was unspectacular in his one big-league season, in 2005 in Colorado. He posted a 5.09 ERA and walked a good number of batters -- 21 in 53 innings -- but he was only 20 years old for most of the season.

At every level he has pitched, Carvajal has struck out a lot of batters. That's always a good sign for a young pitcher, especially a reliever. Though there's no guarantee that Carvajal will develop better control, his walk rate has never been high enough to merit giving up on him.

Carvajal has a lot in common with another young reliever the Mets picked up this offseason: Ambiorix Burgos. Both throw hard, strike out a lot of batters and struggle with control. Burgos is the more heralded prospect, but both appear to have promising upsides. Though Burgos has more Major League experience, he has allowed significantly more baserunners per inning across his career than Carvajal did in 2005, and his career big-league ERA -- 4.81 -- is only slightly better than Carvajal's 5.09. Carvajal's numbers are particularly impressive when you consider that his entire big-league tenure was spent at Coors Field in Colorado.

(It should be noted that Carvajal actually put up significantly better numbers at home while with the Rockies than he did on the road, but this phenomenon is not unheard of in Colorado. Occasionally, it seems, pitchers adjust their offspeed pitches to the thin air in Colorado and are unable to appropriately modify the offerings for sea-level competition.)

The primary difference between Burgos and Carvajal -- other than hype -- is that Burgos cost the Mets a decent, if unexciting, young starter in Brian Bannister, whereas Carvajal cost them nothing. Burgos has a better shot to make the Mets out of Spring Training because of his experience, but both are good young arms that the Mets can prime to work the late-inning shifts in a couple of years. Burgos and Carvajal, thanks to their potential, go a long way toward replacing all of the older bullpen prospects -- Heath Bell, Royce Ring, Matt Lindstrom and Henry Owens -- that the Mets dispatched this offseason.

Rickey Henderson joins Mets as special instructor: Henderson is my favorite athlete of all time, and I'm always happy to see him employed. A lot of people -- especially Mets fans -- take issue with me on Rickey because of his rocky stay with the team, most notably the card game that he played with Bobby Bonilla while the team struggled to hang on to a lead during the 1999 playoffs. But I've never said that the Man of Steal is without fault.

I just think it's too frequently forgotten that Henderson, outside of all the bravado, is one of the greatest hitters of all time. He's a much better role model for young hitters -- especially speedy ones like Jose Reyes and Lastings Milledge -- than the recently signed Ruben Sierra, who swings at just about everything he sees. Henderson was the best leadoff hitter ever, not just because of his blazing speed, but because he got on base at a career .401 clip. You have to be on base to steal bases, and no one knows that better than Rickey.

The most notable of Reyes' many improvements last season was his increased ability to take pitches and work counts. I'm almost certain that Henderson's work with Reyes in the spring of 2006 was a major factor in the development that prompted Reyes to get on base at a .354 clip, and Reyes could become one of the most valuable commodities in the Majors if he could bring his OBP up into the .380 range -- a lot easier said than done, of course.

Besides the help I'm sure he gave Reyes, I must admit that I like Rickey for his unabashed love of the game. You don't hang around playing for peanuts in independent leagues -- as Rickey has for the past several seasons -- if you don't really, really enjoy playing baseball. I'd love to see Rickey show Milledge how to take the passion that made the young outfielder high-five all those fans after his first home run and turn it into the drive that led Henderson to so much success.