Coleman's Corner: Terry Likes Tejada

By Ed Coleman
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Manager Terry Collins managed to wake some people up today with his pronouncement that Ruben Tejada may possibly be alive and well in the battle for 2B here at Mets camp.  Originally, Tejada was slated to be the everyday shortstop at Triple AAA Buffalo (and still may be) in case anything happened health-wise to Jose Reyes  -  meanwhile Luis Castillo, Daniel Murphy, Brad Emaus and Justin Turner would battle it out to play alongside Reyes in the Met infield.  But Collins raised eyebrows on Thursday when asked about Tejada.

It was another day of live BP before the team plays an intra-squad game on Friday.  Collins singled out Jason Isringhausen, Boof Bonser, Jon Niese, Chris Capuano and even Oliver Perez for looking particularly sharp.

Izzy liked the changeups that he threw, but thought that too much was made of them.  His out pitch?  Still that nasty hook.

Most observers  -  myself included  -  feel that if Capuano and Chris Young are healthy and throwing well, they will be the 4th and 5th starters in the Mets rotation.  That may be true, but Collins insisted that it is still a wide-open competition.

Good news on Carlos Beltran.  Collins wanted to back him off today because he's been pushing himself pretty hard this week, but Beltran insisted on running the bases.  The significance there is that after several days of running the bases, he'll be very close to seeing game action.

Here are your two teams' lineups for the intra-squad game on Friday at Digital Domain:

C U soon
Eddie C.

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