Given its status as America’s national sport, there is a lot of prestige involved in sponsorship, for any company that chooses to go down this path – not to mention the fact that they will be reaching a massive audience across the country by doing so.

Therefore it is not really surprising that rumours about companies becoming involved in baseball sponsorship swirl around just as much as football sponsorship rumours do in Europe, and the latest one suggests that the top online casino firm Lucky Nugget may be set to enter into some form of baseball sponsorship deal.

After watching CC Sabathia (of all people) hurt the Mets last night with a key RBI single – I took a look at the Mets pitching stats against opposing pitchers. Here’s some data for the 2009 season:

Against Mets NL Average Mets Rank
PA .08 .04 Second Worst
AVG .175 .130 Worst
OBP .250 .175 Worst
SLG .217 .168 Worst

Ouch. Thats why I don't even waste free bets on them!

So, each of the last two nights at Citi Field, the Mets led 3-0 after 1 inning. That seems like a pretty nice position to be in.

The Newark Star-Ledger is suggesting that last night’s Met lineup was their worst in team history:

Here’s what the Mets threw out on the field last night:

1. Cory Sullivan, CF (.227)
2. Luis Castillo, 2B (.300)
3. Fernando Tatis, 3B (.243)
4. Daniel Murphy, 1B (.252)
5. Jeff Francoeur, RF (.262)
6. Jeremy Reed, LF (.256)
7. Alex Cora, SS (.256)
8. Brian Schneider, C (.197)
9. Livan Hernandez, SP (.132)

I wanted to follow-up on our prior post about NHL refereeing, where we reviewed Brad Meier’s and Bill McCreary’s actions in Game 6 of the Rangers/Capitals series. They are the referees who did not penalize Donald Brashear for his blind-side, away-from-the-puck, open-ice hit on Blair Betts, which later earned Brashear a 5 game suspension. They are also the guys who told the Rangers that they saw the hit and deemed it legal. Here’s a clip of the hit: