Mets Spring Training Update: Wilpons Settle, Mets Lose, Pelfrey Bombs

You know you’re in for a long season when the “good” in this week’s Mets Spring Training: The Good The Bad and The Ugly could have gone in any of the three categories…

THE GOOD: Today, on the morning of jury selection, the New York Mets owners reached a $162 million dollar settlement with the Trustee for the Bernie Madoff victims. While I’m not completely sure this is a good thing for the Mets, it certainly is a relief for the Wilpon family and Saul Katz, who are the team’s primary owners. The financial woes are far from over for the Wilpons, and the Mets will still be conservative in free agency in the foreseeable future, but this agreement does temporary alleviate some of the financial pressure on the Wilpons to sell the club. With the Wilpons doubling as victims of Bernie Madoff in this very convoluted ordeal, it looks like they will only have to pay around $90 million when all of the corresponding lawsuits are resolved.

THE BAD: The Mets Grapefruit League record. The Mets have managed to take their extremely low expectations and lower them as the team crawls towards Opening Day. The Mets have lost 9 straight games, dropping to 3-11-1 on the spring. On the bright side, David Wright hit off a tee on Sunday and says he expects to be in the line-up come the start of the season.

THE UGLY: Mike Pelfrey. Big Pelf, who has been a huge disappointment for the Mets his entire career, allowed 8 runs on 8 hits through 2 2/3 on Sunday as the Mets fell to the Astros. Pelfrey claims he was intentionally overthrowing in an effort to build up his arm strength, and in the process got rocked by one of the worst offenses in the league. Obviously spring training is a time to work out kinks and not focus on the score, but with Pelfrey’s historically fragile psyche, and with the Mets slim margin of error this season, seeing such a miserable outing is certainly cause for concern amongst the Mets faithful.