Injuries, age, poor management and the emergence of other teams look to contribute to an early tailgating party at MetLife stadium for many Tri-Staters.

Speaking of ARoid, he will probably miss half the season as a result of his steroid inflammed hip. That's alright, he will have plenty of time to count his undeserved salary, which by the way, is more than the entire Houston Astros team combined.

Injuries to Mark Texiera (in addition to his slow starts) and Curtis Granderson compound (sorry for the pun Grandy) the potential misery the Pinstripers are likely to have.
The irony of all of this is, that the Yankees have no where to turn in the free agent market. The LA-area teams have taken care of becoming the new spend-thrifts in baseball, leaving the Yankees to sign an now average Vernon Wells. No offense Vernon.
On the mound, gone are the days of Wells, Cone, Pettitte and Mussina.

Joe Girardi will have to manage his butt off this season to get the Yankees back to the playoffs.

Starting with the newest news, Johan Santana is out for the year. While this is tragic news on the surface, it was really unclear what the Venezuelan lefty was going to contribute in 2013 anyway. His shoulder is shot and his career may very well be done.


Let's talk bullpen. Bobby Parnell has finally got what I am sure he has always wanted. He is the closer. Frank Francisco is still banged up and will not be ready for Opening Day. No names and no talents make up the middle of the relief staff.
Offensively speaking, the Mets will be offensive (and not in the good way) in 2013.

Wright's protection includes, Lucas Duda, Kirk Neiuwenheiss, Mike Baxter, Reuben Tejada and John Buck. Young catcher Travis d'Arnaud (part of the R.A. Dickey trade) was sent to AAA in an apparent move to preserve his ML service. FML.
The Mets should let d'Arnaud start the season in New York this year and hold him to low offensive expectations with the opportunity to learn the staff and catch at the ML level, thereby "develop" ML skills at the ML level.
Whatever.
This could be a long season in New York and the upcoming regular season intra-city games (I will not call it Subway Series unless they play in October) should provide some interestingly meaningless games.
We can count on a lot of listening to John Sterling droning on and miscalling flyballs (ala Ralph Kiner) and Susan Waldman crying, this time sad tears. YES sound-a-likes John Flaherty and David Cone (the vanilla kids) will bore us with blowhard Michael Kay on the TV side.
At least the Mets have Gary Cohen, Ron Darling and Keith Hernandez to kill the time on the tube and Howie Rose on the radio.
It's going to be a long hot summer in N-Y-C....