Josh Thole was the only Met to play in the Peoria Saguaros regular season finale.  He was 0-4.

The Mesa Solar Sox and the Pheonix Desert Dogs will play for the league championship on Saturday.

According to Adam Rubin at the Daily News and Bart Hubbach at the New York Post, the New York Mets added Mike Carp to the 40-man roster Thursday to protect him from the Rule V draft in December.

Here’s the official Mets Press Release from Thursday:

The Mets Daniel Murphy underwent an MRI this morning at New York’s Hospital for Special Surgery and the test revealed that he has a Grade 2 Strain of the right hamstring. Murphy felt discomfort in the leg in pre-game batting practice of his Nov. 11th Arizona Fall League game. He will skip winter league ball in Puerto Rico so that he can be ready for the opening of Spring Training this February in Port St. Lucie, FL.

- Bummer for Murphy that he’s injured.  On the other hand, I’m not sure it’s the worst thing in the world for him now to take some time off to heal this injury and rest his whole body as long as he is indeed, totally healthy for spring training.

- Both Matt and I, and other around the web, posted Wednesday about Murphy experiencing discomfort in his right knee.  In a totally unrelated development, right before labor day, I experienced a searing pain in my right knee.  The orthopedist diagnosed some problems with the meniscus, but the MRI came back totally negative (that is, no structural damage).  The physical therapists also identified inflammation in my hamstring, in the hamstring tendon near the joint line, and at the insertion at the pes anserine.  Thus, the treatment has been largely directed at increasing strength and flexibility in the related muscles.

My point: the hamstring is connected to the knee.

I messed up my earlier post about the Rule Five Draft.

If a player signs his first pro contract before his 19th birthday, he must be protected by the time of the fifth draft after his signing.

If a players signs his first pro contract after his 19th birthday, he must be protected by the time of the fourth draft after his signing.

This means the Mets must protect Mike Carp this time around.

Carp hit .299/.403/.471 at AA Binghamton in 2008.  He is currently 1-5 in Venezuela.

Reader thebigstapler points us to the following quote from Eddie Kunz at his AFL blog:

As I look back on the AFL I can see that I learned alot and fixed things that I have needed to work on. I have met my goals here in learning to control my pitches better and throw more strikes. Now even though my stats don’t show it I feel really good about what I did down here and it will really help me when it comes to Sring Training next year. Now that it is all over back to Oregon I go and home to rest and relax and get ready for Spring Training.

Kunz is right to a degree.  Results in the AFL don’t matter.  His performance in Spring Training will be much more important than a few (bad) innings in the desert.  Even more important than his numbers in ST will be how he looks and his ability to command his pitches.

Image from MLB.com.

So it goes….

Wednesday in a 7-4 loss:

BS (3), .2 IP, 3 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 1 BB, 2 SO, 1 HR – 10.93 ERA

Minorleaguebaseball.com announced the Topps AA All-Star team.  was the only Met to make the squad.  From MiLB.com:

Eddie Kunz (22) of Portland, Ore., recorded 27 saves in 30 opportunities for the Binghamton Mets, before being summoned to the big leagues in August. The right-hander made four appearances for the New York Mets and ended his year in Triple-A. Kunz was drafted in the second round in 2007 out of Oregon State University.

In AA this year, Kunz was 1-4 with a 2.79 ERA.  In 48.1 IP, he gaveup just 39 H for an opponents’ batting average of .222.  He walked 25 and struck out 43.