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The Florida Marlins traded Miguel Cabrera and Dontrelle Willis to the Detroit Tigers Tuesday for two top prospects, three minor league pitchers and a catcher who has the same name as a kid I was in a fantasy league with last year.

You know what that means. Florida Marlins, 2009 World Series Champions!!

And here my beloved New York Mets sit, with no chips to push to the center of the table, no bluff to use to steal a pot and no third poker metaphor to finish this sentence.

Omar Minaya is in Nashville right now walking around like the Chris Rock character "Cheap Pete" from In Living Color.
"How much for Johan Santana?... Good Lord that's a lot of money! How about Carlos Gomez and a groundskeeper?"
"How much for Danny Haren?... Tell ya what, I'll give you Philip Humber and a bus pass."
"How much for Erik Bedard?... OK, OK, let me see here. I got Mike Pelfrey and a bag of baseballs."
"How much for Livan Hernandez?" (Blogger's note: Please, no. Omar, no. NO)

I guess it would have been too difficult to just hold onto Scott Kazmir.

What's Victor Zambrano doing nowadays? Oh, you think he's a middle reliever for the New Haven County Cutters? Oh, the New Haven County Cutters went out of business? Well then he must be unemployed.

And the worse part of this whole thing is when I turned on Mets Hot Stove on SNY this past Monday, Jim Duquette was an in-studio host.

What?

Jim Duquette traded Scott Kazmir for Victor Zambrano and just 3 years later he's hosting a show on the Mets network? For those of you who aren't Mets fans — and judging by the polls conducted in Connecticut every year, 96% of you aren't — this is Eric Mangini hosting a Patriots' postgame show. This is "Hello, I'm Michael Kay alongside Pedro Martinez". This is the Celtics front office playing beer pong with the balls from the 1997 lottery.

Seeing Jim Duquette in the SNY studios analyzing the current GM — the one who succeeded him because he's a moron — is just an indication of what type of organization the Mets really are. They're second rate. If there was another baseball team in New York, they might be third rate. And I'm a die-hard Mets fan. When you get slapped in the face, it stings.

But that's the difference between the Mets and the Yanks. You won't turn on YES and find Kevin Brown and Carl Pavano analyzing Joba Chamberlain and Phil Hughes. Just switch over to SNY. I'm sure Jim Duquette thinks landing Ryan Church and Brian Schneider for Lastings Milledge was a steal.