KinersKorner.com is your one-stop multimedia source for all things Mets

By the time I pulled into the complex at Clover Park for my sixth and final day of covering Mets Spring Training, the place felt almost civilized. No 6:00 a.m. cattle call. No players stumbling in before sunrise for picture day obligations. The press room didn’t open until 9:45. The clubhouse doors welcomed us at 10. It felt like baseball had hit the snooze button. And honestly, after a week of controlled chaos, it was kind of perfect. The room itself was quiet. Not tense qui

Spring Training has a rhythm to it. The crack of the bat. The thud of a fastball into leather. The hum of golf carts. And apparently… the gentle click of chess pieces. Day 5 began in the clubhouse, and what jumped out immediately had nothing to do with radar guns or exit velocity. It was Sean Manaea holding court with Jonah Tong, teaching him chess as if he were channeling Bobby Fischer rather than former Mets pitcher Jack Fisher. Manaea wasn’t just explaining moves. He was e

By the time the Florida humidity announced itself before breakfast, Clover Park was already humming. Clover Park was already humming. Spring Training coverage Day 4 began early — locker room doors open at 8 a.m. — and if you’ve been around this game long enough you know that’s when the real stories tend to wander in, usually wearing spikes and carrying a cup of bad clubhouse coffee. I made the rounds, hopping from locker to locker — speed dating for reporters, where the goal

There are certain moments in spring training when you stumble across a story you weren’t expecting. Maybe it’s a kid throwing 97 free and easy like he found it in the bottom of a Cracker Jack box, or maybe it’s just wandering past a locker when a glove catches your eye, covered in pop culture references that would make a film studies professor spill his latte.. That’s how I wound up talking pitching and psychological satire with Mets prospect Ryan Lambert, which is how you k

Day three in Port St. Lucie and by now you start noticing the things you miss when you first arrive — the small details, the subtle changes, the little hints that baseball continues to evolve even if the smell of sunscreen and pine tar still feels exactly the same. I’ve reached the midpoint of my six days here covering camp, and what stood out most today wasn’t a home run or a diving catch. It was intent. There’s a little more purpose to everything, from the way players stret

If Day 1 is about handshakes and fresh spikes in the clubhouse, Day 2 is where the tone starts to reveal itself. And the tone on this morning was set in the dugout. Steve Cohen met the media for 22 minutes, and if there was one word he kept circling back to, it was “excited.” But don’t confuse that with satisfied. “I feel like there’s a different energy here this year than last year,” Cohen said. “I don’t know what it is. It just feels really optimistic.” That optimism lives

There are certain sites and sounds in spring training that signal baseball is officially alive again, the pop of a fastball in a catcher’s mitt, the sound of a fungo bat, and the unmistakable cadence of a manager standing at a podium explaining, in calm baseball speak, why everything is both encouraging and cautiously monitored. On Friday, Carlos Mendoza stepped into that role, delivering a wide-ranging briefing that touched on pitching health, roster development, defensive p

Mets fans, let’s take the blue-and-orange tinted glasses off for a minute. Vidal Bruján is not the next José Reyes, hell he isn't even the next Pablo Reyes. He’s not a secret All-Star hiding in plain sight. He’s not about to steal 60 bases and force the Mets to install a speed limit at Citi Field. So who is Vidal Bruján ? If your reaction to the question, “Is that a new member of the Queens Crew — congratulations, you’re normal. He’s basically baseball’s version of the guy w

There are two truths in life: The sun rises in the east. Mets fandom much like today's political climate is a house divided, with the dividing line usually running straight through Thanksgiving dinner. I know this because I run KinersKorner.com, a digital family room where Mets fans gather daily to agree on one thing that everyone else is wrong. Which brings us to David Stearns. Let me preface this by saying I have been a believer in David Stearns’ long-term vision for this

The 2010s were yet another decade of transition for the New York Mets, and few positions reflected that churn more clearly than first base. From early promise and unmet expectations to a thunderous finish that redefined the franchise’s power identity, the Mets’ first basemen told a story of trial, error, and, ultimately, transformation. The decade opened with Ike Davis, a former first-round pick and the heir apparent to the position. Davis burst onto the scene in 2010, showin

Welcome back to Sunday School: Forgotten Faces of Flushing, our weekly rummage through the Mets’ attic, where we brush the dust off the bubble gum cards, flip through the curling pages of old yearbooks, and rediscover the players who once made you pause mid–potato knish and mutter, “Hold on… he was a Met, right?” Last week, class focused on Joe Frazier , not the heavyweight champion, but the Mets manager whose brief tenure somehow produced a better winning percentage than Ter

You know those social media posts that pop up every day asking things like, Describe your mood today with a movie title? Or a song? Or the old internet classic where you create your “adult film name” by combining your first pet with the last name of your least favorite Mets reliever and yes, mine would be Coco Looper thanks for asking. Honestly, that’s how my brain has always worked. I don’t process life in neat paragraphs. I process it in pop culture references movies, lyr

Welcome back to Sunday School: Forgotten Faces of Flushing, our weekly rummage through the Mets’ attic, where we dust off the bubble-gum cards and game-used jerseys of the guys who made you squint and go, “Wait… didn’t he play for us?” Last week, we looked back at Chuck Hiller and Harvey Haddix , two men who helped shape a young franchise with fundamentals, grit, and good humor. This week, we shift gears to someone who never made it to Shea but whose name still makes longtime

Welcome back to Sunday School: Forgotten Faces of Flushing our weekly rummage through the Mets’ attic, where we dust off the bubble-gum...

Welcome back to Sunday School: Forgotten Faces of Flushing, our weekly rummage through the Mets’ attic, where we dust off the bubble-gum...

Welcome back to Sunday School: Forgotten Faces of Flushing, our weekly rummage through the Mets’ attic, where we brush aside the...

Mets 19, Marlins 9 (Citi Field, Flushing, NY) Mets Record: 73-62 Mets Streak: W1 Mets Last 10: 6-4 WP: Jonah Tong (1-0) LP: Eury Perez...

It’s not every day the Mets hand the ball to a guy nicknamed The Cowboy Otani. Then again, it’s not every day the Mets hand the ball to a...

Mets Recent Trade Acquistions Let’s be honest: nobody saw this coming. Not like this. Not clean. Not surgical. As the trade deadline...