Hooray!! The Mets finally took a flier and bought James Loney from the Padres for straight cash money. Finally we’ve done what most competing teams do all the time and made a low risk acquisition to potentially try and fill a roster hole. Pats on the back all around for Sandy, sweaty John Ricco, and the rest of Sandy’s staff. Pop the cheap mid-season acquisition champagne, and let’s celebrate that the Wilpons were willing to Venmo the Padres a few bucks for a stopgap solution at first base.

Loney is a contact hitter, who can take a walk and has a strong glove. That’s the reputation he’s built for himself. That being said, he couldn’t land a major league job in the offseason and was straight chilling in the Pacific Coast League. So let’s not get too excited. He has a reputation as a good defender, but the advanced metrics say he isn’t that strong in the field anymore. He hit .280 for Tampa Bay last year in 361 ABs. So the guy isn’t a useless scrub quite yet. He’s certainly better than Ty Kelly and Eric Campbell. He’ll probably platoon with Wilmer Flores at first base until Lucas Duda can be defrosted from his cryogenic sleep and have his new back discs specially ordered from China installed.

Former Met Scrub-A-Dub Update: The Cardinals just designated Ruben Tejada for assignment. Baaahahaha. He was hitting .176. Remember when I was furious that the Mets let him go in Spring Training for absolutely nothing? Well now he’s being released because he stinks. In all seriousness, the only reason the Ruben release didn’t bite us in the ass is because Asdrubal Cabrera has been healthy and excellent. Wilmer Flores got hurt and Matt Reynolds hasn’t done a damn thing in Vegas or at the MLB level. We lucked out that Asdrubal has been a rock. Mooks on MetsTwitter have been pointing at Ruben’s .176 average and making fun of people like me who were infuriated when we voluntarily dumped Ruben in the spring. Ummmm Eric Campbell is hitting .182 and just happens to play positions in the field where we had more of a need. But clearly we’ve had plenty of room on our roster all season for scrub-a-dub bums like Ruben, Ty Kelly, and Soup. It’s not like we dumped Ruben in favor of a massive talent upgrade. Also, did everyone forget last year’s Kirk Nieuwenhuis boomerang job back to the Mets? Vegas has a Ruben/Mets reunion going off at 1:1.

Anyway, Loney should be joining the team on Monday. This is good news people. Thank you Sandy!