According mlb.com, Mets general manager Sandy Alderson claims that ace Johan Santana should be returning to the hill by the time the team reconvenes for Spring Training in Port St. Lucie, Florida. Santana is now three weeks into his usual offseason throwing regimen, which consists of flat surface long tossing on consecutive days.

“He’s in a normal progression for Spring Training,” said Alderson during a Thursday conference call. “We expect to see him in Spring Training, and he should be ready to go at that point.”

The two time Cy Young Award winner missed the entire 2011 season after a severe left shoulder injury, suffered in late 2010, which required anterior shoulder capsule surgery – a procedure previously necessary for pitchers such as Chien-Ming Wang and Mark Prior. The management was originally optimistic that he would be pitching at the Major League level by last season’s All Star break. This remains unfulfilled.

Mets fans have been hopeful for an end to this, though, aware that Alderson previously referred to Johan Santana returning for Grapefruit League action as “a question mark” as recently as a month ago. “I didn’t want to set off alarms the last time I talked about this, but we are talking about somebody who’s coming off a long rehab,” said Alderson. “I think ultimately the questions are going to be answered in Spring Training, not beforehand.”

Obviously the “questions” Alderson eluded to refer to Santana’s physical capabilities following shoulder surgery. Conclusions cannot be drawn regarding expectations until a radar gun determines if there is a dip in velocity. As noted over the last few years, shoulder operations have had this effect more often in comparison to Tommy John elbow surgery.

Santana’s absence was definitely felt throughout the 2010 campaign. Over three seasons with New York, he has gone an impressive 40-25, boasting a 2.85 ERA. Without him, the Mets entire starting staff went an abysmal 53-58 last season, combining for a much higher ERA of 4.17. Lacking a true ace, their best pitcher record-wise wound up being rookie Dillon Gee, who went 13-6 with a 4.32 ERA in 27 starts.

New York handed the ball to 9 starters during the course of a 77-85 season – Gee, Jonathan Niese, Chris Capuano, Mike Pelfrey, and knuckleballer R.A. Dickey making up the rotation most of the way. Of those 5, Dickey, Capuano, and Pelfrey were the only ones to make at least 30 starts each.

The other four players called upon were Chris Young, Miguel Batista, rookie Chris Schwinden, and D.J. Carrasco. Young, Batista, and Schwinden each made four starts, while Carrasco had just one.

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U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff stated in an order last Wednesday that the owners of the New York Mets, in order to pay reprisal to investors in Bernard Madoff’s fraud, will be forced to pay noless than $386 million for turning a blind eye towards the ex-financier’s scheme.

The sum of money will cut more than $600 million from the $1 billion award requested in a lawsuit against the team for allowing the fraud to happen. Rakoff said, according to an article posted on Time magazine’s website, that $83.3 million of that money is the assumed profits collected by the Mets’ owners in the two years before a bankruptcy court filing occurred.

Also, the payment includes more than $300 million in principal that the Mets received during the two-year period. Rakoff also stated that Irving Picard, the court-appointed trustee on the case, could only recover principal if it could be proven that the Mets’ owners knew about the fraud, and allowed it to continue.

This is because the lawsuit claimed the owners either knew or should have known that Madoff was operating this scheme. Lawyers for the Mets owners have said, on numerous occasions, that the defendants had no idea that Madoff was operating this huge scheme with the money that their organization invested.

Picard has filed more than 1,000 lawsuits in order to recover billions of dollars lost by investors in Bernard Madoff, according to Time magazine. Picard argued that some investors, like the Mets’ owners, owe large sums of money to other investors because they withdrew from them enough to make a larger amount of money at the expense of others.

Bernard Madoff, the 73-year-old ex-financier, is serving 150 years in prison after pleading guilty to fraud charges. He revealed the lengthy scheme in December 2008 after telling investors their money was worth as much as $68 billion. However, there was only a fraction of their $20 billion dollar investment left.

The New York Mets’ owners announced in May had agreed to sell a minority share to hedge fund manager David Einhorn for $200 million, but the deal fell through on September 1^st. The Mets said they would seek to sell shares of up to $20 million to family members and other potential investors without risking the possibility of losing a controlling interest.
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