About a month ago I sat down and talked baseball with sportsonearth.com writer Tim Healey. Tim has been covering sports since he was in college with the Boston Globe where he started covering high school sports and has since worked for MLB.com and now with its sister site, sportsonearth.com.

Tim and I talked all sorts of topics; Josh Hamilton, the Mets, the universal DH and more.

We talked about Josh Hamilton’s relapse earlier in the year and both Tim’s reaction as well as the reaction from the sport on what happened. I was personally surprised with how the GM, Jerry Dipoto, handled that situation and seemingly so was Tim. He talked about how you never want to see someone go through a relapse like that but how weird it was to see the organization handle the situation the way that they did.

Next we covered one of the most widely debated topics in the MLB right now, the universal DH. I’m a baseball purist and I like things the way that they are, DH in one league and no DH in the other. Tim and I disagreed on this topic with him noting that, minus a few exceptions (Madison Bumgarner and Noah Syndergaard) pitchers hitting is a joke. No matter how fun it is to see Bartolo Colon flail at the ball a couple times every five days, it would be better for the game overall to have a universal DH to increase offense in the game.

Harper vs. Trout is a widely debated topic in baseball as well but Tim and I couldn’t have agreed more with our answers. To Tim, as nice as it is to see Bryce Harper succeeding this year (and boy is he) there’s no contest as to who the better player is. Its nice to see Bryce finally living up to his extremely high expectations but its still nowhere close. Tim cites how Trout’s single MVP win in three seasons, where he won once and got second twice, was his worst statistical year out of the three. To both of us, as good as Harper is, its really a no contest between the two as Mike Trout firmly holds his place atop the list of the best players in baseball.

After those topics we moved on to one that’s near and dear to my heart, the New York Mets. We started off talking about the six-man rotation and how puzzling it was to both of us that they went to the six man rotation to begin with and that they dumped it so quickly after one so-so start from Dillon Gee. Keeping on the topic of the Mets pitching we moved on to Matt Harvey and his triumphant return from Tommy John surgery. We both agree that this is no fluke what he’s doing and he is still the real deal. Tim notes how success like Harvey’s right off surgery would normally be surprising but coming from the Dark Knight, its really not. Reasonable expectations for most pitchers would be somewhat below-average performance based off previous play but for Matt, those expectations are not the same.

Noah Syndergaard has taken the Big Apple by storm and his success to start the season had Tim somewhat surprised but with him being a top prospect, the surprise was still fairly limited.

Lastly we talked trades. Dillon Gee, John Niese, Rafael Montero are names that have been tossed around, but what’s a reasonable return to expect for them. Tim looked at what places on the diamond the team needs to look at to improve, for him it was potentially third base depending on David Wright’s situation which is still in the air. Todd Frazier’s name has been bounced around and is someone who can play both third base and the outfield (if Wright were to return) if needed and could be a potential target. The name that I tossed out, and Tim liked but hadn’t heard much about, was Ryan Braun. Braun is a guy who is owed a lot of money over the next few years and likely won’t be an MVP caliber guy anymore but plays good defense in the outfield and can hit for both average and power. What would it take to get him? That’s the question. The other issue is, what to do with Granderson and Cuddyer? If you platoon them, you’re throwing out a  $20+ million platoon which would certainly be one of the most expensive in baseball. Is that worth upgrading the overall ball club? Tim and I both agree that the ballclub needs to be upgraded but neither of us have a perfect solution, which seemingly nobody does!

This conversation went into a little more depth than I typed out here but this covered most of it. I had a blast talking with Tim and can’t wait to do it again, hopefully posting our talk a little sooner than I did this one.

-Brian R.