Mets Morning News 2-28-12

Fred Wilpon spoke with reporters Monday afternoon and essentially said the teams' owners are not going anywhere.

"[Fans] shouldn’t be concerned about us owning the franchise, because we intend to own the franchise for a very long time," he said. "Whether they’re happy about that right now, or not, I don’t know."

Adam Rubin of ESPN New York writes of how Lucas Duda has impressed just about everyone in the Mets clubhouse.

"He’s putting the rest of us to shame," [Jason] Bay said. "He was bench-pressing the other day. I couldn’t really tell, but I’m pretty sure they were the 120-pound dumbbells he was doing with one arm. You don’t see that very often. I would say 80, you’re doing pretty good on those.

"And not too many guys turned around a [Braves closer Craig] Kimbrel fastball last year. If I recall, he turned about a neck-high one around to dead-center field. He’s just one of those guys that probably doesn’t get enough notice -- a lot probably because of the personality that he has. He doesn’t say much. But he’s a big, strong guy and he can hit."

Terry Collins gave his opening speech yesterday, telling players that their job is to prove everyone wrong.

"I spoke from the heart, I always do," Collins said. "I told them, 'There are 29 teams that think they are better than you are. How does it make you feel, and what are you going to do about it? You can talk about it or you can do something about it.' And that’s pretty much the gist of the whole conversation."