When Carlos Beltran decided to open his mouth about the Mets winning the NL East this year, the general consensus was that of shock.Not because of what he said, but that he had said it. It was like in The Breakfast Club when Ally Sheedy started talking after being quiet for the first half of the movie. We were half-expecting Beltran to start feeding Chris Gomez birth control pills.

And not only did he talk trash, but Beltran directed it at Jimmy Rollins, the Phillies player who caught the most ire from the Metropolitans last season for making a similar prediction. Way to poke a bear, Carlos.

When a reporter read Beltran’s quote straight from a newspaper clip, Rollins smiled and shrugged it off.

“Pretty good, especially coming from him,” he said. “Because he’s a quiet guy, it was probably shocking when he said it. Not shocking in a bad way, like, ‘Wow, I can’t believe he said that.’ More like, ‘Wow, he finally said something because he’s a leader on that team and you definitely need to be a vocal leader.’”

Well, it’s a lot easier to be vocal when everyone’s shouting for Johan. You can hide a lot easier when the focus is on the other guy.

Rollins replies to Beltran [Yahoo]
Image [hotstovenewyork.com]