.Its all part of his mission to build a championship foundation in an organization | Forum

NEW YORK -- New York Mets general manager Sandy Alderson called it bad optics that Yoenis Cespedes played a round of golf hours before landing on the disabled list with a lingering right quadriceps injury. Cheap NFL Jerseys Wholesale .On Thursday, Alderson added that he has come to a mutual agreement with Cespedes representatives that the outfielder will refrain from golfing, at least for the time period when it could be viewed negatively by the public.Ive had conversations with his people, but not directly with Yoenis, Alderson said. But that message will get to him, at least circuitously, and probably directly.... I think everybody is taking it seriously. I think Yoenis takes it seriously. But Yoenis has his own personal life that sometimes is larger than life. Weve seen that from the beginning of spring training.Cespedes injured the quadriceps on July 8, and he has been in and out of the lineup for the past month. He finally landed on the DL after a 9-5 loss to the Yankees on Wednesday, when manager Terry Collins spotted Cespedes grimacing on a swing during his final at-bat. The outfielder said he could not continue.Alderson did not have an estimate for the length of Cespedes absence, but the GM hoped it would be limited to two weeks. Alderson said an MRI taken of Cespedes quadriceps Thursday showed no worsening of the injury from when it was originally diagnosed.In retrospect, Alderson acknowledged the Mets should have placed Cespedes on the DL when the injury originally occurred. Cespedes skipped the All-Star Game and appeared in only 14 games since originally straining the muscle. He hit .227 with one homer and seven RBIs in 44 at-bats during that stretch.It has been a trying month or so with Yoenis and the injury, Alderson said. And, in retrospect, its probable that we should have just put him on the DL at the beginning of this episode, which is generally true with most injuries, unfortunately. ... On the other hand, he wanted to try to play through it. We certainly had every interest in seeing him do that.Alderson said team doctors cannot confirm that golf made the injury worse, but the GM acknowledged it comes off looking poor. At least one Mets employee was disappointed that former major leaguer Kevin Millar tweeted a photo of his round of golf on Wednesday with Cespedes, which put it on the medias radar.In reality, Cespedes may have played golf 10 times in the past couple of weeks, a team official said.The golf is bad optics, Alderson said. Lets just start there. Our doctors have told us that probably had no impact on the injury -- positive or negative. But lets face it: You play golf during the day and then go out injured in the evening, its a bad visual. I think he recognizes that at this point. So well go from there.Cespedes landing on the DL is a serious blow to the Mets, who entered Thursday a season-high 8? games behind the Washington Nationals in the National League East. Jay Bruce just made his Mets debut on Tuesday after being acquired from the Cincinnati Reds. Cespedes and Bruce appeared in the starting lineup only once together before Cespedes required the DL trip.With Brandon Nimmo promoted to replace Cespedes, the Mets now have five lefty-hitting outfielders, which Alderson acknowledged is not ideal. In addition to Cespedes, righty-hitting outfielders Juan Lagares (thumb surgery) and Justin Ruggiano (hamstring strain) are on the DL.The Mets considered calling up T.J. Rivera, but he is primarily an infielder, so team officials passed. Mets brass also was concerned about Travis Taijerons high strikeout rate with Triple-A Las Vegas (131 Ks in 364 at-bats).Were going to have to grin and bear it for the moment, Alderson said. We are a little heavily populated with left-handed hitters. Wholesale Womens NFL Jerseys . -- Ken Appleby made 32 saves for his first shutout of the season to lead the Oshawa Generals to a 2-0 win over the Belleville Bulls on Wednesday in Ontario Hockey League action. Womens NFL Jerseys Discount . Pirlo limped out of Sundays 1-0 win over Udinese after just 13 minutes. Juventus says Pirlo underwent tests on Monday which revealed he has "a second-degree lesion to the collateral medial ligament in his right knee. http://www.authenticnfljerseyssale.com/ . The Barrie Colts defenceman, who impressed many with his play for Canada at the World Junior Hockey Championship, is the top-ranked skater in the February rankings. He has 19 goals and 24 assists for 43 points in 45 games with the Colts this season. MINNEAPOLIS -- The alarm rings at 4:30 a.m., but only for a split-second. Tom Thibodeau has been wide awake for the last eight minutes, waiting for the buzzer to go off.He unplugs himself from the matrix, where he has spent the last four hours downloading video of Rick Carlisles push offense, all 722 of Russell Westbrooks pick-and-rolls last season and diagrams of Gregg Popovichs plays after a timeout straight into his brain.Or so goes the caricature of the NBAs ultimate grinder, a reputation that has morphed from reality to apocryphal over Thibodeaus three decades in the league. The snarling, growling, basketball savant so consumed by the game there seems to be little room for anything else in his life.I think thats sort of the way it is today, Thibodeau said with a hearty laugh. You get put in some type of box. Im like everybody else. There are a lot of other things that I enjoy doing also.Thibodeau insists hes more than the basketball junkie that people cast him to be. In addition to visiting teams during his sabbatical last year, he also saw his family over the holidays for the first time in recent memory, took trips to Napa and St. Thomas and watched the occasional movie. He loves U2 and Bruce Springsteen and relishes a great meal with good company.But now that the season is here, its time to work.The Timberwolves brought him back to Minnesota -- the place his NBA coaching career began 27 years ago -- with the hope he can galvanize a promising young roster and end an interminable 12-year playoff drought. He arrived in Minneapolis in 1989 as a mullet-wearing, 31-year-old making the jump from Harvard. He returns as a 58-year-old coaching veteran, empowered by owner Glen Taylor as coach and president of basketball operations.Im never going to apologize for working hard, Thibodeau said. I just dont believe in that. I believe that when you make a commitment to do something, put everything you have into it every single day and then you let the chips fall where they may. Its worked well for me.His ability to balance the patience it takes to construct the long-term vision he has for the organization with the win-at-all-costs mentality that made him a success with the Chicago Bulls will be crucial to the downtrodden franchises ability to pull out of the abyss.In some ways this is similar to when I took over in Chicago, when Derrick (Rose) was 22 and Joakim (Noah) was 25, he said. But how you pace the team, I think thats one of the biggest challenges for a head coach.That Bulls team went 62-20 -- a 21-game improvement over the previous season -- and lost in the Eastern Conference finals. In MMinnesota, he takes over a team that won just 29 games, but boasts a treasure trove of young talent including Karl-Anthony Towns, Andrew Wiggins and Zach LaVine. Cheap Womens NFL Jerseys. I think hes going to be great for the city, great for these young guys, said Memphis Grizzlies coach David Fizdale, who along with Thibodeau is among the 10 new coaches in the league this season. Hes going to make them into a serious threat in the West.In his first month coaching this team, there have been signs of the old and new Thibodeau. His practices are long and intense, but he has granted several days off for rest and even gave the entire starting lineup the night off on the second night of a back-to-back last weekend.He is hilariously profane while storming up and down the sideline, but also laughs uncontrollably and cracks jokes while presiding as judge and jury over a competitive shooting drill in practice.Hes tough. But at the end of the day, this is our job. This is our profession, said guard John Lucas III, who played for Thibodeau in Chicago. This is what we do. All he asks of you is give him 100 percent. Take no possessions off. Help each other. Leave nobody on an island. Have your teammates back. And thats the culture were trying to build here.Its an all-business culture cultivated by Thibodeau and GM Scott Layden. The demands made of players here in the past -- meeting with corporate sponsors or season ticket holders to try to spur interest in the team -- have been significantly reduced to allow them to focus on basketball.Hotels on the road have been upgraded and trips home in between spaced-out road games have been eliminated to give the team more bonding time.And after a messy exit from Chicago plagued by mistrust between the coaching staff and front office, Thibodeau has established a unified management front in Minnesota. During big news conferences, he and Layden sit side by side. And Thibodeau has followed the lead of several other head coaches around the league by not permitting his assistants to do interviews with the media, an effort to make sure there is one message being delivered.Its all part of his mission to build a championship foundation in an organization that has advanced out of the first round of the playoffs one time in its 28-year history.I love the game so its not work to me, he said. I enjoy being part of a group and the camaraderie of being with a team. And I love the competition.---Follow Jon Krawczynski on Twitter: http://twitter.com/APKrawczynski ' ' '