Ex-Mets in Lesser Threads

Willets Point · February 23, 2021

Where's he been the past 5 years?

Edgy MD · February 23, 2021

In Kashmir, duh!

[YOUTUBE]PD-MdiUm1_Y[/YOUTUBE]

smg58 · February 23, 2021

I'm kind of curious to know what Kazmir has left in the tank. I doubt he could hold up to a full season of starting, but good lefty arms out of the pen aren't so easy to come by.

G-Fafif · March 2, 2021

Still unsigned Yoenis Cespedes to hold a showcase (or Yo!case) on March 2. Sandy Alderson gets droll.

https://twitter.com/jonheyman/status/1363968963470843912?s=21https://twitter.com/jonheyman/status/1363968963470843912?s=21

What a rascal.

G-Fafif · March 2, 2021

MFS62 · March 2, 2021

Scott Kazmir, 37, is attempting a comeback with SF - he signed a minor league contract.

https://www.yahoo.com/sports/longtime-big-leaguer-scott-kazmir-174640057.htmlhttps://www.yahoo.com/sports/longtime-big-leaguer-scott-kazmir-174640057.html

Kazmir refuses to let the clock run out on his baseball career, and last week he signed a minor league deal with the Giants, hopeful that he can make it into a big league rotation at the age of 37, five years removed from his last MLB appearance.

Later

Johnny Lunchbucket · March 2, 2021

Both guys 2 scoreless, 1 hit

G-Fafif · March 4, 2021

Anthony Swarzak is an Arizona Diamondback invitee.

G-Fafif · March 4, 2021

2011 Carlos Beltran has had it with 2011 Justin Turner.

In 2011, Turner's first season with the Mets, Beltrán pulled him aside and told him it looked like he didn't care.

“You're a young guy,” Beltrán said. “You can't just be flipping balls from second base. Get the ball and throw it, show a little bit more effort.”

2013 David Wright had only an inkling of what 2013 Justin Turner might become.

At that moment, Wright did not anticipate Turner developing the player he became with the Dodgers. But he detected in that conversation an edge in Turner he had not heard previously.

“You could tell in his voice he was upset and hurt that (the Mets) didn't view him as good enough to be on our team,” Wright says. “He used that as motivation. You could tell that day moving forward that he was going to prove us wrong, that he was going to show baseball we made a mistake.”

2021 Justin Turner is considered the world champion Dodgers' leader because 2011 David Wright told him to stop being such a little bitch with the press after a bad game.

After the game, Turner drifted from the training room to the weight room to the food room, seeking to avoid reporters. He had settled in a sauna when Wright found him and asked what he was doing.

“I don't want to go talk to those guys,” Turner said. “I'm going to get buried.”

“Look, you've helped us win way more games than you've lost us,” Wright replied. “The best thing to do in these situations is go out there and tell these guys exactly what happened. If you don't tell them what happened, they're going to write whatever the heck they want and assume whatever they want.”

With that, Wright escorted Turner into the clubhouse and stood by his side as he answered questions. Turner recalls experiencing great relief when the interview session was over, and to this day he tells Dodgers teammates the story, using it as a lesson in accountability and responsibility.

Wright's guidance in that moment is something Turner says he will never forget. And as he became more established with the Dodgers, he also emerged as a model teammate, particularly with the way he regularly demonstrated concern for others.

Ken Rosenthal with https://theathletic.com/2417940/2021/03/04/why-justin-turner-heart-and-soul-of-the-dodgers-was-never-leaving-los-angeles/the rest of the story.

Edgy MD · March 5, 2021

Food room.

Edgy MD · March 6, 2021

The KBO's SK Wyverns are pleased to welcome Wilmer Font to their 2021 pitching staff.

He says he's looking forward to playing the Doosan Bears, when he hopes to match up with fellow 2019 Met star Walker Lockett.

NC Dinos' Aaron Altherr is hoping to avoid them both.

vtmet7 · March 6, 2021

=smg58 post_id=56117 time=1613266766 user_id=62]
Jay Bruce signs a minor-league deal with the Yankees. If his criminally bad BABIP from the last two seasons normalizes, he could make a positive contribution for them.

Edgy MD · March 7, 2021

Chin-Lung Hu is returning or his sixth consecutive season with the KBO's Fuban guardians.

The former Mets utility infielder has been exclusively an outfielder (with rare appearances at first) since returning to KBO ball in 2013.

Gaby Ynoa hopes to face him as a member of The CTBC Brothers, while Drew Gagnon seeks to advance the interests of The Wei Chuan Dragons

G-Fafif · March 9, 2021

Though “he was good in Korea” comes off as the baseball equivalent of “my girlfriend in Canada,” Seattle Mariner Chris Flexen is making the most of it.

When baseball came to a halt last spring, the Mariners were still in Arizona. Many of their professional scouts were on the road, watching high school and college players. Soon enough, though, everyone was back home. There were zero games to watch, to scout and to write reports on. At least not stateside.

“We found ourselves with a scouting staff that didn't have a lot to do. Our guys were dying to work. They were desperate to do something … to feel like they were making an impact,” said Mariners assistant general manager Justin Hollander. “So rather than sit around, we had video of KBO (Korea Baseball Organization) and the NPB (Nippon Professional Baseball) games that had already started.”

What were the Mariners looking for, exactly? Well, that was sort of the beauty of going through this exercise: They didn't know, which was completely fine. The performances (and data) would shape their interest. When you're looking under rocks, you have to sift through a lot of basalt in hopes of finding a ruby.

“We asked our pro scouting staff to go through all the video and look for U.S.-born players who had gone over there and foreign-born players who may have come over for the first time, just to get a sense of who were the guys we wanted to track and also monitor all season,” Hollander said.

Flexen certainly fit that mold. He had an 8.07 ERA in parts of three seasons with the Mets (2017-2019) and had gone to Korea with the hopes, really, of rebuilding his resume in case the big leagues came calling again.

Pitching for Doosan, Flexen didn't just find his big breaking ball — a pitch that got a lot of positive reviews and awkward swings — in Korea, but he also found himself as a pitcher. Across the board, his stuff jumped. Flexen posted a 132-to-32 strikeout-to-walk ratio, saw a bump in his velocity and had a 28 percent strikeout rate, which caught the eyes of the Mariners.

And because of the pandemic, the Mariners could allocate more of their scouting resources than in a typical year to evaluate players like Flexen. That led to more eyeballs and opinions and, the Mariners believe, better decision-making.

“This was born out of opportunity. Before (the pandemic), we may have had two or three looks, mostly analytical. But we would not have had the breadth of different evaluators take a look at him like we did,” Hollander said.

“Between those early-season reports, midseason reports and end-of-season reports, I want to say we had six reports on Chris from last year from different evaluators. Then, at the end of the season, we were able to run our analytical work on the NPB and the KBO, and Chris popped in both of those lenses.”

https://theathletic.com/2422823/2021/03/09/finding-flexen-how-scouting-the-kbo-led-the-mariners-to-sign-the-revamped-starter/https://theathletic.com/2422823/2021/03/09/finding-flexen-how-scouting-the-kbo-led-the-mariners-to-sign-the-revamped-starter/

MFS62 · March 9, 2021

I'd be interested in the metrics they use for evaluating the NPB and KBO as a way to project performance when players return to the US pro leagues. What is their conversion factor?

Later

G-Fafif · March 22, 2021

TransMonk · March 25, 2021

https://twitter.com/danconnolly2016/status/1375082549278572545https://twitter.com/danconnolly2016/status/1375082549278572545

G-Fafif · March 25, 2021

Good for Matt.

bmfc1 · March 25, 2021

If you need a reason to follow the Orioles this year, and you likely do, it's here (other than May 11, 12, June 8 and 9, we wish him the best).

seawolf17 · March 25, 2021

I would love to see him come all the way back. He was deGrom-level "fun to watch."

LWFS · March 25, 2021

I would love to see him come all the way back. He was deGrom-level "fun to watch."

Cosigned.

It would exceedingly cool-- and weird-- to see him make that comeback as a veteran leader on a better-than-most-think Oriole team this or next season.

MFS62 · March 29, 2021

Todd Frazier has opted out of his deal with the Pirates and is a free agent. He says he doesn't want to retire and is looking for another major league deal.

Later