IGT 9/14, Gnats at Mets

[Guest KC]

Gnats

Wilkerson lf
Cruz 2b
Guillen rf
Johnson 1b
Wilson cf
Castilla 3b
Bennett c
Guzman ss
Loaiza p

Mets

Reyes ss
Matsui 2b
Beltran cf
Floyd lf
Wright 3b
Piazza c
Jacobs 1b
Diaz rf
Benson p

[Guest KC]

Heard Randolph on M&MD today say that he plans on trying to go out on
a strong note and that they prolly won't be running out a lot of new guys in
the next couple of weeks. (paraphrasing, of course - for everyone licking
their chops to see some AA and AAA players take the field)

Also said that he's approached most of the guys one on one and asked
that they don't mail it in and that they've had some positives to build on
and he expects their all through the last couple of weeks.

[Guest Rotblatt]

Good for Willie! I hope it has an effect.

[Guest Johnny Dickshot]

Matsui is raking just like he did during the MFY series in '04.

[Guest Johnny Dickshot]

Mets are all wearing those knickers high tonight.

[Guest ScarletKnight41]

1-1 after one.

[seawolf17]

WHY does Beltran try to steal third with Wright at the plate again!? This guy's gonna be the death of me for the next six years.

[Guest Johnny Dickshot]

I guess he wasn't listening to WWSB's pre-game peptalk.

[nymr83]

maybe he's trying to pad his SB numbers to tone down criticism from jerks like us? :twisted:

[Frayed Knot]

Guillen decides it's a fine time to conduct a yard sale.

[Elster88]

I believed in you Kaz! Way to go!!!
____________________________
This post had the designation 155) David Segui

[Valadius]

Ten-game hit streak for Kaz.

Really makes WWSB look like a goddamn moron for trotting Cairo out there every day.

[Guest Rockin' Doc]

Sometimes, it doesn't seem all that hard to make WWSB look like a moron.

[Frayed Knot]

Except that most of the time Cairo was getting trotted out there every day Matsui was either:
a) hitting even less than Cairo
or
out injured

[Guest KC]

>>>Really makes WWSB look like a goddamn moron for trotting Cairo out there every day.<<<

That's a pretty moronic statement to be calling someone a moron in,
especially a strongly worded gosh darn moron at that??

I don't mean to be mean, but c'mon.

[Elster88]

Well, he did go a little overboard when saying it, but I think his point is true. Playing Cairo when a healthy Matsui was an option was the wrong decision. If you want to discount Matsui's hot streak as a flash in the pan, Cairo's poor play proved he's not an everyday option.
____________________________
This post had the designation 155) David Segui

[Elster88]

And yeah, the fact that Cairo was consistently starting, while playing awfully, and only giving Matsui a day here and a day there (including at least one 3 for 4 game) is pretty moronic.
____________________________
This post had the designation 155) David Segui

[Guest KC]

I'm with FK who snuck in before me. You guys have all winter to Randolph
bash, I won't have too much to do with it.

[Elster88]

I'm not into bashing Willlie. I just think the Cairo decision was terrible. Not just him, though, every fool on the FAN, 99% of the media, and I daresay even a few around these parts agreed with him.

Morons? No. Too quick to throw in the towel on Kaz, and much too quick to assume last year was a better representation of Cairo's ability than his entire career? Absolutely.
____________________________
This post had the designation 155) David Segui

[Guest KC]

>>>Except that most of the time Cairo was getting trotted out there every day Matsui was either:
a) hitting even less than Cairo
or
out injured<<<

This is the way I remember it. It's a lot less dramatic, but until someone
demonstrates otherwise ....

[Guest Edgy DC]

Willie stood with Matsui for a long time in the face of demands for Cairo.

[Frayed Knot]

It's just starting to sound like cranky kids crying Wolf around here.

I was as loud as anyone against those fans and media who seemed to act as if there were piles of evidence that Cairo was the superior player. Between Cairo's 'Yanquiness' plus the dislike of Matsui coming in to the year I thought that many were vastly over-rating Cairo's potential impact.
BUT, having said all that ... Matsui had the job most of the time in the beginning and didn't play well enough either offensively or defensively to hold it. He then got hurt and was out nearly 2 months during which Cairo played well in spots. So It wasn't exactly surprising when Kaz wasn't simply handed a full-time spot immediately upon returning and this notion that a moronic Willie was consistantly playing Cairo over a healthy and hot Matsui is mostly fiction.

Look, I don't want to upset Bret and sound like I'm trying to tell people how to post here because I'm certainly not ... but even though I realize that it's fashionable to call WWSB a moron at every possible opportunity these days it really does sound like so many kids crying 'Wolf'. When every little decision we disagree with is cited as some sort of sign of diminished mental capacity the whole concept starts to lose it's effectiveness, and it becomes even worse if we're going to start making up examples just to pile on.
[/end rant]

[Guest Edgy DC]

Six three. The IGT took my thread's theme and ran away. Away.





Away.

[Guest Edgy DC]

Fell to the red room
Because she was there
Uh-huh-huh-huh
A scarlet woman
She got me in fear
Yeah, yeah, yeah
She said, "do all those things that you do to me
You know what I mean, boy?
Do all those things that you do to me, yeah!"

(Talkin' bout love)
Love remover!
(Talkin' bout love)
Love remover machine!
(Talkin' bout love)
Gimme love, soul shaker!
(Talkin' bout love)
Love remover machine!

Baby, baby, baby, baby, baby!
I fell from the sky!
Yesterday
You blew my mind
Oh, yeah
Having trouble with my direction
Upside-down, psychotic reaction
Oh!

(Talkin' bout love)
Love remover!
(Talkin' bout love)
Love removal machine!
(Talkin' bout love)
Gimme love, soul stealer!
(Talkin' bout love)
Love removal machine!

(Talkin' bout love)
Gimme love!
(Talkin' bout love)
Love remover machine!
(Talkin' bout love)
Gimme love, fun remover!
(Talkin' bout love)
Love removal machine!

Yeah!
(Talkin' bout love)
Love remover!
(Talkin' bout love)
Love remover machine!
(Talkin' bout love)
Gimme love, fun remover!
(Talkin' bout love)
Love remover machine!

(Talkin' bout love)
Gimme love!
(Talkin' bout love)
Love remover machine!
(Talkin' bout love)
Gimme love, soul shaker!
(Talkin' bout love)
Love removal machine!

Ooh yeah!

Look out, here she comes!
Look out, here she comes!
I said, look out, here she comes!
Look out, here she comes, yeah!

Shake it, don't break it, baby!
Shake it, don't break it, baby!
Shake it, don't break it, baby!
Shake it, don't break it!
Baby!!
Ow, ow, ow!
Ow, ow, ow!
Ah, yeah!

[Guest Edgy DC]

Wow. The inning ended before I could get my rally song up.

That


sucks.

[Guest Rockin' Doc]

I believe this is the first time that I have referred to Willie as a moron (or similar) so I wouldn't classify myself as a Willie basher. I will readily admit that I am greatly frustrated by the team's September swoon. Not that this collapse is all Willie's fault by any stretch of the imagination. However, I have become increasingly frustrated by many of Willie's in game decisions as well as many of his player personnel decisions.

KC and LF are correct that there will be more than ample time to sift through Randolph's first managerial season once the season has been completed. I will go through my list of grievances at a more appropriate time in the future.

[Elster88]

Rockin' Doc wrote: I believe this is the first time that I have referred to Willie as a moron (or similar) so I wouldn't classify myself as a Willie basher. I will readily admit that I am greatly frustrated by the team's September swoon. Not that this collapse is all Willie's fault by any stretch of the imagination. However, I have become increasingly frustrated by many of Willie's in game decisions as well as many of his player personnel decisions. KC and LF are correct that there will be more than ample time to sift through Randolph's first managerial season once the season has been completed. I will go through my list of grievances at a more appropriate time in the future.

I'll agree with all this.

Personally, I consider myself to be someone who defends Willie more than most. I don't remember who it was who tried to blame the whole season on Willie (or at least blamed not making the playoffs on Willie), but when it happened I rose to Willie's defense.
____________________________
This post had the designation 155) David Segui

[Guest Rotblatt]

That was me, Elster. And I still think I'm right. My main point was that Seo had been the second best pitcher on our team per start, and that him being successful was entirely predictible after his 3 MLB starts--or at least a few starts after his reentry into the minors.

Of course, I was wrong. Seo's been the best pitcher on our team on a per start basis. Yes, even better than Pedro, by a pretty significant amount (+.71 VORP/game, according to Baseball Prospectus).

Now, it's reasonable to expect that Seo would have gone through a rough patch and ended up less valuable than Petey, but imagine if our team had had another Petey starting every five days since May.

My other huge gripe was Willie's bullpen management, where he used average or worse pitchers in high-level situations and Heilman in low-level situations. Which he continues to do, by the way.

I know you're all going to tell me that it's our offense that sunk us and not our pitching, but if you don't think an average offense (which we STILL have been, even after our recent dive, and so far no one's produced any stats to suggest otherwise) and a dominant pitching staff can make the playoffs, you haven't been paying attention.

VORP by Position Player
Wright 59.2
Floyd 38.8
Reyes 26.5
Beltran 25.2
Piazza 23.6

VORP by Pitcher
Petey, 29 GS, 59.5
Glavine, 30 Gs, 30.5
Seo, 10 GS, 27.6
Benson, 24 GS, 20.6
Hernandez, 60 G, 20.1

Seo's already been the 5th most valuable PLAYER on our team AND HE'S ONLY APPEARED IN TEN GAMES. And as I've laid out elsewhere, Seo's dominance has been consistent the entire season save for one start, where he showed up late because he was attending to his pregnant wife.

Willie--or whomever decided to let Seo languish in the minors--IS a moron.

edited for confusing 5th with 6th and a typo

[Frayed Knot]

I'm not trying to make the point that we can't be critical of Willie - I'm kinda mixed on him myself so far.
But this all reminds me a bit of the Cardinal fan who invaded the old forum during the 2000 season. He was your typical obnoxious fan whose idea of intelligent conversation was to show up following a StL win and say 'nyah nyah nah nyah nayh' (I later found out this teenage-sounding dope was around 50 y/o). Anyway, he moved in near the end of the season and, needless to say, wound up taking a pasting during the NLCS which he would deflect in each case by simply blaming everything on LaRussa. They clearly had the better team ... only LaRussa screwed it up. That 4-1 series would have been the other way around ... if only they had a "real" manager, etc.

The problem is that that kind of thinking becomes a crutch after a while and diverts attention from the real, or at least [u:d3373471f7]other[/u:d3373471f7], problems. In this case, using KazMat's sudden hot streak to imply that the dope at the helm was the only reason we haven't been getting this kind of production out of 2nd base all season certainly ignores a lot of inconvinient facts. So does blaming all the personnel decisions - usually the GM's realm - on him.

So critisize away. It's just that if we use a losing streak as an excuse to call him a "moron" every time things don't go our way it not only loses it's effectiveness if/when he really deserves such a label, but also by that point no one's going to be listening anymore.

[Guest Johnny Dickshot]

an average offense (which we STILL have been, even after our recent dive, and so far no one's produced any stats to suggest otherwise)

And as long as one resolutely sticks to the narrowest possible interpretation of an "average offense," why bother?