KTE - Nationals Sept 12-15

[Frayed Knot]

OK, so we played these guys 14 times already this year [8-6 in favor of Mets] including three just last week [two NYM wins sandwiched around Ryan Zimmerman's broken-bat 2RBI walk-off single off Parnell] so it's not like there's a lot we don't already know by this point in the year.

As from last week's KTE, most of their hitters can bop it out of the park pretty good (although certainly that'll be tougher at our place) but suffer from low-OBA/High-K itis. IOW, many of their guys are the type that "can be pitched to". Now if only we had guys who could actually do that. Be nice also if we could actually retire any of their catchers. IIRC Flores & Ramos got about eleventeen hits each off Met pitchers in the last series. For all we know Pudge* will come off the bench and get a bunch himself now that he's back.



Monday - 7:10
Ross Detwiler (L) vs (Recently Awesome) Dickey
An exclusive and extensive CPF investigation has revealed that Ross Detwiler pretty much suxx. We bounced him around for 6 runs + 7 hits in 3 innings on Sept 2 including HRs from Wright & Evans in the first 7 batters he faced. This will be his 8th ML start of the year after 16 for Syracuse where he wasn't very good either.

Tuesday - 7:10
CM Wang vs Dillon Gee (what happened to my good stuff)
We faced Wang in his first start in over two years in late July where he was gone 4 innings and 6 runs later. He looked to be righting his ship for a couple starts in between then and now but lately has gone back to proving that, while with the Yanx, his success was mostly a product of newness and run support.

Wednesday - 7:10
Brad (insert FMan joke here) Peacock vs Mike Pelfrey
This will be Peacock's 2nd ML appearance and first start after an excellent year (23 starts; 2.39; 0.989 WHiP) of mostly starts in AA Harrisburg & AAA Syracuse .

Thursday - 1:10
Tom Milone (L) vs Chris (I gave you one good game what the hell else you want from me?) Capuano
Milone will be making only his 3rd ML start, and his 2nd one against us. We spotted him a 5-run lead in Washington then caught up to him in the 4th & 5th innings eventually tying the game before losing it late on the Zimmerman hit. In his only other start he gave up 3 runs in 5.2 IPs to Houston


So we've got a three game lead on this troupe and will be facing four hurlers who spent all or most of this season in the minor leagues (while missing Jordan Zimmermannnn & Strasburg). IOW, no excuses for not hitting and the lack of clutchness can't possibly be worse than it was last night.





* Pudge recently implied that he wants to play four more years.
Yeah, I don't think that's happening big boy. He's 158 hits short of 3,000 so I suppose that's a target, but he also turns 40 in November and, after playing more or less full time since mid-way through the year when he turned 19 until his age 37 season, there's a lot of miles on that body (and who knows what IN it!). He's had just one ML AB since going on the DL in early July and there's only so much value one can have coaxing Strasburg through bullpen sessions and rehab starts. Maybe someone gives him a part-time shot next year but I'm thinking he may have already played his last game except for a token appreciation AB at home in the final week of the season.

Edited September 12, 2011 by Guest

[TransMonk]

Great work, FK.

[bmfc1]

Great job FK. For Mets fans in DC, MLB's blackout rules means no GKR. Instead, we get Bob Carpenter who is a simpleton. You know how Gary Cohen and Howie Rose mostly speak at a high level and not down to us? Carpenter does the opposite. He treats his audience like it has never seen a baseball game before. (Although with the Nationals, there's a decent chance of that.) At the "top" of every hour, he does a time check--I wish I was kidding. I keep waiting for traffic and weather, too.

[Frayed Knot]

bmfc1 wrote: Great job FK. For Mets fans in DC, MLB's blackout rules means no GKR. Instead, we get Bob Carpenter who is a simpleton. You know how Gary Cohen and Howie Rose mostly speak at a high level and not down to us? Carpenter does the opposite. He treats his audience like it has never seen a baseball game before. (Although with the Nationals, there's a decent chance of that.).

I think your final parenthetical thought is the key - that Carpenter probably feels as if he has a kind of double selling job to do.
- First he has to sell the Nats to the baseball world. Because the team has been in or near last place virtually every year since their move from Le Ile de Mont Real, I think he sees part of his job description (whether self-assigned or via instructions from above) as making the audience feel that the Nats are just a couple of breaks away from competing with the big boys, particularly those in those much larger cities to the north of DC whose fans keep invading Nats park and often out-numbering the home folk.
- And then secondly, he has to sell the sport of baseball in general to his city. In a market that not only was abandoned by MLB twice (and for more than three decades the second time) but also is so dominated by the Redskins, he probably thinks that if he doesn't talk about baseball, who else will? Well Boswell will, but certainly not the electronic media in town.

He's not my favorite either, but I've certainly heard worse. He's also more palatable since Dibble was tossed overboard. HE was the real crime against humanity in that booth.

[bmfc1]

"It's 8:00 in the Big Apple [as the camera pans Citi Field], Bob Carpenter, F.P. Santangelo with you on MASN 2 from Citi Field in New York. It's the Mets nothing, the Nationals nothing with 2 outs in the top of the 4th...."

You're right FK but his act of "if that ball was a foot to the left" is insulting to anybody that knows the game. Granted, that's not a lot here but for us, it's hard to take.

[Frayed Knot]

Let's just say that while the the overly-public relation-sy style of Carpenter is not something that us New Yorkers are used to and it's certainly not my idea of good announcing, I at least understand it from the position he's in and while he might sometimes shade things towards the Nats he isn't the type to stoop to telling his audience that white is black. Dibble, on the other hand, would flat-out state that umpires were intentionally screwing Washington out of calls because they favored the other team (quite possibly upon MLB orders) and when the slo-mo replay or strike-zone box would prove him wrong he'd pretend that it didn't.
It would have been nice if Carpenter had felt secure enough to tell Dibble what an idiot he was instead of being a bit of an enabler, but at least he no longer has to. Santangelo seems pretty decent from what I've heard even if it's just from measuring him against a pretty low bar.

[Guest themetfairy]

Thanks FK!

[bmfc1]

Dibble was awful--offensive awful--and I'm sure he's still awful on SiriusXM but I won't put that channel on while he's on.