And The Beat Goes On (2016)

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

Picking up from last year: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=22301

3-year Met-beat veteran Jared Diamond (WSJ) this morning announces he's switching the MFYs for 2016. No word yet on his replacement.

[Ceetar]

Picking up from last year: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=22301 3-year Met-beat veteran Jared Diamond (WSJ) this morning announces he's switching the MFYs for 2016. No word yet on his replacement.

I think Jared said Andrew Beaton is his replacement.

Jared was probably my favorite beat guy for sure.

[Ceetar]

doesn't seem like we have one of these yet.

Last year:

Outlet Beater Years on Mets Beat College Fun Fact Daily News Kristie Ackert 2 (since 2013) Syracuse Prone to Twitter typos; former Modesto Bee reporter NY Post Mike Puma 7 (since 2007) Fordam Not an actual Puma ESPN NY Adam Rubin 15 (since 2000) U Penn Was Daily News beatguy from 2000-10 Newsday Marc Carig 2 (since 2013) Nevada-Reno Former MFY beater for the Star-Ledger NY Times Tim Rohan 1 (Since 2014) Michigan Looks like Bob Seger Mets.com Anthony DiComo 7 (since 2007) Boston U Once made Dillon Gee balk. Bergen Record Matt Ehalt 1 (since 2014) Syracuse Predecessor now does social media for ShopRite Wall Street Journal Jared Diamond 4 (since 2011) Syracuse Once victim of an Opening Day headline surprise Star-Ledger Mike Vorkunov 1 (since 2014) Rutgers Broke the cheesesteak story

new:

Maria Guardado in for the Star Ledger:

Mike Vorkunov appears out I guess, I missed what he's doing next. Twitter bio seems to say nothing interesting.

Jared Diamond has been demoted to the Yankees (sad, he was probably the most interesting of this bunch) in his place is

Who I feel like might have been a former blogger? name seems familiar.

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

BIG TRADE!

[crossout:1hxoygqk]Bob Seger[/crossout:1hxoygqk] Tim Rohan off the Mets beat at the Times, to be replaced by Washington Post Nats reporter @JamesWagnerWP. Wags has Natty stuff in today's Post so unclear how soon this all goes down.

Rohan moving on to SI's Monday Morning Quarterback thing, which sounds like a step down to me. Recent Times Mets stuff being handled by college-sports reporter Marc Tracy.

[G-Fafif]

BIG TRADE! [crossout]Bob Seger[/crossout] Tim Rohan off the Mets beat at the Times, to be replaced by Washington Post Nats reporter @JamesWagnerWP. Wags has Natty stuff in today's Post so unclear how soon this all goes down. Rohan moving on to SI's Monday Morning Quarterback thing, which sounds like a step down to me. Recent Times Mets stuff being handled by college-sports reporter Marc Tracy.

June 13, says Wags.

Also moving: Jorge Castillo, who covered the Nets for the NY Post and joined the WaPo to follow the Wizards midseason, is going to be the Nats guy. So that's Nets to Nats after stopping for a quick Wiz.

I thought Rohan did some good work. I also didn't notice he hadn't been on the Mets for weeks.

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

Yeah, Rohan seemed to lurk in the shadows a bit. I guess skateboarding to and from Williamsburg every day got to be too much for him.

[seawolf17]

Also moving: Jorge Castillo

No relation to Xorge Carrillo.

[Ceetar]

John Cougar Lunchbucket wrote: Yeah, Rohan seemed to lurk in the shadows a bit. I guess skateboarding to and from Williamsburg every day got to be too much for him.

yeah, I have positive notions about Rohan's work, but I don't recall it being plentiful.

[Guest LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr]

He covered the no-hitter as an intern, IIRC. And didn't he do a fun writeup or two (Duda instagram) re: Mets off-field stuff?

[G-Fafif]

Rohan's best that I can recall: the guy who delivered the mail inside Citi Field.

His official title is special services clerk, but he sorts the mail for everyone at Citi Field. He is believed to be the Mets’ longest-tenured employee. He is an institution. But not all of the Mets’ staff knows him or his story. As an infant, Tillotson climbed out of his crib, fell and smacked his head on a radiator. He was bruised but otherwise considered fine until he lost his hearing at age 5. Tillotson started working for the Mets in 1964, when he was 15. His father, Gerald, then a manager at the Regency Whist Club in Manhattan, had befriended M. Donald Grant, a member who was an owner of the Mets. Gerald Tillotson asked Grant for a favor, and his son went to work in the Shea Stadium mailroom that summer, and for the next few summers. After he graduated from the New York School for the Deaf in 1968, Tillotson worked full time in the Mets’ ticket office for about 10 years, then returned to the mailroom, where he has been ever since. Early on, he delivered the players’ mail and sometimes slipped into the clubhouse. He fondly recalled conversations with Bob Taylor, who first played for the Mets in 1964. Taylor, known as Hawk, was very good at reading Tillotson’s lips, Tillotson said, and he understood Taylor, too. But the Mets traded Taylor in 1967. A lot has changed since Tillotson’s first summer with the team. “Everybody’s gone,” he said through a sign-language interpreter. “I’m the only one left.” And these days, he has less mail to sort. Some current Mets, like Travis d’Arnaud and Daisuke Matsuzaka, check their cubbies every so often. Matsuzaka said his fan mail followed him wherever he pitched, even at Class AAA Columbus in the Cleveland Indians’ system this season. Fans sent kind words, inspirational notes and Bible verses. D’Arnaud, a 24-year-old catcher, said he received similar messages from people who root for him. “I’m still, like, so honored to be looked at like a hero,” he said. Others, like pitchers Jon Niese and Dillon Gee, will wait until the season ends to go through their mail. The correspondents, they said, include youngsters asking for autographs on baseball cards, people wishing them luck and those telling them how to pitch. “Everybody tries to put their two cents in,” Niese said. “You get old men who think they know everything about the game and tell you what to do.” Tillotson, 64, stopped delivering the players’ mail when the Mets moved to Citi Field in 2009. Because of stricter clubhouse rules, he said, he does not visit the players anymore. But he has worked for the Mets from Tom Seaver to Harvey, from Keith Hernandez to Wright, through their best times and their worst, through the good letters and the bad. Tillotson’s workday routine begins at 9:30 a.m., after he drives from his home in Fresh Meadows, Queens, to Citi Field. Then he sorts the mail and makes his rounds, pushing his large metal cart. He makes about six trips around the park, delivering mail and picking it up, walking on average, he said, about eight miles each day.

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

Rubes is so full of shit lately I don't know whether he's leaving the beat or just exaggerating.

[G-Fafif]

Filling in for the Times on '86 night was a face I couldn't quite place for the longest time. Then I realized it was Filip Bondy. He had more gray than he had in the photo you associate with him, an epidemic situation among venerable journalists and, for that matter, 1986 World Champions. This was somebody I raged at when he wrote his Bleacher Creature paeans in the News (and recurring Met hit jobs) for so long, and in person, he appeared an amiable chap just doin' his job. Disconnect City. I'd been told by a mutual friend that, nah, "Phil" is OK, and I suppose nobody walks around in real life playing the heel at all times. But I still detest everything he wrote in the context of the Met-MFY dynamic of the early 2000s.

Perhaps that's the mark of an effective columnist. Or a grudge-bearing reader.

[Ceetar]

John Cougar Lunchbucket wrote: Rubes is so full of shit lately I don't know whether he's leaving the beat or just exaggerating.

I don't follow him so I only see second/third hand, but hasn't he been tweeting about "BIG NEWS" for about a month and then delaying it?

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

I've been confused too. Seems like the announcement was a weekly radio show on Sunday ams that I'll never hear as long as Ken Dashow is alive. But Rubes seems to enjoy teasing the small group that hangs on his every word every bit as much as those who use him just to be conveniently informed.

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

The White Knight turns the tables: https://www.sny.tv/video/901074283/the-amazin-life-talk-show

[bmfc1]

Noah is multi-talented: pitching (of course), hitting, tweeting and now comedy.

[Edgy MD]

Everybody welcome Jared Diamond briefly back to the Mets side of the fence with a cool feature about the turn-of-the-century Mets brain trust recalling their initial pursuit of Ichiro.

The weird part is everybody recalls that Bobby Valentine was a raving advocate for the guy, but then comes this bit o' weaseling:

Phillips added that while Valentine did push for Suzuki, “even he just wasn’t sure.”

Nobody's sure of anything in scouting, but by my memory and clearly everybody else's, Valentine couldn't have put more chips on the table.

Good job by Diamante of rounding Phillips, Valentine, and Duquette up and getting them on record, but strangely nothing from anybody named Wilpon.

[Frayed Knot]

It's been a good week for reminiscing in the papers as NYDN's Anthony McCarron does an oral history of the Piazza deals which ultimately landed him in Queens.

[Edgy MD]

Matt Ehalt, baby-faced Bergen Record beat guy and future supermarket publicist, may have scooped the field in getting a statement from Céspedes suggesting that he's going to forego his opt-out and serve out his full three-year deal.

The problem is that everybody is quoting him but I can't find the original source quote. I gather that he was asked if he's going to spend the full three years in New York and got a terse "Yes" — which could mean a lot of things.

[Benjamin Grimm]

I never thought it was a foregone conclusion that Cespedes would opt out. He surprised everyone last winter, so a second surprise shouldn't necessarily be surprising.

[Ceetar]

What did he do last winter that was so surprising?

[Benjamin Grimm]

The conventional wisdom was that he wouldn't sign with the Mets. Remember?

[Ceetar]

Benjamin Grimm wrote: The conventional wisdom was that he wouldn't sign with the Mets. Remember?

I'm not surprised that the 'conventional wisdom' failed, as it so often does. Maybe there's some surprise no one else valued him at more than he got, but these guys are content-fillers needing to guess values for free agents and so often get it very wrong.

I'd be more surprised if he didn't opt out though, barring further injury or just completely sucking. That's sorta the whole point of adding in an opt-out. I'd argue that if he didn't, the Mets almost have to trade him given the outfield glut and the likely return of much more value than you'd like get keeping him at that 2-year rate.

[Frayed Knot]

Benjamin Grimm wrote: The conventional wisdom was that he wouldn't sign with the Mets. Remember?

More specifically, much of the CW had it that the Mets had no interest (read: money) in signing him other than to pretend that they were strictly for pr purposes.

[Edgy MD]

Jennifer Frey, outstanding beat writer for the Mets in the early nineties, passes away at 47. She would follow me to Washington and I felt privileged.

Dave McKenna, who can write about sports like ... Jennifer Frey ...remembers her at Deadspin.


Here's an old story of hers covering the Spring of Scabs.

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

Holy mackeral. Amazin. The guy who took a restraining order on her was one of my school-newspaper colleagues in kollege. I was always jealous of him getting to cover the NFL for the Times at age 24. But his career went kinda sideways too for reasons I never understood.

[G-Fafif]

Deadspin link here. What an incredible and sad story.

[Frayed Knot]

Edgy MD wrote: Jennifer Frey, outstanding beat writer for the Mets in the early nineties, passes away at 47.

I suspect you were alerted to this story via the just-published Deadspin article, but Frey's death occurred back in March.

[Edgy MD]

I had no idea. How lousy.

Back in the early nineties when she was coming out of school, it must've still been awesome to get a beat job. You're part of a priesthood, holding coveted spots, with half the city relying on you. File your stories, eat and drink for free, and live on the road like a prince ... or princess in her case.

But then the internet came along and created all sorts of competition for information. Your dinosaur colleagues — Maddens and Pepes and Lupicas — could live on, because they've become brand names as identifiable with the game as the players and logos. But you suddenly have to hustle three times as hard while becoming three times as disposable, trying to stay one step ahead of the digital onslaught. There's an Adam Rubin or two that prospered, clearly by working unthinkably hard, and there were the Pearlmans who made their name on one big story. But I imagine no shortage of Jennifer Freys got lost in the flood.

Not for nothing, but having grown up dreaming about getting one of those slots, it's still a punch in the gut to think of one of the Mets beat writers giving that seat up for the relative job security of doing social media for Pathmark.

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

ShopRite, but yeah.