Benjamin Grimm

VOTING FOR THIS GAME IS NOW CLOSED Totals for September 22, 2008 (6 votes) Chicago Cubs 9, New York Mets 5 NameTotal PointsPoints AwardedPlayer PerformanceDavid Wright12.002.002-4, 2 R, HR, 2 RBI, BB.Jos� Reyes5.250.882-5, 2 R, 2B.Carlos Delgado5.250.882-3, R, 2 BB, SO.Daniel Murphy4.050.681-5, 2B, RBI, SO.Ryan Church3.650.612-3, 2 BB.Aaron Heilman2.900.481.0 IP, 0 H, 0 ER, 1 BB, 0 SO.Duaner Sanchez2.750.461.0 IP, 0 H, 0 ER, 0 BB, 2 SO.Carlos Beltran2.550.422-5, RBI, 2 SO.Ricardo Rincon0.250.040.1 IP, 0 H, 0 ER, 0 BB, 0 SO.Bobby Parnell0.250.042.0 IP, 2 H, 1 ER, 0 BB, 2 SO.

At least I'm not nearly as jittery as I was last year at this time. Maybe I'm just getting used to this stuff, or maybe it's because last year's fall from first place was so monumental. This, if it doesn't turn out to have a happy ending, will just be a lost pennant race, although some of the losses are especially gut-wrenching. The races that the Mets lost in 1985 and 1987 only had one or two of these kinds of games. The last two seasons, it's like Terry Pendleton is hitting that damn homer three times a week.

Or, if we can somehow arrange to keep having four days of downpour followed by one day of sunshine in a repeating cycle, then Santana can start all four remaining games of the regular season!

Parnell 0.75 Smith 0.5 Rincon 0.5 Delgado 4.5 RMartinez 1 Murphy 1 Wright 0.75 Beltran 0.5

I'm hoping that the Mets clinch the NL East by August 31, 2009!

You know what? I think if this worst-case scenario plays out, it will be pretty cool. If only it wasn't affecting a race that the Mets were involved in. I can't imagine that the Mets and Brewers would play a day game at Shea on Tuesday and then the winner would have to go to Philadelphia to play a game that same night. I think they'd have to push into Wednesday and delay the start of the NLDS. (Or would Bud Selig dare to have the Phillies in Queens to play the winner of Mets-Brewers in the second game of a three-team doubleheader? That would lead to this quirk: The Mets last game, at least in the regular season, at Shea Stadium could end up with the Phillies as the home team! It seems unlikely, but you never know what Bud Selig will dream up.)

Some days these daily updates are more of a chore than others. Today is one of those days. But here we go... W L Pct3 Avg W Avg L Champions Wild Card Playoffs 1D Change 7D Change Phillies 89 70 .530 91.0 71.0 85.04305 12.42827 97.47132 -1.03660 15.87417 Mets 87 71 .543 89.3 72.7 14.95695 39.59053 54.54748 -17.59809 -8.10731 Brewers 87 71 .531 89.2 72.8 .00000 47.88558 47.88559 18.58966 -5.92613David Wright's inability to hit a fly ball last night in the ninth inning has pretty much cost the Mets 17.5 playoff points. Yes, it's nice that the Phillies lost, but it's the Brewers win that killed us yesterday. The Mets would have been much better off, playoff-wise, had the Brewers lost and the Phillies won, even with their own defeat to the Cubs. Now, they have some doing to do. It's essentially a four-game season, and the Mets have to win more of their four than the Brewers win of their own four games. The schedule sort of favors the Mets, as Milwaukee has to face the Cubs three times while the Mets will be closing against the Marlins, a good team that's not nearly as good as the Cubs. And hopefully the Cubs will be seriously getting their playoff faces on for those last three games. The bad news is that the Mets still have one game against the Cubs while the Brewers are playing the lowly Pittsburgh Pirates. If the Mets can avoid losing ground to the Brewers today (in other words, if both teams end up with the same result) the advantage will swing towards the Mets again. And if the Mets expand their lead tonight, that will be significantly better. If the two teams have opposite results today, the team that wins will have a magic number of 3 with three games remaining, which is a decent, but not commanding, position to be in. The Mets starters the rest of the way are Pedro Martinez tonight in perhaps his last game as a Met, followed by Mike Pelfrey, TBD, and Johan Santana against the Marlins. (That's two shaky starters in four games.) The Brewers will have Yovani Gallardo take on the Pirates, and against the Cubs they'll have Suppan, Bush, and a hopefully exhausted Sabathia. The Mets loss last night allowed the Phillies to reduce their own magic number to 3. (That's for both the Mets and the Brewers.) The Mets and Brewers, with their identical records, have matching NHOPs. They each need 5 happy outcomes in 8 games, for an NHOP of 62.5%. Just a few days ago the Mets had an NHOP of 40, so we see how swiftly things can change. The Mets NHOP regarding the Phillies is 85.7% (6 out of 7) to finish with a better record. It's 71.4%, (5 of 7) to end up tied with the Phils. These numbers, clearly, have not been moving in a good direction. Things need to turn around very very soon!

Let's let Murphy lead the Mets to a pennant, and then we'll worry about the rest of his career.

If the Mets have to play the Brewers on Monday, would it be a day game or a night game? I remember that the tie-breaker in 1999 against the Reds was played at night, but I seem to recall that last year's game against the Phillies, had it been necessary, was going to be a day game. The Rockies and Padres did play a day game last year.

The Schaefer Mets Player of the Year competition, by the way, is rather fierce this year. With only a few days to go, there are four players who have a decent shot at taking the prize. There's one player who's led all year, but his lead is not all that secure. (After the current tallying, he's only up by 3.40 points.) 1 Player A 110.65 2 Player B 107.25 3 Player C 105.41 4 Player D 100.31

VOTING FOR THIS GAME IS NOW CLOSED Totals for September 21, 2008 (10 votes) Atlanta Braves 7, New York Mets 6 NameTotal PointsPoints AwardedPlayer PerformanceMike Pelfrey27.702.776.0 IP, 6 H, 3 ER, 3 BB, 2 SO.Carlos Delgado25.502.554-5, 2 R, 2B, HR, 3 RBI.David Wright20.302.032-3, 3 R, HR, 2 RBI, 2 BB.Ricardo Rincon3.650.360.1 IP, 0 H, 0 ER, 0 BB, 0 SO.Luis Castillo1.900.190-2, RBI, 2 BB, SO.

I don't see how canceling games would help much, since it would just lead to doubleheaders.

VOTING FOR THIS GAME IS NOW CLOSED Totals for September 20, 2008 (8 votes) Atlanta Braves 4, New York Mets 2 NameTotal PointsPoints AwardedPlayer PerformancePedro Martinez24.253.03(L) 6.0 IP, 9 H, 4 ER, 3 BB, 7 SO.Scott Schoeneweis8.101.011.1 IP, 0 H, 0 ER, 0 BB, 1 SO.David Wright5.800.722-4, 2B, SO.Bobby Parnell4.600.570.2 IP, 0 H, 0 ER, 0 BB, 1 SO.Carlos Beltran1.650.211-4, R, 2B.Luis Castillo0.500.061-2, BB, SO.Brian Schneider0.250.030-1, R, BB.

metirish awarded a whopping 11.5 points, and his votes have been prorated as follows: Perez 2.5 2.17 Reyes 3 2.61 Evans 2 1.74 Murphy 1 0.87 Stokes 1 0.87 Wright 1 0.87 Delgado 1 0.87 VOTING FOR THIS GAME IS NOW CLOSED Totals for September 19, 2008 (9 votes) New York Mets 9, Atlanta Braves 5 NameTotal PointsPoints AwardedPlayer PerformanceJos� Reyes19.662.183-4, 3 R, HR, 2 RBI, BB, SO, SB.Oliver Perez14.871.656.0 IP, 6 H, 3 ER, 3 BB, 6 SO.Daniel Murphy13.721.521-1, R, 2B, 2 RBI.Nick Evans9.191.021-2, R, HR, RBI, BB.Brian Stokes9.071.012.0 IP, 1 H, 0 ER, 0 BB, 2 SO.David Wright9.021.002-5, R, 2B, 2 RBI, SO.Carlos Delgado8.020.892-5, R, RBI.Carlos Beltran2.950.331-5, R, 2B, RBI, 3 SO.Pedro Feliciano1.350.15(W) 0.1 IP, 0 H, 0 ER, 0 BB, 0 SO.Aaron Heilman1.300.140.1 IP, 0 H, 0 ER, 1 BB, 1 SO.Ricardo Rincon0.600.070.1 IP, 0 H, 0 ER, 0 BB, 0 SO.Argenis Reyes0.250.030-0, R.

Voting for Monday night's series-opening loss to the Cubs at Shea will close on Thursday afternoon. Schaefer POTG 9/22/08 - Cubs 9, Mets 5

You know, aside from the typical bluster, he does have a point. The more divisions that the leagues are divided into, the more likely it is that a mediocre team in a weak division will turn a late hot streak into a championship. Some day we'll have a sub-.500 team in the World Series. (A few years ago I had a hunch that that team would be the Texas Rangers.) And there will be a lot of tsk-tsking when a losing team ends up as the World Champion. I'd rather see four divisions with eight teams each and an unbalanced schedule, and only one round of playoffs before the World Series.

soupcan wrote: ="Benjamin Grimm"]soupcan wrote: Isn't every cellphone web-enabled these days? Just go to any one of a bazillion sites and grab your score. I have no idea how to do that. You can create and maintain a virtual universe of Mets history and interactive statistics on the internet and you can't figure out how to use a basic function of your cellphone? Slacker. Yeah, isn't that something? When it comes to cell phones I'm like somebody who was born in 1905. I can only assume that cell phone technology just hasn't intrigued me enough for me to focus on it at all. Kind of like my late grandmother who, years ago, when given a microwave oven as a gift ended up using it as a spare kitchen cabinet.

soupcan wrote: Isn't every cellphone web-enabled these days? Just go to any one of a bazillion sites and grab your score. I have no idea how to do that.

Vic Sage wrote: ]I had the same trouble when I was in Hawaii last month... go fuck yourself. Just for that, I'm not going to give you the shell necklace I brought back for you. HAH!

That sounds cool. And I wouldn't have to listen to a bunch of college basketball scores before finally getting to the Mets result.

The only thing I've received from the Mets so far today is "Vote for Wright and you could be a VIP winner"

Next time I travel (during baseball season anyway) I'll have to make sure beforehand to find myself one of those phone numbers.

I'd have traded a Yankees loss for one by the Brewers. I'm only doubly happy, but I'll take it.

I had the same trouble when I was in Hawaii last month, the only way to get scores was to either watch the scroll on ESPN in the hotel room, or wait until the morning paper the next day. I was wondering, does SportsPhone or anything like it still exist? I had a working cell phone in my pocket; I would have been happy to dial a number to get an update like I used to do 20 years ago.

I was thinking that Reyes, even though he didn't break early, could still have dashed home when he saw how the play was unfolding. The pitcher (I think) had the ball and was kind of stumbling toward the bag to beat Castillo. Jose might have been able to read the play and do a Jackie Robinson-style charge for the plate. I think he might have made it, since the fielder with the ball had his back to the plate and was heading in the opposite direction.