Benjamin Grimm

I'm intrigued by the guy who played 2,003 games in the American League before coming to the Mets.

He played in the Negro Leagues, debuting with the Kansas City Monarchs in 1955, eight years after Jackie Robinson broke the color line.

George Altman, the oldest living Met and only living nonagenarian, has died. It was announced yesterday but I haven't seen any confirmation of the actual date of death. The oldest living Met is now John DeMerit, 89 years and 323 days.

I want to be transparent about what's going on, so here's an update. No real "hard news" but I want to at least share what the landscape looks like. PLAN A As mentioned earlier in this thread, KC reached out to 700 members of the SABR New York chapter to see if anyone was interested in taking on the UMDB. He got one response, from a professor at Columbia University who lives in Queens and is a big Mets fan. I reached out to him a couple of days ago but haven't heard back. I realize that it's Thanksgiving week and a lot of people have things going on, so I'll wait patiently for his response. But if I don't hear from him by Friday of next week (December 5) I'll move on to Plan B. PLAN B The Ultimate Mets Database is an extraordinary property in that it makes zero revenue. Despite that, my research indicates that there may be a market for it. I saw recently on Flippa a different zero-revenue site sold for $5,000. A long-lived site that would appeal to fans of a popular sports franchise might actually be a money maker for someone who markets it aggressively. So if Plan A doesn't work out, Plan B will be to list the UMDB on Flippa. I haven't decided what my minimum price would be, but it will be a four-digit number. If nobody meets my price, I'll probably go to Plan C, but might skip straight to Plan D. PLAN C I'll keep the UMDB for a while, but I'll seriously scale back the functionality. I'll probably roll it back to what it was in 1999, when I created it to develop my web skills and for my own entertainment. I'd update stats once or twice a week and that would probably be it. I might enter game results, but probably no box scores. No transactions, no fan memories, none of that. I'd probably lose a lot of visitors, but it's not making money anyway so I don't really care about that. PLAN D Complete shutdown. I give up the ultimatemets.com domain and take down all of the content. What this means for the CPF: Under Plan C, nothing would change. Plans A and B mean there's a new owner of the UMDB and it would be up to him or her or them whether or not to continue to maintain a forum. If they do decide to keep a forum, they would have the right to moderate it according to their own rules. Right now, we would get a rating of R from the Motion Picture Association. A new owner might want to roll it back to PG or even G. We would, of course, still have the option to establish a new forum elsewhere. And we can do that. (More on that below.) Under Plan D, establishing a new forum elsewhere would be the only option, other than disbanding entirely. Any one of us who already owns a domain with a hosting account that supports PHP should be able to host the forum at no additional charge. If anyone here wants to be the new host, I'll take care of the setup and the move to the new location. We don't have to disband, but somebody would have to step up. At this point, I really don't know which outcome is most likely. I just know that after 27 years (longer than my marriage lasted!) the UMDB has slowly morphed from being a hobby of a sort to being a chore and I don't want to do it anymore.

Francisco Rodriguez

Mo Vaughn.

Justin Verlander

Jim Fregosi!

I first thought of Mickey Lolich (who I mentioned earlier in another Semien thread) but as a starting pitcher, he may not have racked up that many games. So I'll guess Robin Ventura instead.

I hate to be a downer, but this forum may not survive that long.

Maybe I need to pay more attention. I don't think I've ever seen the name "Ji Hwan Bae" before.

I hope for his sake, and the sake of the team as well, that Marcus Semien has tough skin. He's coming to New York in a very unpopular trade. He's Mickey Lolich. He's Juan Samuel. He's not in a good position. There are a lot of fans who are poised to hate and resent him.

I never bought into the Ray Knight thing either, especially since by 1987 the 1986 version of Ray Knight didn't exist anymore, and the 1984 and 1985 versions of him were nothing special either. He was lightning in a bottle in 1986, as Iglesias was in 2024. The Mets' problem in 2025 wasn't the absence of Jose Iglesias; they were totally kicking ass for the first two and a half months of the season. The pitching staff spiraled after Senga's injury and Jose Iglesias couldn't have done anything about that. I really thought this thread was inspired by Nimmo, not Iglesias.

If the Mets can build a lineup where Semien hits eighth or ninth, they should be okay. If he ends up close to the top of the lineup, I'm a lot less enthusiastic.

In 2025, between Brooklyn, Binghamton, and Syracuse, Benge played 67 games in center field against 48 in the corners (22 in left and 26 in right). So I think it may be more likely that the Mets would add a corner outfielder at let Benge play center if they're confident that he'll be ready. And even if they're unsure, they can still add a corner guy and let Taylor and/or McNeil play center until Benge is ready.

And makes it more likely that Benge will make the team.

I don't see that this makes them a better team for 2026, but I'm sure this is just the first shoe to drop.

I'm glad to have him back. Hopefully he'll play a less prominent role.

That seems like a lot. Especially given how the Mets struggled to get innings from their starting rotation, giving up two starters to get one doesn't seem to be a great idea. You're trading quantity for quality, and I can see the upside to that, but I also can't help but see the downside as well. Replace Sproat or Tong with a different position player in the deal and I'd like it better.

That quiz that I put in place a few years ago worked really well for a while. But not so much lately. Maybe it is still keeping some spammers out, but I suppose with AI it's easy enough to ask which names were pitchers and which weren't.

I saw a headline in my Google feed the other day that said, "Mets Trade Juan Soto to the Dodgers". I wish I had a way to block these sources. I've tried, but it doesn't seem to work. As for Senga, I feel that they would be selling low, and they do need many pitching options so I'd be inclined to keep him, hoping he'll have a 2026 similar to the first few months of 2025. We've seen that it takes him a while to recover from injuries. I think a healthy Senga (if he remains healthy, of course) will be very valuable to have next April.

Plus their ongoing interest in Conflict Escalation.

I found this on a site called "crunchbase". It's... not accurate.