Benjamin Grimm

First, to everyone above who has thanked me for doing this for eleven years, you're welcome. It's been fun and I too am sorry to see it end. Maybe if it's launched from the boards facebook page it'll pick up some steam. When you post for a call to vote it should hit the walls & feeds of all those friended by the CPF on fb. I bet there are other old fans who fondly remember the Schaefer Met Player Of The Game. Maybe they'll get involved. You would have to be loud about it initially, to get folks attention. I hate to see this go away. I'm afriad that sounds like it would take far more effort than I'd care to expend. I'm sure that there are hundreds of people (if not more) out there who would like to participate in something like this, but I'm not inclined to go beating the bushes in an attempt to find them. Create a Twitter # for Schaefer voting? Maybe open a space on Redditt? Maybe a Tumblr site for repostings? Or whatever is going to replace Facebook? I think the Twitter hashtag suggestion is a pretty good one. If we were at the beginning of this Schaefer revival and if I was a proficient Twitter user, this might very well be the approach I'd take. But I know fairly little about Twitter, other than that it doesn't interest me very much. And I know nothing at all about Redditt or Tumblr, and I mean that literally. I still think this can live on nicely with a voting form affiliated with each game at the UMDB. Hopefully that takes much of the work out. I've considered that, and haven't ruled it out. It would take a little (but not a whole lot) of start-up development and if I manage to motivate myself to do that between now and next April, I might put such a thing in place. At the very least, I expect that I'll at least post my own votes to the UMDB so that the single-game results appear in the box scores and the Players and Pitchers of the month will continue to appear on this page. If anyone thinks that they would participate in off-forum voting let me know and I'll keep you posted, through PM, of whether or not that will happen. I may (or may not) continue to post the end-of-month and end-of-year results here, although perhaps without the custom 1970s baseball cards. I also don't understand why every one here does not vote. It's such a simple thing. How about if we have a forum where there's an easily understood established protocol and you can vote for several days after the game and a really diligent moderator continually tabulates the results and announces them with great visual flair on a going basis? That sounds like it should work, and did, I suppose, for a number of years. I think that there are still enough people posting on this forum, and participating in IGTs, to keep this viable. Voting should really only take a few minutes, but for whatever reason, there are only four or five people (beyond me) who seem interested. There's a story that Redd Foxx, when playing in Las Vegas, walked on stage one late night and only saw five people in the audience. He said, "Five people! I'm not doin' a show for five fuckin' people!" and then walked off stage. I guess I can identify with how Redd Foxx felt. This Schaefer thing is not a very big effort; it only takes a few minutes a day, but even that seems like too much of an effort for the entertainment of five people. And my apologies to those five devoted voters: I really appreciate your sticking with it as long as you have. First David Letterman. Then Jon Stewart. Now Schaefer. Late nights will never be the same. David Letterman, by announcing his retirement over a year in advance, indirectly inspired me to announce the end of Schaefer at this point in the season. Each October I think that I may not want to keep the Schaefer thing going the next year, but by April I'm always willing to give it one more try. I realized that the only way to get off this merry-go-round is to announce the ending at a time when I'm aware that I no longer want to do it, rather than keep deferring the decision to April, a time when I've forgotten the discouraging participation from the year before.

I kind of buried a (relatively) important announcement in the Schaefer 2015 thread, so I'll post it again here so that the few remaining people who may care about this are sure to see it. Due to declining participation, 2015 will be the final year of Schaefer voting in the Crane Pool Forum. Everything will continue as normal for the remainder of the season, and we'll put this thing to bed for good when the season ends. Thanks to everyone (humans and robots alike) who participated over the last eleven years. It's been fun, but this feature seems to have run out of gas.

Ceciliani 0.4 Cuddyer 2 d'Arnaud 0.9 Duda 0.4 Familia 1 Goeddel 1 Granderson 1 Niese 3.3

Campbell 1 Flores 2 Granderson 1 Lagares 1.5 d'Arnaud 1

SCHAEFER METS PLAYERS OF THE WEEK, 2015 Week ending April 11, 2015: Travis d'Arnaud, 4.86 points. Week ending April 18, 2015: Lucas Duda, 8.80 points. Week ending April 25, 2015: Matt Harvey, 6.45 points. Week ending May 2, 2015: Daniel Murphy, 8.63 points. Week ending May 9, 2015: Bartolo Colon, 4.92 points. Week ending May 16, 2015: Wilmer Flores, 6.25 points. Week ending May 23, 2015: Noah Syndergaard, 5.95 points. Week ending May 30, 2015: Lucas Duda, 7.14 points. Week ending June 6, 2015: Bartolo Colon, 8.43 points.

Thanks for transcribing that; it was a fun read. I turned on the game just as Gee was giving up the fifth run and bailed shortly after. I didn't find out that Heston had completed the no-hitter until this morning.

Syndergaard 0.75

Edgy MD wrote: (Are the scorecards gone from the UMDB?) They're never there for the current season, because I need to use data from Retrosheet's end-of-year update to generate the scorecards.

Curtis Granderson wrote: The cool thing about this, things reset, all of a sudden we�re focused on tomorrow. Curtis seems like a nice guy, but this positive spin that he puts on just about everything is getting more than tiresome.

Edgy MD wrote: Would-be Giant-slayers Travis d'Arnaud and Dilson Herrera are expected to be activated for the game. Good! That's a few days earlier than they had been saying. Edgy MD wrote: I'm no soothsayer, but I foresee Daniel leaving tonight on a plane. Kevin, too. It took me a moment to realize that you meant Muno and not Murphy.

Voting for all four games played recently in Phoenix will close on Wednesday morning, some time after 10 a.m. Schaefer POTG 6/4/2015: Mets 6, D'Backs 2 Schaefer POTG, 06/05/2015 Arizona 7, Mets 2 Schaefer POTG, 06/06/2015. Arizona 2, Mets 1 Schaefer POTG 6/7/15 - Mets 6, Diamondbacks 3 Also, due to increasing apathy (including on my own part) 2015 will be the final year of Schaefer voting. The eleventh and final Schaefer Mets Player of the Year will be announced in October. At least this lasted longer here at the CPF than it did in the Mets broadcast booth!

MFS62 wrote: At least it appears that he hits right handed. That's good! Because right-handed hitters are so rare!

Voting for all three games played in San Diego last week will close on Tuesday, some time after 12 noon. Voting for the June 2 and June 3 games is especially light. Don't be at all surprised if this turns out to be the final year of Schaefer. Schaefer POTG 6/1/15 - Mets 7, Padres 0 Schaefer POTG 6/2/15: Padres 7 Mets 2 Schaefer POTG 6/3/15 - Padres 7, Mets 3

They have a "fan etiquette" scoreboard video that is shown before the game in Pittsburgh that, among other things, asks fans not to get up and move around during an at bat. If I remember right, it was called "Don't Be That Guy" and showed us a Goofus-like fan doing everything wrong.

d'Kong76 wrote: Is anyone sure that Harvey would be available to pitch in a long cold postseason... his mound time would be used up, no? They're trying to avoid that situation. (Although it now looks like the six-man rotation isn't going to be the way they do that.) Whether they manage to do so, or whether it will even matter, of course remains to be seen.

Edgy MD wrote: I'll stick with whatever's behind the curtain, I think. Anyhow, baseball with the ending pre-written (even a mostly good one) takes most of the fun out. True. Part of the deal would have to be that your mind is wiped of any memory of having made the decision of how the season turns out.

Yes.

He really shouldn't care about his trade value. If he's sent to another team, what difference does it make to him what kind of return the Mets get?