G-Fafif

For the first time since August 31, 2013 (62-72), the New York Mets (37-47) are precisely ten games below .500.

batmagadanleadoff wrote: Something else to think about: do you even know which Met was protected at the risk of exposing Seaver? Murray Chass had it in a Sporting News column shortly after the fact. PITCHERS Darling Terrell Fernandez Swan (No Trade Clause) Orosco Sisk Gooden Leary Kevin Brown Youmans Gardner CATCHERS Ortiz Gibbons INFIELDERS Hernandez Oquendo Brooks Gardenhire Cochrane Mitchell Eddie Williams OUTFIELDERS Strawberry Wilson Blocker Dykstra Winningham Jefferson

Recommended listening: Howie Rose with Pete McCarthy on Monday night's WOR Sports Zone. Good, fair perspective on the GM, including his professional relationship with him.

Ron Darling quotes Tom Seaver a lot from their days together as teammates, yet they were in the same clubhouse for less than a month. I wonder how much Seaver the sage said to Ronnie the rookie in September 1983, how much he said as their paths crossed over the decades and how much Darling imagines was said to him. It all comes out in the "we're a couple of old pitchers who understand how this game is supposed to be played," I guess.

Curtis Granderson � RF Ruben Tejada � SS Daniel Murphy � 2B Eric Campbell � 3B Lucas Duda � 1B Chris Young � LF Travis d�Arnaud � C Juan Lagares � CF Daisuke Matsuzaka � RHP

Frank Cashen and The Glory That Was Rome, so to speak.

Wheeler 3.0 Edgin 2.0 d'Arnaud 1.0 CYoung 1.0 Granderson 1.0

smg58 wrote: G-Fafif wrote: In short, Cashen built Rome. He also oversaw its decline if not its fall, but nobody can stay close to perfect forever. In hindsight, it's easier to build a team up to elite status from scratch than it is to keep it elite for a long period of time. Hell, he might fared better in the long run by ripping the team up and starting over in 1990 or so, but that would have been a tough sell to himself as well as the fans. Post-1986 (a pretty convenient dividing line), Frank trusted talent and maybe misconstrued character. McReynolds was talent. Jefferies was talent. Samuel -- McIlvaine's deal but Frank had to bless it -- appeared to be talent. You couldn't blame a GM for going with guys who looked very good on paper and often on the field. Character concerns, however, squeezed out Knight maybe a little too soon, not to mention Mitchell, Dykstra and (in the face of Jefferies' potential development) Backman. I think he understood the challenge of keeping the machine humming. It just didn't hum all that efficiently after a fashion. Even in their decline state they were still a contender. There was a lot of talent on those clubs...and not enough playoff spots, perhaps.

BTW, Guys! just tweeted Frank wasn't 91 but 88, which makes the circumstances of his birth even murkier...that is assuming he was even born. Why won't Frank Cashen just show us his birth certificate? Besides the fact that he's no longer with us?

Collusion didn't hit until after 1986.

David not with team in Atlanta. He decided he's tired of the lot of them and is taking a little R & R, screw you and your towels. (Actually: prescribed rest by club; will rejoin in NY on Friday to hopefully be the healthy firecracker the Mets need.)

Wrightless again: Granderson-9 Tejada-6 Murphy-4 Campbell-5 Duda-3 CYoung-7 Lagares-8 d�Arnaud-2 Wheeler-1

From a piece I wrote in 2010 when Frank and Darryl (and Doc and Davey) went into the Mets HOF at last. Cashen built his Mets on trades and from the farm. He hated free agency. When he was hired to re-create the Mets from the ground up in 1980, he gave free agency one legitimate shot � trying for Dave Winfield and Don Sutton in his first full off-season but settling for Mike Cubbage, Dave Roberts and the second coming of Rusty Staub � before removing that distasteful arrow from the organizational quiver. �Fans think that because of free agency, you can turn a ballclub around very quickly,� Cashen told Angell the spring before, �but that isn�t a useful way to go about what we have in mind here.� Thus, the open market went largely untapped by Cashen�and it didn�t hurt a bit in the buildup to 1986. Mazzilli for Darling and Terrell. Terrell for Johnson. Allen and Ownbey for Hernandez. Brooks, Winningham, Youmans and Fitzgerald for Carter. Bailor and Diaz for Fernandez. Young, Lee and Cook for Knight. Christensen, Gardner, Schiraldi and Tarver for Ojeda. Beane, Klink and Latham for Teufel. Even Trevi�o, Kern and Harris for Foster. Heck, even Scott for Heep. Frank Cashen didn�t always fleece the other guy, and not every guy he got was the equal of what he gave up (Mike Scott) or the equal of what he thought was getting (George Foster), but every part contributed to a beautiful whole. Mix the fruits of those deals with Strawberry and Gooden and Dykstra and Elster and Aguilera and Mitchell and McDowell and Sisk, all drafted by the Cashen regime � along with pre-Cashen holdover youngsters Wilson, Backman and Orosco � and you have a contender that became a champion if not a dynasty. Hardly any free agency was involved in making the Mets great in the 1980s. In short, Cashen built Rome. He also oversaw its decline if not its fall, but nobody can stay close to perfect forever.

Rubin just tweeted passing of 1986 architect, age 91.

Murphy 1.5 Tejada 1.0 CYoung 1.0 Campbell 0.5 Germen 0.5 Eveland 0.5

Campbell 3.0 Familia 2.0 Niese 2.0 Mejia 1.0 EYoung 1.0 Murphy 0.5 Lagares 0.5

Mejia 2.5 deGrom 2.0 Duda 1.0 Granderson 0.5 d'Arnaud 0.5

Duda 1.5 Wright 1.0 Torres 0.5

Adding color commentary to last night's Las Vegas 51s affair on the CBS Sports Network, and weekly on the channel's minor league coverage...Doug Flynn!

Cam possibly headed up to Binghamton, according to Mr. Rubin. Stay tuned.

Flores optioned to make room for Lagares. Tejada the only SS to speak of, save for cameos from Wright and Campbell (minors).

Granderson 2.0 CYoung 1.5 Duda 1.5

CYoung 3.5 Colon 3.0 d'Arnaud 2.0 Granderson 1.5

Let's Go Metropolitans, advise 45 Adapters on their 2012 LP Collected Works Vol. 1. Gz2a0KvLmWo&feature=youtu.be

Texas Rangers hitting coach Dave Magadan remembers his time on the Padre bench alongside Tony Gwynn for Tyler Kepner in the Times: Dave Magadan played the last three years of his career for the San Diego Padres, from 1999 to 2001. Those were also the final years of Tony Gwynn�s career, and the two filled a similar role as veteran left-handed hitters off the bench. Naturally, they talked a lot about hitting. �A lot of the routines that I do now, in the cage with guys, are directly related to conversations that we had,� said Magadan, the Texas Rangers� hitting coach. �He was a big proponent of the tee and things you could do off the tee to improve your bat path and make you more direct to the ball. He loved that, and a lot of that stuff I still teach today.� Magadan still marvels at the prescience of Gwynn, who died of cancer last week at 54. As a pinch-hitter in his final years, Gwynn would tell Magadan how the pitcher would set him up, and he would almost always guess right. If he guessed wrong before there were two strikes, Magadan said, Gwynn simply took the pitch. For Magadan, watching Gwynn sharpened his understanding of what it meant to be a disciplined hitter. �If he was looking for a breaking ball, he wouldn�t swing at a fastball � he would still stay on the breaking ball,� Magadan said. �That�s how he was disciplined. He wasn�t disciplined by walking a hundred times, but he was disciplined in staying on the pitch he was looking for. �And that�s where I get my definition of discipline from. Some guys are disciplined that walk a lot; some guys are disciplined that are really good hitters and stay on the pitch they�re looking for. If he gets it, he hits it. If he doesn�t get it, then he doesn�t swing at it. Then if he gets to two strikes, of course, he battles.� Magadan said he was never much of a guess hitter until he played with Gwynn. But by then, it was too late to salvage much more from his career. �I wish I knew what I knew then a lot earlier in my career,� Magadan said, �because I probably would have been a lot better hitter.�