G-Fafif

Short week but Juan was its king. And tonight, per Terry Collins, he rests on his laurels...or the bench.

metirish wrote: he's like Joe McEwing with a Twitter account..... Excellent characterization.

From the Post down there: Manager Davey Johnson had been a staunch supporter of Eckstein, who had been the Nationals coach since 2009. �If you want to fire the hitting coach, you might as well fire me right with him,� Johnson said in mind-June. Even Saturday night, Johnson called Eckstein �the best hitting instructor� he had ever worked with. Davey still there? And what was wrong with Bill Robinson?

The Young Buck lineup is in effect. Eric Young, Jr. � LF Daniel Murphy � 2B David Wright � 3B Marlon Byrd � RF Ike Davis � 1B John Buck � C Kirk Nieuwenhuis � CF Omar Quintanilla � SS Dillon Gee - RHP

Greg Burke is opening his own theater on the Strip, right up the road from Celine Dion's. He's that much of a fixture.

Dillon Gee is 7-7, right there with the '68 Giants and the '72 Jets as not bad, not great. Both NFL franchises were doomed to wander the autumnal deserts for years after they ascended to .500 in what were then 14-game seasons. Gee can take a great leap forward Monday night by outpassing Julio Teheran, who, at 7-5, is still entertaining thoughts of surpassing the Lions and grabbing the Wild Card. Or something like that.

The Phillies versus Harvey are a sad little enterprise, aren't they?

Box. Harvey 4.5 Lagares 2.0 Wright 1.5 Byrd 1.5 Atchison 0.5

Eight ballplayers and one bleeping fashion model (per JCL). Eric Young, Jr. � LF Daniel Murphy � 2B David Wright � 3B Marlon Byrd � RF Josh Satin � 1B John Buck � C Juan Lagares � CF Omar Quintanilla � SS Matt Harvey � RHP

METS PITCHERS BY WINS, 6/25-Present Hefner 2 Wheeler 2 Marcum 1 Germen 1 Hawkins 1 Aardsma 1 Rice 1 Gee 2 Harvey 1 Gotta get Matt moved up this chart. And an "L" to "Lee" like "Aardsma" has "A"s.

Box. Germen 2.5 Lagares 1.5 Byrd 1.5 Murphy 1.0 Wright 1.0 Young 1.0 Rice 0.5 Hawkins 0.5 Quintanilla 0.5

Young LF Murphy 2B Wright 3B Byrd RF Satin 1B Lagares CF Recker C Quintanilla SS Wheeler P

Hoping Wheeler builds off stellar outing in San Fran, which feels like a month ago.

Lagares 2.0 Byrd 1.5 Wright 1.5 Davis 1.0 Buck 1.0 Germen 0.5 Rice 0.5 Aardsma 0.5

DUCK! That's what Daniel Herrera is now, per Rubin.

Brandon Lyon, signed by the Red Sox, assigned to Double-A.

Young LF Murphy 2B Wright 3B Byrd RF Davis 1B Buck C Nieuwenhuis CF Quintanilla SS Hefner P

I picked 33 wins for the second half, which I thought left them at my preseason prediction of 73-89, but they have 41 wins right now (I thought it was 40), so I was off by one. Anyway, 33-38 over their final 71 sounds reasonable given the lineup flux, regressions to the mean and, most importantly, the kind of pitching that should prevent utter second-half collapse. Might be enough to save Terry, which I'm not thrilled about, but if he earns it, he earns it.

Futures kid had a good time. Mets prospect Brandon Nimmo, an outfielder at Class-A Savannah, got David Wright’s locker at Citi Field for the Futures Game. It was a pleasant surprise for the 20-year-old, who didn’t realize it until clubhouse personnel told him. “I really appreciate it and hopefully some of David’s mojo and good luck can rub off on me,” Nimmo said, grinning. “I appreciate the gesture.” When asked about it in Pittsburgh, the Mets star had some fun with it. “That’s prime real estate,” Wright quipped. “I like my locker. They gave it away? I thought they were gonna rope it off. No, that’s nice. I’ve talked to him a few times, he seems like a nice kid. It’s well-deserved. “But I hope he doesn't touch my stuff.” Nimmo, who was 0-for-2 in the game, has been to Citi Field before, taking batting practice here after he signed in 2011. “I’m excited,” he said. “Hopefully, the first of many to come.” When I sat it on the conference call the Mets held with Nimmo when they were plugging his Futures candidacy, I thought his responses were very Wrightlike, which I took as a good thing.

Requisite Yankee fellation alert: If only it were like Yankee Stadium, it would be so much better. Neyer wasn't at all crazy about MFYS III -- said both NY parks could have been so much more. His review of that place here. The New York Yankees are supposed to epitomize class. But with the arguable exception of Derek Jeter's appearances still announced by the (now) disembodied voice of Bob Sheppard, there is almost nothing classy about Yankee Stadium. The Yankees could have afforded to eschew advertisements on the outfield walls, but they didn't. They could have jettisoned "YMCA", but they didn't. They could have built something in the grand tradition of the Empire State Building or the Chrysler Building or the Brooklyn Bridge or any of a dozen other New York City landmarks, but they didn't. Yankee Stadium's like a school in summer. The big blue letters say Yankee Stadium, but otherwise you could be almost anywhere. There's something special about Yankee Stadium because the New York Yankees do play there and, as the franchise wins more championships, this new building will naturally accrue atmosphere and mystique, weighty with emotion and history. Now, though? The New York Yankees and the local citizenry spent more than a billion dollars on a wasted opportunity.

Not sure if anybody here has mentioned the tackiness of the Citi Field scoreboard advertising situation, but SB Nation's Rob Neyer just noticed it. Leaving aside the ear-splitting sound systems, which aren't a function of the architecture but rather are just an offensive stylistic choice, both Safeco and Coors are largely geared toward the game on the field. In both ballparks, you can almost literally walk around the entire lower level and never lose sight of the field. It's almost as if the architect - and by extension the franchise itself - believed that watching baseball was the single most important thing about attending a baseball game. Well, that's just no longer the case. Or doesn't seem to be. I haven't been to a number of the newer ballparks; later this summer, I'll visit the new parks in Philadelphia and Washington, which will leave me two short (San Diego and Miami) of the complete set. But the new paradigm is, in a more blatant way than ever before, all about the money: Get the people inside the building, then separate them from as much of their money as possible while bombarding them with as many advertisements as can be sold. Every time I write something like this, a few wise guys are quick to yell at me, "Hey, I guess you don't know that all the baseball parks used to have advertising!" Actually, yeah. Thanks. I do know that. I've seen the old photos. When I was growing up, the fountains in Royals Stadium were capped by huge rotating billboards, including advertisements for cigarettes. Mind you, the Royals were owned by a noted humanitarian. That was life in the 1970s and '80s. My point isn't that ballparks weren't commercial enterprises. They were. My point is that the commercialism, aside from actually selling tickets and beer and hot dogs, was a secondary consideration. Today, it's the primary consideration. Which was never so clear to me before this week, when I visited Citi Field for the first time. Citi Field's most notable elements create a jarring contrast. Exiting the Willets Point subway station, your path takes you to the stadium's main entrance, the Jackie Robinson Rotunda. This isn't just a name. The rotunda is essentially a shrine to Robinson, with huge photographs, a video screen running Robinson clips in a loop, and inspirational quotes. These words are writ large, high on the wall: excellence, justice, persistence, determination, courage, citizenship, commitment. It's all in perfectly good taste, but somewhat discordant, since Robinson never played for the Mets, never played a baseball game in Queens. It's also a bit odd to build a shrine in a high-traffic area like the main entrance to a baseball stadium. But I can't really quibble with Fred Wilpon's execution of what I will assume was high-minded sentiment. It's the rest of the stadium that leaves me cold, because the rest of the stadium is a shrine, not to Jackie Robinson, or to excellence or justice or citizenship or any of the rest of it, but rather to rank commerce. There are the usual suites, of course, and also a number of clubs, where one can relax with an overpriced drink without having to look at those silly baseball players doing the things that Jackie Robinson used to do. Some of the clubs are close to the field -- supplanting many hundreds of seats, and any view of the field from the concourse -- and some are far from the field, but it's hard to escape the conclusion that this ballpark wasn't designed for actually watching baseball games. If you do actually sit in the stands, you might notice something strange: two huge walls beyond the outfield, featuring video boards and advertising billboards. This is not unusual. What's unusual is that one board is angled toward the middle of the field, while another is angled toward left field. Why this cockeyed arrangement? Because one of the boards is not designed for people inside the ballpark. Some clever lad realized that if that wall were angled in a certain way, it would perfectly catch the eyes of people driving on the Van Wyck Expressway. The other wall, the one that faces the infield, faces out perfectly toward another highway. That one's covered with signs, too, with just a little room for a subtle, easy-to-miss Mets logo. When I was growing up, the giant scoreboard at Royals Stadium also fronted a freeway; it was painted blue, with the Royals logo in white. In those days, you sold a few commodities on the inside, but you were really selling your baseball team. Today, it's all about the commodities. Essentially, Citi Field is a shrine to Jackie Robinson's value and to naked commerce. Which seems an uncomfortable, vaguely inappropriate combination. I'm sure that many Mets fans have figured out a way to enjoy Citi Field; after all, it's all they've got. I do appreciate the extremely cantilevered upper deck in right field, which hearkens back to the old days. The Mets Hall of Fame and Museum, in a room next to the rotunda, is decent enough (although it's not as well-appointed as the Royals Hall of Fame and Museum at Kauffman Stadium). Citi Field isn't a terrible place. But like the new Yankee Stadium, it could have been so much more. Considering how much money was spent, and the grand tradition of public architecture in New York, it should have been so much more. But this, I'm sorry to say, is where we're at. Baseball stadiums are no longer palaces for the fans. They have become palaces for people who live in palaces, and places from which to hang garish billboards. Maybe it didn't have to be this way, but then again maybe it did. Considering that not a single owner has stood up to the forces of commercialism, not even the owners of teams that play in the remaining Classic Era ballparks, maybe there was never any reasonable hope of resisting the impulse to suck every last short-term dollar out of these publicly financed stadiums. Maybe this is just where we're at, in our society and in baseball ... which does, in the end, usually do a pretty good job of reflecting our society. Welcome to the enemy, sports fans; he is us.

Edgy MD wrote: And God bless surly giants everywhere. And the jolly ones, too.

Many have traced Harvey's combination of skill and discipline to the fact that his father, Ed, is himself a former college baseball player and current junior-college coach. While Harvey doesn't dismiss this notion, he credits his father with supplying an equally important lesson: that having fun is as important as anything else in life. "Dirty martinis and music � that's the big motto in our family," he says, describing his extended Italian-American clan as a rowdy tribe, fond of letting loose as often as possible. "We get the booze going, and the music starts playing. Always old-school hip-hop. Jay-Z. Tribe Called Quest. The Pharcyde. My parents love that stuff." 1) Interesting parents. 2) Getting the booze going (with parental supervision) beats getting the boos going...which is why Ike Davis's parties have gotten so depressing.

I'm down with the Angels retiring whoever they want to retire, the MFYs retiring whoever they want to retire, the Pirates retiring whoever they want to retire (even though they waited more than three decades to do right by Ralph). Family business. I'm also for mocking the MFYs, of course, but still. Casey infiltrates the Mets conversation on a regular basis despite his not managing them since 1965 or vice presidenting them since 1975. Helluva successful tenth-place manager.