Do you remember Paul Sewald as a Met? I'm very glad for his successes but do you really think he's the shutdown closer you want in Game 7 with a two run lead? I think the Diamondbacks are in a great spot but I am nervous for them.
Edgy MD wrote: If you have the biggest budget ever, why sink so much of it into starting pitching in an era when — between caution and injury — starting pitchers get an ever-decreasing opportunity to impact the game? If you're unwilling to depart from the prevalent thinking, you can be minimizing the advantage of a large budget, rather than maximizing it. Because starting pitching was a way to rapidly improve the team without committing to long term contracts? Trea Turner or Aaron Judge - or even Carlos Correa - were all available last season (and Cory Seager, Marcus Semien, and Freddie Freeman the year before) but required contracts of substantially different length than the 2 or 3 years committed to Scherzer and Verlander.
A Boy Named Seo wrote: The Mets will in be hamstrung by both the ghosts of Scherzer and Verlander next year, too (and maybe for taxation purposes $17.5M more for Verlander in '25). This hardly seems like something that gets charged to the account of Eppler. He certainly could have moved more of the money when trading Verlander/Scherzer. Steve Cohen was very candid about the fact that he preferred to eat the money and acquire better prospects.
Especially given what the Diamondbacks have done so far as the #6 seed, one additional angle to consider is what the Mets might have done with the departed players and if they could have won the 10 extra games needed to get that #6 seed.
Answer is: John Olerud. 1993 WS, for Toronto against Curt Schilling* 1999 NLDS, off Randy Johnson 1999 NLCS, off Glavine and Smoltz 2001 ALDS and ALCS, for Seattle 2004 ALCS, for the Yankees, off Pedro Martinez. *Not in the HOF but added for context.
Curtis played in the postseason with 5 teams (DET, NYY, NYM, LAD, MIL) but only homered for the first 3. Ventura played in the postseason with 4 teams (CHW, NYM, NYY, LAD) but only homered for the first two teams.
Johnny Lunchbucket wrote: Don Baylor Also an excellent guess. He made the postseason with 5 teams (Baltimore, Angels, Boston, Oakland, and Minnesota) but only homered for 3.
Sheffield's a good guess: he played in the postseason/hit postseason homers with Miami, Atlanta, and the Yankees, but never with the Dodgers. Beltran played in the postseason with 5 teams but only homered for 3: Houston, Mets, and Cardinals. The Met actually hit a homer with the Mets in the postseason. All are wild-card era players.
Great trivia question (degree of difficulty: impossible). JD Martinez's solo homer made him the 7th player to hit a postseason home run for 4 different franchises. Met content = 1 but I'd have had trouble coming up most of the other 6.
Frayed Knot wrote: The NL is also the FOX series and I suspect that FOX didn't want to compete with themselves (NFL on FOX opposite MLB on FS1) NL is TBS. AL is Fox.