Gwreck

=bmfc1 post_id=111389 time=1665949047 user_id=73]Padres: CON: They beat our guys. They acted holier than thou at the ear inspection when one of their stars was banned for being a juicer.

Guardians.

=stevejrogers post_id=111184 time=1665607935 user_id=57] Taylor McGill and Joely Rodriguez join the list of Mets on postseason rosters, but never got into a postseason game; 1969 Jack DiLauro, Cal Koonce, Jim McAndrew 1973 Duffy Dyer, Buzz Capra, Jim McAndrew 1986 John Gibbons, Ed Hearn, Randy Niemann 1988 Keith Miller, Barry Lyons, Bob McClure 1999 None* 2000 None 2006 Ramon Castro 2015 Matt Reynolds, Kevin Plawecki 2016 Kelly Johnson, Michael Conforto, Alejandro De Aza, Juan Lagares, Travis d'Arnaud, Kevin Plawecki, Jerry Blevins, Bartolo Colon, Josh Edgin, Robert Gsellman, Hansel Robles, Fernando Salas

PETE ALONSO YES FRANCISCO ALVAREZ YES CHRIS BASSITT NO BRETT BATY YES MARK CANHA YES CARLOS CARRASCO YES JACOB deGROM YES EDWIN DIAZ YES EDUARDO ESCOBAR YES MYCHAL GIVENS NO LUIS GUILLORME YES FRANCISCO LINDOR YES SETH LUGO YES STARLING MARTE YES TREVOR MAY NO JAMES McCANN YES JEFF McNEIL YES TYLOR MEGILL YES TYLER NAQUIN NO TOMAS NIDO YES BRANDON NIMMO YES ADAM OTTAVINO YES DAVID PETERSON YES JOELY RODRIGUEZ NO DARIN RUF YES DOMINIC SMITH NO DREW SMITH YES MARK VIENTOS YES DANIEL VOGELBACH YES TAIJUAN WALKER YES TREVOR WILLIAMS YES

Gwreck Plan, sorted by order of priority: 1. Offer top dollar to DeGrom. Maybe he leaves anyway but let's not be outbid. Besides, do we like any of the other FA options better? (Justin Verlander? Our pal Joe Musgrove? Bassitt?) 2. Re-sign Nimmo. 3. Sign three more starters. This could indeed be Bassitt, Walker, and Williams, but there are other options on the FA market too. Why 3 more if we already have Scherzer/deGrom/Carrasco/Peterson? Because SP depth is critical and was a huge part of the 101 wins. 4. Sign best available hitter. Position agnostic since we have an open DH slot. 5. Make a fair offer to Diaz. Maybe someone wants to pay $25/5 and, well, the Mets might not top that, but make a solid offer. 6. Sign or re-sign at least 4 more relievers. Retaining Ottavino and Lugo is fine, but there are other options too if needed. Two lefties would also be ideal. We can figure Drew Smith and Stephen Nogosek are likely to make the pen next year, but other in-house options are uncertain.

A few corrections: Ruf is a not a free agent. (Might be a non-tender candidate). Vogelbach's club option for next year is $1.5M so I expect that gets exercised. I believe Joely Rodriguez is also a FA. So is Tommy Hunter. Tyler Naquin is also a FA.

you're misreading me. I'm not saying the Mets need "better than reasonable hope" from their prospects. I'm saying Atlanta has a more complete talented player dev system, and a more consistent plan of promotion. Yes, they ended up doing even better than that, even faster. But they put them in positions to succeed, and the Mets promotions seemed like reactions to twitter pressure, desperate ,and could be argued put them in a position to fail. Again, no doubt that Atlanta has had a better talent development system in place. Certainly that was a shortcoming of prior management, and it's also certainly too early to know if it's been improved. Any fair measurement of that is going to take several years. I'm not saying Cohen is unwilling to expand the budget, i'm saying he's unwilling to expand it to compensate for the MANY players that are now free agents. He's said stuff about the budget not being unlimited ,which means it exists, which means decisions have to be made. But this is based on supposition, that because there is a limit somewhere, that means enough won't be spent. There's no evidence for this claim. They need to replace 3 starting pitchers, a closer, a centerfielder, a few other bullpen arms, and then add a hitter, and maybe some new bench pieces. The budget gap is not as big as it might seem. Many of the players to be replaced are already making close to market value on one-year deals. Take Diaz: he's at $10M this year. DeGrom would require some additional fresh money to resign but it's not coming from zero; he was already making $28M this year. It's fine to take a pessimistic viewpoint, I guess, but there's no basis to for the idea that Cohen won't or can't spend sufficiently to make the team competitive. And they've botched some of these decisions in the past, from draft to trade deadline to offseason. There is no indication that this team is up to the task. I hope so, but I don't think any of them have the track record to say "I trust Billy Eppler implicitly to put the best options in place" This is a bit all over the place, and it plays both ways. Eppler has a 101 win team on the field. That's a success anywhere. His off-season acquisitions were a resounding success. I'll agree he underperformed at the most recent deadline but longer-term results are unclear given that prospects stayed put. And if you want to claim the Rocker draft was botched, fine - but that can't count against Eppler. There's no basis to complain about the most recent draft and far too early to judge results.

There's plenty correct and plenty of hyperbole in that analysis. projections systems underrate the Braves, particularly their rookies, because there's no major league data on them. So when they preform better than even reasonable hope, it makes the Braves better than projected. But that's a nod to the Braves system and a knock to the Mets one, who couldn't get Vientos, Baty or Álvarez up here to contribute even when they needed offense at those positions. This is a failure both of the dev system, and of the leadership that makes these decisions. Yes, the Mets failed to get their prospects up to the majors in sufficient time to see what they had to offer, let them adjust, and so forth. 100% correct. But, as also acknowledged here, the Braves' additions (eg. Harris and Strider) performed “better than even reasonable hope.” How do you counter that? Sometimes the other guy does get more lucky than you. Hence the obvious inconsistency in the argument. It would be foolish for the Mets to need “better than reasonable hope” from prospects to best the Braves. And, Baty was playing regularly before he got injured. That injury can be chalked up to bad luck. They also didn't truly address their holes at the deadline, making marginal bet around the edges, which mostly felt like shoring up a deep playoff roster...except the Mets didn't have a deep playoff roster, so their "this is a really good platoon guy, and gives us flexibility!" additions get overused, and they struggled. Agree again, that the trade deadline moves were insufficient. The team's lack of offensive depth was absolutely exposed, particularly after the Marte injury. Of course, it was well-documented that better players at the trade deadline required parting with better prospects. I wouldn't have been as hesitant to trade prospects as the Mets were, but realistically prospects were only going to if help this year if there were (1) in the majors or (2) available for trade. The Mets did neither, but prospect help can't be “double-counted” in the analysis. So favored, again, and they lost the division, again. The goal of the regular season is to win the division. They failed, miserably. Here's where you lose me with the hyperbole. 101 wins gets you the division almost every single time.. And they lost the division by a game. 2021 being a miserable failure? Ok, fine. No argument. 2022? That's quite the misrepresentation. And now there are a lot of moving parts for next year, and there's been no indication that this team has the personnel or willingness to expand the budget to piece this together. There's plenty of reasons to have a healthy suspicion of how effective or good it is to have Steve Cohen as owner, but all evidence indicates plenty of willingness to “expand the budget.” To suggest there is “no indication” of such willingness ignores reality. Not only do you need to spend a ton of money, you need to spend it in the right places. You can't just give Aaron Judge a billion dollars and pretend that fixes the offense. Yes adding Aaron Judge would indeed fix most of the Mets' offensive woes. If he played for the Mets and provided half of his 2022 production, that's certainly the difference between winning and losing the division. No need to pretend otherwise. —- Of course, I doubt anyone seriously thinks the Mets will add Aaron Judge. We agree they do need to upgrade at DH (easily accomplished via the FA market) and catcher (eg. using Alvarez as a starter), while also retaining Nimmo.

The sax sound effect is new. They started using it in the 2-game home series against the Marlins in late September.

Frayed Knot wrote: Not exactly the storybook ending that Yadi, Wainwright, and Sir Albert were hoping for, eh? Shucks

I could use a Pancake Triple Play right about now.

Frayed Knot wrote: So if you want the extra teams/games/dollars that expanded playoffs bring, do understand the downsides as well. I certainly didn't want these expanded playoffs and plenty others didn't want them either. And were on record about that long ago.

Willets Point wrote: a series between two teams I suspect most of us want both of them to lose. Best case is that one of these teams takes Atlanta out in the DS. Presumably we don't really care which one.

=Ceetar post_id=110228 time=1665156373 user_id=102]#pendingphysicals let's wait for a real reporter.

Joel Sherman reporting that Marte is on and Naquin is NOT. Presumably that means Starling is ready to play…

Friday's starting pitcher is Yu Darvish. Darvish is 36, in the 5th year of a 6 year contract initially signed with Chicago before the 2018 season. The Cubs traded him to San Diego after a 2020 season in which Darvish was the runner-up for the Cy Young Award (8-3, 2.01 ERA in 12 starts). After an up-and-down 2021, Darvish has had an excellent 2022 with San Diego: 16-8, 3.10 ERA in 194.2 innings; 197 Ks against 37 walks; a 0.950 WHIP. He had two excellent starts against the Mets this year: On June 7 in San Diego, he threw 7 innings, allowing no runs, striking out 6, walking none, and allowing a double to Escobar and a single to Marte. On July 22 in New York, Darvish matched up with Scherzer and won. 7 innings. 1 run, 4 hits. 9 Ks, 1 walk. Marte had 2 singles, Alonso one, and Guillorme had an RBI double. Darvish also had a pretty good start against the Mets in 2021, but the starting lineup had Lindor, James McCann (hitting third), Taijuan Walker, and 6 other guys who aren't on the Mets now. McCann did hit a two-run homer off Darvish. If we're looking for silver linings, Darvish's splits this year show that he's got an ERA almost a run better at home than on the road.

Benjamin Grimm wrote: If the Cleveland vs Tampa series ends in two games, and all other series are still going, then Sunday's Mets Padres game will move to 4 pm. I don't think this is quite right. If, for example, the Tampa/Cleveland AND Seattle/Toronto series both end in two games (but not Philadelphia/St. Louis), the Mets game still moves to 4 PM. Put another way, the game moves if: (1) Tampa/Cleveland ends in two games AND (2) Philadelphia/St. Louis goes 3. The full scenario list is out there via Twitter, eg.

Some interesting data regarding 2022 performance against playoff teams: The Mets (and Phillies) led the majors in games played against teams in the 2022 postseason, with 69. 2022 Records against postseason teams: Houston: 37-18, .673 Los Angeles: 29-19, .604 Seattle: 32-27, .542 New York: 37-32, .536 Atlanta: 33-31, .516 Yankees: 33-31, .516 Tampa: 29-31, .483 St. Louis: 22-24, .478 Cleveland: 19-21, .475 Toronto: 30-36, .455 Philadelphia: 29-40, .420 San Diego: 20-33, .378 (Yes, San Diego went 5-14 against the Dodgers. Excluding those games only brings them up to .441).

=Centerfield post_id=110116 time=1665010341 user_id=65] We're going to end up with 5 out of 6 NHO for these last 3 games. Infuriating.

The new NHOP is now .667.

They have increased the cost of single-game postseason tickets substantially. Supply is also up with the extra round. In an effort to incentivize full/partial season ticketholders, the playoff tickets sold to them are heavily discounted.

Edgy MD wrote: I'm not looking for that. Great player, immediately solves problem with lack of right handed power in DH spot, costs nothing in prospects. Seems like a good fit to me!

Also, as technical requirements for Postseason eligiblilty, (1) Alvarez has to be a “replacement” for another otherwise-eligible position player who is now injured and (2) MLB has to sign off. For (1), he could be the “replacement” for Brett Baty. (2) is understood to be a mere formality and there's no reason to expect such approval would be withheld.

Alas, because rosters only go to 28, Smith, Marrero, and Ruf are not on the active roster. And room can't be made for any of them unless there was an injury/DFA/option which would make that affected payer unavailable for the WC series.

Confirmed: Friday 8:07 PM Saturday 7:37 PM Sunday: 7:37 PM (if necessary) If Tampa/Cleveland series ends in 2 games AND the Phillies/Cardinals series goes 3 games, the Sunday game shifts to 4 PM.