smg58

Willets Point wrote: Kershaw pitching a perfecto through 7 innings vs. the Twins. Pulled from the game after only 80 pitches, still perfect. Geez Dodgers. Christ, even the managers hate baseball now.

Did he go to Wrigley Field? OK seriously, I see a September call-up highlighted by a crucial pinch hit in a meaningful late-season game.

Vientos is further along, plus I think the Mets would be more comfortable calling him up to be a reserve than Baty. (His skill set, for better and worse, is very similar to that of JD Davis.)

My primary memory of Betances involved slapping my head when I realized that van Wegenen gave him a player option for the second year.

1. What will The Mets record will be? 86-76 2. Where will The Mets finish in the NL East? Third 3. Will The Mets make the playoffs (yes/no)? Yes 4. If so, A. Where exactly will their record land, 1 through 6 (remember that there are 3 Wild Cards), in the NL; 6 B. How far will they advance; they won't C. The number of games in their final round? How many games are in the first round these days? 5. Who wins the World Series (can be the same answer as Q.4.B.)? the Dodgers 6. How many home runs will Pete Alonso hit? I think I said 35 in the other thread?

I can't imagine Baxter wouldn't make the trip for something like this. Colon will play in the old timers game and then start the real game and get a hit even though he's the pitcher. I always loved McCarver and never understood the negative energy. Is this the thread to mention that Todd Frazier announced his retirement?

.300/.360/.440, with 35 steals. Not spectacular, but solid.

.265/.340/.440 with 22 homers. Not earth-shattering, but decent. And 90% of his starts come at third base.

.320/.380/.480, with 90 runs. Like Dom Smith, he tried unsuccessfully to play through an injury last season and the Mets will be rewarded for not selling low.

Probably a wash, but we got the left arm.

.290/.410/.460 line with over 100 runs scored. Gets rewarded with a juicy extension.

I think you have to be careful. It's not clear that Paddock is enough of an upgrade over McGill or Peterson to justify bothering. And Smith/Davis/McNeil are at most one injury on offense away from being badly missed. I'd sooner trade nothing for Johnny Cueto than give up somebody I might miss for a mediocre arm. That being said, I'm talking to the A's. Montas is worth having.

I'd expect something along the lines of the .262/.344/.519 with 37 HR we got last year. The lineup around him will be sufficiently better to push his RBI total over 100 though.

An age-defying rock. 185 IP, 15-7, 2.50 ERA.

I figured Thor would be the one who'd have trouble finding a taker, and he was one of the first free agents to sign. I'm stumped on this. Hopefully Conforto is smart enough to realize that Stephen Drew's career never recovered from his taking half a season off. Honestly, a non-contending team who gets him on a discount could get value for him at the deadline, if not sooner. But we don't really know, outside of the QO, what Conforto and Boras have turned down to get here.

.270/.330/.480, with 25 HR and 85 RBI. He'll be pretty good.

I think everybody's in agreement on the quality of the innings we'll get, but the error bars for the quantity are huge. I think Seo is in the median area, but I'm hoping for more and fearing less. 150 IP, 2.23 ERA, 180 K, 9-5 record.

I guess the first question to ask is did the approach change with runners on base? If no, then they were horrifically unlucky. If yes, then why did the approach go so wrong, and why didn't they just stick to one approach since their basic one was working? It's also worth mentioning that OPS+ and wRC+ factor in the ballpark, so you would expect fewer runs with a given wRC+ from a team that plays its home games in Citi. So you have to be more scrutinizing of your pitching staff too.

I was just going to say, if McCann doesn't bounce back with the bat we could be seeing Alvarez sooner rather than later.

Whenever he was up, I kept rooting for him to hit it with his rhythm stick. Which he did, quite a bit more often than I expected him to.

Edgy MD wrote: Cahna could well be the fourth depending on how other things shake out. If ... McNeil retains his hold on second, and ... ... if Escobar is demonstrably a full-timer at third, and ... ... if Canó has enough left to be the regular DH, and ... ... Smitty continues his impressive spring, ... ... then Smitty is your leftfielder and Cahna is #4. That's a lot of ifs that have to fall into place, but there certainly is something of an unsettled situation. They might keep an eye on it for a few days and jump on Conforto later if he's available. If McNeil and Smith are healthy, as they appear to be, then three of the four "ifs" are high-probability. That leaves Canó, but we still have JD Davis as a fallback. I think our depth in the lineup is good (I'm leery about catcher, but we might have the top catching prospect in the game right now), and unless the entire team stays healthy (an "if" I would not bank on), nobody will get squeezed out of playing time. That doesn't mean I wouldn't take Conforto if he could be had at a discount, but Conforto at a discount still costs as much as Collin McHugh, Ryan Tepera, and Andrew Chafin. That would have given us depth where we most need it.

It's not surprising that his biggest memory came on defense. But he had a fair amount of offensive upside his first few years (certainly an amount you'd take with elite CF defense), and his bat just flat out vanished and it's not clear why.

It's shocking to me that MLB is doing everything they can to attract a larger audience, and "let's stop blackouts" isn't anywhere on that list. Along with "let's avoid work stoppages," "let's not keep changing the rules to make the game less interesting," etc. Mr. Magoo was less myopic.

PS the league link is https://ottoneu.fangraphs.com/209/homehttps://ottoneu.fangraphs.com/209/home.

Is Whizzo Butter one of us? If there are any objections to 9:30 on Wednesday, please let me know by 10 am tomorrow morning.