Centerfield

It's been months since we've had a Flores walkoff. Also, are they pitching their closer in a tie game on the road? Is that legal?

Nice! A hit! Now steal 2nd, 3rd and home.

Come on Rene. Chance to make this the Rene Rivera Game.

Fuck. That walk is going to end up scoring isn't it.

On to the 11th. Ty Kelly is going to be the hero of this game. Or Rivera. One of those two.

Well, you know what they say. A team that grounds into a shit ton of double-plays is a team that is showing signs of breaking out.

But that being said, all of this may be moot, because the organization appears to have elected to give Wright a cortisone shot and hope that the guy with spinal stenosis can play through a herniated disk in his neck. Makes the Eric Campbell decision seem downright brilliant.

Frayed Knot wrote: Frayed Knot wrote: We have some people here who I believe are vastly over-rating Dilson Herrera's value. Yes, it's far-fetched. Not I. It was just a thought as to why a seemingly logical player move was not being made. I guess I just don't see it as the slam-dunk logical move as other seem to - at least not unless a decision is made to put Wright on the DL and, even then, I don't think they're going to start shifting players around the infield just to give Dilson an everyday job. And if it's just for a bench role then they've already called up the guy (Kelly) who switch-hits and was hitting .400 in AAA rather than Herrera who's at .270 This appears to be directed at me. So I'll retort. Yes, I've been beating the drum for Dilson for a while. But understand that most of that was fueled by the guy I wanted him to replace. Eric Campbell fell 4 PA's short of 75, but had he qualified, his .492 OPS would have ranked him 303rd out of 306 qualifying players. So he was not literally the worst hitter in baseball, but he was pretty damn close. And this was a guy who was playing more or less every day, and batting as high as 6th! (not a condemnation of the batting order, a condemnation of the 25 man roster). Very seldom does the "anyone but him" argument work but in this case, I think it does. Herrera, Rivera. Anyone. Thankfully, Campbell is gone. Hooray! But we still have 3 injured regulars. At catcher, there's nothing we can do but play Plawecki. But for first and third, we have a number of options. 1. James Loney: Career .748 OPS. Respectable player, and even if you just look at his last 3 years, his OPS is still not bad at .730. The problem is the numbers are heading the wrong way. (.778, .716, .679). 32 years old. 2. Wilmer Flores: Career .667 OPS. 24 years old, nearly 900 AB's. Upward trending OPS. 3. Dilson Herrera: Career .690 OPS (149 AB's). Career .837 OPS in the minors. 4. Ty Kelly: Career .763 OPS in the minors. Just made his major league debut The Mets are going to go with Loney at 1st, Flores at 3rd, and Kelly batting off the bench. And so Herrera, the top hitting prospect in the organization, the one Keith Law pegged as possibly a future All-Star, the one with the highest upside, gets left out of the mix. This makes no sense to me. Why not go with the guy that might be great? Especially since we are going to need to know what we have in Herrera when Walker's contract expires? Because Neil Walker can't play a few games at 3rd? Because Herrera can't? Stunting his development is an argument for someone who is not ready. And Herrera is most definitely ready. Teams who are not in a pennant race can preserve their prospects for the future. A team that is in a tooth and nail battle for the division can't afford to give away at-bats and field an inferior team. Divisions are hard to win. You have to take every advantage you can get. The "fear of disrupting a player's rhythm" is what led to the idiotic IF lineup last year (Tejada 3rd, Flores SS, Murphy 2B). But once it was disrupted, everyone was fine. The team is 25th in the league in runs scored. They have to figure out how to get the best 8 bats in organization in the lineup every night.

Must be due to the return of LOBin Ventura.

Now loaded. Rivera up with a chance at an Eponymous Game.

1st and 3rd. 2 outs. Ty Kelly batting.

Edgy MD wrote: And they certainly had no business out-bullpenning us. This. When are they going to remember that their bullpen sucks?

1 for his last 24. I mean, it's a joke at this point.

Hey guys! Just wondering how many more guys have to get hurt and/or hit below .200 before I get a chance. No sour grapes or anything. Just curious. You know, so I can plan and stuff.

Edgy MD wrote: My guess is they'll do it sooner than you think, if not as fast as you like. It all unfolds from the Wright prognosis, of course, so we'll see. As fast as I like would have been a week ago, so certainly yes on that. Sooner than I think? Possibly. But I don't see it. I think both Flores and Loney will be given the everyday job, regardless of the starting pitcher, and both will be given a few weeks. At which point Wright will be close to returning, meaning Dilson stays down. But one can hope.

I think the long-term outage with Wright will be confirmed today. But I agree that the Mets will cycle through all other possibilities before calling on Dilson. Not that this makes any sense in the world. The only reason the idea behind "don't call him up unless he's going to start" philosophy holds any credibility is that irregular playing time will stunt a player's development. In this case, it doesn't apply. In AAA, Dilson posted an .899 OPS last year and has an .811 OPS this year. He is developed. He is ready. There is nothing more for him to prove at that level. The next step in his development is to prove he can hit major league pitching, which he can only do in the major leagues. We've already given away nearly 100 PA's to Campbell/Kelly/Reynolds. That could be 100 PA's working toward Herrera's development. And even if he only performed to an OPS of .690 (his career MLB OPS so far) he would be far outperforming the guys who have taken these PA's from him. But whatever. It's not like we are in a pennant race or anything. Plus, isn't anyone else curious to see how Herrera will do in the bigs before handing the job to him next season? Let's just speculate on Herrera might do. So long as we have a firm understanding of the abilities of Eric Campbell. Herrera should be called up. Flores/Loney should platoon at 1B, and Lagares/Granderson should platoon in the OF. But they won't do that. It makes too much sense.

Frayed Knot wrote: Loney should be activated by Tuesday with either Campbell or Kelly banished back to Vegas - unless Dabid gets DL'd by then in which case they both stay although they'd start a whole lot less so at least there's that. Unless of course CF gets his wet dream and they send down one of them for Dilson Herrera but I'm not sure they're going to do that unless they intend to start him regularly. I doubt it though right? I'm thinking David gets DL'ed, Wilmer becomes the everyday 3B, and Loney more or less the everyday 1B.

You could always just go with "terrible".

Zvon wrote: You have to see it Cooby [youtube]W4rR-OsTNCg[/youtube] "I think I'll go for a walk..."

Three douchebags (six chins) sitting in a bar plug center douchebag's ESPN radio show.

Nice win for the team, but it should have never come to that. As many on this board said [u:1detmaap]before [/u:1detmaap]the events unfolded, an absolute bonehead move to bring in Familia today. I don't like what this says about Terry's decision making. Piling on to the many reasons already cited by you guys, one of the biggest reasons you don't go this route is that if any other reliever runs into trouble, you bring in Familia. If Familia runs into trouble, you are stuck. You have to either: 1. Pull your closer. Which results in controversy! "Terry has no faith in Familia!" "Has Familia lost the closer role?!?!?" 2. Leave him in to meltdown, even when it's clear he doesn't have his best stuff and just hope you don't give up the lead, knowing he's probably going to, because you don't want the consequences of Choice #1. Bad bad bad.

bmfc1 wrote: RealityChuck: you remembered it correctly. I watched some of Game 6 today. In the bottom of the 10th, before the fun began, they showed tape of Davey sitting down on the bench and literally hitting his head against the wall. Scully says something like "it's a hard enough game but it's even harder when you make a decision that is going to stick in your craw all winter long." He was referring to letting HoJo swinging away. I remember this clear as day. I was livid with Johnson for not bunting the runners over. Mazzili's fly ball scores the run easily. Of course, you never know if he would seen the same pitch yyybbb

soupcan wrote: Rusty Staub (among many, many others) is offended.

d'Kong76 wrote: Buttley 2B Seager SS Turner 3B Gonzalez 1B Kendrick LF Pederson CF Puig RF Grandal C Urias P Granderson RF Cabrera SS Wright 3B Cespedes LF Walker 2B Lagares CF Plawecki C Campbell 1B deGrom P Campbell again? Seriously? Did Flores get hurt?

d'Kong76 wrote: The Captain chimes in... Weighing in late here. Love David, but I don't agree with this at all. As a team captain, I think he should stick up for his teammates or say nothing at all. There is no reason to have your team captain pile on and vindicate the media. I especially don't like the part where it seems he's talking to the media before talking to Harvey. I know it's not David's style and he has a great relationship with the media, and that's fine. But if I'm on the Mets, I want my team captain standing behind me. "Hey Mike Vaccaro, what headline did you run when my teammate was in the hospital? Yeah, that's right. Go fuck yourself." This is the same criticism I had of Derek Jeter when ARod joined the Yankees and was getting booed for struggling at 3B. The team captain should have said "Look, he's a gold glove SS that unselfishly agreed to switch positions for the good of the team. The fans should recognize that and support him." But he didn't. Acting largely out of self-interest, Jeter didn't. He said something along the lines of "Alex Rodriguez is a professional and needs to deal with it." Gotta protect your player and address it internally. Now, I don't think David's acting out of self-interest, like Jeter (I also don't think David is an overrated dickhead fraud), but David has a duty to protect his teammates here. No matter what he or other teammates might think, the company line has to be "Harvey is our teammate. He's struggling but we believe in him. We are behind him 100%." Clearly David, and others, have issue with what Harvey did, and that's fine. Address it internally. Look, Harvey seems like he's kinda dumb. Needs a lot of hand-holding. Help him out David.