Centerfield

Well that was certainly the Shohei Ohtani game.

It's ridiculous.

It's insane. I know he's been around a while but it's still crazy to see. We will never see anything like this again.

I nominate 2015 NLDS Game 3 at Citi. I know it's not a close game like some of the others, but I can't remember ever seeing Citi delirious like that. When Cespedes hit that bomb, I remember thinking WTF is going on. We're going to win the World Series! What a team. I think if we win Game 1, we win in 5.

Mariners were about to bring the tying run to the plate but Naylor makes the last out trying to go first to third. Between that and the pickoff, just some terrible baserunning.

Wow. Rivas picked off with Cal Raleigh at the plate as the tying run. And then Cal strikes out.

Castillo doesn't survive the inning. Bases loaded. 1 out.

Andres Gimenez again. 2-1 Blue Jays.

This 5 run third is straight out of the 2025 Mets playbook.

Or be sufficiently young enough so your peers don’t know the reference. My brother’s name is Albert. He was never fat, but that didn’t stop ppl from calling him “fatty” growing up.

An article on Okamoto. https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/mlb/slugging-japanese-infielder-expected-to-be-posted-by-yomiuri-giants/ar-AA1OoQQw?ocid=BingNewsSerp

Another option at first is Kazuma Okamoto, expected to be posted by Yomiuri. Power hitter, though not as prodigious as Murakami. But hits for average, walks and plays good defense. 29 years old. Has been compared to Seiya Suzuki.

Yeah. Our pitching was no where near good enough to get to this point. Snell signed so early and was hurt this year so he doesn't get mentioned a lot in the “coulda shoulda” discussion. But it will be work it if they win another WS.

I went with Mets for 4 years. If some team gives him 5-6 years, he's probably gone, but I have a hard time coming up with a team that will offer him that.

Going back to the original extension offer from 2023. Pete has since made $20.5M in 2024, and $30M in 2025. There would be 5 years, $107.5M left on his contract. ($21.5M AAV). You'd think just by sheer pride he wouldn't want to take less than that. Maybe 4 years $100M, plus a 5th year vesting option gets it done. Or a straight 4 year, $115M contract.

It makes you wonder what the base coaches are doing during all of this. You'd think they'd be watching the umps, then directing traffic.

TCD. The saving grace of many a shitty season.

Three years certainly. Four years begrudgingly. Five years, I dunno. I guess it depends on who else is available by the time Pete signs. Which is why I think it's important to get this done quicker than we did last year. Let Pete go find his market. Match it if it's 4 years or less. But pivot if he doesn't make up his mind quickly. Plan B Options: 1. Murakami. Huge unknown. Younger, but he's never played in the bigs, has huge strikeout numbers, and was hurt last year. 2. Bellinger. Same age as Pete, more or less. Less consistent offensively, but is a better athlete and offers positional versatility. If he can actually play CF, he might be a good fit for the Mets regardless of Pete. 3. Josh Naylor. Not as good offensively, better defense. A few years younger. 4. Ryan Clifford. The in-house option. Non-1B Options. You could always try moving Vientos/Baty/Nimmo/Soto to 1B and fill Pete's production in other ways. 1. Kyle Tucker. The big fish this offseason. I don't see this happening. 2. Kyle Schwarber. Masher. But will be 33 next year, and has never hit for any kind of average. 3. Alex Bregman. He's a big name, but I don't like his production at all. Power numbers have fallen off, which isn't great considering the ballparks he plays in. But he bats RH.

Looks like it would have hit him.

I feel like the using sim score to predict results can be fairly easily tested if you are able to go back and look up similar players retroactively. I don't think it's any major feat if a sim score predicts decline. As we all agree, almost every player declines during that 32-34 window. Oftentimes precipitously. It's like I can come up with a fancy formula to predict that Frank from accounting couldn't hit Nolan McLean. It's not the formula, it's that most can't hit Nolan McLean. Does sim score predict the outlier? Take a look at Moises Alou at age 30. Or David Ortiz. Or Jim Thome. Do their lists contain other players who performed into their late 30s? Or do their lists have players that declined under the normal aging curve. If you look up Manny Ramirez at age 30, do you find Jason Bay? Or is it full of guys like Mike Schmidt or Moises Alou? If the latter, maybe there's something to it.

So. If marathon can find the 5 year projection on Alonso I’m guessing an actually MLB GM probably has that info too. 7 years. lol. But then again, it only takes one…

Bump.

I love that there is no extra runner. And if I had my way there would never be one. One of the considerations a manager used to have when pulling his starter early is “what if this game goes into extras”. Those that favor the extra runner will say we can’t take it away because of the way the games are managed now. Everyone will run out of pitchers. I say if you go back to normal, then managers maybe wouldn’t manage this way. In the end it’s all about viewership and ratings. We know it won’t ever go away. I just wish they’d give us, say, two innings of real baseball before adding the runner. Starting with a runner in the 12th makes more sense to me.

My son’s coach, who coached at AAA Las Vegas, used to tell him to treat the first pitch like a 3-1 pitch. Hone in on one pitch, one area, and if you get it, attack. Let everything else go. I have no idea if high school kids and big league players are taught to treat them the same way. But if they are, part of the success could be from batters being very selective. Expand that, and maybe those numbers go down.

Preach on. You know. Watching these games makes me realize that the Mets pitching staff was no where near good enough to play in October. Like not close.