Chad ochoseis

I don't know if it's about being the best player, because that probably would be Viola. It's more the Pavlovian response, which has a lot to do with the era when you were a kid and read the sports pages first thing in the morning. This is why Jerry Grote is my eternal #15, even if Beltran was objectively a far better Met, and why Kong will always and immutably be my #26.

- It's not that hard, Jorge. Tell him, Wash. - It's incredibly hard. - Hey, anything worth doing is. And we're gonna teach you.

Very late to this party, but thanks to Edgy and Grimm for keeping this place alive.

Asdrubal Cabrera

Carlos Delgado

Marvelous Marv Throneberry

Lindor

Mike Cameron

Joe Foy

I think this topic comes up occasionally when talking about Keith Hernandez. BBRef dWAR really, really, really discounts the defensive contributions of first basemen. Table of 1B dWAR below. With the exception of Alonso and Goldschmidt, these players have had long and complete careers. Goldschmidt is near retirement, and I added Pete out of curiosity, but over a career that -6.3 probably projects to about a -11, assuming he starts DHing in a few years. No system to these choices except "Chad named a bunch of first basemen", though I went out of my way to pick several reputed great gloves. So this group likely skews better than average. [TH]Player[/TH][TH]dWAR[/TH][TD]Chief Keef[/TD][TD]1.3[/TD][TD]JT Snow[/TD][TD]0.0[/TD][TD]Chris Chambliss[/TD][TD]0.0[/TD][TD]Doug Mientkiewicz[/TD][TD]-0.7[/TD][TD]Wes Parker[/TD][TD]-3.0[/TD][TD]Gil Hodges[/TD][TD]-5.4[/TD][TD]Nick Johnson[/TD][TD]-5.7[/TD][TD]Paul Goldschmidt[/TD][TD]-6.0[/TD][TD]Don Mattingly[/TD][TD]-6.2[/TD][TD]Pete Alonso[/TD][TD]-6.3[/TD][TD]Adam LaRoche[/TD][TD]-10.1[/TD][TD]Rafael Palmeiro[/TD][TD]-10.7[/TD][TD]Ed Kranepool[/TD][TD]-11.0[/TD][TD]Cecil Fielder[/TD][TD]-12.1[/TD][TD]Steve Garvey*[/TD][TD]-13.6[/TD][TD]Prince Fielder[/TD][TD]-20.7[/TD] *Garvey was primarily a 3B for the first three years of his career, and I excluded those years. Keith is the only first baseman I could find with a positive career dWAR, and 1.3 isn't all that good. Wayne Garrett's was better. Ken Boswell's was better. You get the point. I was surprised that Chris Chambliss, who I always thought of as a good but not great first baseman, is as high as he is, and that Palmiero and Garvey are quite that low. And I don't remember Prince Fielder as being particularly bad at first. Edgar Martinez, who was primarily a DH for 12 seasons, had a dWAR of -11.5 for those seasons. So a guy who never plays the field is considered comparable in value to several actual first basemen. I never played baseball, not even Little League. I've maybe played ten softball games in my life. I'm not even an especially observant fan. So I'm looking to the group. Are first basemen really that valueless defensively? At the very least, they have to be able to field batted balls about as well as third basemen, given that a ball pulled by a left handed hitter to first behaves about the same as a ball pulled by a right handed hitter to third. A first baseman never has to make long throws, is almost always behind the play, seldom has to make tags, and almost never has to deal with runners sliding in to the base. They're involved in most plays, but their involvement is limited to being able to catch, which is important but something most professional athletes should be able to handle. So I can see that 1B has significantly less value than other positions on the field. But this little, where Ken Boswell is considered more valuable defensively than Keith Hernandez? Any explanation besides "dWAR is bogus"?

John Stearns came from the Phillies organization, but I'm guessing he didn't play in the majors until he joined the Mets.

Recently passed former Cy Young winner Randy Jones?

Good one. Rick Reed was famously a replacement player before being a Met, but I think his regular season debut was with the Mets. So, Rick Reed. On edit: wow. Had no memory of him having had an established career before being a Met, but he did.

Interesting that there would be an extremely hard one. I'd figure that any ballplayer with 20+ WAR isn't going to be obscure, and we'd know if he started out as a Met. Mookie?

Jason Isringhausen

Tim Foli

Jeromy Burnitz

Pete Alonso.

Mora and Scutaro are on my All-Conflation team. Zack Wheeler.

Late to this party, but it looks like fun. Jeff Conine?

About five minutes in, at the end of the opening scene, you'll see a gray haired woman say "It was a wonderful affair, and I've never seen so many judges in all my life." In real life, she's the significant other of a Crane Pooler .

https://www.nbcsports.com/nfl/profootballtalk/rumor-mill/news/guardians-pitchers-emmanuel-clase-and-luis-ortiz-are-indicted-on-gambling-charges Closer Emmanuel Clase and meh starter Luis Ortiz indicted on gambling charges, including intentionally throwing out of the strike zone to fix the outcomes of proposition bets. Indictment is in federal court in New York. Don't know why there and not Ohio, but apparently the Eastern District of New York has been aggressive in pursuing illegal sports gambling.

Parts are in French and parts are in English, depending on who they're talking to, and Vladimir Guerrero speaks only Spanish (Pedro speaks in English in the film). It would have made sense if they just made one version that had subtitles in the opposite language regardless, but they didn't do that. I saw the version where subtitles were in English. Omar was brilliant at doing more with less. He just ran into problems when he had to do more with more.

Got to be Wall Street. Famous the world over, exciting to watch, the best at what it does, and most likable when watched from a distance. What is the Tom Seaver of Shakespeare's plays?

I saw this at a film festival in Montreal a couple of weeks ago and I believe it's coming out on Netflix in the US this week. A good documentary that asks a good question. A whole lot of love for Montreal from Pedro, as well as Larry Walker, Felipe Alou, and Vlad Guerrero. Jeffrey Loria and his stepson/henchman David Samson agree to appear, and it's puzzling as to why, because they come off as absolute douchebags and possibly the most likely answer to the titular question. It's clear that they went in knowing nothing at all about how to market baseball and, in particular, how to market it in Montreal. The consortium of Montreal businessmen who owned the club before Loria come in for some criticism as well, though some of the onus goes to MLB itself for not knowing how to deal with an ownership group without a designated leader. As usual, luck comes in for some blame as well, and in particular the absolute **** luck of the Expos being the best team in baseball during the one year of their existence when a strike cancelled the World Series. But in the end, it was probably economics that killed the Expos. Montreal can compete with the rest of North America because it's the only game in town if you're French speaking and want to live in a major city where your own cultural touchpoints are available. And it's a great place as far as food, culture, cleanliness, safety, green space, and all the other things that make a city worthwhile. But what it doesn't have is money. Mississippi is the poorest state in the US, and Quebec's per capita GDP is 12% below Mississippi's. It's a closed economy, and as major league salaries have gone from high to higher to astronomical, there's no way a local ownership group can keep up with the US or even the rest of Canada.