Chad ochoseis

d'Kong76 wrote: TransMonk wrote: This was my third year in a row seeing a game down near the on deck circle and, man, I feel for Wilmer. I don't know if it is just Milwaukee, but he gets a lot of mean jeering about the crying incident even though it was almost 3 years ago now. Funny, it wouldn't even occur to me that lunkheads would jeer that. That was as manly a moment as they come. I guess they take it as him crying because he was being sent to Milwaukee, as opposed to crying because he was some kid who barely spoke English and knew nothing about American culture except what he'd learned from being in the Mets system since he was 16, and he was being sent to some place he knew nothing about. Midwestern cities have serious inferiority complexes, unless they're Chicago, and they get tetchy when someone snubs them. Cleveland still hasn't let Jonathan Lucroy forget that he vetoed a trade to the Indians in 2016. Wilmer, by the way, looks like he's really turned into a veteran as far as handling the media, based on a quick interview I saw on WPIX. MLB.tv cuts away from SNY the moment a game ends, but occasionally will stay with broadcast TV for five or ten minutes of post-game interviews.

And...BOOKS!

Pencil it in the books for now. And, all of a sudden, the Mets look like a team that can catch and throw.

Centerfield wrote: Now, I know that this is painting with a broad brush and a lot of preconceived notions but I just can’t help but feel that 41’s take is such a typical Republican point of view. Come in with the notion you want to believe and stick to it. Even when logic and data suggest otherwise. Focus on numbers that support your thinking, even if those numbers are belied by better, more exhaustive information. Mix in a hint of inaccuracy (the team was never 12-1). Remember to be judgmental (“I can’t believe you guys are talking about bailing”). And you are almost there. Finally, before you leave the house, check if your opinion justifies the behavior of rich white men. Yes? Congratulations! You’re ready to be a Republican! In defense of 41F's baseball views, it's true that defending the Mets justifies the behavior of rich white men. But that's also true of defenders of the behaviors of the Yankees, Royals, Indians, Diamondbacks, Red Sox, White Sox, Cubs, and Rumble Ponies, as well as more or less anyone else who has earned money from owning or being in the front office of a professional baseball team. And pessimism is fine, and really the only sane choice if you root for the Mets, but not-bailing is part of the life of being a fan. It's why I ignore football, basketball, and hockey. Rooting for 1 1/2 baseball teams is draining enough. And what a 21-19 record tells us about the Mets is that the Mets are 21-19. The fact that they were extremely fantastic over their first 12 games and rather crappy over the following 28 doesn't provide any extra information on the surface. You could dig a little and maybe see that the competition was different. That was true last year when we started 7-3 by beating up on weak teams, but I don't think it's true this year. We won series against the Nats and Cardinals during the 11-1 stretch, and lost series to the Reds and Padres during the 10-18. You can argue that it's a different Mets team now than it was at the beginning of the season. This is true to some degree. The slide downhill began when we lost both our catchers in two or three days. Catching is subtle. We all know it's one of the two most important non-pitching positions on the field, but I can't tell much difference between "good" and "bad" catchers by watching them. The Mets have been looking better since the Mesoraco trade. Could be the change from Plawecki/D'Arnaud to Lobaton/Nido was creating a bigger hole than we realized. So maybe things start picking up again now. All in all, though, I think the 21-19 record is about what the Mets are right now - a .525 team. Closer to good than bad, and maybe able to go deep into the postseason with some luck, health, and good trades, but not the best team in baseball by a long shot. As far as why the Mets are mediocre, can we tie a rock to the idea that The Yankees Are A Big Market Team That Acts Like One And The Wilpons Are Cheap and toss it into a very deep lake? First, sustained excellence in baseball is nearly impossible. The only teams that have been consistently reasonably competitive over the past fifteen years are the Yankees and Cardinals, and even that's giving the phrase "reasonably competitive" a very broad interpretation. Every other team, including the other Big Market teams (say, the Dodgers, Giants, Red Sox, and Cubs, and maybe throw in the White Sox, A's, and Angels) has had ups and downs, just like the Mets. Second, as far as the Yankees going big and the Mets going small, I call bullshit. The Yankees' payroll is $166.1 million. The Mets' payroll is $150.6 million. Does anyone really think that the difference between the Yankees and the Mets can be explained by $15.5 million? The players signed by the Yankees to multi-year contracts for more than $10M per year are Giancarlo Stanton, Masahiro Tanaka, Jacoby Ellsbury, Brett Gardner, and Aroldis Chapman. That's one new signing, one mediocre signing, one signing that makes Jason Bay look like a smart deal, one aging centerfielder finishing out a middling career, and a very good closer. This isn't why the Yankees win and the Mets don't. The Yankees win because they drafted Luis Severino, Aaron Judge, Dellin Betances, Gary Sanchez, and Gleyber Torres, and because they somehow figured out that Didi Gregorius was good at baseball. Or, at least, that he was good enough to hit pop-up home runs in that joke of a ballpark they play in. The key players the Mets drafted or made early-career trades for are DeGrom, Syndergaard, Flores, Lagares, Conforto, Rosario, D'Arnaud, Plawecki, and Familia. Other than DeGrom and possibly Syndergaard, those guys aren't as good as the players the Yankees drafted, at least not yet. And the Yankees have a deep pool of talented young players in the pipeline. We have two first basemen who maybe possibly might could turn out to be pretty good if we're lucky. It sucks to have to admit it, but the Yankees win because they've been smarter. Or luckier. I'm not sure which. I've spent plenty of time wondering about whether the Mets inability to develop top quality players within the org is due to bad luck or bad skills, and I have absolutely no clue. But I am convinced that the core problem with the org is player development, not some refusal to act like a Big Market Team. And, for what it's worth, I think the Stanton trade/contract takeover was monumentally stupid and arrogant, and may be the beginning of the end of Yankee dominance. Way too much can go wrong at $30M+ per year (for the later years), even for the MFYs. It'll be tragic to those who feel (MFY bandwagoners) and comic to those who think (that's us).

Benjamin Grimm wrote: True. Hopefully the Mets will use their three hits wisely and score a couple of runs. SIX, BABY, SIX!!!

Nope, Edgy started yesterday's victorious IGT. With Syndergaard on the mound and Edgy's IGT karma, we can't lose tonight.

Welcome to the early season. Mesoraco upped his average up to .200, and Conforto is now tearing it up at a .207 clip. I know I always get lost trying to find the interstate in Philly; let's hope they do, too.

I'm trying to remember the last player to wear zero whose name didn't begin with O, and I'm drawing a blank.

He looked so happy running off the field. That kid is the puppy dog I never had, if the puppy dog had the potential to hit .310 and steal 25 bases per year.

They're not sure. They can't tell ass from elbow. I may be the first Mets fan in history to say this, but I'm trusting the doctors. If they say he can go Monday, let him go Monday.

Ducks 5, Ponies 2 at Canal Park last night. duckpony scorecard.jpg[/attachment:3eo346xz] This guy was there: tebow at plate.jpg[/attachment:3eo346xz] He sure strikes out a lot! tebow scoreboard.jpg[/attachment:3eo346xz] I'm limited to three attachments, or I'd show the shot of his adoring fans waiting by the team bus for his autograph after the game!!! Tebow certainly gets his share of love from the people of Akron (and, presumably, Erie, Reading, Bowie, etc.). And he's a fine athlete who looked better than competent making a diving catch in left field. But he's struck out somewhere around 35 times in 70 ABs, and he looked completely overmatched at the plate. He looked like a college football star trying to play baseball. Peter Alonso went 1-4 with a single, but didn't look Tebow-clueless at the plate and made a nice leaping grab of a line drive that was headed for right center. Despite the score, Marcos Molina didn't look awful. I didn't see any hard-hit balls off him, but I missed the double and home run in the second. John Mora went from first to third on a groundout in the top of the first. And he's not even the fastest guy on the team. Champ Stuart has some serious speed. And if he works hard, maybe one day he'll hit as well as Tebow.

I'll be in Akron on Wednesday watching the Rumble Ponies play the Rubber Ducks. Then on Thursday, I watch my niece's Tigers play softball against the Parma Redmen, and wonder when it happened that minor league baseball teams and girls softball teams traded nicknames. I'll come back with a scouting report on Tim Tebow.

I'm not ready to give up on Wheeler yet, though I'm on board with letting Matz hang out with Harvey in the bullpen. Maybe Harvey can lend Matz some confidence, since he has way too much and Matz doesn't have nearly enough. Gsellman and Lugo are starting pitchers who wound up in the pen because there wasn't room for them in the rotation. I'd put Gsellman back in the rotation over Sewald and see if he's really figured out how to be 2016 Gsellman again.

I got 17. And that list is a great argument that contact hitters != good hitters.

Edgy MD wrote: I like how the names gradually shrink in length as the lineup progresses. Replace Syndergaard with, say, Jeff Tam, and Rosario with Chin-lung Hu, and we could have a vanishing point. Or it could be a sign that Rosario is ready to move up in the order.

Gary and Ron talked about that last night, sometime around the fifth or sixth inning. Gary broached the topic of Harvey going to Vegas to work on things and Ron used up about five hundred words of verbal gymnastics to say diplomatically, "Harvey's way too much of a dickhead to ever accept a minor league assignment".

I'm watching last night's Twins-Indians game, which was played in San Juan. It's the top of the 14th, and still 0-0. I don't know how it ends. I have to shut it off to host my block club meeting, and I'm really hoping that when my neighbors show up, they're not talking about the ballgame.

^^^ Brilliant! I was curious, so I looked at the percentage of innings pitched by relievers in the AL Central last year. I figured that with Mickey the Hook as pitching coach, the Indians would be at the top, and it turns out I was wrong: KCR 41.3% MIN 40.3% CWS 38.6% DET 37.3% CLE 32.8% The numbers are going to be a little off. They came from BBRef, which doesn't give innings pitched in relief. So I assumed that pitchers who started more often than they relieved were starters, and I assumed every inning pitched by a starter was pitched as a starter (i.e. if Corey Kluber pitched an inning in relief, it would still go in the starting bucket). Also, BBRef uses the annoying convention that, for example, 6 2/3 innings is 6.2 and not 6.67. I didn't convert to actual decimals, so my totals were slightly off. But neither of these assumptions should matter very much. There are factors that would have worked to decrease the Indians' use of the bullpen last year. They were really good, and being really good is probably highly correlated with not having to go to the bullpen as frequently as an average team. And Mickey didn't have the final say last year on what to do with his staff; Terry Francona did. But, still, this indicates that Mickey isn't going to be especially bullpen-happy in the long run, and the quick hooks could just be an early season small sample size thing.

HOLY CRAP! CES!!!

Rockin' Doc wrote: Bust this thing wide open Conforto. Or walk. That's cool, too.

Correa walks...still a no-hitter.

Odd time to burn a pinch-hitter and a catcher, Mick. Yeah, Gary's saying the same thing. Not sure if the logic was that Syndergaard is a better hitter than Nido (a distinct possibility), or what. Even so, there's a good chance Nido would have drawn the walk. Either way, why do all that burning in a game that very well can go into extras? I dunno. I want to think that Mickey is playing six-dimensional chess. Maybe he was trying to get an insurance run thinking that the game may be rain-shortened.

On the list of Marginal Recent Vintage Met Backup Catchers I'd Like To See In Blue And Orange Again, he's in line behind Mike Nickeas, Josh Thole, and Anthony Recker.

The more I look at Steven Matz, the more I see Jon Niese. I'd keep Wheeler in the rotation and let Matz stretch his arm out in Vegas. I think he still has options.

Count your blessings. Don't look a gift horse in the mouth. You're never as good as you look when you're winning and you're never as bad as you look when you're losing. Insert your favorite cliche here. The Mets are 9-1. Tied for the best record in MLB, and already 3 1/2 games up in the division. 3rd best OPS and 2nd best ERA in the NL. You'd have to be a huge freaking pessimist to find something to worry about at this point in the season. Hi, my name is Chad Ochoseis, and I'm a huge freaking pessimist. The Mets haven't played particularly well their last three games, win or lose. But mainly, I'm worried about Syndergaard and DeGrom to a lesser DeGree. They've looked like they have minimal command, and they haven't gone deep into games. So the bullpen has been pulling the weight. So the Mets needed an extra arm. So Brandon Nimmo, who has been playing like an above-average everyday major league baseball player, is now the starting centerfielder for the 51s. I love this start as much as anyone, but this club is going to need some Thor sooner or later.