Chad ochoseis

Philip_Metropolitan_of_Moscow_(small).jpg[/attachment:25ico35h] Conforto CF Cabrera 3B Cespedes LF Bruce RF Flores 2B Duda 1B D'Arnaud C Reyes SS deGrom P friar.jpg[/attachment:25ico35h] Pirela LF Asuaje 2B Myers 1B Renfroe RF Spangenberg 3B Margot CF Coleman SS Torrens C Richard P

Oh, yeah...and then there's the reason why Conforto is a center fielder instead of a corner outfielder for now. Nimmo and his collapsed lung.

I was going to mention Lagares, who has been all but forgotten, but you were all over that. It looked like he was on his way to working his way back to becoming a starting CF. I'm not too disappointed about Conforto's lack of reps. The Mets have three good corner outfielders, and only two can play at any one time. I'm all for showcasing Bruce, and Cespedes isn't going to sit when he's healthy. A big disappointment to me so far is the dog that didn't bark. Usually, even during a weak season, there's some nice surprise. An R.A. Dickey gets pulled off the scrap heap. A Matt Harvey comes in and becomes the best pitcher in baseball for a couple of months. Wright or Reyes come up and show their star potential. Karma throws us a bone. That hasn't happened this year. The biggest "surprise" is TJ Rivera becoming a slightly better than league average hitter. Yeah, great. "I think TJ Rivera is going to be a decent bat off the bench for the next couple of years" isn't exactly something to dream on. I would have liked to have seen Td'A have that breakout season we've been expecting for years. Or Montero proving that he's more than just the guy you stick in the rotation after you've blown through Plans A, B, C, D, and XYZ. Maybe Rosario comes up in August and lives up to his billing. That would be nice.

Edgy MD wrote: I'm telling you, if you play three All-Star games during Mid-Season Baseball Week, you get the potential for three good games instead of one excruciating one. No forced substitutions—and no farcical endings—because the players who don't appear in game one will start in game two. Yeah, but then you'll get people complaining that the game 2 All Stars aren't as All Starry as the game 1 All Stars. My magic elixir is to play the ASG in April, before the start of the regular season. It would be a teaser for the new season. You could base the ballot on the entire prior year, post-season and all, so you wouldn't have some schlub making the game because he happened to get hot in May. Whatever puzzles are caused because players change leagues during the off season can be finessed, particularly now that the league got wise and decided not to make the game count anymore. You could take a few days off after the game so that the pitchers are ready for Opening Day if needed. It beats having a black hole in the middle of July. It would screw over northern cities, as it would be really challenging to schedule an April ASG in an outdoor ballpark anywhere in New England or the Midwest. It seems like about half the early April games here in Cleveland get postponed because of weather. In any event, it's an exhibition. I'm fine with all the substitutions. I'm fine with the NL not winning. I don't care who wins. The purpose is to showcase the best players from each league. It's not intended to be a good game. Then again, I haven't watched an All-Star Game in six years or so. So, what do I know?

We're running out of movies shot with brand-new Technicolor coming soon to an air-conditioned theater near you for Terry. Ben-Hur is about the only possibility left.

Edgy MD wrote: Some excellent players tended to perform at their most productive as the season progressed, and history has recorded them as infrequent All Stars, ergo, not as good as frequent All Stars. This is the larger problem - that history cares how many times a player was named to an All Star team (and how many awards a player won, in general) rather than paying attention to what the player actually did on the field.

In 1974 or so, I received a hand-me-down Sports Illustrated Baseball game. SI Baseball was one of the many Strat-O-Matic knockoffs of the 70s, and the game I inherited was based on the 1970 season. That was the year Rico Carty hit .366 with the Braves, and I remember being utterly blown away that the best hitter in the majors that year was some dude I'd never heard of. They also included defensive ratings, and Rico's was a -2. Average outfielders got +5 or so. Willie Mays and Paul Blair got +10s. 0 was pretty bad. -2 was unheard of. So that goes a long way towards explaining why Rico Carty was never considered a serious HoF candidate. Dick Allen was equally bad in the field, but was a much better hitter for a much longer time. Back to the subject of older players who are still alive, the Times had a moving piece on Jim Bouton last week. The guy who wrote the smartest and most insightful baseball book in history is now struggling to write and speak in complete sentences. The article says that he went public with his brain disease at the SABR meeting last month, so maybe Fafif heard more about it when he was there.

A WS with the Astros representing the AL and the Brewers representing the NL would be seriously confusing.

If we were to move one of the core players, I would want it to be Cespedes. He's still a productive player when he's on the field, but the leg injury worries me. He's not a young 31 (if 31 is what he actually is). We may have reached or may be rapidly approaching peak Cespy productivity, and the contract can very well hamstring us (yes, pun intended) in 2019 and 2020. I could happily go with Conforto-Nimmo-Bruce for the rest of the year and possibly 2018 if we could make a trade that Cespedes would approve, that would allow us to unload at least 80% of salary (we'd still be eating about $5M/year), and that would include two top quality prospects at the AA or AAA level. That's only slightly more than what we gave up for him at the 2015 deadline, but he is signed - though pricy - through 2020. That trade may be possible now, particularly given that the AL wild card race is tight and there should be plenty of AL buyers this month.

Curtis Granderson, American hero.

Nah. We all love Bartolo. But there's no upside here. And he takes up space - lots and lots of space - both in the dugout and on the roster. On the other hand, I think he'd be a great replacement for Mike Barwis.

ochoseis tribe.jpg[/attachment:rh4jkydx] I've never kept my AL affair secret, and if there was ever any doubt, I moved in with her two years ago. The Mets don't mind. They know that my heart is still with them. She's a little cold sometimes - last time I saw her was Monday night, and although her scoreboard said 70 degrees, it was really more like 60 and windy and rainy. On the twenty-sixth of June. And after the fourth inning, she looked like she was going to turn into a real loser. But this happened... 20170626_223648.jpg[/attachment:rh4jkydx] Great things about the Indians: - District tickets. $13 gets you standing room and one free beer. The choices are Bud, Miller, or Labatt's, but it's still free beer. Or soda or bottled water if you'd prefer. Arrive at the bar early enough, and you can sit at a table overlooking right field from club level as long as you want. And there's a fire pit nearby. You'll appreciate it (see above). - Jason Kipnis is the only player in the majors who has smooth jazz walkup music. His fans are bringing inflatable saxophones to the ballpark. - They sing the José, José, José chant for Jose Ramirez, their superutility player who had a breakout 2016 and is currently OPSing .940. I've given up on telling the people around me that Mets fans were there first and I just accept it now. - Their Terry is better than our Terry. Not great things about the Indians: The first baseman, Carlos Santana, wears #41. Every time I see a SANTANA 41 jersey, a few hundred brain cells explode from the cognitive dissonance. Fucking Chief Wahoo. He's an embarrassment to the club and to the city. I think he'll go away as soon as everyone stops telling the club to get rid of him. The Indians have been pushing the blocked C logo for the past five or ten years, but the fans are hanging on to the Chief, partially in defiance and partially in recognition that his days are numbered, and they want to snap up the Wahoo logo while they still can. Progressive Field - way too quiet.

The Mets have the day off today while Terry figures out ways to bring all this winning to an end. Don't let Robert Gsellman's mediocre 5-5 record fool you - he's been making sure to give up plenty of runs every outing, and I don't think he's lasted into the 7th all season. So he's been doing what he can to help the Mets lose, even if it doesn't always show up in the stats. He goes up against Dan Straily tomorrow night. Back to the east coast - standard 7:10 start time, standard SNY broadcast.

Yeah, you're muscling in on my turf. IGT originators continue to start IGTs as long as the Mets win. This is a major jinx...now the Mets will probably win on Tuesday night and continue to screw up their chances of picking seventh in the draft instead of tenth. As the latest IGT originator, I'm happy to hand the mantle (or should we call it the beltran?) to MFS62.

Raffy shows some heart. Duda shows some brain.

The Penn State linebacker's son shakes it off and goes to first.

The Mets are at risk of sweeping their first series since April 12, when they completed a three game sweep at CBP to go to 6-3 on the year, raising some concerns that the team might finish above .500 and possibly even make a run at the NL East. Rafael Montero, who has given up one run in his last two appearances in relief, totaling 6 2/3* innings, goes up against Matt Moore. 4:05 start. *Remember when people used to refer to that as "6.2 innings"? That would drive me bonkers.

What has Granderson been eating? And can he cook it for the rest of the lineup?

Interesting to hear the non-local take on promoting Rosario.

Asdrubal not complaining about removing Flores' helmet. They're not bad so far, except for DAR-no instead of dar-NO.

MLB.tv is indeed broadcasting the game in my NL-deprived city. However, it's only giving me a choice between the FOX and SF radio audio feeds - no Howie for me tonight.

Well, there goes my excuse.

The LOLMets can't even lose right. Tonight, they put up the extremely competent Jacob DeGrom against Johnny Cueto who, surprisingly enough, plays for the Giants. Fools didn't even remember that DeGrom still has options and they could have sent him to Vegas instead of Tyler Pill. It's like they don't actually want to lose. 7:15 start on FOX, which I believe means as a non-cable-subscriber who watches on MLB.tv, I'm SOL tonight.

Benjamin Grimm wrote: I think we'll be rooting against him tonight. I know I will, anyway. Me, too. If it wasn't clear, my tongue was planted firmly in my cheek when I started this IGT.

Seth Lugo leads the Mets latest attempt to improve their draft position for 2018. The Giants, with a 27-48 record and some guy named Ty Blach on the mound, have an excellent chance of stopping them tonight.