Chad ochoseis

Heard on WFUV this morning on the way in: "The Yankees are in Toronto tonight and the Mets are at CitiField to face Cincinnati." It certainly sounds more natural.

If we're gonna take Razor Shines, then Alvin Dark makes the team at SS.

When in doubt, bring Nieve in from the pen.

Hindsight's a great thing to have. Niese had been very good. He hadn't been great - eight baserunners in six innings, and it could have easily been more but for a couple of good plays by Wright. We had two runners in scoring position late in a tie game with two outs. We needed to maximize the probability of getting those runs in. PHing for Niese was exactly the right thing to do, even if it didn't work out this time. The bullpen has had its hot moments and its cold moments in this small sample size of a season. I'm not ready to avoid it at all costs yet. Davis is sucking now and Baxter is hot, but Davis has a successful season and a half of hitting experience and Baxter has a month of good PHing. It's not obvious who would have been the better choice to PH. I don't know exactly how sick Davis was, and neither does anyone else posting here, unless Ray Ramirez is sneaking in under a fake name.

Benjamin Grimm wrote: Just for the sake of argument, what meat, if any, would we want to pick off their corpse? Ruiz would be nice if the Mets were contending mid-year. He'd be a great platoon-mate for Thole, and nothing would say "cockpunch" to a Phillies fan like Chooch in a Met uniform. His current salary is $3.7M, and he has a 2013 $5M club option. I was in Lakewood, NJ last night watching the Phillie-affiliated Class A Blue Claws lose 6-1 to the Marlin-affiliated Greensboro Grasshoppers. Five errors by the appropriately-named Claws, not counting a botched infield popup that was scored a hit. I have seen the phuture, and it ain't pretty.

I was looking up Ed Kranepool's minor league stats on bbref and found this: Year Age Tm Lg Lev Aff G PA AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI SB CS BB SO BA OBP SLG OPS TB GDP HBP SH SF IBB 1962 17 Auburn NYPL D NYM 20 92 77 23 27 2 1 1 18 0 0 14 15 .351 .446 .442 .887 34 0 0 1 1962 17 Knoxville SALL A DET 7 20 18 4 5 3 0 0 0 0 2 2 .278 .350 .444 .794 8 0 0 0 0 1962 17 Syracuse IL AAA WSA,NYM 14 54 48 2 11 1 1 0 4 0 0 6 12 .229 .315 .292 .606 14 0 0 0 So he started out in the Mets' Class D NY-Penn affiliate. Easy enough. Before he was promoted, he played for Syracuse in the International League, which was shared by the Mets and the Senators. A little odd, but I think I'd heard somewhere that teams occasionally shared affiliates back in the day. I think they still do it in the Arizona Fall League. What puzzles me is the second line. He played for the Tigers' Class A affiliate for a week. Was/is there a rule that allows minor league players to be lent to other orgs for a short period of time? I could see this happening if the Tigers' org needed a short term 1B and the Mets wanted to promote Kranepool without taking up space on their affiliate's roster. Anyone know the story here?

John Cougar Lunchbucket wrote: Srsly, its at a point now where I'm expecting the comeback. Who will be the hero is the question. Kyle Kendrick.

Murphy is starting to get the hang of this second base thing.

Precious? Yes. Formulaic? Yes. Predictable? Yes. But, hey, good cinematography and Judi Dench. I can think of worse ways to spend $13 and two hours.

LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr wrote: Give DiPoto a call/Josh Collmenter a try? DiPoto would be a definite improvement over Schwinden.

Denver's a great place to get off the interstate...Hairy's now up to .265, and Nickeas at .188 has at least switched on his turn signal.

I haven't checked Gameday yet, but from this thread I'm going to guess that the Mets are behind.

The Mets and Angels (usually) have more money to spend than most of the other 60s expansion teams and have been more willing to invest in free agents and - possibly - to trade prospects for high priced established major leaguers. Also - without checking - the Mets have probably contended more frequently than the other teams, meaning they'd be more likely to make trade deadline moves that would add major league level talent to the org. Just some guesses.

Going the other way, there were no major leaguers named Jason until Jason Thompson showed up in 1976. The next Jason after him was White Sox flash in the pan Jason Bere in 1993. Now? 25 active major league Jasons. And that's not counting Jaysons like Werth.

I'm good with not including Reyes, Beltran, or any other currently active ex-Met. Do we really want to honor players who are playing against us this year? Glavine got a ticket, also. This isn't true. This is just batmags taking the piss. Right? RIGHT???

Puma; NY Post: �Honestly, it�s probably smart right now to give me a day,� Davis said. �Do I want to come out? No, because I want to get a damn hit. But it�s a lefty, I haven�t gotten a hit all year and [Turner] needs to get some at-bats. It�s smart managing, I think, right now.� What could he have said in place of "Turner"?

Go ahead and host...

LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr wrote: From the Punch Bowl Turds Dept.: the HRs are nice and all, but the Mets are now 2-for-16 (or 17, I lost count) with RISP on the year. From the Rose Colored Glasses department: in two games against good pitching, the reputedly weak hitting Mets have gotten 17 runners in scoring position.

-> Caught the tail end of metfairy's tailgate, which gave me enough time to scarf down a chicken soft taco and help D-Dad a little bit with the cleanup -> Was really pissed off that Jason Bay was mostly booed during the opening intros. He hasn't made a freaking out yet in 2012, people. Also, the man is unquestionably hustling and doing his best out there. -> Santana looked fantastic until he didn't. -> Ike saw a lot of breaking balls. -> Was good to see metfairy, D-Dad, Kase, and Fafif (if only briefly).

Not exactly pictures, but the scanned scorecard.

1. First Mets hit of 2012 - Thole 2. First double - Murphy 3. First triple - Bay 4. First home run - Duda 5. First run batted in - Murphy 6. First stolen base - Wright 7. First caught stealing/picked off - Torres 8. First multihit game - Murphy 9. First RBI sac fly - Davis 10. First sac hit (bunt) - Tejada 11. First infield single - Torres 12. First ground-rules double - Wright 13. First to draw a walk - Wright 14. First Met to strike out - Torres 15. First to hit into a double play - Duda 16. First pitcher to get a hit - Dickey 17. Pitcher with first win - Acosta 18. Pitcher with first save - Francisco 19. Pitcher with first wild pitch - Dickey 20. Met player to commit first error - Wright

5th place 69-93 No playoffs I'd love to be wrong.

His cover of "Light My Fire" wasn't half as good as the original.

Roadtripping to DC to see a Mets-Nationals game in 2012? Stop off in Wilmington and say hi to Vance Wilson, manager of the Blue Rocks.

Edgy DC wrote: Rizzuto was 16th on the list. He'd probably be 20th or so now (again, not counting Negro Leaguers), with Jeter having passed him, and probably Nomar Garciaparra and Omar Vizquel as well. OE: BB-Ref has them really close in WAR, with Garciaparra at 42.5, Vizquel at 42.3, and Rizzutto at 41.8. Hanley Ram�rez and Jos� Reyes each have 29.3 career WAR. Vern Stephens had a career WAR of 44.5 and led the AL in RBI three times as a shortstop (OK, he played in some hitters' parks, but still...). Bill James wrote a pretty passionate chapter in his Hall of Fame book arguing that Stephens was a better all-around shortstop than Rizzuto, so I'm surprised that he didn't make James' list. metsguyinmichigan wrote: Well, it shows that the Mets weren't exactly getting a bum. The trade looks horrible now because we know what Ryan became -- and how Fregosi fell apart. But he was a damn good player for a while. Yeah, this. Fregosi put up some great numbers before injuries/lack of motivation/etc. took its toll. Sort of an Andruw Jones of the Nixon era.