batmagadanleadoff

There aren't enough major league quality relievers to go around, let alone very good relievers, but that guy's gonna complain unless the Mets get Mariano Rivera in his prime. The Mets have been one of baseball's very best teams for the past 13 calendar months. The Mets have way more strengths than weaknesses. Their top half of the lineup is probably the best in all of baseball and must-see TV. So yeah, Stearns is doing an awful.job. Just awful.

There aren't enough major league quality relievers to go around, let alone very good relievers, but that guy's gonna complain unless the Mets get Mariano Rivera in his prime.

But .299 (20 for 67) since his demotion last month. I hope his AAA HRs came with Syracuse trailing because what's the point if he's only gonna hit homers with the Mets tied or already ahead? What the Mets should do going forward whenever they try out new hitters is to set the scoreboard so that the Mets are ahead by a few runs for the first 10 or 20 pitches. Then for the next 10 or 20 pitches, they should set the big outfield scoreboard to show the Mets trailing by three or four runs. Then the Mets should pay real close attention to what the batter does with the scoreboard showing the Mets losing. That's how to scout a player!

https://nypost.com/2025/07/20/sports/mets-recalling-francisco-alvarez-after-homer-barrage-in-minors/

Yeah. Because a peak Sandy Koufax grows on a ****ing tree in abundance like green leaves in the middle of July.

What the hell is Stearns supposed to do ? Pull out a Sandy Koufax and a Bob Gibson and a Randy Johnson out of his ass? Don't you realize that the Mets pitching staff is decimated? It's as if somebody exploded an atom bomb on the pitching room. I've lost track of how many Mets pitchers are gone for the season. I think it's five already -- AJ Minter, Danny Young, Dedniel Nunez, Max Kranick and Griffin Canning. Tylor Megill has been out for a while and wlll be out for a while longer. Brooks Raley came back yesterday after not pitching in a year and a half. And 60% of the starting rotation is being weaned back from major injuries -- they're still not up to going six innings or throwing 100 pitches -- including their ace pitcher Kodai Senga and Sean Manaea and Frankie Montas,each of whom haven't pitched all season long until a week or two ago. What the hell is Stearns supposed to do in the face of this natural disaster? What could anybody do? Teams use twice as many pitchers as they used to do. And the supply of major league quality pitchers hasn't even remotely caught up with this recent demand for more pitching. So you're seeing a never-ending stream of crappy pitchers that would have never even sniffed the majors seven, ten years ago. This is a league-wide problem, not a Stearns issue. I'm confident that given Stearns' track record of building strong pitching staffs in Houston and then in Milwaukee, the Mets state of the art pitching lab and their owner's tremendous resources, the Mets will fare better than most other teams in assembling a pitching staff.

That's because the Mets can't hit when they're trailing. Probably on purpose. They give up when they're behind. As soon as they're down a run, they're making after-the-game dinner plans. When you make baseball player money and can afford to eat anywhere, there's so many great restaurants to choose from wherever they play, being that the cities that have major league baseball are major cities. Even Cincinnati, too, I suppose. They'll never ever come from behind to win a game for the rest of our lives till the end of the world. Oh, enough already.

Sure. There are, of course, clutch hits. What doesn't exist, however, is clutch hitting. All a team can do is stockpile as many good hitters as it possibly can and hope for the best. And besides pitching, the baby Mets of 2022 are also killing the Mets. Francisco Alvarez has been so bad that he's not even a major leaguer anymore. Other than a pretty good week and a half, two week stretch last month, Brett Baty's entire baseball career, all of it, has been vomit inducing. And Mark Vientos has been playing like the pre-breakout version of himself all season long.

I think that's mainly it. No coincidence that this brutal stretch began, more or less, with Senga's injury. Replacing innings from your best pitcher with innings from the worst pitcher in the rotation is never a recipe for success.

I can only hope, pray really, that Senger is a clutch hitter. If not, maybe the Mets need to trade for a clutch hitter. Not merely a good hitter or even a great hitter. But a good and great hitter who can, in addition, hit in the clutch. They should trade for a wizard, too. I wonder if the Kansas City Chiefs have any good clutch hitters that they can spare? Or wizards. I'd settle for a magician.

(And another thing ...) Because the runs that the Mets score early on don't count as much as the runs they might score late in the game.

Who gives a ****? The Mets had the best record in baseball for most of this season. That means that the Mets had the most wins for most of the season. If they're not coming from behind, that means that they're usually ahead from the get-go. Because, you know, they have just about the most wins in baseball. And they're still one of baseball's very best teams, bad week and all. Give me a ****ing break already. Three of their first four hitters are MVP candidates. I'm sure every team has that going on. Again with the clutch crap.

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6443580/2025/06/22/mets-francisco-alvarez-optioned/ If anybody still can't figure it out yet, this is the downside to giving somebody with Brett Baty's utterly execrable track record -- one good week and a half stretch in four seasons, hundreds and hundreds of plate appearances. Because the Mets are a serious contender.

Probably because he didn't use enough smoke. And face makeup. He should do opera, next. Maybe La Traviata. Or classical. Lay down some heavy John Bonham-style drumming to Beethoven's Fifth. And of course, lotsa smoke and flames.

I remember the rookie trophy on Chet's Topps baseball card more than anything else about him. [FIMG=277]https://cdn10.mavin.io/production/soldItems/156322451/images/image-0.jpg[/FIMG]

Jesse Winker expected to be out for 6-8 weeks.

How fortunate that the Mets might replace Winker with a player who isn't even half as good. Lucky us Mets fans.

Yes, Lefty. How original. You think of everything, Lefty. Give yourself two gold stars. Who on this year's Mets is a "dead-ender" "sitting on the bench for weeks at a stretch"? Lefty, Lefty, Lefty.

Seeing this in the baseball passings thread was a shocker when I scrolled down through the thread, until I saw the text above the picture. Mets get their own death threads.

And Joe Morgan wasn't the only breakout superstar and future Hall of Famer to be traded after the 1971 season. [FIMG=333]https://i.psacard.com/cardfacts/1972-topps-595-nolan-ryan-36566.jpg?h=1000[/FIMG]

Tommy Helms, 1966 NL Rookie of the Year for the Cincinnati Reds; included in the important multi-player Reds-Astros trade after the 1971 season that allowed the Reds to essentially replace Helms with breakout superstar and future Hall of Famer Joe Morgan. Was a featured interviewee in HBO's recent multi-part documentary on Pete Rose. [FIMG=333]https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgP-LZiaPF8civHojz5FcRR69YT0rwC_k7CnOtK5hSCPGJL8ayKuPyuMK5vAIGO-jhw0X4jmuQQAUmRIGLhCRSIAdsbP2SRIXh6hscDNMAIdCzpQmtnEEAz9rrOtUlxk1jBQWHbWUvO_ig/s1600/1967+Tommy+Helms+%2528f%2529.jpg[/FIMG] [FIMG=333]https://live.staticflickr.com/1738/40733950160_67123a676e_b.jpg[/FIMG]

Oh my god! Such grand talk after all of 20 at-bats. It's probably the terrible quality of baseball prospects. Or maybe that the KC Chiefs haven't started a season with four straight losses since god knows when. Siri'll probably bat .050 for the rest of his life. I can tell because he already had 20 at-bats this season.

Yeah. Like the Marlins are gonna trade Alcantra to a division rival.

Screw Alcantra. The Mets are, hopefully, hoarding their prospects for Paul Skenes. If that guy's still a Pirate in 2028, it'll be a miracle.

Bleacher creatures is too kind a description of them. Later Gimme a break. This is fun. Especially to a Mets fan.