batmagadanleadoff

Livan Hernandez [FIMG=333]https://ca-times.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/6ee051f/2147483647/strip/true/crop/410x512+0+0/resize/840x1049!/format/webp/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcalifornia-times-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F63%2Fe1%2F23ff6e655108261de454189def69%2Fsdut-new-york-mets-livan-hernandez-20160828-002[/FIMG]

6 is the same argument as "clutch". Slumps only exist in the past, they don't come to the plate (unless you get in your own head, but that's a different argument) with you the same way 3 heads in a row on a coin don't mean you're likely to flip a head again. Slumps happen. Slumps are more than bad luck and they're not necessarily a collection of random bad at-bats strung together in a streak, although they could be. At-bats aren't anything like coin flips. A balanced coin should behave the same way on every flip. A coin that comes up heads 50 times straight still has a 50-50 chance of coming up heads on the 51st flip. It's not likelier to come up tails on the 51st flip. It isn't "due" for tails, even though many people incorrectly think so. At-bats are totally different. A player could lose his mechanics, for example, or play for a while with a minor injury, not serious enough to sideline him, but severe enough to compromise his mechanics. I could go on with examples.

I don't recognize the name but that face is definitely familiar.

I'm a little confused. I like the idea that statues are the new retired numbers. That's a novel yet interesting thought. Where I'm mixed up is the part about the Mets Hall of Fame. Is inclusion there also analogous with a Met having his number retired? Because it's way easier for a Met to get into the Mets Hall than to have his number retired. And way easier to get your number retired than to get a statue. So if I'm reading this correctly, and I many not be, I don't see how the Mets HOF is the equivalent of a Mets statue.

[FIMG=500]https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/52235247330_3286ef5a0d_h.jpg[/FIMG]

Yeah. I love Mushnick. And at the same time, I get all the criticism.

=seawolf17 post_id=100501 time=1658422835 user_id=91] =batmagadanleadoff post_id=100500 time=1658422750 user_id=68] =seawolf17 post_id=100498 time=1658422566 user_id=91] I hadn't realized that Orosco and Buckner were linked from day one. Neat.

Benjamin Grimm wrote: I was a little weirded out by how frequently Joe McDonald referred to Orosco as "the boy". Yeah, I just finished reading the Orosco piece and that's what struck me about the article more than anything else. I was still thinking about that even for a few seconds after I finished reading the article.

=seawolf17 post_id=100498 time=1658422566 user_id=91] I hadn't realized that Orosco and Buckner were linked from day one. Neat.

Hawkins passed away last year. From RIP Baseball: Excerpt: Hawkins was sold to the Mets at the end of the 1962 season. The Mets returned him to Cleveland before the end of the 1963 training camp, despite the fact that he had thrown very well. He pitched with the Indians' AAA teams before retiring after the 1964 season, at the age of 28. He reportedly injured his arm while throwing a snowball in 1961, and he was never able to recover his old form after that. https://ripbaseball.com/2021/03/04/obituary-wynn-hawkins-1936-2021/https://ripbaseball.com/2021/03/04/obituary-wynn-hawkins-1936-2021/ I wouldn't be surprised if Hawkins was included in the first version of the Mets '63 yearbook. My copy of that yearbook is a revised edition so I won't even bother to track it down to take a look.

I have no idea what deGrom's thinking. Maybe he simply wants to make as much money as he possibly can. Maybe he's a country boy at heart and deep down, prefers not to play in a city as enormous as NYC. Maybe he'd prefer to play closer to home. Not that the Marlins could afford deGrom. But maybe the Rays? Or, shudder, the Braves? I have no idea. I'm just spitballin' a little bit.

Wynn Hawkins [FIMG=311]https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/52229916935_4c57f3f08d_t.jpg[/FIMG]

[FIMG=228]https://forums.ootpdevelopments.com/attachment.php?s=aee265a7dc0aea92b7b3a89502f2c930&attachmentid=715433&stc=1&d=1595596029[/FIMG] Hawkins participated in the Mets '63 Spring Training and was even included in the Mets set of team issued press photos for that season. I can't find an image of that press photo on the web right now but I know that that photo exists because I own a copy.

A coupl'a other ghost Mets, Topps style:

The Typewriter Chewing Gum 2022 total Mets set is now available at a store near you. And what a set it is. We anticipate that with future updates, it might turn out to be the largest TCG Mets set ever. The set will include base cards for every player, even the fringiest Mets: [FIMG=533]https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/52235692080_67a656c9e6_h.jpg[/FIMG] ...base card variations: [FIMG=533]https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/52227784112_69a177ea5a_h.jpg[/FIMG] ...teammate cards: [FIMG=533]https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/52228787811_46f64acb59_h.jpg[/FIMG] ...MTV cards, an exciting subset that will take collectors back to the glorious days of pop music video (look for the MTV logo on these cards): [FIMG=533]https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/52228794503_43168f0c9e_h.jpg[/FIMG] ...Brogna Boys cards (dead Brogna Boys, too): [FIMG=355]https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/52229269840_047f0f2877_h.jpg[/FIMG] ...old friends: [FIMG=533]https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/52229636533_5f07a677ef_h.jpg[/FIMG] ...and a chance to acquire a unique one of a kind trading card (POP. - 1). But you'll need to score our Willy Wonka style golden ticket first, for a chance to claim this unique card, featuring Led Zeppelin. We've sprinkled several golden tickets in our card packs. (Odds: 1 in every 15,000 packs). The first collector to mail a golden ticket to our offices will win the unique trading card: [FIMG=533]https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/52229270840_341abdbf9e_h.jpg[/FIMG] And many other surprises and features. Like digging into our fascination with Chicago's corporate logo style album covers. And the Brandon Nimmo walls of 45RPM history. Plus Max Scherzer gets assigned to the Andy Warhol rock and roll desk. It's all happening. Now!

=Ceetar post_id=100353 time=1658283749 user_id=102] That's fine. Gimme Lindor every time.

Edgy MD wrote: I like how both secondbasemen are 2020 Mets. That's how you see it. What I'm seeing is that Gimenez is an all-star and Lindor ain't.

Dale Murphy.

Moneyball is on tomorrow at 8PM on AMC, if anyone's interested.

Edgy MD wrote: There isn't a total lack of objective numerical evidence. Of course there isn't. There isn't definitive proof, but that's not the same thing. We've been down this road. Nor is your position itself presented with objective numerical evidence, but conditional arguments/hypothetical syllogisms. So, no, it's not a closed question. That doesn't mean you're right or wrong, but we're applying different standards to our imagined opponents than we are to ourselves. I wasn't going for the mathematical angle, but I'd like to see whatever objective numerical evidence there is for clutch hitting. That they've been playing baseball for almost 200 years and we have to squint at supposed evidence of clutch hitting and hold it up just so to the light to maybe see a glimmer of something that nobody, not even the Ph.D's in math agree on, says enough for me. Anyways, I was going for the logic, or illogic logic of it all. Not the numbers. The idea that some players have these magic powers that they could turn on at will like some light switch to hit way better than they ordinarily do, powers that they choose to use only sometimes, maybe 10 or 20 times a year, instead of all of the time is just bonkers and defies all common sense. It's like believing in god. There's not a shred of evidence to support it. It defies every known principle of science and physics. Objectively, it's batshit crazy and makes no more sense, realistically, than Jack and the Beanstalk or the Three Little Pigs. The best defense for the crazy idea, the only defense, really, is that others can't prove that there is no god. Of course, by that logic, one can claim anything. Anything! Flying elephants? Why not? Just because nobody's seen a flying elephant doesn't mean they don't exist because how do you know that the flying elephants can't make themselves invisible like Claude Rains? Flying elephants work in mysterious ways. Enough with the clutch hitting. At some point, people just have to face facts instead of clinging to myths and old wive's tales. But maybe it's our nature to believe these nutty things. We like to make order out of things, even when there isn't any. We can't accept the idea of randomness and luck controlling our lives to such a great extent. So we make up crazy shit to explain this stuff.

I think clutch hitting, as a skill, is like those old tales passed down from hundreds of years ago from people who lived by candlelight because electricity didn't exist and when they wanted to have chicken dinner, had to go out and hunt down and catch their own chickens and then kill and clean them themselves by hand because there were no Kentucky Fried Chickens around. And we live our lives according to what these primitive bastards who knew practically nothing abut the world they lived in believed, because we're barbaric primitive bastards ourselves, but fool ourselves into thinking otherwise because we have air conditioning. Put aside for a second,the total lack of objective numerical evidence for clutch hitting. If clutch hitting were a separate and distinct skill, totally independent of regular hitting, we'd have a list of hundreds, if not thousands of clutch hitters, backed up by the math, because they've been playing baseball and keeping meticulous detailed records of the sport since practically the Civil War. But the real reason clutch hitting doesn't exist is because clutch hitting itself makes no sense. It's a ridiculous absurdity. Me, personally, I dismissed the idea of clutch hitting by the time I was in Junior High School. Because if clutch hitting existed --- if there really were batters that could truly elevate their performances in clutch situations, however clutch is defined --- then those batters would "clutch up" all of the time, not just in "clutch" situations. The 25 HR's a year hitter who could supposedly hit in the clutch at will would want to hit 40 HRs instead if 25. Or 70. The .330 clutch hitter would want to hit .400. Or .600. And so this extraordinary but mythical clutch hitting skill would be used in every at bat, not just in clutch situations. Besides, every hit is a clutch hit. So, for example, when three straight hitters come up with two outs and nobody on base and each of those batters single, generating a run for their team, each of those singles was clutch. The first batter in that sequence also gets credit for a run scored, the last batter -- an RBI. The middle batter gets neither a run nor an RBI. But his single was just as crucial to the run producing sequence. Every single in that chain was the proverbial weak link in the chain because take away any of those singles, and the whole chain collapses -- the run never happens. The point being that it's just as important to get a hit with nobody on base as it is with a runner in scoring position. So the whole concept of clutch hitting is flawed as well.

Cohen's one of the dozen or so wealthiest guys in the world. He has more money than Arab oil sheikhs. He's sui generis and I strongly suspect that the regular rules don't apply to him. And by regular rules, I'm talking about the regular rules for billionaires. Cohen might be playing a different game. But we'll see. Fifty million dollars to Cohen is like pizza pie money to regular people. As far as the value of players, they go up every year. Every year, last season's record breaking salaries are shattered. I agree with smg. In fact, the first thing I thought of when I heard about Soto's contract situation, was that there's no way the Nats are trading him within their division, but if they did, it'd be a given that the Mets would have to include Alvarez.

Ryota Igarashi I'd have eventually come up with the others but not this dude. Igarashi's fresh in my head because I've been looking at these for the past two weeks or so. [FIMG=555]https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/52217758917_081b44e1c4_h.jpg[/FIMG]

Jeff Innis [FIMG=500]https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/52218663881_aeae78933b_h.jpg[/FIMG] Ryota Igarashi

Jeff Innis [FIMG=500]https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/52218663881_aeae78933b_h.jpg[/FIMG]