batmagadanleadoff

Yeah, right. Like this team's gonna score a run off Kershaw to tie this game. It'll take them three games to score one run off of him.

[youtube:2zgmaobj]3Gh0zFVc6S8[/youtube:2zgmaobj]

Ceetar wrote: 57-34 to get to 88 wins isn't absurd,.... I think it is. It's a 100 win pace over a full season.

New York Mets outfielder Brandon Nimmo now has enough plate appearances to qualify among league leaders and he’s atop numerous categories in the National League. The left-handed hitting Nimmo leads the NL in slugging percentage (.585), isolated slugging (.301), wRC+ (172) and wOBA (.421). It’s amazing to see him slugging at a higher rate than guys like Freddie Freeman, Paul Goldschmidt, Nolan Arenado and Kris Bryant. That’s not the only leaderboard littered with the name Nimmo, he’s also among the best players in the majors for many of the key offensive categories. His 172 wRC+ ranks third below only Mike Trout (206) and Mookie Betts (196). Despite only 221 plate appearances, the 25-year-old ranks 14th among position major league position players with his 2.7 fWAR and that puts him fourth among NL hitters. Nimmo is one of three major league players, along with Red Sox outfielder Andrew Benintendi and Cubs infielder Javier Baez that have at least five triples, nine doubles, 10 home runs and five stolen bases. https://metsmerizedonline.com/2018/06/now-qualified-nimmo-leads-national-league-in-slugging.html/

Edgy MD wrote: Maybe, but my understanding is that it doesn't provide enough resistance to effectively create the break of curveball pitchers. You're right. He's wrong. Thin air reduces spin rate, which relies on friction. Coors Field particularly diminishes the effectiveness of curves and stinkers. In fact, Rox reliever Chad Bettis is finding success this year with an extremely low spin rate changeup.

Edgy MD wrote: Forgetting about the fact that this is a pitcher struggling with his control, if he takes the and it's a strike right down the pipe his On-Base-Percentage going forward from there is still .387. But put that ball in play, and his OBP (and batting average) is .338. I'll bet it's a lot higher in Denver.

I'm not so sure the Mets should tear it down. They seem to be in a tough place: not good enough to compete for first place, but probably not as bad as their recent abominable play. They're certainly not as bad as the Cubs and Astros were when they tore it down. On the other hand, Bruce, Cabrera Frazier and Cespedes are likelier to get worse rather than better -- they've all reached their decline years or are about to. That's half the lineup. And the Mets either can't or won't get an impact free agent to bolster their youngsters. Which they'll surely need to compete for the division unless you wanna hope for the sucker's game where everybody improves and everybody plays to their ceilings and nobody backslides.

I wonder if the Mets sudden willingness to trade deGrom or Syndergaard is based mainly on the owners' cheapness and reluctance to have to pay these guys what it would likely take to keep them?

Goofball? Okily-dokily, I guess. Gosh.

The Bookend phenomenon holds for the third straight game, as the Mets were 12-2 over their first 14 games and are 2-12 over their last 14 games.

... because the Mets, who were once 10 games over .500, are now 10 games under .500. (And closer to the last place Marlins than to the third place Phillies).

I worry that the Marlins won't catch the Mets and the Mets don't get to draft #1 overall next year.

Centerfield wrote: The team’s approach to the draft is weirdly recursive and predictable for something that has not worked very well, but it probably reflects organizational malaise and lassitude more than it does a meddling owner. Still, a half decade of near-identical failures, especially in early rounds, have kept the team from building the young depth necessary for sustained success. I don't really understand the criticism here. Is it that the Mets are predictable? As far as I can tell I don't see any pattern in their draft picks. I just think they haven't picked all that well. They're predictable because, predictably, they draft lotsa busts every year.

... so aptly named because the Mets are 1-11 over their last 12 games.

Zvon wrote: The hill to climb becomes steeper. [fimg=300]https://scontent-iad3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/35292327_1774935672565303_1952090063693152256_n.jpg?_nc_cat=0&oh=e719326f0a6e498b14365b901849c9d5&oe=5BA43442[/fimg] Is that for Peralta's or Lamb's homer?

Have some pity on Sandy, all you Alderson bashers.

Got more than 40 minutes? Two on the Wilpons: one, a thinkpiece https://deadspin.com/the-mets-screwed-up-a-chance-at-greatness-because-they-1826249290 the other a sprawling 42 minute read chronicling the entire history of Wilpon related fuckery. https://goodfundies.com/a-complete-history-of-media-reports-chronicling-the-wilpons-meddling-in-new-york-mets-baseball-6c0055acaa2 You probably do not need to be a baseball fan to know that it is harder to build a winning roster when it’s unclear how much you can spend on it, or that it is unhelpful when professional baseball decision-makers can’t make even minor personnel decisions without the input of some crabby Long Island real estate scion ....

If only Cespedes could go on another Babe Ruth spree. And we still had the Daniel Murphy of the second half of 2015. And Matt Harvey and Steven Matz pitching like all stars. And Familia pitching like the best reliever in all of baseball. Then we could win more games than we're likely to win.

Ceetar wrote: smg58 wrote: Maybe that's what it will take to hit rock bottom. 2015 Mets were 31-28 after Heston's no hitter. 59-44 the rest of the way. 2015 Mets were 89-72 after Scherzer's no-hitter. went 1-0 the rest of the way. And the 1927 Yankees also won a lot of games. You forgot about the 1927 Yankees.

HahnSolo wrote: batmagadanleadoff wrote: Anybody ever win the Cy Young award with a losing record? A good argument could have been made for Nolan Ryan 1987. 8-16 record, BUT... led the league in ERA, ERA+, Strikeouts, hits per 9, Ks per 9, and K-BB ratio. He finished fifth. That's exactly who I was thinking of when I wrote that post -- Ryan87.

Anybody ever win the Cy Young award with a losing record?

Centerfield wrote: Agreed that Dom Smith's numbers are bad, but it's still a relatively small sample size. 219 ABs. In 2017, Brandon Nimmo had a .732 OPS in LV, with a terrible average, and only 4 HR's. So there's precedent for a hitter turning it on after they arrive at the show. Nimmo, like Smith, was much better in the year before. .905 for Smith, .964 for Nimmo. So hopefully Dom gets the bump like Nimmo did. Hopefully. Sure. I didn't make any comments about Smith's future., just that he sucked in Vegas. I just disagree with the idea that Smith was sent down and asked to hit in a way that he'd never hit once back in the majors. That idea, to me, is pure rationalization. Also, there are scouting reports that Smith's hitting looked awful in Vegas, and that specifically he wasn't driving the ball or hitting it hard.

smg58 wrote: Ceetar wrote: I said it in the Gonzalez thread but here as well, I think there's a reasonable chance that the Mets specifically told Smith to work on his plate discipline. So while the overall offensive numbers aren't great, the BB% is. (11.3% in the minors, would be 43rd of 161 or so in the majors) And with the juiced ball in the majors the SLG difference between the PCL and the MLB isn't that stark. So come up, wait for your pitch, and mash it. I guess that's the next step in the development, but if he can pull of even a .350/.400 obp/slg it'll be a huge boost to the offense over Gonzalez, and will even compensate if we lose Cabrera. It's not a bad thing to work on, for sure, but I still think he's not 100%. Like I said in the other thread, it would be ideal if he, Bruce, and Conforto could rotate in two spots (or perhaps only one against lefties) until one or more of them heal enough and start feeling it at the plate. But the Cespedes setback makes that hard. Smith's Vegas numbers are bad. Unadjusted. When you adjust for superior major league pitching and for going from a mile high hitting paradise to a pitcher's park, they're even worse than bad. But his walks are up. To rationalize his bad numbers by speculating that Smith was sent down to work on his walks at the expense of everything else is about as contrived a stretch of the imagination as I've heard. The Mets would be asking Smith to develop more bad hitting habits than I can list to "get walks and to hell with everything else". No organization, not even the colossally stupid Mets could be that dumb. I hope.

Edgy MD wrote: I'm not interested in hearing how you're singled out again. Please don't. Oh please yourself. Whaddya, suddenly have amnesia In the head? You don't single me out? You suspended me for posting about the way Travis d'arnaud cocks his wrists which was especially galling since I was directly responding to your own post about d'arnaud's wrist-cock technique. I'm sure if I published a book about the Mets, you'd be giving me BOC's every time I write a wrist-cock post. You don't single me out. Crazy talk.

What's not true? That the Dodgers tend to have baseball's highest payroll -- the source of your original criticism? Of course it's true and I'm right. That LA is a smaller market than NYC? Of course I'm right again. That yet again I hijack threads. Don't know what you're talking about other than that you've gone farther off thread with this hijack talk than anyone else in this thread. Oh, and that when it's me involved, you just have to win at all costs, even if you have to contrive something as contrived as what you just contrived. My post is a natural response to Ceetar's post, which was an on topic response to my on topic post. Nobody's hijacking anything. This is how discussions in good faith flow. You just have to win these conversations against me no matter what. You'll probably spend the next two hours looking for that one study like a needle in a haystack that claims LA is the bigger market.