batmagadanleadoff

I made this in the 8th inning. I'm not re-doing it. Consider it a gift to all you alternate universers. [fimg=366:hvdbsnwz]https://farm6.staticflickr.com/5699/22511862590_1debbecf25_o.jpg[/fimg:hvdbsnwz]

I feel bad for any Mets fans that hadda go to sleep around the 8th inning.

Maybe now, Jeff Wilpon'll order Sandy to sign J.J. Putz for 2016.

More Great. Wade Davis and down by five in extras. It'd take these Mets two months to score five on Davis.

I hope this inning never ends. I'd like to see the lead runner steal home.

Enough with the relievers criticism. Three hits in 12 innings. Three hits in 12 innings.

You know who's got a nice scoreboard? The Royals.

What an ugly scoreboard, Fred.

Great. A two-strike battle. Because it's not just the broken bats and the bleeders that killed us. They wait for two strikes, having been totally over-matched on the prior pitches.

I don't know if the Royals are gonna score this runner on third with one out but I'd have little confidence if it was the Mets offense in this situation.

Whew. When I saw that bat shatter, I figgered we were in deep shit.

This is great. (Not) Because the Royals have about five innings worth of star reliever power in their tank.

I bet this is what it felt like to root for the '69 Orioles in the WS.

I never saw anything like this. Another productive shattered bat at bat. It doesn't matter to them. The pitch could've broken his bat and his hand and still something good woulda happened for the Royals.

Frayed Knot wrote: batmagadanleadoff wrote: And I'm more than tired from reading about the great fucking Royals, because if they were as great as everyone's making them out to be, if they were truly so much better than the Mets, they would've already swept the damn thing and outscored the Mets by 20. I'll take the Mets HR power any day of the week over a team that has to string together a half a dozen unbelievable you'll never see that again for the rest of your life plays just to score two or three runs. The thing is, there IS a legitimate discussion to be had about whether KC's method of building a team through high-contact / low-K / speed & defense is a good 'Moneyball' style of under-valued approach in this day where power is king and damn the strikeouts.... Definitely. So long as that discussion's not disproportionately based on what's happened in just these past four WS games. Which brings up another big peeve of mine that I raise every year around this time. Why can't the networks show the players' regular season stats? And when they do, why is it so supertiny? Why do they think that the 20 or 30 AB's these players accumulated in the post-season mean more than a full regular season's worth? Who are they catering to when they decide on the graphics? The casual fan who probably doesn't watch one entire regular season game from first to last pitch?

Frayed Knot wrote: Be nice if the bats woke up too. Especially since, for all the talk about KC's contact rates and aggressive approach that exploits every chance they get, this 'talent' of theirs still just netted them runs at a rate barely above league average over the course of the season. It's actually their pitching which ranked much closer to the league leading levels (more due to the pen than the starters but we're not exactly busting up their starters either). Bottom line: it would be nice if the offense tonight consisted of more than just two solo HRs and a combination passed ball/brain fart by Rios out in RF. I know what you mean. At the risk of overanalyzing just four WS games, and with the usual disclaimers and qualifiers about short series, randomness, small sample sizes and blah blah blah -- each team won one decisive game, a blow-out essentially -- while the Royals won the two squeakers. Skill? Close calls? Luck? Anybody's game? I'll take mostly all of the above except for skill when it comes to those two close games. The Royals won those two games on a collection of dinks and dunks and nicks and broken bat singles. The key play so far, Murphy's error, where Hosmer hit a slow squib, a mistake, a batted ball that he had no intention of hitting and no intention of hitting it where it went -- to the infield lip. And on a tough pitch from Familia. Hosmer's series turning shot was a fucking accident and there's no doubt that at the precise micorfraction of an instant that Hosmer hit that ball, he wished that he could take it back. It's luck. And I'm more than tired from reading about the great fucking Royals, because if they were as great as everyone's making them out to be, if they were truly so much better than the Mets, they would've already swept the damn thing and outscored the Mets by 20. I'll take the Mets HR power any day of the week over a team that has to string together a half a dozen unbelievable you'll never see that again for the rest of your life plays just to score two or three runs.

PITCHING MATCHUP: Royals RH Edinson Volquez (1-2, 4.37 ERA) vs. Mets RH Matt Harvey (2-0, 3.38) Harvey gave up three runs and five hits over six innings in Game 1. He didn't throw his usual amount of fastballs as he dissected how to handle Kansas City's lineup. "I felt like I didn't really have the greatest control with my fastball and greatest life," Harvey explained at Saturday's press conference. "So with a team who's known to hit the fastball well, I think when you lose a little bit of confidence in that, you kind of have to try to pitch a little bit differently." Is Harvey capable of intentionally pulling his punches -- purposely holding back on his fast ball because he's secretly torn over this innings limit situation -- and so he'll pitch without pitching?

Perfect time for the Mets young guns to make their bones by shutting down KC the rest of the way to win three straight elimination games.

A Mets Fan Tries To Control A Cruel And Random Universe 9:41 AM By Chadwick Matlin Warning: This post was written by a Mets fan. When Daniel Murphy let a ball bounce beneath his glove in the eighth inning of Game 4 of the World Series, I threw my Mets hat to the ground. It was ostensibly the pivotal moment in a 5-3 Royals win, the kind of play that reminded me why other sports have fouls but baseball has errors. We could sit here together and dwell on all the Mets errors: We could wonder how Jeurys Familia, an all-star closer, blew five saves in 48 opportunities during the regular season, but has blown two in two opportunities during the World Series. We could plumb the depths of Yoenis Cespedes�s above-average defensive metrics, and make the case that to measure Cespedes�s true defensive capacity we need a new metric that somehow quantifies a fielder�s nonchalance.1 And we could spend hours trying to understand Terry Collins�s faith in an eighth-inning set-up man who is allowing a .835 OPS to opposing batters in the postseason. (It seems as though I may spend the next several years doing that.) But instead I want to tell you about my hat. If you read FiveThirtyEight a lot, you know that we�re puritanical about baseball�s playoffs being a crapshoot. They�re a series of games that may or may not be a reflection of a team�s actual quality. Intellectually, I know the same rules of randomness that apply to a baseball also apply to what I wear to watch a game. But the World Series is not a time for intellect. On July 31, the day Cespedes was traded to the Mets, I bought a Minnesota Twins hat at Target Field in Minneapolis. It was a tourist�s purchase � I was in Minnesota for a couple of ballgames with some friends. But the hat started to mean something more. That weekend, the Mets swept the Washington Nationals to tie for first place in the NL East. So I kept wearing the hat. And the Mets kept winning. The Mets went 37-22 to close out the season, and won the NL East despite a 23 percent chance of doing so when I bought the hat. (The rational readers among you will note that they also went 37-22 to close out the season after Cespedes joined the team, but, again, this is not a rational story.) Soon, the Twins hat had replaced my Mets hat. My Mets friends texted me and asked me to wear it when they were feeling nervous about a game. I nearly forgot it on a plane, and felt the Mets season slipping away until I stormed back to retrieve it. At the start of the playoffs, I went on a poorly timed vacation to India, and brought the Twins hat to ensure the Mets advanced. I returned to the U.S. in time for the World Series, and there was no question I�d wear the Twins hat into the heart of a Mets bar for Game 1. Fourteen innings later, the hat wasn�t enough. The Mets lost 5-4. So I put on something different. I went to Game 3 in Citi Field and wore a hat that spelled out M-E-T-S. I had worn it to every Mets home game I attended this year. That Mets hat has its own history, with a winning percentage of about .550 this season, if I recall correctly. Good, but not Twins hat good. Yet the Mets won Game 3 9-3. And so, before Game 4, I faced the same choice any manager does: Do I ride what�s hot, or stick with the steady performer? I looked into the archives of Baseball Prospectus, but couldn�t find any research on whether there�s such a thing as a hot-hand effect in fans� attire. I was adrift with nothing but my own small sample sizes. Saturday, I put on the Mets hat. By the end of the night, it had regressed to its mean. It couldn�t stop a Royals team that had a .301 BABIP in the regular season from having a BABIP of .346 in Game 4 (and that doesn�t even count the ball that skittered beneath Murphy�s glove). It couldn�t make the Mets win. It couldn�t get Terry Collins to bring in his best bullpen pitcher for a six-out save with nobody on, rather than a five-out save with two runners on base. It couldn�t get Cespedes to stay closer to first base in the final moments. A hat with a .550 winning percentage could never do that. But a Twins hat with a .627 winning percentage? We�ll find out during Game 5. http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/world-series-game-4-recap-mets/

Check your quote boxes. I don't recall writing that.

PiggiesTomatoes wrote: This wouldn't be the first time we've won three in a row. One game at a time. Every time I look at your avatar, I think it's Roger Sterling in a Mets uniform. Rog'd be about 105 years old today.

Zvon wrote: Zvon wrote: [fimg=384]https://farm1.staticflickr.com/729/22038384153_f54d20798f_o.jpg[/fimg] Excellent. The mood of this game changed as dramatically and as suddenly as that of a baby. [fimg=388]https://farm1.staticflickr.com/624/22039175073_4f9f763233_o.jpg[/fimg] Wow. The one that didn't go to press. If I was the publisher of a real newspaper, I'd sent that Mike/Steven version to press, anyways.

Zvon wrote: batmagadanleadoff wrote: [fimg=384]https://farm1.staticflickr.com/729/22038384153_f54d20798f_o.jpg[/fimg] Excellent. The mood of this game changed as dramatically and as suddenly as that of a baby. [fimg=388]https://farm1.staticflickr.com/624/22039175073_4f9f763233_o.jpg[/fimg]

[fimg=384:hzsx6y77]https://farm1.staticflickr.com/729/22038384153_f54d20798f_o.jpg[/fimg:hzsx6y77]

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