batmagadanleadoff

Indian Week preview.

It's Indian week. So bump.

I agree. I think Sandy's doing a heckuva job, and it really sunk in right after the Mets recent trade with the Pirates. Of course, there's no guarantee that d'Arnaud and Black, et. al. will ever pan out. And Wheeler is no less subject to the typical perils that face a developing pitcher just because Harvey went down. But it's the process that matters, not the results.

Jeez, this might cost the Mets the pennant.

batmagadanleadoff wrote: So what's Wright gonna do if it turns out that the FO was full of shit? Test the free agent market? Ceetar wrote: Continue to be a perennial MVP candidate and help the teams win ballgames I suspect. Shouldn't Wright be trying to do that anyways, whether or not the FO is full of shit?

Gwreck wrote: batmagadanleadoff wrote: So what's Wright gonna do if it turns out that the FO was full of shit? Test the free agent market? Instead of the rhetorical, what about the actual issue? What are your thoughts about Wright making this sort of public statement? Seems like a good thing, no? I don't think so. If Wright suspects that the FO intends to renege on their promises to improve the club, he should confront them privately. If the owners have decided to keep the payroll where it is, more or less, then a public shaming probably won't change things. They're masters of the universe with the massive egos to match their social standing and they've read it all, by now. Besides, this season's not even over yet. The time for Wright to air out his complaints would be when it's entirely clear that the FO didn't try to improve the club to the extent that they promised they would.

Wright won�t forget Mets� promise to spend By MIKE VACCARO Last Updated: 2:39 AM, August 30, 2013 Posted: 12:46 AM, August 30, 2013 excerpt: And the clock that really matters again is this one: the one belonging to David Wright, who has already seen five full seasons of his prime get tossed into a paper shredder. There was a time when we believed � when Wright himself had to believe � he would be the Mets� version of Derek Jeter, the foundation for teams that would be regular autumnal players. For three years � 2006, �07, �08 � that is exactly how it played out, even if each year ended in more gut-wrenching fashion than the one before. And for the last five? Well, heartbreak has probably never sounded so seductive. �He knows we�re close,� Mets manager Terry Collins said about Wright, with whom he has developed a very close professional relationship. �And he�s excited about it.� That remains the company line, and has to be, because the Mets made Wright certain promises besides handing him a bucket of money last winter when he agreed to stay aboard, and that included insight into Sandy Alderson�s plan to drag the Mets back to relevance by next year. And Wright � smartly, it says here � wasn�t shy about reminding the Mets about that pledge yesterday. �With the money we have coming off the books this year, I expect us to go out there and make this team better whether it�s through free agency, whether it�s through trades,� Wright said yesterday, before hopping a plane to continue rehabbing his balky hammy in Port St. Lucie, Fla. �I still believe in the vision that Sandy has and although for the time being this looks like a step backwards it gives other young pitchers opportunities to kind of step up and show what they have for the rest of this year. And hopefully Matt�s back next year but if not, I�m still confident in the plan.� That isn�t subtle, and it serves Wright well not to be even a little subtle. A captain�s job description doesn�t include player acquisition � that�s still Alderson�s purview, and Fred Wilpon�s � but it is right for Wright to remind his bosses he agreed to an extended tour of purgatory because he was also promised a glimpse of heaven. http://www.nypost.com/p/sports/mets/wright_won_forget_mets_promise_to_crjeTz5lEJ7vQLvCReEU6I _______________________ So what's Wright gonna do if it turns out that the FO was full of shit? Test the free agent market?

Mets great Tom Seaver reacts to Matt Harvey's injury by saying today's pitchers are being babied With that, the Mets� greatest pitcher, with three Cy Young Awards and 311 victories, who averaged 265 innings his first 13 years in the big leagues, cited the examples of all his Hall of Fame pitching cohorts in the �60s and �70s as guys who got to Cooperstown, without incident, because they just pitched. Mets legend Tom Seaver says pitchers of his generation just went out and pitched. When word of Matt Harvey�s partially torn ulnar collateral ligament reached the mountaintop in the Calistoga, Calif., wine country the other day, the still one-and-only Mets �Franchise� shook his head and let out a sigh. �That�s all I could do,� Tom Seaver said of the player touted to be the next �Franchise.� �Naturally, I felt terrible for the kid. He�s got such a bright future. But at the same time, all I could think of was how it just goes to show how all this babying of pitchers � pitch counts and innings limits � is a bunch of nonsense. You can�t predict these things, and there�s really not a whole lot you can do to prevent them other than refining your mechanics as (�60s and �70s Mets pitching coach) Rube (Walker) did with us. But one way I know doesn�t do anything to prevent them is babying these kids like they do.� With that, the Mets� greatest pitcher, with three Cy Young Awards and 311 victories, who averaged 265 innings his first 13 years in the big leagues, cited the examples of all his Hall of Fame pitching cohorts in the �60s and �70s � Juan Marichal, Steve Carlton, Ferguson Jenkins, Jim Palmer, even Warren Spahn, who was still logging nearly 260 innings in 1963 when he was 42 � as guys who got to Cooperstown, without incident, because they just pitched. �Take a look at all of them, Marichal, Jenkins, Spahn, what do you think made them successful?� Seaver asked. �They conditioned their arms by pitching more, not less, starting from when they signed their first contract. Jenkins threw 300 or more innings half a dozen (actually five) times. Same with Palmer, Carlton and Marichal. I keep going back to that (July 2, 1963) Marichal-Spahn game when they both pitched 16 innings and threw almost 500 pitches between them. �Neither one of them had any adverse aftereffects from it.� RELATED: WRIGHT LOOKS TO RETURN THIS YEAR, SET COURSE FOR '14 By contrast, as Seaver noted, so many of today�s top young pitchers � Washington�s Stephen Strasburg and Jordan Zimmermann, the Blue Jays� Kyle Drabek, the Orioles� Dylan Bundy, the Twins� Scott Baker, the Braves� Brandon Beachy and the Yankees� Joba Chamberlain and Manny Banuelos, to name just a few prime products of the modern pitch-count, innings-limit era � ended up blowing out their elbows anyway and getting Tommy John surgery. The problem, said Seaver, is that pitchers today are treated like robots, with too much emphasis on how many pitches they might have in their arms instead of weighing the determination and competitive spirit they have in their minds and hearts. �These kids today, they want to be men, they want to be foxhole guys, but they�re not being allowed to do that,� Seaver said. �Imagine if these computer geeks who are running baseball now were allowed to run a war? They�d be telling our soldiers: �That�s enough. You�ve fired too many bullets from your rifle this week!� � he old �Franchise� was really getting worked up now as he spoke by phone from his vineyard atop Diamond Mountain in Calistoga. He acknowledged that in Harvey�s case, the Mets didn�t go overboard in the babying and did let him be �the man� this year, going deep into games. (�They did all the right things with him. It�s nobody�s fault this happened. It just did.�) But he hopes this will not scare the Mets into putting more stringent innings limits on their other top pitching prospects, Noah Syndergaard and Rafael Montero. �There is no set numerical value you can put on a pitcher,� Seaver said. �They�re all different. �What�s important is to get into the pitcher's head, to know what he�s made of. �I guarantee most of these pitchers today would like to realize their full potential and pitch more. Unfortunately, this is what the game has come to and sadly there�s no turning back.� Another loud sigh could be heard at the other end of the phone. So how, he was asked, does one explain how Harvey, who certainly has the competitive heart and bulldog approach Seaver and all the others had back in the �60s and �70s, not to mention the good mechanics Walker emphasized, still got hurt? �It�s gotta be genetic,� Seaver said. �He�s a great competitor and the Mets let him pitch to his potential. �Look, I don�t blame these organizations for what they�re doing with pitchers. There�s just too much damn money in the game now. �But it�s the wrong approach. I can only speak from experience.� Some 4,783 innings of it. http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/baseball/mets/madden-seaver-pitching-fit-young-arms-babied-article-1.1441192

LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr wrote: Not anymore it don't, fella. (Hence, the Astros carrying a DH, and the interleague-every-day thing.) Plus, it was the NL with the extra team. So the waiver system was unfair to AL teams. Can you blame a fella for not thinking of the Astros as an AL team?

batmagadanleadoff wrote: batmagadanleadoff wrote: He must have cleared waivers, allowing the deal to be finalized now. Most likely. Teams have 48 hours to put in a waiver claim from the time the player is waived. Black was probably put on waivers during negotiations between the Mets and the Pirates, which probably began two days ago. I suppose that the Mets were also allowed to put in a claim for the waived Black. Because of the Mets poor W-L record, there were only a few teams that had priority over the Mets to block their claim. This got me to just now realize an inherent unfairness in MLB's waiver claim system. If more than one team puts in a claim for a waived player, claim priority is determined as follows: The claiming team with the worst record in the same league as the waiving team is awarded the claim. If no team from the same league as the waiving team claims the waived player, then the claim is awarded to the claiming team with the worst record in the other league. This is unfair to the National League because the AL has two more teams than the NL does.

batmagadanleadoff wrote: smg58 wrote: He must have cleared waivers, allowing the deal to be finalized now. Most likely. Teams have 48 hours to put in a waiver claim from the time the player is waived. Black was probably put on waivers during negotiations between the Mets and the Pirates, which probably began two days ago. I suppose that the Mets were also allowed to put in a claim for the waived Black. Because of the Mets poor W-L record, there were only a few teams that had priority over the Mets to block their claim.

smg58 wrote: He must have cleared waivers, allowing the deal to be finalized now. Most likely. Teams have 48 hours to put in a waiver claim from the time the player is waived. Black was probably put on waivers during negotiations between the Mets and the Pirates, which probably began two days ago.

Zvon wrote: I didn't know that Callison hit his walkoff wearing a Met helmet in the 64 all star game. And that's major Met lore to me.

Edgy MD wrote: A lot of guys patting Recker on the butt after the game. A lot of guys. "BTDT".

bump.

Here's an unused Topps photo of Gil Hodges (c. 1962), that you might be interested in using for a card. The photo is faded and needs some color correction, (check out the dull purples that used to be Met blue and the brownish rather than greenish grass). You'll also need to remove the Topps watermark, but you have the skill sets to do that. Topps has been selling their archive of hard photos to the public, presumably because they've digitized their image collection.

Phils booth sharing SteveRogers nightmare of Seaver going anywhere but NY to start his illustrious career. The Phillies were one of three teams (Mets and Indians) to throw their names into the hat that would decide which team owned Seaver's rights. The Mets Find A Young Phenom New York's perennial losers pulled a name out of a hat and came up with Tom Seaver, a $50,000 bonus pitcher who steals bases as well Joe Jares After a road trip that was worse than usual, calamitous rather than merely disastrous, the 10th-place New York Mets returned last week to Shea Stadium where two of their nutty fans displayed a banner suggesting the hiring of Israel's General Moshe Dayan. A fine idea, except that the first opponent on the home stand was league-leading Cincinnati, and the closest any of the Reds had been to Egypt was Cairo, Ill. The series started with a twi-night doubleheader, and Cincy easily won the first game behind the five-hit, shutout pitching of rookie Gary Nolan. But in the second game the Mets produced their own special rookie pitcher, Tom Seaver, who beat the Reds 7-3 and showed a sample of his exceptional poise in the sixth inning. With runners on second and third and no outs, he forced Floyd Robinson to pop up and struck out Vada Pinson and Pete Rose. He tired in the ninth and lost his shutout, but the job was typical of what Seaver has been doing for the Mets in his second season of pro ball. Against the Cubs he pitched a four-hitter over 10 innings and scored the winning run himself. Against Atlanta he lost a 4-3 game but hit two doubles and a single, stole a base and had two RBIs. He beat the Dodgers with a five-hitter and stole another base. Through last weekend Tom had a 5-4 record, praiseworthy on a basement team, and if his performance was un-Metlike, it was hardly unexpected by another team to which he happens to belong�the sharpshooting, par-busting, raisin-packing Seaver family out of Fresno, Calif. and points east. The patriarch is Tom's father, Charles Seaver Sr., a fine amateur golfer. He was a two-handicapper at age 15, the same as he is today at the Sunnyside Country Club in Fresno. He was the Stanford University champion in 1932, beating Lawson Little, and the same year was on the Walker Cup team captained by Francis Ouimet. The elder Seaver also played football and basketball at Stanford, came within a hole of making the final round in the U.S. Amateur Championship in 1930 and a chance to meet Bobby Jones in his last match as an amateur, and, with Pro Mike Fetchick, won the Bing Crosby Pro-Am in 1964. "He and Fetchick play together every year at the Crosby," said a veteran golf writer. "He's a great competitor, one of the few amateurs who can handle Pebble Beach, because he's so powerful. When there's wind and rain, Charles will be out there playing just as well as Fetchick." Tom's mother is also a good golfer and a regular at Sunnyside. His Aunt Katie, friends remember, had no trouble lugging an old-fashioned 75-pound surfboard around the beaches of Hawaii. Another Katie, his oldest sister, was a good swimmer and volleyball player at Stanford and was famous around school for flattening a guy who got fresh with her one day at a campus pub. Brother Charles Jr., now a Brooklyn social worker who brings a batch of underprivileged kids to each home game Tom pitches, swam one year for the Cal varsity. Sister Carol was a physical education major at UCLA and spent two years in Nigeria with her husband, a Peace Corps official. It was no shock when Tom, the baby of the family, turned out to be a fine athlete. He is also a soft-spoken gentleman of the Sandy Koufax school, autographing photographs, answering repetitious questions and accepting the wisecracks of his teammates, all without complaint. He is working toward a college degree in public relations and it shows. "Poised" is the adjective most often stuck on him. "I don't find myself jumping up and down," he says. "I smile, but that's as far as I let my emotions carry me." He recently joined a couple of his teammates in visiting the prisoners at Sing Sing, and on his first day off after coming home from the horrible road trip he went to a Bronx hospital and made a tape recording for the Bedside Network, a veterans' organization. He may be doing such things because he is a rookie and does not know how to turn people down, but more likely it is the same unostentatious idealism his brothers and sisters picked up somewhere in their Fresno upbringing. Fresno is a pleasant place to grow up in. It lies in the middle of California's agriculture-rich San Joaquin Valley and consists mainly of farmers, Armenian merchants and budding baseball players (major league pitchers Wade Blasingame, Dick Ellsworth, Jim Maloney and Dick Selma also come from there). For excitement at night you can stew some figs or maybe drive over to Taft and watch the oil rigs bob up and down in the moonlight. The sun shines brightly nearly every day, and boxes of raisins are shipped out regularly from the packing company where Tom's father is vice president. Almost every Sunday when Tom was a boy his parents would golf at Sunnyside while the young Seavers ducked each other in the club swimming pool. The three males in the family hunted quail at every opportunity in the nearby foothills. Tom is a right-handed pitcher, batter and writer, but for some reason he shoots left-handed. During a short hitch in the Marines a sergeant insisted he switch over. "Out he came with an eye patch," said his father, "put it over his left eye and in two weeks he was an expert marksman with his right hand. Now he's back to shooting left-handed." "Pop is the best hunter," said Charles Jr. "At Christmas we were all home. We hunted quail and he left us in the dust. Tom's a professional athlete but Dad was leaving him behind. He'd go bouncing over the hills and then wait for us. He's like a mountain goat." Tom was a good basketball and baseball player at Fresno High, yet not one scout so much as nodded to him. He was small, and his fast ball would not squash a grape. But Marine Corps mess halls accomplished what years of raisins and quails could not. He went in the corps for six months, worked at his father's plant for six months and entered Fresno City College four inches taller (6'1") and 45 pounds heavier (190). After a good season at Fresno City College and a summer in Fairbanks pitching for the Alaska Goldpanners, Tom was given a baseball grant-in-aid by USC, one of the few big universities in the state that had been Seaverless. Trojan Coach Rod Dedeaux is a successful trucking executive who, as a sideline, develops major league talent and wins championships. As a junior Seaver had a 10-2 record and struck out 100 batters in 106 innings. He roomed with Coach Dedeaux's son, Justin, and left Justin strongly impressed with his pitching, his cooking of self-shot pheasant and his running, which the Mets have come to appreciate, too. "His speed fools you," says Justin. "He's one of the best base runners I've ever seen. He studies the pitchers, knows their moves, knows their little idiosyncrasies, and this gives him the jump. "Dad used to have the team run wind sprints, and Tom could almost run nose to nose with Mike Garrett. Mike might win one time by a stride at 75 yards. The next time they'd dead-heat. Once in a while Tom might have an edge." The Dodgers picked Seaver in the free-agent draft of June 1965 but made no effort to sign him. He was available again in the January 1966 draft, so the Braves picked him and began negotiations. When he was signed for a bonus of about $50,000, the USC baseball season already had started�which is too late to sign a college ballplayer, according to current baseball law�but the Braves assured him everything was O.K. as long as the Trojans' league games had not started. Dedeaux was not exactly overjoyed ( Ron Fairly of the Dodgers, Barry Lat-man of the Astros and Gary Sutherland of the Phils are some other players he lost while they had eligibility left), but Tom and his girl friend, Nancy, were happy, for now they could get married. His parents planned a gala party in Fresno for 60 or 70 of their friends. One hour before the first cork was to pop, Braves General Manager John McHale phoned and told Tom that the commissioner's office had voided the contract. It turned out that the rule held whether the games were in league or out. The party went on anyway. Tom would have rejoined the Trojans, but the NCAA declared him ineligible. Suddenly he was not only $50,000 poorer, he was a man without a country, neither pro nor amateur. In the flurry of phone calls that followed, from Fresno to Atlanta to the baseball commissioner's office, Seaver occasionally found himself wondering whether he was talking to MacPhail (Lee) of the commissioner's office or McHale (John) of the Braves. Commissioner Eckert finally ruled that any club but the Braves that was willing to pick up the $50,000 bonus tab could put in a claim for Seaver. The Phillies, Indians and Mets stepped forward and, as Tom listened via long-distance telephone, New York's name was picked out of a hat, perhaps John McHale's. That is how the Mets�who have lived so long with bad luck�came up with a base-stealing, right-hand-throwing, left-hand-shooting pitching phenom, and how USC lost the national baseball championship. The Trojans, without Tom, went to the college World Series at Omaha in 1966 and lost to Ohio State 1-0 (the Buckeye pitcher, Steve Arlin, subsequently signed with the Phillies for a $100,000 bonus). If Seaver had been pitching that day, muses Rod Dedeaux, "the game might still be in extra innings." http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1079997/1/index.htm

G-Fafif wrote: Benny Ayala remembers his big splash 39 years later. Nice story.

batmagadanleadoff wrote: GM puppet/slave Sandy Alderson must be exerting all of his powers of persuasion to keep the Wilpons from immediately activating David Wright. Mets 3B Wright heading to Florida to ramp up rehab Wrong link. Fixed. GM puppet/slave Sandy Alderson must be exerting all of his powers of persuasion to stop the Wilpons from immediately activating David Wright. Mets 3B Wright heading to Florida to ramp up rehab

Frayed Knot wrote: Wasn't there a story (on some SNY show or another) about how some local shop in Queens was the one who did all the patch/letter-type embroidery for NYM uniforms? And, if that's the case, how come they can't whip up a bunch of lower case letters for d'Arnaud and den Dekker? It would certainly look cooler. http://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2004/06/uni_watch_2.html

GM puppet/slave Sandy Alderson must be exerting all of his powers of persuasion to keep the Wilpons from immediately activating David Wright. Mets 3B Wright heading to Florida to ramp up rehab

G-Fafif wrote: No pressure, kid. There was a run of a few years, beginning in 1977, when SI's annual Spring Training story on baseball's most promising rookies would make its cover. Wills was the first cover rookie in that run, which would include 1978's phenom, Clint Hurdle, rip-roarin' rookie Kirk Gibson and the littlest rookie, Harry Chappas. Hector Cruz, the featured rookie of 1976, was a year ahead of his time, and thus, missed making the SI cover. Frank Lucchesi's decision to give the rookie Bump Wills the starting job in 1977 led to his vicious knockout at the hands of Lenny Randle, who was then traded to the Mets for Rick Auerbach. The Mets and the Rangers are the only two teams in baseball that wore jersey pullovers with two buttons. Randle and Tom Grieve and Mike Cubbage and Doug Flynn are among the only players to have worn that style uniform for both teams.

TIM LEARY: A PAINFUL WAIT FOR AN UNCERTAIN FUTURE By MALCOLM MORAN Published: July 18, 1982 MALIBU, Calif. TIM LEARY remembered the day when he formally became a member of the Mets' pitching staff. A year ago in April, at the age of 22, Leary either lacked perspective or he possessed too much, because he had no idea how important he had become to the future of a baseball team. ''It was no big deal to me,'' Leary remembered. He was a very big deal. His promotion to the Mets, after a long debate, was announced in a news conference attended by the general manager, the manager and the pitching coach. Leary had pitched just one year of Class AA ball, and yet his earned run average with the Mets that spring was 1.50. The question of his immediate future - a year in Class AAA or a one-way ticket to New York? - became a major topic in management discussions. And when the decision was finally made and Leary was brought to New York, more than a dozen reporters talked to him within an hour. They asked about his first start as a Met, a week away, against the Cubs at Wrigley Field. For the pitcher who had already been compared to Tom Seaver and Jim Palmer, veterans well on their way to the Hall of Fame, that was the beginning. ''I wasn't running around, saying, 'Whoopee,' '' Leary said here last week. ''I was a rookie. Still am, officially.'' Fifteen months, two innings and 37 pitches after the beginning of his major league career, Leary has wondered if he has reached the end. His doubts began with a muscle strain in his right elbow suffered in the second inning of his first game as a Met. They deepened with pain in his throwing shoulder last winter that was not completely diagnosed as a nerve problem until just over a month ago. And Leary's problem was made more complex by communication problems with a manager, a coach, and the team physician. Once, Met management made plans for a young pitching staff with Leary as the No.1 starter. Now, despite the organization's public optimism, management is not automatically including Leary in its private plans. So Tim Leary is a gentleman of leisure, waiting at home for his shoulder to heal. There is no exercise program for his arm, because any work would create the risk of causing more aggravation than improvement. Leary runs, and rides a bicycle, and swims without using his arms. He waits for his next meeting, in mid-August, with Dr. James Parkes, the Mets' doctor. He is at home in Malibu, close to his mother in Santa Monica, and near the Pacific Coast Highway, the beaches, and the picture-postcard scenery. He is also 3,000 miles away from New York, and far enough removed from questions he cannot answer. ''I can seclude myself from a lot of people,'' Leary said. He speaks quietly as he talks about the emotional highs and lows of the last 15 months. ''Some people here are removed from baseball,'' he said. ''That's not a part of their life. If I was to live in Santa Monica and still be around there, a couple of times a week they'd say, 'Oh, how's baseball? How's your arm?' That's the first thing they say. It's better that way, though.'' It is better that way because Leary has felt even more uncomfortable when the questions go unasked. ''I've had that happen,'' he said. ''They don't mention baseball. They think it's so bad they can't talk about it. I've had worse things happen. When my father died, that was much worse.'' When Leary has occasionally made the 45-minute trip to Dodger Stadium, he has studied the pitchers and discovered reminders of what is possible. ''I've thought, 'God, I can be as good as any of them,' '' Leary said. ''I still feel that way. I go to games and think there's only about 10 pitchers - counting relievers, more than 10 - that super impress me.'' There is little else to do but rest, and watch, and think of what went wrong. ''It doesn't cross my mind too much,'' he said, ''but if it does cross my mind, I'll just sort of pretend I'm back in high school. Back then it was no big deal. I wasn't in the big leagues, so I wasn't losing anything. I'll just have a normal life and enjoy myself here. Hopefully, I'll be able to get back and have a full career. ... ''Now I think, well, if things didn't work out, I could always do something. I could finish school. '' There is no time limit and no guarantee. The only consistency is the pain in his shoulder, which was once so bad that it hurt as he shifted gears in his car. The examinations of more than a month ago confirmed what his shoulder had already said. ''If I just lift my arm,'' Leary said, ''I can tell. ... Just sitting here, I can tell.'' At the start of last season, there were observers who rated Leary at the front of a rookie group that included Fernando Valenzuela of the Dodgers. When the Mets played at Dodger Stadium this weekend, Leary was a visitor, a question mark that was once an exclamation point. ''There's a lot of things,'' he said. ''It's hard to begin.'' As Leary progressed in his first spring as a Met, despite his statistics and raves from opponents, he says it became more and more obvious to him that he was uncomfortable. Nothing was wrong with his arm, but Leary was troubled by the way he thought he was being used. In 1979, his junior year at U.C.L.A. and the year he became the Mets' first selection in the draft, Leary struck out 111 batters in 148 innings. In his first professional season, with Jackson of the Class AA Texas League, Leary struck out 138 batters in 173 innings, and he was named the league's most valuable player. But Leary did not see himself as a strikeout pitcher. He preferred to rely on intelligence and a range of pitches. ''Play with the batters' minds,'' he says. That was not the Mets' plan. ''I know he thinks that way,'' Bill Monbouquette, the Met pitching coach and the organization's minor league instructor last year, said recently. ''I've said, 'Tim, you have a chance to be a power pitcher. A power pitcher doesn't mean you're going to go out and strike out 13, 14 or 15 a night. It means you'll be hard to hit.' ''He's said, often, 'I'm a guy that gets ahead of the hitters, and gets everything over. I consider myself more of a ground-ball pitcher, making them hit the ball and making the guys catch the ball.' '' That was clearly not the style that made Leary the talk of the Mets' camp. Leary had discussed his reservations about being a power pitcher with Monbouquette, but not with Joe Torre, the Mets' manager last year, or Bob Gibson, the pitching coach. ''There were no lines of communication,'' Leary said. And his success made a conversation seem less necessary. Leary allowed three earned runs in 18 innings, with 12 strikeouts. In a game against the Dodgers, he pitched four innings, the longest appearance for any Met to that point, allowed two singles and one walk, and had five strikeouts. Against major league competition, he was everything that Monbouquette had seen in Class AA. More and more, the name Leary was linked to Seaver. ''This boy just reminded me so much of him,'' Monbouquette said. ''Not so much that he looked like Tom, throwing, just the way he went about his business. He was a stickler about conditioning. I often thought, 'I hope I'm not putting the jinx on him.' '' Frank Cashen, the executive vice president and general manager, said he was aware of Leary's pitching preferences, but he never talked to him about them. ''What I do know,'' Cashen said, ''is from what you saw of his physical equipment, I thought he was a power pitcher to the extent that his fastball was his best pitch.'' As Leary achieved more and more success, he became more and more confused. ''Because I got the feeling that Torre and Gibson were trying to get me to go for strikeouts,'' he said. ''I'm not going to win by striking out nine guys. That kind of screwed me up. It was taking away my personality on the pitching mound. ...'' ''We never did that,'' Torre, now the manager of the Atlanta Braves, said recently. ''We didn't tell him to think about strikeouts. He was trying to make the ball move in different ways that we felt could have been responsible for his injury. He was turning it over, trying to make it move all the time. There are pitchers that don't throw as hard as he does that have to do that. ... ''Tim definitely had his own ideas,'' Torre said. ''When you're set in your ways, when people talk to you, it's like a steady hum. I know I always respected people with experience and figured I could learn more. When you form your own ideas, it's like an immovable object.'' But Leary said he did listen. ''I thought, 'these guys know. They've been around. Maybe this will help me,' '' Leary said. ''And at the time, I was doing well, too, so I didn't say much. I thought 'later on, if I do well, I'll just pitch the way I want no matter what they say.' But that time never came. I just threw too many hard fastballs. It caught up with me.'' On a chilly Sunday afternoon in Chicago, everything changed. Leary suddenly felt pain in his elbow after he released a pitch in the second inning and left the game after the inning ended. ''If they would have just let me pitch the way I wanted to pitch,'' Leary said, ''I would have been O.K.'' Five weeks ago tomorrow, on the west side of midtown Manhattan, a frustrated pitcher sat in the office of a frustrated doctor. Leary's elbow was considered healthy, but now there was shoulder pain that could be traced to a trip to the winter league in Venezuela that Leary now wishes he never made. Leary had been sent to Venezuela after six frustrating games late last season with the Class AAA Tidewater team. The pain continued this spring, and seemed even worse in comparison to the success of the previous spring. ''It was my own fault,'' Leary said. ''I guess I wasn't vocal enough that there was a problem, even though I thought it was obvious. ... I guess I didn't express myself, before.'' The Mets found Leary's shoulder problem mysterious and concerned that Leary, who never before had to cope with the stress of serious arm trouble, was taking advice from outsiders. By early June, Leary thought that exercise programs had been hurting more than helping. As they sat in the office, Dr. Parkes felt that he was not getting through to the pitcher. ''I said, 'How do you feel?' '' Dr. Parkes remembered. '' 'Well,' he said, 'I feel better.' I said, 'Tim, you sound like my father. Do you feel better?' '' When Leary showed the doctor where the pain was, it was a different place than Dr. Parkes had seen before. This time, Leary pointed to the base of his neck, in the front and the back. ''That's the first time he said, 'I really don't feel good,' '' Dr. Parkes said. ''He didn't want to complain. He didn't want our management to feel he was complaining unduly.'' Tests and examinations by Dr. Parkes and two specialists found that the supra scapular nerve was being pinched, with definite evidence of irritation and tendinitis. There were tests to search for any vascular problem, such as the one that resulted in the stroke suffered by J.R. Richard of Houston, and those tests revealed that vessels coming from the chest to the arm were being pinched during extremes of motion created by Leary's pitching delivery. ''So we had a complex problem,'' Dr. Parkes said. ''Not a serious one, I believe, but complex.'' There was another problem that Dr. Parkes thinks was resolved that day in his office. ''I said, 'Do you have confidence in me? Do you like me? Do you trust me? If not, I'll get anybody you want.' '' Dr. Parkes remembered. ''He said, 'No, no, I do.' I said, 'If you do, we've got to be friends. We've got to talk. Then you're not the bad guy. I'm the bad guy.' '' What the doctor meant was a bad guy in the eyes of management. Leary has heard the whispers that said that his problem could be found in his head rather than in his arm, and he resents those whispers. ''I have very definitely explained to him that this is not so,'' Dr. Parkes said. The truth was that Leary's hesitance to complain complicated an already difficult situation. ''I told him it was commendable not to cry to the doctor, and bite the bullet,'' the doctor said. ''But this is not what works at the major league level.'' The next step will be the August examination, after 12 weeks of complete rest. ''I would be very surprised if there is much irritation left,'' Dr. Parkes said. ''If there is any left, I would not hesitate to wait four to six weeks and test him again. I'm planning for next spring training for him to be throwing. That's my goal. If he does better than that, I've also told him I'm not going to hold him back.'' Dr. Parkes optimistically points to recent innovations in the nonsurgical treatment of injured shoulders, plus Leary's youth, intelligence and the improved communication. If the August examination shows no signs of irritation, Leary's return to a mound would be taken in small steps, to carefully build strength and confidence. ''I'm not going to even toss the ball if it bothers me,'' Leary said. ''I'll wait another year.'' As he waits, he tries to wait patiently. ''The Mets, they're good about it,'' he said. ''They could easily be insensitive. I'm not going to harp on what's happened and blame other people. ''I'll just have to wait my turn. I figure I was lucky to get where I was at the time. You couldn't ask for anything more. There are guys who play in the minor leagues all their lives and never play in the big leagues.'' And as everyone waits, there is the hope that when Leary was compared to Jim Palmer, who overcame severe arm trouble early in his career, that comparison was more accurate than anyone could have known.

John Cougar Lunchbucket wrote: The PTBNL is likely on the Pirates' 40-man roster btw If that's so, then in all likelihood, the teams already know who the PTBNL is. They're probably just delaying the rest of the trade because the PTBNL likely wouldn't clear waivers. The PTBNL method is a way around waivers.

Now I'm even more confused. The '85 Mets were goodenough to win the WS. There are WS champs who weren't as good as that team. Terry Collins' Mets aren't even in the same galaxy as the mid-80's Mets. Not even with two healthy Matt Harveys.