batmagadanleadoff

While I stand by my “release” sentiment as it was https://www.faithandfearinflushing.com/2009/06/13/15-seconds-of-lousy-baseball-%E2%80%94-weve-had-enough/rendered in the moment — which itself was, I believe, the shittiest Mets moment simply as a moment (rather than as a numbing conclusion to an ongoing trauma) I've ever experienced — I attempted to make my personal peace with Castillo a few years ago by ranking him No. 100 as https://www.faithandfearinflushing.com/2021/02/17/mets-of-the-2000s-100-91/part of a multipart series on Mets of the 2000s, acknowledging he had as good a 2009 as he was capable of, while certainly not forgetting the one-handed debacle of June 12. When I tweeted the article, an immediate response was, in so many words, I'm not bleeping reading anything that bleeping praises Luis Bleeping Castillo. While I felt that nonreader lacked the ability to grasp nuance, I understood. OK. He responded while I was posting.

Benjamin Grimm wrote: That surprised me too! Me three. That's what I remember the most about the Castillo game: how uncharacteristically mean G-FAFIF was to Castillo. It was so brutal that I ended up feeling sorry for the guy. Castillo, that is. I think it was like two or three times meaner than he was to Gl@v!ne. And he's never mean to anybody.

and Vic.

He's been a Met for a long time now. This is his ninth season as a Met. [FIMG=555]https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/53783463468837629_7e00d6400f_h.jpg[/FIMG]

Edgy MD wrote: I assume Jay Horwitz has staff and part of their role is to keep tabs on the 800 or so surviving Mets. I would guess that they're already doing that. But it's on the players' families to inform the Mets of these occurrences and some families just don't, for whatever reason or other. Obviously, the deaths of the more prominent players make the National news feeds and the team finds out that way whether or not their families contact the Mets. But Murphy was a fringe player with a brief career. Anyways, I'm now waiting for the inevitable writeup on Faith and Fear, which might be my favorite feature over there. Too bad somebody's gotta die for that to happen. I'm guessing Fry gets this assignment because he's got a DIY Mets Murphy card.

Edgy MD wrote: I assume Jay Horwitz has staff and part of their role is to keep tabs on the 800 or so surviving Mets. I would guess that they're already doing that. But it's on the players' families to inform the Mets of these occurrences and some families just don't, for whatever reason or other. Obviously, the deaths of the more prominent players make the National news feeds and the team finds out that way whether or not their families contact the Mets. But Murphy was a fringe player with a brief career.

How would that work? Was Jay Horwitz supposed to write a letter to Billy Murphy, asking Murphy to inform the Mets as soon as he dies?

Benjamin Grimm wrote: Anything from Fansided probably isn't a "rumor"; it's more like uninformed speculation from somebody who met the low bar that qualified him or her to write for Fansided. You could say the exact same thing for (so, so sad) Sports Illustrated. I stopped reading their web pieces a while ago but once in a while I peek in because I can't resist. And then I'm reminded why I quit them in the first place. SI's trade deadline takes are all the same bullshit. There's a headline about some big blockbuster rumored trade involving Pete Alonso. Only it turns out that the writer himself, who's probably some teenager who doesn't have the writing chops to write for his High School newspaper is the one that started the rumor.

London Series two-pint beer bat [FIMG=411]https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2024/06/10/16/85934631-13513985-image-a-101_1718033836949.jpg[/FIMG]

Inside the experience of MLB's London Series, which mattered much more than the Mets vs. Phillies scores The Phillies and Mets split two games at London Stadium, but the weekend was not about the results Excerpt: LONDON -- I planned my honeymoon around the Mets, which in hindsight (and at the time of booking, if I'm being honest) was a terrible idea. Jet-lagged, dehydrated and somehow slightly sunburned, I headed into London Stadium, prepared to watch the National League-leading Phillies stomp the Mets in front of crowds of 55,000 people. It felt like I was being punished for some mortal sin I didn't know I'd committed. The London Series, it turns out, was perfect. The baseball wasn't particularly good, unless you consider ninth-inning chaos good (which I do, to be clear, but your mileage may vary). But The Baseball, that joyous, life-ruining, addictive part of our soul that we can't seem to rid ourselves us, was good. The Brits may not understand baseball but they know how to put on a show. The concourse around London Stadium, built for the 2012 Olympics and now home to the West Ham United of the Premier League, was packed with the English idea of American food: disgustingly overloaded two-foot hot dogs and pizza that looked like cardboard and Philly cheesesteaks topped with a sauce I'm pretty sure glowed in the dark. There were jugglers and dancers and a marching band that didn't march and batting cages and a DJ and beer bats taller than me (I'd unfortunately learn on the tube ride home that selling people that much beer AND a makeshift weapon is a terrible idea). It felt more like a Phillies home game inside, which would have been fine and a credit to the fandom had that not resulted in raucous booing of Quad-A relievers they'd probably never even heard of and definitely had no reason to boo other than the shirt they wore. But the main takeaway is that everyone was happy to be there, even as Sean Manaea gave up a three-run home run to Whit Merrifield and Jose Alvarado imploded to a level that should be considered treasonous. None of that particularly mattered. The boxscores say Mets and Phillies split the series. Great. Good for them. Read it all at https://www.cbssports.com/mlb/news/inside-the-experience-of-mlbs-london-series-which-mattered-much-more-than-the-mets-vs-phillies-scores/https://www.cbssports.com/mlb/news/inside-the-experience-of-mlbs-london-series-which-mattered-much-more-than-the-mets-vs-phillies-scores/

Benjamin Grimm wrote: I was thinking the same thing. Me three. Also, I would've liked for Steve to put the actual Mets pop culture reference in his post, instead of just a link. I mean, that's a 20 minute pod. I have to sit through 20 minutes of that to find like a six seconds remark? The reference was Connor wearing a cap in a screen capture Oh. Thanks. I didn't even notice. I did notice the '66 style Batman and Robin standees in the background of one of those shots.

Benjamin Grimm wrote: I was thinking the same thing. Me three. Also, I would've liked for Steve to put the actual Mets pop culture reference in his post, instead of just a link. I mean, that's a 20 minute pod. I have to sit through 20 minutes of that to find like a six seconds remark?

Frayed Knot wrote: I think it's likely that we'd find several players with higher rates if more were included. Agreed. Milner came to my mind right away because I remember he had a knack for hitting grand slams. So I looked up his situational splits on BR.

if I'm reading this correctly, Kingman's former Mets teammate, John Milner, hit 10 grand slams in 79 PAs with the bases loaded, a rate of 12.6%

I wanted to address this persistent idea of yours that when his team is behind, a batter should take the first strike. Sight unseen. According to you, the batter, with no strikes, should decide to take a pitch before that pitch is even thrown. It came up again here: Edgy MD wrote: Francisco Lindor swung and missed for strike three. At least he had the wisdom or what have you to take strike one.... and again here: Edgy MD wrote: Brandon Nimmo kept the damned bat on his shoulder for all three strikes. Useless, huh? NO! IT WASN'T! For you can't hit into a double play if you don't swing, so even though he struck out looking he was still alive when José Alvarado and J.T. Realmuto conspired to let a pitch get away, allowing another run to score.... where you also go so far as to credit Nimmo for the Phillies wild pitch, suggesting perhaps that a batter with his team behind should never swing at anything. Anyway, this nutty idea that a batter should take the first pitch or first strike, sight unseen is an old wive's tale that comes from the neanderthal days of baseball when practically nobody, I mean nobody, had the slightest fucking clue as to how the game actually worked. Hardly anybody knew. Not the owners. Not their GMs. Not the scouts they hired. Not the players themselves. And not even the college educated pundits with their English majors and journalism degrees, some of them who were even privileged enough to get to vote on Hall of Fame inductees and MVP and Cy Young award winners. And these neanderthal times weren't even that long ago. They existed in our lifetimes. In our adulthoods, even. Anyways, the idea that a player should be taking the first strike, sight unseen, is crazy talk. First of all, the first strike might be the best pitch he sees in the at-bat. It might be a terrible mistake or cripple pitch -- the kind of mistake pitch that a batter would be lucky to see more than once every week or two. Batters feast on those mistake pitches. Also, if there's an advantage to taking the first strike (there isn't), then that same advantage should exist on the next pitch. And the pitch after that. And so logically, a batter should never swing. But there's no advantage to taking the first strike. First of all, a pitcher is likelier to throw a strike instead of a ball on every given pitch. And the advantage from going from an 0-0 count to a 1-0 count is so small, that it's not worth chancing the strike. And with one strike, the batter is one pitch cloesr to two strikes. And with two strikes, the batter is already dead meat and the at-bat is practically over -- a fait accompli that favors the pitcher. Batters should act like batters. They should determine whether or not the pitch is worth swinging at during the flight of the pitch, an admittedly difficult task. There's precious little time to gauge the pitch and decide whether to swing or not and the pitch comes in too damn quick. But if it were easy, you and me would be playing for the Mets.

You didn't split this thread too well. Several posts from the original Thor thread belong here, where we're comparing today's game to that of 30 or 40 years ago and discussing the superiority of the modern athlete.

Edgy MD wrote: As I wrote (and crossed out), there will nonetheless probably be somebody (like the Yankees) who will be looking to upgrade at first. I would imagine. That's my point.

Benjamin Grimm wrote: I think he's saying that there will be less demand for Alonso, because he may not be that much of an upgrade for most of the contending teams. So with less demand, comes less value in return. That makes sense, and it's a point that's been well covered and understood. On the other hand, 40% of the teams now make the playoffs. Which means that more than half of all teams will remain in the hunt for playoff spots. I doubt that more than half of the teams, the majority in other words, have a Keith Hernandez or a Glenn Davis or even a Lee May at first. There are only so many good first basemen out there and there certainly aren't enough for more than half the teams.

Benjamin Grimm wrote: If the Mets are sellers at the deadline, and they can get Pat Zachry, Steve Henderson, Doug Flynn, and Dan Norman in return, then I guess they should do it. But if they get significantly less than that, which is very likely, I'd rather they kept Pete. Me too. Agreed.

Benjamin Grimm wrote: I think he's saying that there will be less demand for Alonso, because he may not be that much of an upgrade for most of the contending teams. So with less demand, comes less value in return. That makes sense, and it's a point that's been well covered and understood.

=nymr83 post_id=158781 time=1718127096 user_id=54] =batmagadanleadoff post_id=158777 time=1718126383 user_id=68] You could nitpick but the larger point holds true.

Edgy MD wrote: Also, I'm writing that, if your first baseman is Jason Phillips ('03) or Tim Harkness ('63) or Doug Mientkiewicz ('05), there's a good chance that you're well out of contention come the trade deadline. But if that's not the case, then what? 40% of the teams now make the playoffs. It's not 1971 anymore. I don't see your point. Are you supposing that no one will pursue Alonso if he's made available? And if no one wants Alonso, the Mets keep him. No harm. No foul.

Edgy MD wrote: =batmagadanleadoff post_id=158775 time=1718125852 user_id=68]I don't understand. Are you making a general across the board statement that teams don't need a first baseman? No, I'm not. I'm writing that firstbasemen aren't as fungible.

You could nitpick but the larger point holds true.

Edgy MD wrote: First basemen aren't as fungible. All teams need another reliever. Most every contenders could use another starting pitcher. You can find work for another outfielder, whether you need them or not. But historically, you only need one firstbaseman, and two is too many. Eight first basemen is also too many first basemen. But that doesn't mean that a first baseman isn't needed at all. I don't understand. Are you making a general across the board statement that teams don't need a first baseman? Because a contending team that needs a first baseman will be in the market for Alonso. Bowden himself lists about half a dozen teams that could pursue Alonso. If your first baseman is Jason Phillips ('03) or Tim Harkness ('63) or Doug Mientkiewicz ('05), you could use an upgrade.