batmagadanleadoff

Eff Wilpon on RA Dickey in The New Yorker: "He's a thoughtful player, but he's no Cy Young Award caliber pitcher".

The Second Spitter wrote: I can hear it now: Fred Wilpon wrote: I cannot justify, in good conscious, paying a 38 year old pitcher with a penchant for adventure more than $5M a year I can hear that four months ago.

RA deserves his own thread. And his own contract, too. But don't expect Dickey to give the Mets a hometown discount NEW YORK � As Tuesday evening bled into Wednesday morning, a blue neon sign shone off the side of Citi Field and out toward the Van Wyck Expressway. �R.A. GOES FOR 20,� the message beamed, an advertisement for R.A. Dickey�s start this afternoon against the Pirates. Using ticket packages and promotions, the Mets have attempted to milk every last dollar out of Dickey�s Cy Young-worthy season as 2012 limps to its merciful conclusion. This winter, as general manager Sandy Alderson attempts to extend Dickey through next season, the roles will reverse. No longer will Dickey (19-6, 2.66 ERA) agree to a hometown discount, as he did following the 2010 season, when he signed a two-year, $7.8 million deal with a $5 million option for 2013. �It�s different in that you accept the first contract trying to be compensated for 13 years of playing the game and finally getting a chance to take care of your family,� Dickey said this week as he prepared to become the franchise�s first 20-game winner since Frank Viola in 1990. �This mentality is different. Because I�ve done that now. I have more freedom to really weigh things.� His performance liberated him, and his current contract gave him long-awaited financial security. Which is why Dickey feels �I have more leverage� than in his last negotiation. He wants compensation commensurate with his production these past three seasons. He also feels that he and third baseman David Wright are something of a �package deal.� He struggles to envision himself inking a multi-year extension if the club doesn�t make an aggressive attempt to re-sign Wright. �If I don�t see them pursuing David hard,� Dickey said, �I think it would be a message to everybody that they�re content to spend the next five or six years rebuilding this organization. Rather than trying to be competitive, and trying to rebuild it at the same time. �I think you can do both. I think (doing both is) what they want to do. �But if you see them not really pursue him hard, that�s the message that I get. Unless they trade him and get multiple, big-league pieces back.� Alderson has not hidden his intentions. He wants to extend Dickey and Wright through their team options for 2013. The deadline to exercise Wright�s $16 million option falls three days after the World Series ends; Dickey�s deadline is two days after that. Last month, Alderson told The Star-Ledger those two were �at the top� of his list for offseason priorities. He reiterated as much during an in-game interview with SNY this week. The Mets engaged in tepid negotiations with Dickey earlier this season, with the hope of reaching an extension through at least 2014, as The Star-Ledger reported last month. The team elected to wait and observe Dickey during the course of the season. His value has only jumped since then. He enters today�s home finale leading the National League in ERA and innings pitched. His strikeout-to-walk ratio is a career-high 4.02 � an almost unfathomable statistic considering he throws a knuckleball. �Now I have much more of a platform to really be able to value yourself on,� Dickey said. �Like I have a good sample size to say �OK, this is who you are.�?� Dickey turns 38 next month, but opposing executives believe his knuckleball could sustain him for years to come. One suggested a four-year deal wasn�t out of the question if Dickey hit the open market after 2013. How much will he cost? In three seasons with the Mets, Dickey has thrown 603 innings with a 2.93 ERA. From 2009 to 2011, only 14 pitchers completed at least 600 innings with an ERA under 3.50. Their average salary in 2012: $15.5 million. Dickey will pitch somewhere in 2014. But odds are, he�ll cost a good deal more than the $5 million he�s due next season. He only hopes he can sustain this year�s success. �The way that I�ve performed,� Dickey said, �I would like to capture that and repeat it over and over and over again.�

Another serving of burnt rump end .... September 25, 2012 A Team Falls in Flushing Posted by Thomas Denby A promising team comes into the second half of their season with a winning record and an excellent shot at the playoffs. It exits humiliated, licking its wounds as division rivals speed past on their way to the playoffs. Sound familiar? Welcome to another year in Flushing. Let the Mets mourning begin: the self pity and woeful chest-beating; the envious looks towards our brethren in the Bronx, with their slick pinstripes and even slicker accounting. And, of course, the existential lamentations over what it means to be a Mets fan: a loser at your very core, someone who wears his team�s inevitable, bumbling failures as a badge of honor in a last-ditch attempt at wielding control over a relationship that is, ultimately, cruel and capricious. These Flushing fatalists have a point: the Mets recently spun off a string of sixteen straight home games in which they never scored more than three runs�two off the all-time record. David Wright, who hit like Babe Ruth for the first half of the season, reverted to his listless 2011 form for the second half, looking more Bader Ginsburg than Babe. Young sluggers Ike Davis and Lucas Duda fell depressingly short of the high�perhaps overly so�expectations that management had for them coming into the season. After a comical 16-1 loss to the Phillies on Thursday, reporters wanted to know if the players had quit. �You�ll have to ask them,� responded the usually upbeat manager Terry Collins, who had the shattered look of a parent at his wits� end. After getting our hopes up, and entering the second half having won six more games than they had lost, these Mets faded in spectacular fashion, losing eleven of their next twelve games. They never recovered. Watching the team over the last couple of months has felt like slowly slipping into a ratty old pair of sweatpants: they may make you look�and feel�like crap, but hey, at least it�s a feeling you know. A comfortable shabbiness. Let�s not forget the pleasant surprises this squad has provided over the last six months, though. On Saturday, R. A. Dickey, the Mets� philosopher-knuckleballer, won his nineteenth game�the most won by any Met pitcher in over two decades. He currently leads the league in E.R.A. and innings pitched, and is second in wins and strikeouts. He is easily having the greatest season by a knuckleballer of all time, and his back-to-back one-hitters in June were extraordinary feats to watch. If he pitches well over his final two starts of the season, he may very well become the first Met to win the Cy Young since Dwight Gooden in his masterful 1985 season. Jon Niese, the talented twenty-five-year-old lefty who has been unable to finish out his last two seasons due to injury and fatigue, has stayed strong the whole year, going nineteen straight starts of six innings or more. Matt Harvey, the Mets� first-round pick from 2010, has electrified fans in his d�but season, striking out the second-most batters of any pitcher in his first ten starts since 1990. And, most importantly, there was Johan Santana�s no-hitter�the first in Mets history. After 8,019 games and countless near-misses, the event seemed so improbable, and the lack of a no-hitter so much a part of the franchise�s identity, that SNY announcer Gary Cohen�s simple, declarative call after the final out��It has happened!��could not have been more fitting. And while it might be easy to call this yet another Mets collapse, let�s not confuse this team with the talent-rich squads of 2007 and 2008, both of which contended until the end of the season before spectacularly imploding in the final weeks. The 2012 Mets were never supposed to compete for a playoff spot�just the fact that they had a winning record at the All-Star break was a minor miracle, not to be taken for granted. Before the season started, my focus, and that of most fans, was on the owners� byzantine legal and financial troubles, many of which have since been resolved, not Jason Bay�s sagging batting average. Being able to worry only about our team�s ineptitude is, perversely, a sort of privilege. This season was, and always has been, about rebuilding. But now General Manager Sandy Alderson has questions to answer. Should he trade David Wright, the most decorated hitter in Mets� history, before his contract is up at the end of next season, or try to lock up the mercurial slugger with a long-term deal? Will R. A. Dickey�s unpredictable knuckleball continue to dance, or would Alderson be crazy to sign a thirty-seven-year-old pitcher to a long-term contract? What to do with Davis and Duda, both of whom are essentially unable to play any position other than first base? Whatever Alderson chooses, his fan base�s existential angst isn�t going anywhere. But let�s hope the Met fan�s characteristic, and sometimes delusional, sense of hope sticks around, too. Don�t look now, but we just swept the Marlins. Illustration by David Levine. Read more http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/sportingscene/2012/09/a-team-falls-in-flushing.html#ixzz27dbL0fLA

September 26, 2012 R. A. Dickey Pitches a Book Posted by Jesse Will Early on a bright Friday morning, just after the New York Mets lost to the Philadelphia Phillies, 16-1, their ace pitcher R. A. Dickey ambled from the Grand Hyatt hotel on Forty-second Street towards Grand Central Terminal, unnoticed and uninterrupted. �To be honest with you,� he said, �I�m a bit tired. Last night was rough. The team�s gone into some kind of dark tailspin.� The Mets had, maybe, but not Dickey. He would take the mound three more times in September in pursuit of a twentieth win and a probable Cy Young award. (Currently 19-6, he makes his next start on Thursday.) Dickey, the only knuckleballer in the major leagues, has become dominant courtesy of a strange, near spin-free pitch that hovers en route to home plate, then takes a trap-door drop that batters often can�t see or predict. But the pitch he was more concerned with on this morning was the plot of a children�s picture book he�d written. He was headed by subway to the offices of Penguin publishers in SoHo to present it to his editor there. The thirty-seven-year-old Dickey, who has the gentle comportment of a humanities professor, has no personal representative or manager��because I don�t consider myself marquee,� he said, �and I like to be in control of things.� He spoke in a soulful Nashville drawl peppered with words and phrases that would include, over the course of a morning, �edifying,� �antithetical,� �deus ex machina,� and �voluminous.� He is exceedingly polite. It is not difficult to imagine a character with his traits in a Wes Anderson film, though he would surely rather appear in a sci-fi or fantasy flick. (He warms up on the mound to �The Imperial March,� from �Star Wars,� and when he comes to bat, has the Citi Field public-address system play the theme from �Game of Thrones.�) An avid reader, Dickey keeps books in his locker at the stadium, where he often finds time to read. (Pitchers, he noted, tend to have a lot of free time.) As he navigated a transfer underneath Times Square, Dickey rattled off a few of this year�s summer reading titles, and when asked, followed up with reviews in miniature. A sampling: a rereading of John Steinbeck�s �Of Mice and Men�: �Still potent�; Chaim Potok�s �The Chosen�: �A rich education in Jewish culture;� Bill O�Reilly�s �Killing Lincoln�: �Entertaining, but he�s no Hemingway;� and William Saroyan�s �The Human Comedy�: �Actually, let�s skip that one.� �I think you�ll like my editor,� he said with a smile as he approached the Penguin offices. �I�m pretty sure she might have been part of the hippie movement. You�ll see what I mean.� He took the elevator, checked in at the front desk and sat down on a couch. It was nearly silent, and the lobby�s lower walls were painted with characters from children�s books. After a few minutes, a ruddy-cheeked young man wearing a tie and carrying a backpack introduced himself to the receptionist and informed her that it was his first day on the job. Dickey looked over and said softly, �Now isn�t that an exciting moment?� Just then Lucia Monfried, Dickey�s editor, appeared, a petite, fair-skinned woman with light blue eyes and long gray hair. On her wrist was a pinstriped New York Yankees watch and a blue silicone wristband that commemorated Derek Jeter�s three-thousandth hit. She didn�t look like a hippie. In a singsong voice that stopped and started, she welcomed Dickey and led him to a sunlit conference room with a view of lower Manhattan. She told Dickey that she was one of the �minute fraction of baseball-crazed people in children�s publishing,� and Dickey complimented her for her work on �Skippyjon Jones,� a book series popular with Dickey�s four kids, who live at his permanent residence in Nashville with his wife. The two sat down and Monfried introduced the first order of business: having Dickey approve the general outline of a young-adult adaptation of �Wherever I Wind Up,� his autobiography, released earlier this year, which tracks his life from a troubled youth�Dickey moved around a lot and was sexually abused�to his career in professional baseball, which stalled until he learned the mechanics of the knuckleball. The conversation eventually turned to �Knuckleball Ned,� a thirty-two-page picture book that is the second of three books in the deal that Dickey signed with the publisher. Dickey pulled a twenty-page manuscript, dense with type, from his bag. On one of the pages was a cut-and-pasted image of Mr. Met. �Now, I know I might have to simplify what I have here,� said Dickey. He began to explain the plot of �Knuckleball Ned,� in which Ned, whose body has the shape of a baseball, negotiates a scene of being bullied. �Ned�s set apart because he wobbles. No one else wobbles, and he�s teased mercilessly. He�s the only one of his kind,� said Dickey. �Does Ned have any friends?� asked Monfried, drinking from a black coffee mug that said �So Many Books, So Little Time.� �Curve Ball,� said Dickey. �O.K. � maybe there should be a Soft Ball, too. Soft Ball�s gotta be fat,� said Monfried. �There�s Foul Ball, he�s kind of a gangster. And Slider.� It was unclear whether these would be friends or foes. �Maybe Slider smells,� said Monfried. It became obvious that Monfried thought Dickey had written too long. �You�ve got to think about who your audience is. I�m not sure, for example, that four-year-olds get what �bullying� is. I think you need to simplify,� she said as she read further. Later, she added, �It doesn�t sound like a light story. Are you funny?� �I would say I�m more witty than funny,� said Dickey. �Maybe this book is older. There�s some meat here, and that�s good. Ned is you, really. It�s not like the story of Derek Jeter�magic just happened to Jeter, found him. Jeter never had any problems, aside from when he was eighteen and went to A-ball and called his parents, homesick, crying.� Monfried didn�t look at the other pages of Dickey�s manuscript, but gave him encouragement, set some deadlines for another draft, and offered up some of �Lucia�s Laws,� which include �Talking is killing,� �Think visually,� �You can do anything you want in a picture book, but you can�t just do it once,� �Children don�t like description,� �Keep it moving,� and �The kid always solves the problem.� Dickey asked Monfried if readers will need to know why it is that Ned wobbles. �No,� she said. �So it�s not important that my character has a genesis�he can just be?� he asked. �Yes,� she said. The meeting wrapped, and Dickey returned to the train going back towards Grand Central. During a transfer underneath Times Square, he was spotted, finally: a young man approached with a Sharpie and a New York Post, with the page folded to an article about him. Dickey signed it and continued down the platform. The episode afforded the opportunity to change the topic of conversation to baseball. As the 7 train clattered towards Grand Central, Dickey likened throwing his pitch to �having a relationship with an organic, living thing�something that�s sometimes there and sometimes not.� So would he feel additional pressure, essentially pitching for the Cy Young during his last starts of the season? �No, extra pressure would only still the joy of the experience,� he said. And what made him risk everything on an odd pitch that baseball teams seldom seek? �It was only until I came to the end of myself that I was able to embrace it,� he offered. The train stopped, and we said goodbye, and Dickey took the sunlit stairwell towards Lexington Avenue, alone. http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/sportingscene/2012/09/ra-dickey-pitches-a-book.html#ixzz27bzcpFCj

That design is based on Topps 1967 teammates cards.

Benjamin Grimm wrote: Wright wasn't the only time traveler here as Grimm departs from his comfortable base in the decade of Disco and Dick (Nixon) for some Summer of Love baseball card design.

No Nats. I wouldn't give Strasburg a vote. And Gio Gonzalez wouldn't make my ballot either if the season ended last night. And I had a ballot to submit. Do the writers have the balls to give first place votes to a 12-9 pitcher? 'Cause Kershaw's looking about as good as anybody else.

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John Cougar Lunchbucket wrote: batmagadanleadoff wrote: I'll betcha a Blue Smoke fried bologna sandwich and some fries to go with that that the Mets don't get Upton. I don't need Martino to tell me that ain't happening. You're on. The upshot is, if you win, you have to come to CitiField in 2013 to claim your prize.

I'll betcha a Blue Smoke fried bologna sandwich and some fries to go with that that the Mets don't get Upton. I don't need Martino to tell me that ain't happening.

Cueto: 5 innings of of one run ball, Reds 4, Brewers 1, pitcher of record on the long side in line for his 19th win. http://scores.espn.go.com/mlb/boxscore?gameId=320925117

themetfairy wrote: Benjamin Grimm wrote: Isn't it up to Ike to decide how observant he wants to be? I'm sure if he asked out for religious reasons Terry would let him sit. Yes, it is. Ike should have opted out of tonight's game.

Swan Swan H wrote: seawolf17 wrote: I love this card, because in my mind, he's not signing an autograph but doing a crossword puzzle. He looks like he's stuck on "12 across.... three letters... Feline" Terry Bradshaw might know the answer to that clue. But whether he could spell out the answer is another matter.

Mets � Willets Point wrote: I remember this card well. My uncle was friends with Candelaria from high school or something so I always set his cards aside in the box reserved for important players. My uncle also gave me his set of 1978 Topps (about 300 cards from that year) so this design was my earliest association with baseball cards. Candelaria was one of the toughest pitchers Keith ever faced. And those '78 Topps are among my all time favorites.

Despite all of the enlightened commentary about how Wins aren't nearly the best indicator of a pitcher's worth, nobody's mentioning Kershaw as a candidate. Yet the reigning Cy Young Award winner passed Dickey for the league lead in K's last night, is tied for the league lead in WHIP, has the second best NL ERA, just .02 behind RA, and has a body of work that's as good as anybody's, notwithstanding his low Wins total (12).

batmagadanleadoff wrote: You'd have to wade through more than a baker's dozen worth of Mets single season strikeout marks before coming up on a pitcher not named Seaver, Gooden or Cone. In his first season as a Met, Pedro Martinez struck out 208 batters, good for 14th all-time (but tied with Seaver) on the list of single season strikeouts by a Mets pitcher. Gotcha, Pedro.

Dickey's faced 75 more batters than Gonzalez. Ranked by Average Game Score Stats that adjust for park factors give Cueto a very slight edge over Dickey

September 22, 2012, 11:05 am Mets� Knuckleballer Has an Honor at His Fingertips By TYLER KEPNER Terry Collins, the Mets� manager, sat gloomily at a news conference after his team lost to Philadelphia on Monday. His staff ace, R. A. Dickey, had lost despite allowing only two earned runs in seven innings. The Mets badly want Dickey to reach 20 victories, the magic threshold for a starting pitcher. �You feel for him because all�s he�s done is give himself a chance to win baseball games,� Collins said. �We�ll go back at the end of the year and re-count the number of games he didn�t get a decision, or didn�t get a win. Hopefully, it doesn�t come back to bite him too bad.� Collins should not worry. By now, the writers who vote for the Cy Young Award understand that won-loss record, while useful for telling the story of how frustrating or rewarding a season has been, is not vital to judging who has pitched best. Three of the last six Cy Young Awards were given to pitchers with no more than 16 victories � Tim Lincecum and Zack Greinke in 2009, and Felix Hernandez in 2010. Last season�s winners were easy: Justin Verlander and Clayton Kershaw both topped 20 wins while leading their leagues in strikeouts and earned run average. Both were unanimous selections. This season�s races are much tighter, and a crowded field of starters could allow a reliever to emerge. Atlanta�s Craig Kimbrel, who had 38 saves in 41 chances, with 105 strikeouts in 571/3 innings entering Saturday, would seem to have the best chance among closers. But only one reliever has captured the award in the last 19 years, and that pitcher � Eric Gagne of the Los Angeles Dodgers, in 2003 � had to go 55 for 55 in save chances to do it. Advanced metrics value starters much more than relievers, because starters pitch so many more innings. Innings should be important to the Cy Young discussion. Pitching deep in games not only helps rest the bullpen, but projects a sense of calm to the rest of the team: It�s O.K., I�ve got this. Durability ought to count for a lot. Take Gio Gonzalez, who was 19-8 for the Washington Nationals. The record was exceptional, and his 2.95 E.R.A. was also sharp. But Gonzalez did not record an out in the eighth inning until Aug. 3. The Giants� Matt Cain had done that 11 times, and Madison Bumgarner, Dickey, Cole Hamels and Kershaw had done that 10 times. Of course, a pitcher can labor for more than seven innings but not necessarily pitch well. So what about high-quality starts � say, starts lasting at least seven innings, with no more than three earned runs? Win or lose, almost every such start is an ace-worthy performance. Dickey and Kershaw (who is probably done for the season with a hip injury) had made 19 such starts. Cincinnati�s Johnny Cueto has made 17, and Hamels 16. Gonzalez had made only nine. From June 3 through July 19, Gonzalez never even lasted seven innings. Gonzalez, of course, is headed to the playoffs, where his relatively light workload could make him fresher than other top starters. He could win a World Series ring for his efforts, and that is the ultimate prize for a player. But the league�s highest individual pitching honor should go to Dickey. He strikes out a lot of hitters, and few reach base. Entering Saturday, he had a National League-best 2.67 E.R.A. and also led in innings, with 212. He has mastered baseball�s most unpredictable pitch, the knuckleball, and made it the most effective pitching weapon in the league. The American League race may be even closer.... http://bats.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/22/mets-knuckleballer-has-an-honor-at-his-fingertips/

Saturday, September 22, 2012 Miami at NY Mets 1:10 PM Buehrle vs Dickey Milwaukee at Washington 1:05 PM Peralta vs Gonzalez http://espn.go.com/mlb/schedule

... it was an invective inducing game. I�m not feeling remotely so generous of spirit. [The Mets] can cry, they can smash stuff, they can bite each other�s heads off for all I care�and maybe they can fucking run to first base.... �Who the fuck loses 16-1 in September? The same outfit that lost 13-0 in August, 11-5 in July, 9-1 in June, 8-0 in May and 18-9 in April.... http://www.faithandfearinflushing.com/

Today in Megdal: Excerpt: For his part, Collins did nothing to take incoming fire for his players. When asked if they have quit, Collins responded in his postgame press conference, "You'll have to ask them. I have my own opinion. And I'm not going to express it publicly." It's a line of thinking that makes a simple problem needlessly complex. The Mets don't have the personnel to contend. To suggest some kind of malfeasance on the part of the players, who are playing for jobs next season, avoids blaming the sheer lack of talent on the Mets organization. Meanwhile, the Mets have two weeks left in their season to show David Wright the kind of progress that will convince him to sign a contract extension with the team, assuming they even have the means to offer him one. The Mets hold a team option on Wright for 2013, but Wright has said he won't negotiate in-season next year, so the Mets can either find a way to extend him this winter, or risk losing him for nothing, like Jose Reyes, next winter. That 4-24 record in the team's last 29 home games probably doesn't help the cause. http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/sports/2012/09/6537384/mets-are-eliminated-home-embarrassing-new-low

Mets � Willets Point wrote: Edgy DC wrote: I appreciate the whole Polo Grounds deep green seats, but it may be a good time to think about painting them happy orange and other playground colors again like at Shea. I mean, we're seeing a lot of the seats these days. They could follow of the lead of the Kentucky Speedway and paint the seats so that they sort of look like people are sitting in them. It seems a Wilponian thing to do. Costs too much. It's cheaper for them to lie.

Yesterday's attendance, according to the Ministry of Truth, was 93,423. Citi Field was doublepluspacked.