batmagadanleadoff

Gwreck wrote: Strange but true: MLB Network was doing a "Top 15 Games of the Decade" countdown tonight. Yet of the 13 games nominated for the "50 best of the last 50 years," only 9 of them made their show tonight. None of the top 50 games of the last 50 years are required to have been played in the last decade. In theory. What did confuse me is why there were only 13 nominations to fill 50 slots.

Ceetar wrote: batmagadanleadoff wrote: With Cliff Lee on the Phillies, the Mets are a playoff lock. No team that Cliff Lee ha started the season with has ever made the playoffs. There you go! Plus, the Phillies are so good that they'll probably have a bad season. They'll try so hard to win that by the time their games start, they'll already be exhausted.

With Cliff Lee on the Phillies, the Mets are a playoff lock.

I'd trade Jose Reyes if we could get someone that's better. Maybe there's a team out there that could spare a player that's better than Jose Reyes because they'd rather have the worser player. If you're that team, come on down and have Jose Reyes. He's not as good as the player you want to trade us.

Met Hunter wrote: Looks like Gene Clines in that photo. It's either Clines, or a glimpse into Cavaretta's top secret experiment to teach Milner how to switch-hit.

John Cougar Lunchbucket wrote: And, good job keeping another star from the MFYs. Maybe the players made a secret pact to boycott the MFY's this year -- kinda like the opposite of what James, Wade and Bosh did in the NBA.

RealityChuck wrote: metirish wrote: What the heck is this? anyone here buy Mets type gifts for the holidays ? IIRC, you dropped a marble down the chute and into the cannon in center field, and the other player would press a button or something to swing a bat (you can see it to the left of home plate). If you made contact, there were rules for scoring. In other words, MVP baseball without the computer. We were more simply amused back then.

Per BBref, Carter's lifetime Mets WAR --11.2 Kingman's lifetime Mets WAR -- 3.2 Carter's Mets AB's -- 2126 Kingman's Mets AB's -- 2323 Carter produced 1 Win Above Replacement for the Mets every 189.8 AB's Kingman produced 1 Win Above Replacement for the Mets every 725.9 AB's.

Frayed Knot wrote: Most of those "nine or ten posts" were yours ... I wasn't addressing you. I know that you love me.

Kingman was an unusual player. From Kingman, I learned that it was possible for a player to excel at the most important offensive skill in baseball --hitting home runs-- while, perhaps, being an overall liability to his team. Kingman was so bad at everything else, at least with the Mets, that his other stats undermined, or neutralized the fact that he was hitting HR's more frequently than any of his peers. I'd give Carter the slight edge, notwithstanding that the Kid was essentially done after '86. But I'm not sure that I love Gary.

This project might actually persuade me to finally learn how to score a game. Neat stuff.

seawolf17 wrote: Why is that so wrong? Kingman was better than Carter. As already mentioned here, Carter was a productive Met for just his first two seasons. Beginning in 1987, he began to deteriorate rather rapidly, his skills eroding, as is typical of many, maybe most catchers, when they reach their early 30's. 1986 would be the last season where Carter was an impact player. But Carter's first two seasons as a Met were quite impressive. Carter was MVP caliber in 1985 though not 1986, the year that he thought he deserved to win the award). As an aside, I played the 1985 Strat-O-Matic set many times. (I was once an avid SOM player, but only up until the moment in life when I got a real adult job; 1985 was the last set I ever played). Anyways, I played in a few 1985 season NL all star leagues with my SOM buddies from back in the day. And in every single draft ever held (four, in total) Gary Carter was always the first player drafted. Everyone, including myself, coveted Carter85 over every other player, even Doc85! I can explain our preference for Kid: we all understood the concept of VORP, WORP and WARP on an intuitive level. Even though those formulas weren't yet formally invented, we were basing our drafts on our mutual ability to recognize that the difference between Gary Carter and the next best 1985 NL catcher was significantly larger than the gap between the best two players at any other position in the NL 1985. There simply wasn't another catcher who combined the dual abilities to defend the position like a gold glover and hit like an all star. Mike Scioscia, the consensus 2d best catcher edged Carter in AB and OBP, but had limited power and was a defensive liability. If I remember correctly, the next best defensive catcher hit like a backup shortstop, or at least the equivalent of a backup shortstop in an all star draft league. I'd give Carter the edge over Kingman.

Of course though, when G-Fafif notes that Kingman ranks higher than Carter, he gets a polite and reasonable acknowledgement that, perhaps, Win Shares is better. But when I point out the overall absurdity of assigning a nebulous number 30 to someone for having the best season in a given year --- the same 30 whether it's for Gooden85 or Swan79, I get the runaround for nine or ten posts, heels dug in all the way deep to oppose whatever I might write.

Just giving everyone here a heads up that I'm not nearly done bitching about how terrible this ranking system is. I just took a rest is what I did. But now that this thread is seeing some action, I'll be postin' here soon.

LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr wrote: G-Fafif wrote: Benjamin Grimm wrote: So they can have that Lee-Harvey-Oswalt rotation? Sounds like a conspiracy to me. Great Googly Moogly-- we've had this comedy pyramid before, haven't we? I hope Lee doesn't pitch any shutouts next season. Because when it comes to the Phillies, I'm no zip-rooter.

G-Fafif wrote: Valadius wrote: He gets a spot in my all-time Mets bullpen. Definitely gives Dennis Cook a run for his money for lefty specialist. (Not a huge cast to choose from -- Carlos Diaz and Mark Guthrie were breifly wonderful, but Cook and Feliciano had endurance going for them.) Pedro going to the MFYs reminds me of Rafael Santana going to the MFYs. I will be more saddened than infuriated by their appearance in ill-fitting pinstripes. If I was Santana, I woulda demanded my old #3.

He might do well in the Bronx. DH league ... less pitching changes ... no more need for Pedro to go perpetually ... effective weapon against LHB's with a hankering to abuse the close right field fences. It's a good fit.

Henry Blanco headed to the D'Backs. He and Takahashi now officially in the One-Year Wonders division of Metsdom. I read your one year wonder piece, which you linked (above) in the ex-Mets thread, and came across this observation you made nine months ago about 2009 OYW Jeremy Reed: Reed played in 126 games in �09 but started in only 24 of them, or about 19%. From what I can tell, no Met who has ever played in that many games in a season has been a starter so rarely That's what I was talking about: I eyeballed [Grimm's] charts quickly and unscientifically, looking for individual seasons that combined the most orange beads with the least amount of white space. I was looking for the most often used Mets that were primarily back-ups. My quick and dirty (and perhaps, inaccurate) winner is Jeremy Reed, 2009. Reed managed (or was managed) to appear in almost every game in 2009, even though he was almost exclusively, a substitute. Honorable mentions go to: Did you check with any databases before writing that, or were you going by memory? Because those pictures with the beads obviously didn't exist nine months ago.

LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr wrote: Fastest pitcher ever? Fastest great pitcher ever? Who else is in the conversation, really-- Gibson? Johnsons Randy and Walter? Satchel Paige? Herb Score? Koufax? What about Nolan Ryan? I sat next to Bob Feller at a Met game a few years ago and he was gracious enough to converse with me for about 15 minutes, maybe half an hour. It was the only time I ever met Feller yet anyone watching our body language would've thought we were lifetime friends. RIP, Rapid Bob.

Francoeur's a great role model, especially for guys like me: thanks to Francoeur, I can preserve my childhood fantasy of playing every single game for the New York Mets at RF even though I'd be the worst major leaguer at my position.

The one that intrigued me more than any other was the Tigers-A's game from 1972. Good call, but I barely remember it. Shows somebody did some homework. Mostly forgotten classic series. There is probably a book to be written about the 1972 postseason. Twenty-five year anniversary of Jackie's first world series, he's there for game 1, and talks about the need for a black manager. Within weeks of the WS, Jackie is gone. Three years later the first African-American manager would happen. And for pure baseball? Wow. All three series went the distance. Of the 19 games, 11 were decided by one run. There were four walk-off wins, in which the home team trailed when they came up to bat, including the decisive game 5 of the NLCS. Then think of all the great personalities: Billy Martin, Reggie getting hurt, Catfish, Fingers, Rose, Bench, Sparky, Clemente, Pops. Toss in the Campy/Lerrin Legrow bat-throwing incident and the fact that a WS berth was decided on a wild pitch. An argument can easily be made that it was the best postseason ever. Interesting thought. Read a book on the 1921 season this summer that asserted every season from the past fifty years had gotten a book of its own, but I don't remember one specific to 1972 -- though the Tigers recently got one. Joe Rudi made one of the great catches in WS history. Gene Tenace hit two home runs in his first two WS at-bats. Night WS games became the (midweek) rule. Hahn may be onto something. Joel Oppeheimer's "The Wrong Season" was a stream of conscousness, unusual prose book about the 72 Mets. I believe that RChuck wrote that it was his favorite baseball book.

MFS62 wrote: The grapes are starting to taste sour for the Yankee shills. Around 6:30 tonight, Michael Kay said (a close paraphrase) that Lee isn't a big loss - he only had one really good year. And he got hit around in his first start after he got traded this year. You can't make this stuff up. Do you suppose that if Lee chose the MFY's, Kay would, instead, be gloating about all the socks Lee's gonna knock off everybody in 2011? ;-)* * This internet symbol represents a smiling, winking face. You have to tilt your head sideways, towards your left shoulder when looking, to get the full effect. ;-) Here are some other symbols I picked up today, while surfing. I never knew these things existed. (.)(.) Breasts 8---> Penis (_!_) Ass (_o_) Asshole ) Happy pig ^..^ Bat =^..^= Cat Dog ears

Edgy DC wrote: Split to the red light. You wished me into the cornfield.

metsmarathon wrote: batmagadanleadoff wrote: If that's the main reason why Lee spurned the Yankees offer and left almost $20M on the table, then the Lees are idiots. besides, it's not like you or i leaving 20 mil on the table. It's a lot of money, no matter who's getting it. A person can always find ways to spend it. More money to take care of relatives. Maybe he'll want to buy a minor league team in 20 years. Or a fancy vacation home. And a fancy vacation home for the kids. Or he takes a big hit on a future investment and the extra millions that he rejected, perhaps solely to exact revenge for an insult, would've given him an extra hedge, or layer of security.

If that's the main reason why Lee spurned the Yankees offer and left almost $20M on the table, then the Lees are idiots.