batmagadanleadoff

I don't know if what Klapisch writes is true or not, but I don't find his story implausible.

LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr wrote: RealityChuck wrote: Started watching baseball in 1961 (one year too early, alas -- though I did get to be at the ballpark to see Roger hit #61). I wish there were more complete games, but I know it's not going to happen. Pitchers used to be able to coast just a bit -- to throw easier stuff to the weaker batters. Now, you have to hit 90+ on your fastball with every pitch. Much more work, more stress, and ultimately tired arms. Also, having a fresh pitcher makes sense -- pitch count or not. Chuck raises an intriguing point. Isn't it more than just possible-- hell, isn't it probable-- that hitters have gotten better at doing their jobs far faster than pitchers have at theirs, and that this relative increase in skill/power shifts the cost-benefit scale of having a fresh arm in considerably? (You could probably make a pretty good case that there's more of a ceiling for improvement among batters, as swing mechanics don't seem to have reached their apex, while the standard pitching motion remains as unnatural and straining to the human body as it ever has.) Me and my Google is looking for some evidents... I've always thought that this is exactly the reason why pitchers pitch less innings today. Pitching is demanding enough, both mentally and physically, that a pitcher simply cannot go all out on every single pitch. Pitchers pace themselves much like a basketball team that can't full court press all game long because if it tried to, its players would have to be lifted and then carted off of the hardwood before a third of the game is over. Stadiums were more forgiving, and there were more Ed Brinkmans, Roger Metzgers and Bud Harrelsons to go around on every team; this gave pitchers more soft spots. Pitching used to be less demanding. Today's athlete is superior to the one of 25 or 30 years ago; improved muscle conditioning has aided hitting more than pitching as the correlation between strength and the ability to pitch, or even to throw harder is weak to non-existent. Bud Harrelson might not make it as a major leaguer today and if he did, there's no way he'd be allowed to accumulate anywhere nearly as many plate appearances as he did in his day. Today's pitcher has to bear down harder and more often than his counterpart of 30 or 40 years ago. This reduces their lasting power.

Stephen Strasburg gave up zero hits in five innings of work today, striking out six. I think he'll be in the big leagues before the All-Star break.

It was Gehrig DiMaggio and Ruth, according to the telecast.

Good thing that Jerry didn't have Castillo sac bunting Pagan over to second base last inning. (Howie Rose was announcing as if the sac bunt was likelier than not). All three runs scored with two outs. If Castillo sac bunts, he doesn't walk, and the Mets ultimately score nothing. A sac bunt would've cost the Mets three runs.

Fman99 wrote: Fman99 wrote: I'm a little nervous about tomorrow's forecast. How windy does it get in the upper deck on a windy day? They're calling for 25-30 MPH winds tomorrow during the game. I can handle it but Fboy may not be able to do 9 innings in a gale, even in winter attire up there. Dress like you're going to Syracuse. I wish it was that easy. We have a big dome up here, you see, so that just means dressing warm for the walk from the parking garage to the game. I didn't say anything about a Dome! Where does it say to dress for the Carrier Dome? Dress like you're going to an April game in that minor league stadium where the Blue Jays affiliate used to play. Does that stadium still exist?

Fman99 wrote: I'm a little nervous about tomorrow's forecast. How windy does it get in the upper deck on a windy day? They're calling for 25-30 MPH winds tomorrow during the game. I can handle it but Fboy may not be able to do 9 innings in a gale, even in winter attire up there. Dress like you're going to Syracuse.

I'd like to pretend that the WSJ piece is a protest: People will continue to complain about this aspect of Mets management so long as the rotunda's named after Jackie Robinson. BTW, this particular quote is consistent with every bad hunch I harbor about the Wilpons: "When we're back there, we truly enjoy it," said Jim McAndrew, a starting pitcher for the '69 Mets, who flew in for the reunion from his home in Fountain Hills, Ariz. "It's just that you get the feeling that they know these are things that you want to do, but then when you walk away, you kind of feel used.''

Well, I'm not nearly the only one who thinks this .... The Mets said the rotunda was intended to honor Robinson's contributions as a civil-rights pioneer, an important figure in New York's social history and a symbol of American diversity. "Yeah," said former Mets catcher Mike Piazza, when asked about the team's decision, "but he didn't play for the team." Do the Mets Need a History Lesson? As the Mets Work to Repair Relations With Former Players, Some Say the Team Doesn't Do Enough to Honor the Past http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703465204575208272455919744.html

84--Last Monday. Castillo, 2B (#42). Cora, SS (#42). 86--9/29/63. Hunt misplaced his jersey and wore Schreiber's #43 at 2B. Schreiber also wore #43 at SS.

Guess who's leading the NL in ERA now?

8/18/63, among other dates from that season. Ted Schreiber, SS (#43) -- Ron Hunt, 2B (#33).

If the Mets win tonight, they will be in a three way tie for 2nd place in the East with the Marlins and the Nats.

This story is beginning to annoy me. All of this deliberation and hesitation and false starts and back and forth over this no-brainer that Reyes should be slotted down one or two slots in the lineup.... And the thing of it is that Jerry doesn't even seem to understand why Reyes shouldn't be batting leadoff. Instead, he seems to have just blundered into the right move. Because the key to this is to have Castillo leading off. It's not so much that Reyes shouldn't be leading off but that Castillo, for reasons already mentioned here about 100 other times, shouldn't be following the leadoff hitter. Just do it already.

No way on the bunting. Willie was a serial bunter. Jerry isn't. Willie demonstrated thoroughly that he had no clue as to how an offense worked. Willie bunted everywhere. He bunted with the pitcher. He bunted with Lo Duca. He bunted in the first inning. He bunted in the first inning of games where Reyes led off and reached second base on his own: with the fastest runner in MLB already in scoring position with nobody out and there being virtually no chance of a ground ball double play, Willie Randolph ---you guessed it!--- sac bunted Reyes to third base. In the first inning. To my recollection, Jerry's done every one of these things-- and bunted ahead of both the number 7 and 8 slots-- during his slightly briefer tenure. (I was about to break out the numbers, but JCL beat me to it.) It kills me when I see him described by beat writers as an "intellectual," ostensibly because of the glasses and non sequiturs. It's like hearing people who've listened to a dullard Brit describe him as "sooooo smart, y'guys." I hate Manuel's current use of the sac bunt as much as you do ... as much as anybody. But this season's less than a month old. 2009 was a lost season. And Jerry didn't bunt in 2008 when he inherited the same team that Willie managed for the first two and a half months of that season. You have to account for this if you're going to compare how Jerry and Willie use the sac bunt.

Who cares? We'll always have Matt Franco's single. They can never take that away from us.

John Cougar Lunchbucket wrote: I don't know where to find bunt attempts but sac hits under Willie in 2005 was 69 and 77 in 2006. Jerry called for 88 last year. It's hard to track statistically because the manager might remove the sac bunt after one or two failed swings. Of course, the batter is then left to fend for himself with two strikes against him. But yeah, following 2008, Manuel's sac bunting too damn much for my tastes.

Edgy DC wrote: I tend to think most of Willie's sins --- bunting, bullpen abuse --- Jerry has exceeded. No way on the bunting. Willie was a serial bunter. Jerry isn't. Willie demonstrated thoroughly that he had no clue as to how an offense worked. Willie bunted everywhere. He bunted with the pitcher. He bunted with Lo Duca. He bunted in the first inning. He bunted in the first inning of games where Reyes led off and reached second base on his own: with the fastest runner in MLB already in scoring position with nobody out and there being virtually no chance of a ground ball double play, Willie Randolph ---you guessed it!--- sac bunted Reyes to third base. In the first inning. He bunted in the first inning of road games against the Rockies. In Denver! Where every manager should assume, before a single pitch is ever thrown, that it's gonna take seven or eight runs to win the game. He bunted in the first inning of games throughout his entire managerial tenure even though the acquisition of Delgado for the 2006 season gave the Mets, arguably, the best middle of the lineup in baseball. Idiot Willie was playing one run baseball from the first pitch even though he was handed a lethal lineup that, more than any other team in the game, was capable of scoring enough runs in the first inning alone to win the game outright. I think that Willie would have sac bunted in the first inning even if he had Ruth and Gehrig. When Manuel took over in June of 2008, he eliminated the sac bunt from the Mets offense. I'm talking Salk vaccine like eradication. It paid off. Under Jerry Manuel in 2008, the Mets were the best team in the NL. You can argue that Willie's sac bunting at the top of the order was as much to blame for the Mets failure to make the playoffs in 2008 as was their horrible bullpen. I know because right after the end of that season, I personally ran the numbers. I compared run production in 2008 under Manuel and Randolph for every inning where the hitter at the top of the lineup led off the inning. (The #1 hitting slot will lead off an inning almost exactly twice as often as any other batting slot). Run production at the top of the lineup was significantly better with Manuel; if Randolph could've matched Jerry's run production with the top of the order in 2008, the Mets would've won their division comfortably, at least according to Bill James' Pythagorean Theorem. Sadly enough, the sac bunt has re-appeared as a "weapon" in the Mets arsenal following 2008. What's worse is that Jerry, like Willie before him, is using the sac bunt as an across the board tactic rather than limiting the bunt to the very bottom of the lineup and only late in the game. So what happened? Why now and not in 2008? I have a theory. Willie was a pathological bunter. Jerry didn't sac bunt in 2008 because he was able to appreciate more than Willie did, the explosiveness of the Mets top of the order ... four of the first five hitters each capable of turning in MVP caliber seasons. I think that Jerry is bunting now (and last year) because he perceives the Mets lineup as depleted and somewhat weakened as compared to the Mets offense at full strength and at its healthiest. Jerry might be thinking that the Mets need to manufacture runs in their present weakened state to compensate for Beltran's absence and Reyes not yet at full strength, hence the sac bunting. If this is true, I don't agree with the strategy. It's illogical. Sac bunting as a long term strategy is counterproductive to scoring. In the long run, it takes away more than it gives. Therefore a depleted team, like the current Mets can less afford to sac bunt than a team at full strength. (Personally, I think that sac bunting has nothing to do with the strength of the team's offense, and everything to do with the team's ability to prevent, rather than score runs. I might play for one run if, for example, I was certain that the opponent wouldn't score any runs.)

Tonight, he might turn into a pumpkin. Jeff Francoeur is about one or two bad games away from having a stat line that's kind of sucky.

holychicken wrote: Okay, shifting them around all the time would probably not be ideal. It is a bit of an extreme stance. I guess I am really talking about a situation where you shift Wright into cleanup and Bay into the 5th spot. Then every other week you shift them back and forth. Does anything really change for Wright? I could understand if his protection changed or he was batting at an extreme of the lineup. But is batting 3rd as opposed to 4th really going to affect a hitter? I can't imagine it, in-and-of-itself, having a big impact. I don't think there's much difference; it's mostly a myth. Every hitter's job, ideally, is to not make an out and to resist the urge to swing at bad pitches. And I never bought into this business about protecting the hitter, either. If Bay is deemed sufficiently effective as a hitter and worthy of protecting Wright, well then who's protecting Bay? And then who protects the guy that's good enough to protect Bay?

Edgy DC wrote: One thing I think he has over Willie is the ability --- perhaps after weeks of EdgyDCarian frustration --- to wake up one morning and eat shit. Just look at his roster and say, "Fuck me, if I wasn't dead wrong about Angel all along. Dead wrong." I mean, yeah, an eighth place hitter and a third-place hitter are about as different as there comes, but I'd hate to have a manager who refused to bat the right hitter third because, "Damn it, I had him eighth earlier in the season and if I bat him there in June, it'll be acknowledging how wrong I was in April. Fuck that owning-up noise. I've got a rep to protect." It makes one wonder just what exactly Pagan has to do to get some PT with Beltran on the DL. Up until last night's game, Pagan had less PA's than Matthews.