batmagadanleadoff

Mets announce death of superfan Seymour Weiner... who loved all the jokes about his name (Editor's note: The New York Mets announced Tuesday that noted fan and World War II veteran Seymour Weiner has died. The Athletic originally ran this story in April 2024.) The more Seymour Weiner sees the Mets making his name famous, the more he eats it up. “I couldn't be more excited,” Weiner said in a telephone interview. “I really can't believe it's happening. It's probably one of the highlights of my life.” Weiner is 97 years old. He has listened to a lifetime supply of wiener jokes. But he said he never heard any wisecracks combining his first name and last name — until the Mets made him something of an internet celebrity on Opening Day. “The Weiner part of it,” Weiner said, “was something that in my childhood I was teased about. But there was never the thing of ‘see more wiener.'” Now, no one can get enough Weiner. He enjoys reliving how the sausage was made: On Opening Day, the Mets named Weiner, who served in World War II, their veteran of the game. When he appeared on the club's supersized scoreboard with his name spelled out, Weiner received a loud ovation. The Mets lost, but he was a clear, ahem, winner. Quickly, Weiner (pronounced “weener”) received attention on social media. He read all the posts. He laughed at all the memes. Weiner, who remains sharp and engaging, exclaimed during a recent conversation, “Did you see they even picked this thing up in Australia?” “To me, it's been so enjoyable,” Weiner said. “In no way does it annoy me. Just look at all the notoriety I got out of it!” After Opening Day, Weiner's daughter, Beth, wrote to the Mets thanking the club for honoring and hosting her father. Beth, who works as a psychologist and professor, expressed how much Weiner enjoyed the day. Within the note, Beth added, “And he has become a meme! Don't worry. We've heard every joke you can imagine.” A pleasant back and forth followed. Eventually, Beth also said, “If you'd ever want to use us in any ad campaign, we'd love it.” Say no more. The Mets recently ensured everyone will be seeing more of Weiner. On Tuesday, the Mets team will hold a $1 hot dog night promotion. The club posted on X a photo of Weiner as part of an image advertising the game. Within a day, nearly 5,000 accounts had liked the post. “We had this idea of Dollar Dog Night,” Mets chief marketing officer Andy Goldberg said, “and we were, like, well, what would be better than Seymour Weiner?” Weiner was up for it. Weiner said he won't be able to go to the game because chilly nights just don't cut the mustard for him these days. But his daughter and other family members plan to attend. Also, Weiner wants to see more of Citi Field. He said he'd love to attend future games and meet more Mets. For Weiner, the moment has punctuated a lifetime connection to baseball. When he was 12 years old, Weiner, a lifelong Brooklyn resident, became a Dodgers fan. Weiner, who got out of the U.S. Army in 1947, attended the game in which Jackie Robinson recorded his first hit. “Only 12,000 people were at that game in Ebbets Field,” Weiner said, “so I may be the only person who was there and saw it and who is still alive.” “He wasn't the greatest ballplayer I ever saw,” Weiner said, “but he was certainly the most exciting.” So who was the best? That'd be Willie Mays, whose number is retired by the San Francisco Giants and Mets. Mays, Duke Snider, Gil Hodges …. Weiner saw a bunch of the greats latch on with the Mets late in their careers, so the transition from Dodgers fan to Mets fan became an easy one. Weiner called the experience on Opening Day “unbelievable.” He said the Mets treated him “like royalty.” Former Mets Mookie Wilson — Weiner's favorite Mets player from the 1980s — and John Franco accompanied Weiner to the field. He was glad he got to show off his Dwight Eisenhower jacket — Weiner was stationed in Italy during the war — and he thanked his granddaughter, another huge Mets fan, for that. Weiner was wrapped in blankets until his granddaughter told him with a smile, “Grandpa, suck it up.” He cherishes the wooden case gifted from the Mets that Wilson and Franco autographed for him. He appreciates the many people, including Keith Hernandez, he said, who have thanked him for his service. He relishes the attention he has received and gets a kick out of people from his daughter's past calling her about his newfound fame. The way he sees it, Weiner can't ask for much more. https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5446444/2024/04/25/mets-seymour-weiner-hot-dog/https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5446444/2024/04/25/mets-seymour-weiner-hot-dog/

Are the New York Mets baseball's newest pitching gurus? The big-spending Mets were relatively thrifty when it came to assembling their pitching staff, but the results so far are undeniable. Excerpt: Perhaps it is too soon to ask the question. After all, it is not yet May. And the implications for the rest of the sport would be, well, rather intimidating. Then again, the smartest teams in baseball earn that title by identifying trends before they are clear to everyone, so maybe in that spirit, the time has come to wonder: Are the New York Mets, owners of the most wins and the lowest ERA in MLB, becoming the sport's latest pitching gurus? Read it all at https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2025/04/29/mets-pitching-staff/https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2025/04/29/mets-pitching-staff/

Yesterday, I was thinking "These guys are playing like they're PISSED!!" Today, too. Maybe this is the upside of blowing two straight to the Nats? Are you asking a question? The answer is yes. The Mets are winning because they were pissed. Teams can just turn it on at will and win whenever the hell they feel like it. And when they lose, it's because they didn't feel like winning on that day. Because there's no luck or randomness in anything and the team that wins is always the team that wanted to win more than the other team did. In fact, the DBacks probably decided that they wanted to lose tonight's game. And so when you have a game where one team wants to win and the other team wants to lose, you get a romp like tonight's breezer.

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Maybe Juan Soto will read this thread and then go ahead and drive in nine runs in the Mets next game. Juan Soto's bat speed decline threatens Mets' $765 million investment Juan Soto's bat has slowed by 2.4 mph this season, and that seemingly small number is threatening to turn the Mets' $765 million investment into baseball's most expensive disappointment. Through Sunday's games, the former Yankees slugger who terrorized fastballs en route to the World Series last October now appears completely lost against the same pitches that once made him elite. The numbers tell a stark story. Soto is slashing a pedestrian .248/.374/.396 with three home runs and a .770 OPS. His OPS+ sits at 122 — above league average (100) but nowhere near the MVP-caliber 178 OPS+ he posted with the Yankees last season when he slashed .288/.419/.569. When the Mets signed Soto to his 15-year megadeal, they expected production mirroring his 2024 Yankees campaign that earned him third place in AL MVP voting. Instead, they've received a shadow of that player, and the culprit appears clear: his diminished bat speed is hampering his ability to handle fastballs. For casual fans wondering why bat speed matters so much, think of it this way: those extra milliseconds make the difference between catching up to a 95 mph fastball or fouling it off, between driving the ball with authority or making weak contact. It's the difference between the Soto who changed games with one swing and the current version struggling to impact outcomes. The decline in bat speed (from 75.4 mph in 2024 to 73.0 mph this season per Baseball Savant) has cascaded through his performance metrics. Year-over-year, his hard-hit rate has tumbled from 57 percent to 50 percent, while his barrel percentage has nosedived from an elite 19.7 percent to a pedestrian six percent. In baseball's data-driven era, these aren't just numbers but warning flares. Most revealing is Soto's performance against fastballs, previously his bread and butter. Last season, he demolished heaters to the tune of a .333 average with 31 home runs and a .709 slugging percentage. Yankees fans still remember his ALCS-clinching blast off a 95.2 mph four-seamer that left his bat at 109.7 mph and traveled a projected 402 feet. This season? He's managed a single homer against fastballs with a paltry .396 slugging percentage through 60 plate appearances. For context, Soto hadn't slugged below .576 (2022) against fastballs in any season, full or partial, since his career began in 2018. His launch angle profile tells a similar story. Last season, Soto was in the 65th percentile for launch angle sweet spot percentage. This year, he's plummeted to the third percentile. He's simply not squaring up balls at optimal angles of 8-32 degrees, particularly on the fastballs he once punished. "Players go through ups and downs," Soto told MLB.com's Mark Feinsand recently. "It will never always go great. Through the year, it's a long season and it's a lot of at-bats. There are ups and downs, but whenever you click in and find your spot, that's when everything starts." While April has historically been Soto's worst month (.853 career OPS), his current struggles represent a different magnitude altogether. The $765 million question looms: Is this a temporary mechanical issue, or has something fundamentally changed in Soto's swing? As April gives way to May, the Mets find themselves in an unexpected predicament. They didn't pay generational money for an average power hitter. They paid for the electrifying slugger who could alter a game's outcome with one majestic swing. That swing is currently missing 2.4 mph of bat speed. At baseball's highest level, this seemingly small difference makes all the difference between greatness and mediocrity. https://www.yardbarker.com/mlb/articles/juan_sotos_bat_speed_decline_threatens_mets_765_million_investment/s1_13132_42116440https://www.yardbarker.com/mlb/articles/juan_sotos_bat_speed_decline_threatens_mets_765_million_investment/s1_13132_42116440

=Cowtipper post_id=191002 time=1745864775 user_id=166] [Nimmo] was basically a two-year wonder in 2022 and 2023....

I think that Nimmo read this thread before today's game and then got motivated.

Johnny Lunchbucket wrote: I remember the Delgado 9 RBI game bc it was against the Yankees I think that Grimm called one of Delgado's HRs.

He ain't scuffling today.

=ashie62 post_id=191047 time=1745870499 user_id=90] Nimmo has a lot of wear and tear on his legs and baseball city miles on everything else This is his 15th year in the organization

And it's not some small sample size either. His OPS by Month: April 2025: .575 September 2024: .611 August 2024: .684 July 2024: .607 June 2024: 1.004 May 2024: .751 April 2024: .708 His last seven months of ABs. 1 great month. One good month. 5 shitty months. He's only 32 years old. I hope that guy is not shot. I've been wondering about this myself lately. I have no idea if this represents a permanent decline in Nimmo's offense, but he's definitely been scuffling as of late. Two points: He's not as valuable in LF as in CF. LF is not nearly as demanding a position defensively as CF, and so more offense is expected from a leftfielder. And Nimmo is not bringing that "LF offensive punch". And I'm convinced that if David Stearns were running things back then, there's no way the Mets give Nimmo the eight-year contract Nimmo eventually received.

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1962 Met Bob Smith. Wearing, I believe, his Mets uniform in a baseball card that identified him as being on the Redbirds. This post is scaring me. I'm fairly certain that I could name the entire '62 squad easily. But I have no idea who this is. Am I developing amnesia? ..Oh wait. That baseball card. You changed the post. That's Bobby Gene Smith. Infielder. I thought you wrote "pitcher".

=Marshmallowmilkshake post_id=191020 time=1745866547 user_id=119] 1962 Met Bob Smith. Wearing, I believe, his Mets uniform in a baseball card that identified him as being on the Redbirds.

=Cowtipper post_id=191017 time=1745866107 user_id=166] Dick Smith is correct. A dicksmith is someone who crafts dildoes at the dildo factory.

Dick.

Charlie. a/k/a Charley.

In one post?

=roger_that post_id=190921 time=1745775247 user_id=128] And if you care about this sort of thing at all, 27 games is exactly one-sixth of the season, so you can easily compute anyone's numbers at this point by multiplying them by 6. This relates, of course, to counting numbers, hits or wins or errors, and not to percentages and rate-stats, such as batting averages or ERAs, and such. I realize this is an obvious point, and most of us here are too intelligent to require such a reminder. A few dunderheads and trolls, but what are you going to do with them? (As little as humanly possible, I'd propose.)

Edgy MD wrote: Everyone apologize to Diaz. And Benitez, while you're at it. Long overdue.

=roger_that post_id=190889 time=1745716038 user_id=128] In going RBI-less for the second straight game, Alonso has dipped below the 162 mark is in danger of dropping below the 150 mark any time now.

Lefty Specialist wrote: McNeil in CF scares the crap outta me. What, you thought they were playing him in CF in rehab just to fuck around with us? They think he can play out there. They should have Brett Baty play CF. And if Baty struggles in CF, he'll make up for it with his awesome bat and lifetime negative WAR.

Cleon drills a double to the left-center field wall to drive in Bud Harrelson. And boy is this forum slow.

With that triple, Mark Vientos' BA climbs to .190. Vientos is now on track to finish the season with a .190 BA.