metirish

I'm changing my allegiance to Soupy Jr.'s team , was he stealing on his own right there?

Benjamin Grimm wrote: I received this e-mail last night: ]PLEASE INFORM RANDOLF THAT HIS COACHING ON ERIC HIELMAN HAS BEEN PATHETIC. HE COULD NOT DO THE JOB LAST YHEAR AT THE END OF THE SEASON, AND CAN NOT DO IT THIS YEAR. YOU SHOULD REPLACE HIELMAN. ANY MINOR LEAGUE PLAYER COULD REPLACE HIM. Hilarious . Cleon would be proud.

] Lasorda, the Dodgers' chief salesman, said he was not offended. He said Piazza was stung by boos at Dodger Stadium, before and after the trade. He would try, he said, to persuade Piazza to wear a Dodgers cap on his Hall of Fame plaque. Doesn't Tommy not know that it's not Mikes choice.

Tim Marchman on Piazza. ] Piazza Retires as Baseball's Greatest Catcher Baseball By TIM MARCHMAN Now that Mike Piazza has declined into the vale of years, having formally announced the end of his 16-year major league career yesterday, it's time to state as fact what's long been plainly true: With the possible exception of Negro League legend Josh Gibson, Piazza was the best catcher in baseball history. It was a privilege to watch him play in New York for so many years, and one can only hope that when he's immortalized in bronze at Cooperstown, a Mets cap will be perched atop his head, right there with his mullet and moustache. From his ruthless hammering of the Yankees to his apocalyptic hot streaks (he hit .430 AVG/.509 OBA/.790 SLG in his last 29 games in 1998 as the Mets chased a playoff spot), from his run-ins with Roger Clemens to his game-winning home run in the first sporting event in New York after September 11, 2001, from the press conference he announced to proclaim his heterosexuality to the image of perfect stillness and balance he left with the fans as he launched warheads to right field, Piazza seared his mark on New York baseball. Still, I honestly don't feel that even rabid Mets partisans have a sense of just how monstrously good he was. The vast distance between Piazza's hitting and that of all other catchers ever is staggering, almost impossible to describe, and was remarkably unappreciated in his prime. In 1997 he hit .363/.431/.638 while playing his home games in Dodger Stadium, which damped offense by 7%, which would have been worthy of an MVP award if he'd been a first baseman. Somehow voters picked Colorado's Larry Walker, a right fielder who played his home games in Coors Field, which inflated offense by 22%. Rather than idiocy on the part of the writers who vote for the award, I've always thought this reflected disbelief. Piazza's numbers were so preposterous that baseball couldn't really absorb their meaning. From 1993 to 2002, which isn't an arbitrary selection � it's the decade from his debut to the beginning of his physical breakdown � Piazza's OPS+ was seventh-best in baseball, essentially tied with those of Manny Ramirez, Jim Thome, Gary Sheffield, and Albert Belle. His hitting would have been Hall of Fame-class had it come from a first baseman or a left fielder; with the possible exception of Johnny Bench, he's the only major league catcher ever of which this is true. To say that he towered over the competition with the bat is a gross understatement, and his career home runs record for catchers (he's the only one ever to top 400) is the least of it. In that 1997 season, for instance, Piazza was credited with 150 runs created. No other catcher has ever topped 129, and only four others � Gabby Harnett, Roy Campanella, Bill Dickey, and Bench � ever topped 120. They all did it once; Piazza did it four times. Going by adjusted OPS+, which, like runs created, is available at baseball-reference.com, Campanella had three seasons that would have cracked Piazza's top seven, Mickey Cochrane had two, Bench and Dickey hadone apiece, and Yogi Berra had none. And while Piazza played in a hitter's era, he played in the worst hitter's parks of his day, against the toughest competition in the sport's history. This is the point where one is supposed to acknowledge that while all this may be so, defense is the most important part of a catcher's job, thus somehow making Piazza much the inferior of several other players. This involves hoodoo. Given levels of competition, Bench, a legendary defender, was probably the second-best-hitting catcher ever. He created 93 runs per 162 games � an astounding 23 less than Piazza, in a career of equal length. Was he really 23 runs better per year than Piazza with the glove? It's possible, but the burden of proof would be on the person making this extraordinary claim. Excepting the odd freak season, there's little reason to think that the best catchers are worth much more than 10 runs above average per year, or the worst much more than 10 below. Credit the two at these poles, and it still doesn't make up the difference in offense. What's more, Piazza, despite falling victim to the well-known fallacy by which a catcher's defensive reputation declines inverse to his offensive numbers, was a perfectly decent catcher. He was lousy at throwing out runners, but then he was playing in an era when the stolen base was more or less irrelevant, and he was solid or better at other aspects of the game before his body began to fall apart. Anyone arguing that he was uniquely bad has to explain why his teams routinely won 90 games and why he generally caught excellent pitching staffs. Of how many bad catchers are these things true? If Piazza was even merely a below-average defender in his prime � and I think that's a fair way to put it � he would be the best major league catcher ever; he was that good a hitter. That he brought so much more to the game, from cheerfully semi-competent heavy metal drumming to absurd facial hair to a Mets pennant to the wonderful (if moderately suspect) legend of how a 62nd-round draft pick turned himself into one of the best players of all time, just made him all the more beloved. No Met has worn no. 31 since his last game with the team, in October 2005; doubtless no Met will ever wear it again. tmarchman@nysun.com Bill Shaikin of the LA Times claims the Dodgers have never recorvered form trading Piazza. ] BILL SHAIKIN / ON BASEBALL Piazza: the blue-plate special He retires without a team, but it should have been as a Dodger The great ones should not bid farewell via e-mail. Mike Piazza deserved to tip his cap and bask in the applause, secure in his place as one of the Dodgers' brightest stars. His place would have been between Tom Lasorda and Sandy Koufax, on opening day, at the end of the Dodgers' stirring parade of players through the decades. Dodger Stadium went nuts when Koufax appeared, and the place would have gone only slightly less berserk with Piazza in the house. But he was not retired then, just unemployed. He never did find a job, and he retired Tuesday, at 39. No standing ovation, no public appearance, just a statement sent to media e-mailboxes. "I walk away with no regrets," Piazza said. "I knew this day was coming and, over the last two years, I started to make my peace with it." It is difficult, even to this day, to make peace with the idea that Piazza did not play out his career with the Dodgers, that they traded perhaps the greatest hitting catcher in history -- and Lasorda's godson, no less. The Dodger Way was no more. It is a decade later, and the Dodgers have yet to recover the tradition, the loyalty and the championships. Piazza was a homegrown superstar, with a story made for Hollywood. The way Lasorda starts to tell the story, five clubs scouted Piazza. "Every one of them said he couldn't play," Lasorda said. So, as a favor to Lasorda, the Dodgers drafted Piazza in 1988, in the 62nd round. Of the 1,433 players selected, he was No. 1,390. He made himself a decent catcher through hard work but, boy, could he hit. As a rookie, in 1993, he hit .318 with 35 home runs. In 1997, his last full season with the Dodgers, he hit .362 with 40 home runs. "He brought the offensive level of what a catcher can do to a level that I don't think can be matched," said Mike Scioscia, his predecessor as the Dodgers' catcher. Piazza loved L.A. -- the fans, the night life, the perennial promise of October -- and L.A. loved him back. But free agency loomed after the 1998 season, initial negotiations did not go well, and all of a sudden L.A. knew he wanted a record-setting contract. Fred Claire, the general manager, figured he had all season to make a deal. The new Fox ownership wanted to rid itself of Piazza and buddy up to the Florida Marlins for television rights purposes, so the corporate suits traded Piazza to the Marlins in May, then told Claire what they had done. "Mike couldn't have been any more shocked than I was," Claire said. "He never wanted to leave," Lasorda said. "He cried." Piazza did get his record contract. The Marlins flipped him to the New York Mets, and the Mets gave him $91 million. This wasn't supposed to happen. Peter O'Malley had told us a family could no longer afford to run a major league team. So he sold to a corporation with deep pockets, and Fox promptly sold off Piazza. But, a few months after portraying Piazza as greedy, Fox signed Kevin Brown for $105 million. Claire and Bill Russell, the manager, were fired one month after the trade. So were three coaches. The Dodgers are on their sixth general manager and fifth manager since then, with no pennants. "The trade changed the whole scope of the Dodgers in the way they had been operated," Claire said. In the various organizational purges, the Dodgers dumped Scioscia, Mickey Hatcher and Ron Roenicke from their minor league staff, Gary Sutherland and Eddie Bane from their scouting staff. They all work -- and win -- in Anaheim now. Piazza did not win a playoff game in L.A., but he got to the World Series with the Mets. He finished his career with the most home runs of any catcher in history, one of eight to hit .300 with 30 homers in a season. He did it six times. Roy Campanella did it three times. No one else did it more than once. "Just to put yourself in the same ballpark as Roy Campanella is saying something," Scioscia said, "and Mike belongs up there." In his statement, Piazza thanked all the teams, managers and fans for which he played, but he singled out the Mets' fans as "the greatest fans in the world." Lasorda, the Dodgers' chief salesman, said he was not offended. He said Piazza was stung by boos at Dodger Stadium, before and after the trade. He would try, he said, to persuade Piazza to wear a Dodgers cap on his Hall of Fame plaque. Persuasion should not have been necessary. The late, great Times columnist Jim Murray called it, two days after the trade: "The Dodgers always have adhered to the Branch Rickey theory of roster cutting that it's better to deal a player a year early than a year late. But in Piazza's case, 10 years early?" bill.shaikin@latimes.com

From Rubin. ] Luis Castillo - the four-year, $25 million second baseman who can't play day games after night games in Year 1 of the deal because of balky knees - butchered a grounder that could have ended the inning and kept the Braves scoreless. After a two-out walk to Chipper Jones, Mark Teixeira sent a slow but routine grounder to second. Castillo, playing back on the grass, reacted slowly, then had trouble pulling the ball from his glove. Teixeira beat the throw. Brian McCann followed with a two-run double. Jeff Francoeur then crushed an RBI triple. The Braves led, 3-1. Randolph suggested Pelfrey should have done a better job of buckling down after the botched play, but didn't spare Castillo. "If you're going to be on the outfield grass, you have to charge the ball," Randolph said. "He let the ball kind of take a big hop on him, stayed back on it."

Did he tell the trainers that it was bothering him , was he trying to play through it , with his history that would seem not very smart. Chavez Beltran Anderson WOW

Would any team be desperate enough to think that Heilman can be a starter now without being sent to the minors to get built up for the job , as has been made clear Heilman is without options so sending him down is a no go.

Harsh from Lukas and what's with the standing up for gay new yorkers angle , he seems especially upset over that , weird.

I tuned into the radio for a few innings last night , Howie and Wayne were talking about the Randolph controversy , Howie maintained that it was causing a distraction to the team and has created " tension" among the team he didn't elaborate .

Schoeneweis 2 Castillo 1 Wise 1

I dunno but I think the end is near. ] Randolph apologizes to Mets management, SNY BY DAVID LENNON | david.lennon@newsday.com - Three days after making inflammatory comments to the Bergen Record, Willie Randolph issued an apology before Wednesday night's game against the Braves. When reporters entered the visiting manager's office here at Turner Field for his daily briefing, Randolph was sitting at his desk, an 8x11 sheet of white loose-leaf paper in front of him. The page was filled with notes carefully written in black ink. When the first question was asked about the health of Ryan Church, who was hospitalized Tuesday with a mild concussion, Randolph politely steered the conversation in another direction. "Before I start guys, I need to say a few things real quick," Randolph said. "First of all I want to apologize to Met ownership, SNY and my team for the unnecessary distraction that I created the last couple of days. I shouldn't have said what I said. It was a mistake -- simple as that. It was a mistake. There's no excuses for that. I'm owning up to it. "The fact of life is that we haven't been playing very well as a team. We've been very inconsistent. When that happens, you're going to be criticized for that. I understand that. It's been a tough couple of months. I expect a lot from my team, from myself, and I understand that goes along with it. I've been in this town for a long time. "I take full responsibility for what I said in my frustration and I hope that we can put a close to this matter and focus on winning a lot of baseball games. That's what we're here to do -- win a championship. I just wanted to publicly apologize and I take full responsibility for what happened a couple of days ago." Randolph later said during his weekly appearance on WFAN that his comments were meant to be off the record, a claim the Record's Ian O'Connor vehemently denies. But apparently it took him almost 72 hours to fully realize how much of a mess he had made. Randolph suggested that racial bias may be part of the reason for the media criticism. He also angered SNY officials by saying the network's coverage was slanted against him. That also did not go over well with the upper management of the Mets, who also own the majority stake in SNY, and apparently Randolph's handling of the fallout on Tuesday did not suffice. The Mets manager said he already had reached out to the Wilpons to apologize directly, but was not instructed by team ownership to issue the statement. COO Jeff Wilpon did not return a telephone call seeking comment. Randolph also told WFAN that he was so troubled by the controversy that he talked with his pastor and family about how to make amends. "I just felt like it was something I wanted to do," Ran.dolph said. "I feel bad about how this has come about because I don't want to be a distraction or for anyone to think this is really how I feel. When you're in the heat of battle sometimes, when you're frustrated, sometimes you open up a little bit or elaborate a little too much, and that's probably what I did." More articles

My black shirt and black/white long sleeved shirt came today , they fit great , I'm not a fat bastard apparently.

This is going about how I thought it would .. Shitty Brick for Shitty Field

No not a prick at Citi Field but a Brick.... Would a CPF brick be cool or not , we could scrape together the $395 and have it as part of the fan walk surrounding the main entrance. The smaller brick is $195

At the very least Francesa will give Willie a history lesson on racism in America.

] BY DAVID LENNON | david.lennon@newsday.com 11:39 AM EDT, May 21, 2008 The Mets have scratched Wednesday's bullpen session for Pedro Martinez after he had to return to the Dominican Republic to tend to his ill, 78-year-old father, Pablo, who suffered a setback this morning in his battle with brain cancer. Martinez already had landed in Atlanta when he got the phone call that told him about his father. He immediately hopped a flight to the Dominican. How this will impact Martinez's rehab schedule is uncertain. Martinez, who has been on the DL since April 2 with a left hamstring strain, was supposed to pitch a side session today for manager Willie Randolph, pitching coach Rick Peterson and bullpen coach Guy Conti, his close friend and guru. If that went smoothly, Martinez was likely to make a rehab start for Class A St. Lucie on Saturday and then possibly be slotted in as early as Thursday against the Dodgers. But with his dad's latest setback, it's difficult to predict how much this will delay Martinez, who may be at his father's bedside indefinitely. At the moment, it looks like he won't be back in the rotation for next week's homestand

While waiting for the rain to stop last night SNY showed a documentary " Playing for Peanuts" , the little they showed made me want to buy the DVD . Wally Backman is the manager of the South Georgia Peanuts , high jinks ensue .... Anyone see the complete airing last week?

Yeah even with all the injuries to regulars Chavez and Anderson have had little playing time .

What or who could Minaya expect to get for Heilman at this point , I would think some one else's struggling reliever is about it , change of scenery and all that.

Benjamin Grimm wrote: ="metirish"]As discussed during the game last night by Ron and Gary how can Pedro come back to pitch for the Mets as soon as next week without pitching to some semblance of real talent in the minors first Why not? Pitchers used to do it all the time, before this "minor league rehab" thing came into vogue. Jerry Koosman, for example, missed a big chunk of time in 1971 and came back right to the rotation without pitching in Tidewater or Pompano Beach. Right and pitchers used to pitch complete games all the time , pitchers used to not have pitch counts , pitchers used to pitch both ends of a double header.......

As discussed during the game last night by Ron and Gary how can Pedro come back to pitch for the Mets as soon as next week without pitching to some semblance of real talent in the minors first , and as Ron said a lot of this retirement talk could be frustration with all the injuries he has dealt with the past few seasons.

Church in hospital with a concussion , what happened?

Interesting bit in a Mark Hermann Newsday article. ] Piazza won't hibernate or stagnate. He has talked of traveling to Italy. He has hinted about studying to become a deacon in the Catholic Church. We all wish him well. More than that, we wish he were still here. Hermann's top ten Mets. 1. Tom Seaver 2. Mike Piazza 3. Darryl Strawberry 4. Keith Hernandez 5. Jerry Koosman 6. Dwight Gooden 7. Gary Carter 8. Tug McGraw 9. Edgardo Alfonzo 10. David Wright

Thursday will be the ten year anniversary since Piazza was traded to the Mets.