metirish

I wouldn't mind one of the fine urinals.

1) - Team getting of to a bad start, 2) Alou's health 3) Right Field 4) Oliver Perez and his contract year,how will all that affect him. 5) Pedro's health.

Well now wouldn't it be great to see him attain those?

It's been reported that he has lost about 20 lbs , came into spring training that much trimmer, dare I say the best shape he's ever been in. I think he's rededicating himself to the task at hand.

As they say he's built like a brick shithouse.

Fernando.

Definitly would be pleased to see him sign, he's young, won 17 games in 06. Worth a look

There was a picture in the Daily News yesterday showing Mike lugging a small propane tank in Miami, presumably for a barbeque.

Pedro Martinez threw a 55-pitch bullpen session, the first 15 tosses with his eyes closed, which Rick Peterson suggests to help muscle memory. Some darts players use this technique, throwing darts at the board to improve muscle memory.

Got to admit I really like the guy, seems like the kinda fella I wouldn't mind sitting next to at the bar having a soda pop ...it's stuff like this that I admire. In talking about Brian Schneider he asks....what does a 'great handler of pitchers' mean?" ] "Put it this way: On average, there are 22,500 pitches a pitching staff throws during the course of a season. That means there are 22,500 decisions two people are making. There are going to be days when a pitcher doesn't feel that good and the catcher has to judge what that pitcher has working for him that day. "The catcher is responsible for getting the pitchers through those 22,500 decisions and, when you think of it, it takes just one pitch to decide a ballgame. You realize the margin between playing in October and going home like we did last year could be a difference of just 2-3 pitches." Pure gold Rick.

Frayed Knot wrote: ="metirish"]It's time they streamed Mets games over the internet. Well they are if you subscribe via MLB media or whatever they call it. WFAN can't do it through their site because those rights belong to MLB. Yes I meant FAN should do it, thanks for the info on MLB.

It's time they streamed Mets games over the internet.

I don't know but having three of their first seven picks make it to the majors seems good to me.

The FAN now does NJ Devils games with Matt Loughlin of all people on pbp.

In that bit it mentions that the Mets WFAN deal is set to expire after 08, surely they won't leave the FAN , will they? Where would they go etc?

]and obviously Rick Peterson and his mullet second from the right having his fist metaphor ignored by Santana Excellent.

Cheers FK, Goldstein sees it differently than Chass. I've read Moneyball twice and one of the things I remember from it was how the A's dismissed some guys because they wouldn't have a shot at signing them.

I doubt the black is going away any time soon looks like Willie has gained a few pounds. A disturbing sequence here.

I think Chass could have got a better article out of this. ] Assessing the �Moneyball� Payoff MURRAY CHASS Published: February 19, 2008 Not that they want to see any prospect fail, but old-line major league scouts everywhere stood up and cheered last week. Jeremy Brown, the Oakland Athletics announced, had retired. Jeremy who? The Athletics have been the home of Catfish Hunter, Reggie Jackson, Sal Bando, Joe Rudi, Gene Tenace, Rollie Fingers, Jason Giambi, Eric Chavez, Miguel Tejada, Tim Hudson, Mark Mulder and Barry Zito. But Jeremy Brown? The best that can be said about Brown in his six years in the Oakland organization is that he made the team�s 40-man roster and played five games in the majors. But Brown will be remembered most as a portly college catcher who was a central figure in �Moneyball� by Michael Lewis, the book on the revolutionary way Oakland identified players to be drafted for a system that had little money to spend because of the team�s low-revenue status. � Brown was one of seven players the Athletics picked among the first 39 players taken in the 2002 draft, a focal point of the book. Billy Beane, the Athletics� general manager, found Brown attractive, despite his size, because he was a college player with a high on-base percentage. Veteran scouts for the A�s scoffed at the pick. Picking amateur players from among thousands was too much of a gamble, as everyone knew, and Beane sought a system that could be more reliable and less wasteful. Brown�s retirement is a good time to look back at the Athletics� 2002 draft and see how the system worked. Based on statistics more than on the established method of having scouts identify prospects from seeing them play, the system has become more widely used and has created debate between old-timers and younger executives. The change in thinking made its biggest impact on the former Cardinals general manager Walt Jocketty, who was let go last fall despite a World Series championship in 2006, because of a difference in scouting philosophy. �There are whole Web sites and companies dedicated to providing statistics on college players,� Beane said in a telephone interview. �I think clubs are utilizing them more now than they have in the past. Some companies have solicited clubs and some have accepted.� Beane unveiled his method to his scouts before the 2002 draft. That was to be a potentially fruitful draft for the A�s because they had so many early picks as a result of the Oakland free agents signed by other teams. With their first seven picks, the A�s selected Nick Swisher, Joe Blanton, John McCurdy, Ben Fritz, Brown, Stephen Obenchain and Mark Teahen. Swisher, Blanton and Teahen have played in the majors for three years, although Blanton is the only one remaining with the Athletics. Swisher was traded to the Chicago White Sox this winter, and Teahen was traded to Kansas City in June 2004 for Octavio Dotel. Fritz, a pitcher, is preparing for his seventh minor league season, but infielder McCurdy and pitcher Obenchain were released after last season. Beane said hitting on three of seven early picks was a good result. �You�d like to be 50 for 50, but that�s the imperfection of the draft,� he said. �That was the point of the process for us. The complete randomness is why we did what we did. I think the draft up to this point has been pretty random. The average number of players teams get to the big leagues is two. The idea was to try to do something objectively to compare decisions down the road.� Four of the seven players picked by Oakland (57 percent) among the first 39 picks in that draft have played in the majors, including Brown. Of the other 32 picks, 20 have played in the majors (62.5 percent). The difference is in the number of high school players in those groups. Oakland drafted none while other teams selected 18, and 11 have played in the majors, including Prince Fielder, B. J. Upton, Cole Hamels, Scott Kazmir, James Loney, Jeff Francoeur, Matt Cain and Adam Loewen. From Beane�s perspective, college position players are the safest selections while high school pitchers are the riskiest. Yet Hamels, Kazmir, Cain and Loewen are pitchers drafted out of high school. But Beane cautioned that people make a mistake with their �absolute interpretation� of the Athletics� drafting strategy. If anything is to blame for that misinterpretation, it�s the book that made Beane a celebrity. The book, for example, makes fun of Fielder�s size, saying: �Here�s an astonishing fact: Prince Fielder is too fat even for the Oakland A�s.� � The A�s didn�t even consider Fielder, whom Milwaukee selected seventh, nine slots ahead of Oakland�s first pick. Yet last season the too-fat guy outperformed Swisher, the college kid the A�s coveted, in every major category: .288 batting average to .262, 50 home runs to 22, 119 runs batted in to 78, .618 slugging percentage to .455, and in the A�s favorite, .395 on-base percentage to .381. Maybe the fact that Scott Boras was Fielder�s agent influenced the A�s view of Fielder, but that�s not apparent from the book, which portrays the A�s as only being concerned with which team might select Fielder and how that could affect their ability to get Swisher. The A�s system has enabled them to contend, but they have yet to reach the World Series. They did not make the playoffs last year and Beane doesn�t expect them to get there this year. He wouldn�t talk about his current thinking on the draft. �Are we doing the same things now as we did then?� he said. �No. Things change. Nobody�s invented a template about how to draft in professional baseball. There�s no silver bullet out there. We don�t have it and no one else has it.� Brown

Yeah he talks about Santana like he can go get him if things don't go well with the current staff, it's hilarious.

This wanker will be providing comic value for years to come.

Well it is a discussion board Val, it's the worst collapse I've ever seen, which isn't saying much. Hopefully that won't happen again.

If the Phillies have a great year this will be cited as one of the reasons, loose clubhouse, Myers now a " leader"....yyybbb

Funny but woud have been funnier if it happened to Myers.