Frayed Knot

One look at the 2010 chart above and you could see how the train came off the tracks as soon as the Mets peaked. I remember that I saw it coming. (And I think it's documented somewhere on this forum.) I had this strong sense that they were playing over their heads, and unfortunately I was right. I remember that too. It was one of those years that JCL put up his mid-season 'Predict the Shams'* polls so I stopped for a sec and thought about it (I'm usually not big on trying to predict what's going to happen next) and it suddenly hit me; 'OMG they're going to totally suck!!' I forget what it was specifically at that point (probably a bunch of stuff) but, yeah, you could smell that one coming. Quite unlike last year by contrast where I thought they were going to have a much better second half until getting buried in August [12-17] thanks to ridiculously sucky performances by Granderson [.147/.231/.183] & the soon to be shut-down for the remainder Wright [.232 in Aug on 23 hits: 22 singles + 1 double] * [Second Half Mets]

Just keep putting up Ws in the eastern time zone while the Nats are out west knowing the best they can do is match. They hit SF tonight for the first of four. P.S. Blue Jays do the same this afternoon in advance of the Yanx game in Cleveland tonight.

Gwreck wrote: The only thing that worries me is that the Nationals get to face the Rockies soon too. But so do we again - and they just went 1-2 against them right before we went 4-0

And after all the runs and high pitch counts and pitching changes, this is still going to be a sub-3:00 game.

OK so maybe Kahnle wouldn't have made a difference in the first three games.

Wow ... an actual good sac bunt!! Our bunting average is 1-fer-2 today. Syndergaard bunted one attempt foul in an earlier AB. Overall this year I think it's down under .100

He really sucks at sucking these days.

Considering the state of the Rox pitching staff, 4, 3, & 4 runs in the series so far (most of that off the bullpen) isn't exactly teeing off. But this Butler guy plain isn't very good -- 3-9; 5.50 ERA; 95 hits in 75 innings; .937 OPS-A; more walks than strikeouts (41 to 40), etc. -- and it's not like his road stats are much better than his home, so this afternoon would be a nice time to bring the lumber and not have to count on late inning runs vs the pen. Btw, once again we've got a manager (Weiss) who has seen his starters give up just 4 runs over 18 IP in this series but has lost all three because his pen has been torched for 7 runs in 6 innings without ever turning to his supposed best reliever, newly installed closer Tommy Kahnle. And the funny thing is that if he wasn't just recently (like last week) dubbed with the title 'Closer' we possibly could have seen him in all three games so far. Maybe that changes things, maybe not, but if he's their hot hand right now I kind of like the fact that we've kept his ass nailed to the bench.

deGrom - 4.3 Uribe - 1.7 Cespedes - 1.2 Clippard - 0.5 Familia - 0.5 Cuddyer - 1.0 d'Arnaud - 0.4 Lagares - 0.4

Yeah I never saw Burgess play, and the rep he has is one where he was a PH specialist, but, yes, he was a semi-regular player for much of his career. Kind of like those who only knew Rusty from his second go-around as a Met never knew that he was an excellent OF for at least a decade or more. Brown was a DH in the pre-DH era who thrived on PH-ing in the days when larger benches gave PH specialists lots of opportunities and double-headers meant enough starts to keep one from getting stale. What intrigues about Uribe is the infielder (even middle infielder) skills coupled with a corner man's power (four times has topped 20 HRs and is closing in on 200 career) all wrapped up in a PH'ers body -- and then also how he's all of 9-for-46 as a Met to date yet seems to have already played a big role in a bunch of important games.

MFS62 wrote: Going back to Smokey Burgess and Gates Brown, I like guys with a gut who can hit. Except that Uribe is no mere pinch-hitter, he's a guy who can field and run and for a while played mostly every day. But mainly I'm just taking in this first prolonged exposure to him (despite his already lengthy career) and am getting a kick out of the odd and seemingly disjointed set of looks & skills he brings to the table.

Introducing your second place New York Yanquis Blue Jays went from 8 games out to 0.5 ahead in 15 days/14 games.

Keep putting up those W's and make the Nats chew on it as they prepare to face Kershaw.

What a trip this guy is. - probably the most anonymous (to me anyway) 15 year vet in MLB - mostly as a result of playing out west much of the time I suspect. - came up as a SS (still has played more games at that position than at any other) even though he looks only slightly more like a SS than Benjie Molina. - has played a major role with several WS contenders and winners (2005 ChiSox, 2010 SFG, 2013-14 LAD) though has never been higher than maybe the 5th banana on any of those squads - has had a wildly inconsistent career with some sub-.200 BA seasons coming right on the heels of .300+ years and then back again - doesn't really have good numbers as a NYM so far but seems to be in the middle of everything whenever he's out there - has some swing and miss to his game but hits the ball REAL FUCKING HARD when he does make contact

G-Fafif wrote: Soup appears confused as to what he did to earn Bench Player of the Month honors. I vaguely recall a useful pinch-hit. He had all the other bench players have an even worse month than he did and had Nieuwenhuis earn all his points during that short stint when he was a starter (hell, he earned most of his points in one game)

John Cougar Lunchbucket wrote: I have the Worries for Doodoo. Stiff back, lefty starter, quick turn-around for tomorrow. If he's not in Thursday's game then maybe it'll be time for DooDoo worries.

Holy pitching dominant months Batman! Starters wind up 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 5th, & 8th

Mets � Willets Point wrote: Isn't there always a Monday night game too? And often a Thursday night game? Yeah, the NFL equivalent to what happened last night in baseball would be if all games for that week were won by home teams. Between the Thursday games, the Monday games, the late-season Saturday games, plus the built-in off-weeks, there are usually less than 10 games on your typical NFL Sunday afternoon which would make a home-team sweep even more likely if we were counting games from just the one day.

Benjamin Grimm wrote: I have a hunch that this is a bit more common in the NFL. HF advantage is bigger in NFL than in MLB (although not as big as in the NBA) and the gap between the better and lesser teams is bigger as well, so yes, I suspect clean sweeps or near clean sweeps are more common too. The hitch in the works is that the NFL, even with 32 teams, usually only plays 13-14 games/week because of the off* weeks built into each team's schedule and so there are probably no more than a half-dozen chances a year for a 16-0 or even 15-1 home-team week to happen. * And, yes, they are OFF weeks not BYE weeks. A Bye is when a team earns an advance through a round of a tournament based on previous record or some such occurrence. What the NFL has is simply weeks off for teams and calling them a 'Bye' for a team doesn't make it one.

Harvey - 4.5 Lagares - 2.2 Murphy - 1.0 Cuddyer - 1.0 Flores - 0.7 Granderson - 0.6

That this has never happened before is less odd than many fans probably think. Start with the fact that playing 15 games in a day couldn't happen, except for some Sundays in the DH era, until after the most recent expansion less than 20 years ago. Beyond that, for all the talk about home field advantage, the home team in MLB generally wins less than 55% of the time so getting this to occur is almost as rare as trying to get a coin to land 'Heads' 15 straight times. But even giving home teams 55% shot at the win, I figure the odds of all 15 winning at 0.000127479497357656 or about 1 in 8,000* So if a full slate of games is played maybe 4-5 times per week over a 26 week season that's around 120 chances where it's possible to happen meaning that the odds say a clean sweep should occur about once every 65 years given random match-ups. Giving a quick glance at last night's match-ups shows that the home team happened to be the stronger team in about 8 of the 15 games vs just 3 where the road team came in as the better squad and about 4 where the teams had relatively even records, so that tilts the odds in favor of the sweep a bit more. * about 4x as often vs assuming a straight 50/50 split where the odds are more like once in 32,000. With a 60% H/R splits the odds fall to around 1 in 2,000

I was also very much in favor of allowing Harvey to pitch the 9th. Once they reached the bottom of the order of course that was all off, but am a bit disturbed by the fact that it certainly looked like Terry was going to pull him regardless of how the bottom of the 8th went.

deGrom - 3.4 Familia - 1.0 Uribe - 1.4 Murphy - 1.4 Flores - 1.0 Conforto - 1.4 O'Flaherty - 0.2 Parnell - 0.2

As if one single game was either the cause of, or the sole reason for, Mets fans dislike of Trachsel. Not suggesting that he should up there among the most popular, only that I've long thought the degree of hate was disproportionate to how he performed here.

As the CPF 'Rankings' list was starting to come together probably the biggest single complaint early on was that Steve Trachsel was too high (currently in 56th place). Yet there he is still Top-10 in wins despite being 13th in innings pitched and 14th in games started for a guy who pitched on mostly bad or mediocre teams. Not that I'm making a case for his greatness or anything but I always thought he got far too much abuse for his time in Queens.