Frayed Knot

I still preferred the idea of moving Cuddyer temporarily to 3B in order to give Nieumayberryenhuis a few starts, but I reckon that ship has sailed.

So the fact that we got out-hit like 12-2 since the end of the 3rd inning means this could easily have been a loss anyway. But it would be tough to find a game where a 4th inning grounder was a bigger turning point.

So Leathersich's role on this team is apparently to give up screaming liners to lefty hitters.

Part of the seeing-eye singles thing is that I have ZERO cahnfidence that any ground ball is going to be turned into an out. Either they wind up between fielders for hits or they wind up AT fielders and which point I hold my breath both through the play and through the throw. It's a far cry from the '99 infield when I was surprised if they didn't turn anything other than a solid line-drive into an out.

I know this is probably just my imagination, but we seem to be getting burned both by a lot of at'em balls by NYM hitters and by a lot of seeing-eye singles against lately.

So that 'E' basically cost the team 3 runs and deGrom maybe 20 pitches. Oh, and it turned the game around. Other than that it wasn't too bad. oe: my auto-corrects "corrects" deGrom to legroom. Maybe that's not too far off

But another bad outing from deG and then it's two in a row and you start to worry. And a series loss here would make it three series losses in a row and 7 losses (or 8!!) in 10 games And the lead over the Nats which was 8 just two days ago and was looking like 9 when they were down 9-1 the other night could suddenly be 4 or even 2 And we only won 1 game vs them at CitiField last season (and 4 overall) so losing 3 of more here would start that spiral again And etc. All that (and more) is why this is officially proclaimed as 2015's first BIG series.

The Who to Release 1982 Concert Film From Shea Stadium As has ben pointed out by numerous people besides me here, The Who have gotten more out of less than just about any BIG band ever. IOW: good band but a relatively small catalog for such a lengthy lifespan. And now this collection just piles on to the number of times most of these songs have been officially released by the band.

I'm declaring this to be the first official BIG series of the season. Nats are off to a rocky start but have scored 26 runs on 30 hits in the last two days. While after our hot start and attendant national attention, we've lost two straight series and are a Murphy bolt from losing 5 of 6. A bad series here will virtually wipe out any of the good vibes from the hot start. At six games out the weekend can end with the Nats as little as 2 out, or at 4, or 6, or 8, or 10 behind, obviously the potential for a big swing. They're getting healthy: Span back, Werth back, Rendon close although looking like he will NOT be activated this weekend. Wright not going to be ready on our side, or obviously d'Arnaud.

I assume that because any tickets purchased for yesterday will eventually be exchanged for tickets at a later date they'd have to report this one as Zero to prevent a double-counting later on.

[u:1m8e5lho]Four Game set in NYC[/u:1m8e5lho] Nats = 9-13, just crawled out of last place. Have had trouble scoring runs right up until two games ago when they dropped 13 on the Braves in two consecutive nights (the first one overcoming an early 9-1 deficit). Their starting pitching has been decent but not as good as advertised; the pen is having all kinds of problems; the hitting erratic at best; and the defense just plain terrible. Thursday 7:10: deGrom vs Strasberg [1-2, 4.88, 1.63] Certainly not the numbers the Nationals expect from Strasberg. He's had just one good outing in four this year and that came against the Phillies so it barely even counts. Friday 7:10 -- Harvey vs Scherzer [1-2, 1.26, 0.84] Scherzer is coming off a skipped start based on a sore thumb which was caused by him trying to swing a bat which apparently never occurred to him that he'd have to do when he decided that $20+ million/year wasn't enough money for him to stay in the AL so now he's trying to get the rules changed so he doesn't have to do it. Don't it just make your brown eye blue? He's pitched ridiculously well for a guy with a 1-2 start. The 3 runs we tagged in with on opening day were the most he's given up in 4 starts but his team's bats and gloves have let him down so far. Saturday 7:10 -- Niese vs Gonzalez [1-2; 5.01, 1.71] Pitched a gem vs StL two outings ago but has otherwise been pretty shitty (5 runs, 3 runs, 6 runs). We didn't see him in the opening series Sunday 1:10 -- Gee vs Fister [1-1, 3.28, 1.46] The other starter we didn't see opening week, the first two starts for Fister were pretty good, next two not so much. We also didn't see Span, Werth, or Rendon the first week. Span is back and is hot. Werth is back and is not. Rendon has been rehabbing and is a possibility to surface before the weekend is out.

Colon - 1.5 Cuddyer - 2.0 Granderson - 1.0 Duda - 0.75 Plawecki - 0.75

OK, this is annoying: Chris Young, between the tail end of last year and early this season, now has just over half as many NYY ABs as he did for the Mets, yet already has as many HRs and more XBHs And with him it's not even like you can blame this all on the Little League fence in RF CY as NYM: 8 HRs + 12 2Bs in 254 ABs -- .250/.283/.346 CY as MFY: 8 HRs + 13 2Bs in 130 ABs -- .292/.361/.577

It also seems like an odd time to stock up on pitching seeing as how two off-days are coming up in the next week. Certainly last night's lefty/lefty match-ups didn't do us any favors.

Edgy MD wrote: And/or other fan-targeted efforts that aren't necessarily player-generated. I can't think of any examples of what those things might be, especially now that they're (supposedly) adhering to guidelines that govern the time between innings*. Whatever it might be, if I'm MLB, I'm studying the game tapes to find out. * Except for the 7th inning stretch at YSIII of course (and select Sunday games at other parks) where the Yanx put on a full dog and pony show so as to reenforce the idea that George personally invented patriotism. If they want to do that, fine, but that doesn't mean they have to televise it also (what, guards forcibly restraining paying customers from leaving their seats during those few minutes isn't enough?) and if they do want to televise it then they don't get to run a full slate of commercials right afterward. Either/or, not both.

Ashie62 wrote: If Plawecki proved himself quickly I might ship d'Arnaud to the AL for an arm. 1) Only for an AL arm? Are there no NL arms you want? 2) Can we wait until Plawecki has 2 weeks in the majors and say gets his BA over .200 before we start declaring d'Arnaud to be yesterday's news?

How many more piece-of-shit hits are these guys going to get tonight? Between these swinging bunts and the ones just sneaking inside the lines (or not) it's getting frickin' annoying. Oh, and I forgot Stanton's off the end of the bat spinner that went against the shift for an RBI.

What does that make us now on challenges at 1B this year, like 1 for 28 or something?

So what do we make of the fact that this game, which had 10 runs, 15 hits, 16 Ks, 2 walks and 6 pitchers (although no in-inning changes), was played in just 2:03 ? Such an unusual time -- for any game much less a high scoring one -- may give credence to the idea that part of the problem all along has been hitters (and maybe pitchers as well) who preen a bit for the fans as they're in the box, or while waiting for their walk-up music, or around the rubber, etc.

So, can a fielder climb into the stands and keep running up the aisle and over seats to make a play? Don't you need to at least start your leap on the playing field for the catch to be legal? IOW, you can climb the fence, make the catch, and then fall into the seats, but not jump the fence first then make the catch while standing in Row C. And while we're on the subject: Alex Gordon's catch over this past weekend, Now THAT (speaking to announcers here) was a catch diving into the stands and, no, it wasn't anything like Jeter's. Jeter's catch, although a nice hustling play, was was caught not only on the playing field **BUT ALSO IN FAIR TERRITORY** before he subsequently went into the front rows because he couldn't stop in time. I fear we've been sentenced to hear every current and future into-the-stands catch for the rest of time likened (and often found inferior in comparison) to the one by St Derek a decade or more ago even when the ones that are considerably better and not remotely similar.

Benjamin Grimm wrote: The announcement is kind of required, isn't it, at least for pinch hitters, because that's when they're officially in the game. A manager waits for the left-handed pinch hitter to be announced, for example, before he tells the umpire that he's bringing in a lefty reliever. Technically the change is official when the home plate ump signals the official scorer in the press box that the guy walking up to the plate in the new hitter in that lineup slot. Whether it subsequently gets announced over a loudspeaker or not isn't necessary. But yeah, as a matter of consistency, it's probably best to continue the standard practice.

There does appear to be a PA announcement for each AB but it's barely audible even without the crowd so I'm thinking that maybe it's aimed at those beyond the gates*. Certainly no point in telling anyone in the stadium who's up. *For those familiar with Camden, the brief glimpse of the gathered crowd (probably an optimistic word here) looked to be beyond the outer gate which is in back of LCF (where the statues are) and which blocks off the entrance end of Eutaw St. So there's no one is that pedestrian area between the OF fence and the converted warehouse and therefore no one on Eutaw Street to chase down Chris Davis's HR which he hooked just inside the RF foul pole. O's were smacking around Samardzija in the early innings.

Even #2 hitters aren't OBA-ing .327 these days (.322 this year to date). You have to remember that we're not in 1999 anymore Toto when entire leagues were north of .330 As for the larger point, bunting Tejada was being discussed as to the specific case of him attempting to SacB Muffy to 3rd in the 8th inning of a tie game. Argue for or against that if you care to, but no one here is advocating adopting the lineup construction and/or offensive strategy of the 1965 Dodgers.

batmagadanleadoff wrote: So do you want your #2 hitter to be just a tick above average in OBP? I don't. Now if your overall offense sucks, that's another thing. Thanks to this terrible lineup construction tradition, fans accept (and I don't necessarily say "youse") a #2 hitter that's average, or even crappy, because, you know, what does his crappiness matter if he can sac bunt the leadoff guy over to the next base? Put a crappy hitter in the #2 hole and compound that dumb move by having him intentionally destroying a chance for a big inning, even in the first inning, right before the most potent hitters are due up. Not sure that 15 to 20 points is a "tick" above average, nor am I trying to make an argument for Tejada batting 2nd I'm clarifying that a .327 lifetime OBA ins't "crap" just because calling it so helps make whatever point you're trying to make.

The biggest problem is that first trip through the lineup. Even on the nights where it's not 9-up/9-down it's often pretty close to it. A lot of the fattening up on the starters comes during innings 4-7 which makes the vs-starters numbers look a lot better. Looked at another way, NL stats for runs scored for innings 1-3 are just a shade lower as compared to innings 4-6 [421 vs 445] while Los Mets are scoring at exactly half the rate. I assume that part or even most of that is flukey, but it would be nice to see them put up some crooked numbers early on one of these nights (one of these crazy old nights) or at least just not go down so meekly to middle/back of the rotation starters on a regular basis.