Frayed Knot

aka: Who cares if there's six feet of snow on the ground, there are going to be baseball men playing on my TV set.

Why not just retire the position of short stop rather than let someone else disgrace the memory?

Hunter Pence -- broken arm from HBP. 6-8 weeks Yu Darvish -- pulled from 1st start with sore arm And just think, if this were a WBC year folks would be tripping over each other to declare that these injuries would have never occurred.

Edgy MD wrote: Mazzoni serves one up to AAAA masher Kila Ka'aihue and the Mets are down by one. Wow, I had forgotten about that name. I remember considering him for a NYM acquisition at one time. Never amounted to the hope some had for him. Now 30 y/o, has been in Japan for the last two seasons.

You wouldn't have to alter the lyrics much on a bunch of Elton/Taupin songs: ... living like a lusty flower / running through the grass for hours

Considering that he needed three seasons of Rookie ball before he found it (whatever "it" is) let's not act as if he suddenly has things all figured out to the point to where he deserves to skip levels. He just turned 22 and has two good years of low level ball under his belt. There's nothing wrong with him starting the year at least in the pitching friendly Fla St League.

TransMonk wrote: The cynic in me thinks that this could have been Murphy publicly thumbing his nose at the Mets, too. The club does a seemingly decent thing by bringing in an "ambassador of inclusion" and Murphy speaks out about his personal disapproval of the ambassador's "lifestyle". He had to have known that he was going firmly against the company line of the day no matter what his personal beliefs are. I think that's reading WAY too much into this.

Lefty Specialist wrote: (Sandy crosses 'San Francisco Giants' off deadline trade possibility list) I remember when (the still active) Andy Van Slyke openly stated that he'd never play in San Fran because of the way 'that lifestyle was openly promoted and celebrated' -- or words to that effect, I can't remember the exact quote. But whatever his specific complaints were it was a much harsher condemnation than what Murphy is saying here (albeit at a different point in time) and he wasn't drummed out of the sport and is coaching today.

Mets Guy in Michigan wrote: I fear this is going to be an issue with legs. I tend to doubt it Sure, a lot of people are going to disagree with him and all, but his statements hardly constituted some hate-filled rant that's going to cause his team & MLB to come down on him, or be the fuel for group protests and the like.

Lefty Specialist wrote: My question would be....what would happen if Daniel Murphy were trapped in an elevator with Richard Simmons? Same as anyone's reaction to being trapped in an elevator with Richard Simmons ... a quick suicide.

Best comment on this so far (via the deadpan link): You mean someone took a teammate's lunch away from him and it wasn't Bartolo?

He'd likely be a guy called up to replace a short-term injury to either d'Arnaud or Recker - even if he just winds up being that guy who does nothing more than warm up the pitchers and collect ML meal money for a week while never getting into a game. A longer injury then it's Plawecki time. So Jonny Monny is rooting for something on the order of sprained thumbs and bone bruises, but not broken bones.

Keith has never (at least to my knowledge) complained publicly about his number not being retired. He's just moaned about it being given out to back-of-the-bullpen and light-hitting MI types -- the Koos and Louis Lopezes of the world. Like I've said before, I'm all for it if someone wants to take charge of distributing numbers a little less haphazardly than in the past (the Mets should hire JCL as a consultant for this task). It would certainly be an improvement over this whole quasi-retirement stuff which I dislike at least as much as I would a trend towards overly-active retired jerseys.

Well the obit might have been unnecessarily nasty and disrespectful but at least 'Bitter Bill' doesn't admit to being a drunken heckler or anything. Oh wait, he does that too.

I think they should start going to symbols, and then when making a substitute they can use one of those boards that the soccer teams use to tell everyone that & is being replaced by Pi

Forget Parnell, I'm thinking that Familia is the best option for closing - excepting of course the idea about the best REAL option for closer is the one where you name no closer at all.

Yeah, during his 13 appearances in August (coming in with no outs/none-on in all but one of them) he had twice as many games where he gave up [u:3j3ky48n]multiple hits[/u:3j3ky48n] (8) as he did where he had 1-2-3 innings (4). The good news is he wasn't walking people, but that's not enough to make up for multiple hits in eight games out of 13. Yet Armando would take more abuse for simply going to a 2-0 count that Jenrry did during that entire run. And, yes, circumstances were different, but circumstances change.

I won't go as far to say that he was given a pass last year, but he remained in the good graces of the fan base despite becoming VERY hittable as the year wound down: BA/OBA/SLG-Against = .286/.346/.395 in the 2nd half to go along with a season-long WHiP of barely under 1.5 NYM fans have tried to run closers out of town who rarely if ever had short stretches as ragged as that much less full seasons. Being young & homegrown & cheap vs imported & expensive has a lot to do with the differing attitudes but that'll only take one so far and, with several other options available, the leash given him by the fans and (hopefully) by the manager won't be very long unless he shows A LOT more goodness early in the year. This is a worm which can turn very quickly.

Muffy is in a similar boat as Lagares in that his OBA is also mostly tied up in his BA (walk rates for both about 40 pts.) but the difference is that he has a longer track record of sustaining and therefore repeating it. I suspect Terry favors Lagares due to his better speed although that would be unfortunate if Juan can't show that he can get his OBA up. My problem with Murphy up top isn't the average-ness of his foot speed as much as it is the dunderheadedness of his running choices. But, unless and until a better option comes along, I'm with Vic's lineup as well. That said there was an article over the weekend somewhere that talked about new hitting coach Kevin Long's predictions for a "monster year" from Murph (including increased power output) but let's wait on that before we take it to the bank.

metsmarathon wrote: lagares seems to be the potential future solution, and in fact since 2011 his numbers in the minors seem to suggest that he has it in him to get on base at a good clip, but i'm not sure that it's sustainable. Yeah, the sustainability is the biggest question. He had merely OK OBP numbers in the minors (.322 over pieces of 9 seasons across every level) and did it with walk rates barely better than half of what you'd prefer to see. That means his OBP was -- and has been at the ML level also -- very BA-dependant. So if those 2-strike pokes to RF stop finding holes ...

TransMonk wrote: If I'm Terry, I'm pushing Laggy by making the leadoff spot his to lose. Terry has pretty much stated that this is going to be his MO this spring.

batmagadanleadoff wrote: First of all, and foremost, I think he's sort of a crappy hitter. One who, in his 2nd year in the majors (neither one full) managed to raise his BA by 29 points, OBA by 40, and SLG by 30 Also it's tough to argue that a .281/.321/.382 hitter, in a year where his league averaged .249/.312/.383, qualifies as "crappy" - particularly from a GG winner at an up the middle position. I know he's a great fielder but the thing is that I don't really know how good a fielder he is and what the value is for that. By a nice coincidence, the NY Times had a piece on Juan Laggy today Among other things, they cited 'Baseball Info Solutions', "one of the sport’s most respected analytics outfits [which] evaluate[d] outfielders on the number of plays they make in three areas — shallow, medium and deep. The company found that Lagares ranked among the top center fielders in all three categories. Perhaps more impressive, the company concluded that Lagares also saved 52 runs over the last two years, best among center fielders. As a rule of thumb, said John Dewan, the founder of Baseball Info, about 10 runs saved equal about one victory. Lagares’s defense alone, then, could be credited for about five Mets wins over the last two years, and he played center field for only about 68 percent of the Mets’ games in that period."

Won't start the year in NY but will see time at some point, probably in several short stints and then again in September. Will look awesome at times but will frustrate with too many walks at others.

smg58 wrote: One thing that got lost last season was how he dramatically cut down on strikeouts as the year went on. He seemed to adopt (quite possibly under pressure from above) a two-strike approach later in the season where he'd cut down on his swing and poke the ball to RF w/2 strikes. The result was those fewer Ks you mentioned and also some extras singles where (although I don't have the data to prove this) it seemed me that he was getting a bit lucky on those pokes more often than not in a BABiP way, so it's possible that some of that upside won't be so easy to reproduce. If he can combine that two strike approach with being more aggressive earlier in the count to take advantage of what seems like his only partially tapped power potential we might have something very nice on our hands. Not sure though that he'll ever be the OBP guy they want for the top of the order.

I'm still waiting for the sequel where Rocky fights Rambo. And, let's face it, it's going to happen at some point.