Frayed Knot

I also agree on the strong possibility he'll do something wildly hurtful to the 2015 Mets. aka: the Willie Harris factor - only in reverse as we obtained Willie after he had burned us several times.

Not quite sure about all this supposed potential or how he was misused - unless misused in this case means used too often. He came here as a 28 y/o in the midst of his fifth season of being a part-time player. He immediately got more or less full time status on account of the 2013 team having a weak OF (he essentially replaced the failed Duda in LF experiment) and he proceed to hit right about where his career numbers suggest he should hit. In 2014 his playing time was reduced with the signings of Granderson & C. Young but he found his spots during Lagares injuries and CYoung's troubles before gradually seeing less as his hitting fell off and Nieuwenhuis and den Dekker were given looks. In all he wound up with over one full season's worth of PAs (734) and a very mediocre stat line of .242/.310/.321. Definitely had that 'make things happen' vibe to him and the SB numbers were great [68 of 81], but playing at a power position where speed was his #1 asset only takes you so far. Maybe [u:11i0pwek]that[/u:11i0pwek] can be considered being misused but he wasn't going to knock Murph off of 2nd and defensively was about 4th on the CF depth chart. So then what?. Defense was decent but hardly great -- many of those diving catches coming in should have been easier but for his penchant for playing real deep; would out-run some of his mistakes in judgement but also had a noodle arm. Bottom line: seemed like a good guy who always hustled and contributed the best he could, but ideally is more a super-sub who gets about 2/3 the playing time he wound with.

I don't even remember hearing about this movie until this thread - even though the campaign behind a summer blockbuster type with Cruise and Blunt must have made at least some mark on the publicity radar. Well, I guess, it got the job done. I mean it was coherent, which is more than I can say for most futurist warped-reality plots. And the battlefield topography all made sense, which is something else that often loses me. Yeah, I guess that pretty much sums it up. I mean, let's face it, most of these movies are thin and barely discernible plots designed to bridge time in between the numerous 'shit gettin blow'd up' scenes. Based on that, this one was probably a tad better than most.

This has little to do with Flores but a lot to do with the notion that having two shortstops is the same of having none is stupid. I know that's a saying used for Quarterbacks (and even there I think it's overused) but it simply doesn't apply here. Teams have and do platoon at all positions for all kinds of reasons at all times in ML history. If Flores winds up as one of a duo (or even trio) of guys that'll cover the SS position for the Mets this year it's not a big deal - unless none of them play well but even then you're still no worse off just leaving one guy who can't play there full time.

Benjamin Grimm wrote: I'll reserve judgement until we hear Brian Williams' side of the story. Well when Brian was inducted to the HoF he ...

Ashie62 wrote: Either Flores is the SS or not. If you have two shortstops you don't have any. So there. Unless somebody invents the concept of the platoon between now and April.

Them eggheads over at 'em Baseball Prospectus sez'um of 'eir top hundred-and-one: 9. Syndergaard 33. Matz 69. Nimmo 78. Rosario 80. Plawecki 82. Herrera In the Q&A for that list they go a bit toward explaining the Syndergaard vs [Nats prospect Lucas] Giolito face-off as to which gets the 'best RHP prospect in baseball' title (a question that came up earlier in this thread -- although BP throws Dylan Bundy into the mix as well) Q -- It seems clear that no other pitching prospect can touch Giolito's upside, but I wonder why Syndergaard's close-to-major-league-readiness and lack of injury history wouldn't make him the top pitching prospect in baseball. A: -- More of a testament to Giolitto's immense upside and the fact that we don't view him as being as far away from contributing as his recent usage might indicate. Thor is a dude, no question.

Edgy MD wrote: I don't know if history has recorded whether a regular shortstop would have made the play ... It's a well established fact that Mays had more SS range than Jeter ... and that includes Presently!!

That game was also the one that featured Mays as the runner on 1st base in the top of the 14th (Jesus Alou was on 2nd) when Orlando Cepeda lined into a 6-6-3 triple play. The story I heard was that Mets SS Roy McMillan could have opted to tag Mays coming towards 2nd for the unassisted TP but took the easier way out and simply threw to Kranepool at 1st. Not sure how accurate that assessment is. The TP was the final pitch Larry Bearnarth would throw that day as it finished up 7 scoreless innings of relief on 3 hits for him.

Edgy MD wrote: Am I misremembering, or was Whitey Herzog the de facto GM, and McDonald just his hatchet guy? To some extent anyway. Whitey certainly had a lot of unofficial power (with the front office and with the press in that town) to the point where if he was intent on getting rid of someone it would set things in motion even if he wasn't the one officially pulling the trigger in the end. Frank Cashen used to cite this trade as a way to tell the story about how it was best to let the other team be the first to mention the name of the guy you really wanted. I can't remember now if he specified who on StL he was on the phone with when Keith's name first came up. Getting the 17/37 thing wrong is a pretty sloppy mistake.

Benjamin Grimm wrote: Joe McDonald, the Cardinals general manager, offered this odd justification for the trade: �If Allen was not having a bad year, there�s no way we could have gotten him.�� That's a real "WTF" if I've ever heard one. Between that statement and the one from Whitey about "wanting to get you for a long time", it's obvious that the Cards valued Allen a lot more than the Mets did, so perhaps they really thought that a 30 y/o Keith wasn't enough to land Allen if healthy and on the top of his game. Needless to say, I never saw Allen in anywhere near that light and I suspect most NYM fans were the same (and wouldn't admit it now if they weren't). I even remember having discussions with Mets fans two years prior to that trade that they had kept the wrong reliever when they dealt Jeff Reardon away in the Ellis Valentine trade.

Yeah, it originally aired in two parts so it's 3-4 hours in total.

This was the one that appeared on (Showtime?) a year or two ago that we dissected for a while here (in a thread that's probably been lost to the ether). Obviously done with the cooperation of the band (meaning Frey & Henley) but they still don't manage to come off all that well in it. Frey in particular is a stone cold killer.

I think I heard somewhere that Brian Williams has some time at shortstop on his resume. He might be worth checking out.

Six year ML vet and 1998 NYM John Hudek's kid has signed a letter of intent to pitch at Bossier Comm College in Louisiana next season. So what's so unusual about that you might ask? ... Well, it's his daughter Sarah. NY Post: The 5-foot-10 Hudek throws her fastball around 82 mph and her soon-to-be college coach insists this is not being done as a publicity stunt for the college. �That�s as good, or better, than most boys around here �� Aaron Voracheck told the paper of Sarah�s heater. �This is not a gimmick and I could care less about media attention. I�m signing her to help us win ballgames.� �I grew up around pro baseball and I�ve had the opportunity to pick the brain, not only of my dad, but of other major leaguers he is friends with,� Sarah told the Shreveport Times. �I have a fastball, changeup, curve, and I�m working on a cutter.� According to the paper, Hudek impressed at the 17 and Under World Wood Bat Championships � striking out 14 compared to two walks. �I saw Sarah pitch as a sophomore and then again last season. She can really pitch,� Vorachek said. �I think other schools were afraid to take a chance on her. But you�re taking a chance with every kid you sign.� Hudek is used to playing with the opposite sex and hopes the experience is the same as it�s been since Little League. �They have been the greatest teammates,� Hudek said of her teammates at George Ranch High School. �I hope my new teammates see me for what I can do to help the team, even though I�ll probably stick out like a sore thumb.�

I'd almost prefer to have the backup for Flores be a stone cold glove man (which RT is not) and not care too much about what kind of offense you get from him. But as backup SS go, there are a lot worse options than Ruben.

Kevin Plawec-key

Edgy MD wrote: Rosario and Smith make MLB.com's supplemental list. Which makes it five in the top 100, and seven in the top 120 where the norms would be about 3 and 4. Certainly encouraging, even if tempered a bit by the fact that, after getting past Syndergaard, the rest are in the back half of that list.

Bobby O defends ownership and seems to cryptically dis Sandy even though he doesn't specifically name him. It's not quite clear (to me anyway) what it is in particular he's getting at here: need "winning attitude" in the clubhouse and all that. Also Martino's opening: "News of Bob Ojeda�s departure from SNY last Thursday left Mets fans stunned and disappointed � a natural reaction, given Ojeda�s passion, preparation and candor as a studio analyst over the past six years." is certainly not a universal sentiment (even on this board) yet gets passed off as if it is.

I was hoping that if d'Arnaud changed it would be to snag #8 Oh well, maybe Plawecki will.

Got around to this one last week and I pretty much agree with the above opinions. Growing up I thought of myself as a fan of Sci-Fi but then grew away from it as special effects seemed to take over, often in place of story, characters, plot, etc. This flick, even though it obviously uses effects to tell the story, it doesn't do so in place of everything else.

dinosaur jesus wrote: And you know what status quo stands for, right? It stands for "Man, the middle-class, everyday Mets fans are really getting taken for a ride." And, hey, I'm all for improvement. I'm just not going to act as if the dropping of O.Q. is an improvement on its own.

Ashie62 wrote: I take it as a sign of progress that Qball is no longer a Met. It's only a sign of progress if the position improves, meaning that either Tejada becomes the backup due to Flores being able to handle the position full-time, or that some better option gets imported prior to the season. But if all that happens is that a different warm body backs up Ruben then things are likely to be pretty much status quo to what they've been over the last three years.

Geez, he was the backup SS; light bats with decent gloves are the definition of that particular spot on the roster. Backup shortstops who big bats have a special name in baseball, they're called starting shortstops. And if the bat is big enough they're called am 'All-Star'. Yeah, but the thing is, his glove wasn't all THAT decent, either. Tejada more or less tried to hand him the starting job for two seasons running, and all he did-- occasional "clutchiness" aside-- was show you how secretly valuable Rubes was. Actually I'd argue it showed how valuable Tejada WASN'T. If Ruben didn't have such a mess of a 2013 season -- showing up out of shape, getting demoted, dropping 80-some points off EACH of his BA, OBA & SLG (he SLUGGED .260 fer crissakes!!) all at age 23 -- then we wouldn't have had to lean on Q as much as we did that season and we'd barely remember him at all. As it was, when he was the REAL backup SS, he amassed a whopping total of 99 and 29 ABs (2012 & 2014). Look, backup SSs, virtually by definition, often have the worst offensive stats on the team (except maybe for the backup catcher but he usually gets cut some slack simply for being the backup catcher). And, as a result, they tend to get assigned a share of blame that far exceeds what deserves to be allocated. I mean does anyone really think that the 2012-2014 Mets would have been collectively even 3 games better total if they had a different backup at that position? A better starter, sure. But unless you run into some flash in the pan luck (Kevin Stocker circa 1993*) they're pretty much interchangeable parts and, as such, Q was anything but a "white flag" because if it wasn't him it wouldn't have been someone pretty darn similar to him. * I often think about Stocker as an example of how many things have to go right when a team wins. In 1993, the Phils had a good team but were struggling at SS. They had tried 3 different guys out there over the first half of the year: Mariano Duncan**, Juan Bell, and Kim Batiste, but none were working. So on July 7th they dipped into their farm system to call up 23 y/o Kevin Stocker who was hitting .233 at the time and virtually handed him the everyday job. He proceeded to ht .324/.404/.417 over 300+ PAs as the Phils won the pennant, very much typifying a year in which virtually everything fell right for the Phightin's: first good season out of Schilling, last good one out of Mitch Williams, last healthy year out of Darren Dalton, only good season out of Dave Hollins, etc. Stocker went on to play parts of seven more seasons in three orgs but never matched that initial half year - hitting just .246/.331/.336 during the best offensive era in half a century and was out of the game by age 30 ** OK, why does Duncan's picture on BB-Ref show him in a Mets hat?

Geez, he was the backup SS; light bats with decent gloves are the definition of that particular spot on the roster. Backup shortstops who big bats have a special name in baseball, they're called starting shortstops. And if the bat is big enough they're called am 'All-Star'.