Frayed Knot

John Cougar Lunchbucket wrote: Well that changes things. 7-2. WRITE IT DOWN oe: by the 4th inning

Crisp, DH Jaso, C Vogt, 1B Moss, LF Fuld, CF This lineup doesn't have enough letters or syllables to outscore us today.

This team's got to quit walking the .211 hitting Eric Sogard w/2 outs. Burned us last night, burned us here.

Lucas says: High slider? ... bye slider.

2 innings/24 pitches so far for ZW Certainly a better pace than his usual.

Oakland's lineup today features 6 lefties and 3 switchies. Wheeler won't see a RHB all day.

Edgin - 1.0 d'Arnaud - 1.5 Recker - 0.5 Flores - 0.5 Campbell - 0.5

Good night.

David's had a tendency of making his outs rather quickly these days.

Good news = 1-0 Mets Bad news = We've used up our quota of hits for the game

Mets � Willets Point wrote: Solution: Three 10-team, regionally-aligned leagues playing a balanced-schedule within the league. The champions of each league are awarded the pennant, which is treated as an honor nearly as high as the World Series championship. In post-season, three pennant-winners rest while second place teams play a round-robin playoff for the wild card. Then a seven-game semifinal. Then a seven-game World Series. That's pretty much the way things were, only with a 2x10 set-up, for the first seven decades of the 20th century, and then your expanded version is maybe the way things would have worked out had the original Branch Rickey/Bill Shea (among others) idea been put into place. The idea that later led to the Mets/Astros/Angels/Senators expansion in the early '60s had started as the makings of a 3rd league, one which would have started separate from and somewhat below the level of the existing NL & AL. The plan was then that their 'Continental League' would, over time, work its way up to being full-fledged ML status as their players and farm systems developed. If/when that happened, a plan such as yours is one that the three leagues could have concocted as a playoff system between them. But as more people/groups got involved the idea of having the fewer but stronger of these nascent clubs getting absorbed into the existing leagues struck some as the easier solution than trying to fly solo. Oddly, this movement got mixed up with football at the time and in that sport it did result in the forming of a rival league, the AFL

Frayed Knot wrote: Giving Brandon his six-week check-up at AA: Low BA so far, just .208 although had been below .200 for a chunk of his time there ... BUT - the ridiculous walk rates are still there: his .331 OBA out of that .208 BA is about double the clip a normal hitter draws walks - the power, if anything, has gotten better: 11 of his 25 hits at the AA level have gone for XBs and he already has more HRs in Bingo in 1/2 the number of PAs compared to Port St Lucie - and his K-rates are about 1/3 lower than in 2013 Last checked in in late July to find Nimmo off to a slow start in his AA stint. Last 28 days (95 PAs): .296/.394/.457 Advance and adjust, then repeat as often as necessary. Is playing his way into a possible 2015 ML debut. Not on Opening Day, I don't suspect, and too early to say at what point in the year or whether as a full-timer or just a fill-in w/an eye more towards 2016. But it's a good pace for a guy who won't turn 22 until just before opening day. For comparison purposes, Wright made his debut at 21 + 217 days, and with just under 400 games/1,700 PAs in the minors [91/406 in 'upper' minors (AA & AAA)] NImmo, barring injuries, will end this year at about 340 games/1,450 PAs and, projecting to let's say Aug 1st of '15, will have closer to 450/1,800 under his belt and will be approx 9 months older than Sugarpants

TheOldMole wrote: Are we no longer gunning for Tulowitzki? He's certainly an option. Do keep in mind though that he's down for the season (AGAIN!!), will turn 30 before he takes another AB, is expensive, is signed for a long term, etc. I make no claims that the names speculated about here are in any way the only ones to consider. Just happened to see these recent articles on a prospect-heavy site speculating about prospect-for-prospect deals.

Lots of speculation at MinorLeagueBall.com about trades for shortstops, specifically those involving Syndergaard - Prospect guru John Sickels proposes some mock deals then invites reader comments on ones they like and don't. Over 100 comments and counting at this point, and remember that the crowd there tends to be REALLY into the prospect scene (to the point where I'm not sure many of them even care about ML baseball beyond each player's fantasy value) and tend to have REALLY specific opinions on prospects high, low, and in-between. The gist of it all is that fans have a tendency to overrate their prospects often to the detriment of others, so that how one looks at a Noah for ________ deal depends on what part of the country you sit. - And then a separate article on Syndergaard himself reminds us of the phrase among scouts: 'Don't Scout the Stat Line'. Bottom line on this one is that, despite the lack of eye-popping numbers this year, the age, the stuff, the level, and the results still add up to Syndergaard being a really, really, good prospect right now.

Not as awful as the 2000 WS winner who finished the season with ML's 9th best record.

Torres - 3.2 Black - 0.7 Duda - 1.6

Oakland's ridonculous +/- totals they've been running all season have leveled off recently. After being +61 RS/RA in April alone, then +53 in May, +22 in June, and +28 in July, they're stumbling along at a 7-10 record and a -1 run ratio since August 1st. That might not all be directly attributable to the Cepedes trade, but dealing away your cleanup hitter in the midst of a great season certainly can affect your run-scoring prowess.

Gonzalez Germen will join the team for this series, and quite possibly the next one, as Colon officially goes to the (3-7 day) bereavement list.

Well if Granderson is going to hit like shit for the foreseeable future then he's not going to be a better fit in LF than he currently is in RF But whatever he does, ideally I'd rather not have that arm in RF. The problem is that we essentially need an OFer who can hit with a bit of pop, and cover some ground, and hopefully throw a bit as well.

Getting Granderson out of RF and getting a real arm out there is a good idea regardless of whatever happens with MdD - although I suspect we'll have to wait at least until the off-season to see a Grandy to LF shift.

Eh, it's not like we're going to be facing the likes of Kazmir, Samardzija, & Kershaw in the next three games. Oh wait!! Lots of SCRABBLE points in that trio. Probably not too many hits, though, I'm afraid.

This series sucked like the Yanqui series sucked: win the first two then barely show up for the next two.

Terry once again double-switches and then doesn't keep his pitcher in. And now Mejia once again has a two-hit (and counting) inning.

New York Mets hits = 3 Luis Valbuena hits = 3

They weren't supposed to take my joke about limiting themselves to four hits again seriously. Right now it's starting to look like they won't even get that many.