Frayed Knot

To be virtually triple-less in this ballpark (5 at home, 4 on road) is really freaky-low. CF, even in its newer slightly smaller state, is built for triples.

Two questions pop to mind with this 'discovery'. 1) Will they break the record? -- It certainly looks likely right now. I don't see many call-ups until September (22 days away) and the first one back may be Dice-K anyway. 2) Who will be the mystery man to break the drought? -- Relievers are always a good guess. Zach Thorton from the Ike trade is pitching merely OK in Vegas, but somebody has to share the load and keep Torres from hitting 300 innings this year. Or maybe the just promoted Jack Leathersich for the honorary '3rd Lefty' role in September

Centerfield wrote: Sure, it would be great if the Mets got back into it, but right now they are not realistically in any race. That's ok. Here are things I'd like to see for the remainder of this year. If some of these things pan out, I'm ok with falling out of the race. 1. Play Lucas Duda against lefties. Let's see how he does. I want 30 HR's. 2. Play Flores at SS every day. We know what we have with Tejada. It's not much...even when it's "good" Tejada. Let's see what Flores can do. 3. Don't push DeGrom past his innings limit. Don't worry about his innings, because the Mets will... 4. Call up Noah Syndegaard. It's time. Throw him into the mix. Let him get the jitters out in a stress-free environment. 5. Wrest Wright. His shoulder seems to be bothering him. Let's give Campbell 2 weeks at third. So far, a quick check mark against #s 1 & 2 as in the last 24 hours or so the club has certainly implied that Duda will see more LHP (he's expected to start tonight vs Hamels) and that Flores will pretty much be the everyday SS. But the thing is, moves like this have more to do with staying IN the race than passively opting out of it. As far as the rest: 3 - no one has put a number on what a limit might be, but I suspect there probably will be a time when his starts either tail off, maybe via a 6-man rotation, or stop completely 4 - no earlier than September and maybe not even then. There's also HIS innings target to consider and possibly some 40-man roster issues 5 - who knows? Hard to tell what's causing his off-year/lack of power and it's not like we're ever going to get a straight answer on it.

Lefty Specialist wrote: Frayed Knot wrote: And just as I was about to start a thread saying that I was ready to cut ties with Abreu, the Mets beat me to it. Then by all means start a thread saying that you were ready to cut ties with Chris Young. Hey, it's worth a shot. You want to wish for the winning lottery ticket next?

Edgy MD wrote: If anything, the signing of Chris Young represents behavior that could be characterized as risk-averse. If anything, Mets fans generally want the front office to take more risks. Ask bmfc. But even if you want to limit the discussion to NYM signings in this past off-season (as Davidoff probably was implying there) it's still, at worst, the 3rd riskiest move of the winter behind Colon & Granderson. Heck, I'd even characterize it as a lack of risk move seeing as how it cost them only money (and not a ton of it by today's standards) but not players or picks while bringing insurance in CF in case Lagares couldn't hit enough to claim a steady job, and it bought them time to see if Nieuwenhuis and/or MdD and/or Brown would play well enough to push out the weakest link. That said link turned out to be Young himself (as opposed to the other Young or Lagares or, heaven forbid, Granderson) doesn't change the equation even a little. They tried it, it didn't work, they're moving on. But let's not act like his 250-some ABs constituted some franchise-dragging anchor whose departure represents an upside that a game-losing, five-run, 9th inning collapse to your closest rival couldn't possibly dampen.

I wasn't planning to nit-pick the rest of the Davidoff article--hell, I wasn't even planning on reading the rest of the Davidoff article--but I'm having too much fun to stop now. * "Chris Young is an ex-Met after the team designated the outfielder for assignment, putting last winter�s riskiest and head-scratchingest move to bed after a brutal, four-plus-month lifespan." --- It was far from the riskiest move of last winter: Granderson because of the length of his deal and the $60 million price tag (close to 8x the cost of the CY deal); and Colon because of his age and due the length the deal (double that of Young's) and the width of his body (maybe triple CY). * "Alderson used the words �investment� and �development� when discussing the Mets� moves of this past week � Bobby Abreu preceded Young out the door by four days � and those scream �white flag!� to most of us." --- No, I think those moves actually scream the opposite of 'White Flag' to most of us.

And it's shit like this that gives sportswriters a bad name: Davidoff, NYPost: "But really, Mets fans probably would be giddy this morning even if Jenrry Mejia had given up a walk-off, two-run home run to Reid Brignac, instead of getting the banjo-hitting former Yankee to look at a third strike, because of what transpired after the last out." at which point he goes on to talk about the Young DFA Yes, Ken, we're such pathetic creatures over here in Metsville that we actually prefer seeing a player essentially fired than we do to see the team win. And, hey, if that loss involves blowing a large lead in the late innings and seeing some of our hoped-for future like the young closer fail miserably, well y'know, at least we got to see someone unconnected to the loss lose their job over it, and isn't that what's really important? In fact, had you told me Chris Young having already taken his last AB as a Met was conditional on the Mets losing the game I would have just rooted for the Sizemore drive to be three feet higher just so I could bask in the warmth of the DFA announcement ten minutes earlier than it eventually occurred.

Wheeler - 3.5 Familia - 0.2 Eveland - 0.2 Edgin - 0.1 Murphy - 2.0 d'Arnaud - 1.6 Duda - 0.8 Nieuwenhuis - 0.8 Wright - 0.8

Oh sure, NOW the Tiger bats wake up as they score three in the 9th Friday night to beat the Jays. That's almost as many as they scored during the entire 4-game series in New York. Way to go schmucks, first hand 2nd place and the 2nd WC to the Yanx, then do everything in your power to make sure they stay there.

Colon - 4.0 d'Arnaud - 1.7 Lagares - 1.0 Murphy - 1.1 Granderson - 1.0 Wright - 0.2 Nieuwenhuis - 0.5 Flores - 0.5

Pretty quick inning considering all that happened. Most of the hits were first-pitches, the walk was four pitches, and the K only 4.

And now we're going to have to get the big boys up anyway.

OK, Flores isn't fast. But he's also not nearly as slow as some claimed and the rest of us were led to believe. Some of the scouting reports I'd read on the prospect sites talked about him as having '25' speed (on the 20-80 scale) which is basically Mo Vaughn/Molina brother territory.

Edgy MD wrote: A quiet fifth, and Colon is in line for the winnebago. I think a Winnebago is also Bartolo's personal car. The others were all too small.

Travis d'A does have some pop in that bat of his, don't he? That one got gone in a hurry.

Not that I want to seem greedy or anything (after all, who am I to turn down 7 hits plus a walk in a 10 batter span?) but mixing in an XBH every once in a while would be a nice surprise.

Post-deadliney deals: Marlins deal RHP Jacob Turner to the Cubs in exchange for two Class-A relievers. Turner is a former #9 overall pick (Tigers - 2009) out of a St Louis HS and was consistently a Top-25 prospect over the 2010-2012 period. The Cubs will mark the 23 y/o Turner's 3rd organization, having been dealt to Miami in the Anibal Sanchez deal in mid-2012, and they plan to use him in their ML rotation starting immediately.

Oooooh, Tigers vs Blue Jays and RA Dickey tonight - even extra incentive to root against those lame-ass bums. And if Detroit bats suddenly wake up in Toronto after getting shut down by the likes of Shane Greene & Chris Capuano then I'm going to drop this nice-guy act and really get pissed off at them.

John Cougar Lunchbucket wrote: Tejada to PH. This is where Bobby Abreu would have come in handy Sure, but let's not forget that Abreu was 1 for his last 857 PH-ing. That, plus Nieuey's 2 catches convinced me that the Abreu DFA has already paid dues. We lose that game twice before Tejada ever gets up without him out there.

Hey Tigers, Fuck You! for allowing your staff of 3 CYs plus Rick Porcello to be beaten 3-of-4 because you could only manage a total of SIX runs off of the 62 y/o Hiroki Kuroda and three guys named Murray. So Fuck You again and I hope the Royals bury your ass in the Central.

I don't see anyone pulling away in that division (with only the Sox being truly out of it) so things will almost surely go down to the wire there both for the div win and for the 2nd WC. But this entire season I've seen the Yanx as not only NOT a playoff team but a sub-.500 one - and then when their pitchers going down I thought that was all just a matter of time. Hell, they were 30-40 runs in arrears before all that happened. But now, with Gardner suddenly on pace for 25 HRs, McCann slowly waking up, Headley being an improvement, and, like I said above, scrub pitchers pitching as well or better than the high-priced guys they replaced, I'm not so sure. They just won 2-of-3 vs Detroit while Brandon McCarthy (5.00 ERA before trade, 2.08 since), Hiroki Kuroda (looked like toast end of last season) & Capuano (released twice this season) basically out-pitched the last three CY winners as the Tigers needed an extra-inning HR in order to not get swept.

The Yanx are getting better starting pitching with all these scrubs than they ever were before all the injuries hit. Losing Tanaka was obviously a big blow, but the current collection of no-names is performing MUCH better than Sabathia, Pineda, Nuno & Nova even were. Shyeet, Chris Freakin' Capuano is shutting down the Tigers tonight.

You can bring in a LHP for Granderson & Murphy all you want there Matt Williams, but the best thing you could have done for the Mets tonight is yank Doug Fister. You'll in all likelihood get away with it (and, let's face it, no one in DC knows enough about baseball to even ask you about it) but, still, I say thank you.

LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr wrote: Two 5-4-3s this evening, on hard-hit balls. It's like we're aiming not only to kill rallies, but to kill them in the most expedient way possible. None of this would happen if David Wright were still alive today.

Niese is also the only LHP among this team's top group, putting that in his favor over several other candidates when it comes to choosing who to send away. Hefner, btw, is back to pitching in real, live games. Only two starts and a total of 7 innings so far with PSL (5 runs on 5 hits w/[u:iltnmqwl]7 BBs[/u:iltnmqwl]) ... but it's something.