Frayed Knot

Hmmmm, I kind of like this - more faith in d'Arnaud for a run-scoring single than in Duda.

Shyeet, I thought that one was through. at least it got the runner over though.

Both teams tonight feature a lineup with their HR leaders* hitting leadoff, and both are their RF. * tied in Granderson's case

Edgy MD wrote: Wow, we never did one of these apparently. We did, just under an assumed name Uggla, if you recall, had been suspended for a game just prior to the ASB. G, K & R were speculating whether that was going to be just a one day thing or something more substantial. More substantial seems like the winner here, although I suppose it's possible that this was strictly a performance based thing that was bound to happen sooner or later. Amazing how Atlanta minor leaguers just always seem to pop up where & when they need them. As far as I know they have no other position prospects on the horizon, but the one they did have was a 2nd baseman and it was a 2nd baseman that they needed.

That leaves only 3rd base where Chase Headley -- not to be confused with SI for Kids star Kedley Kase [fimg=170]http://i601.photobucket.com/albums/tt94/FHSart/sc013f66ef.jpg[/fimg] -- has been their man at the hot corner for eight consecutive years now. But as time goes on, Headley's 2012 season [GG, AS, 5th in MVP voting] is increasingly taking on a 'one of these things is not like the others' shine to it as that one year is responsible for more than 1/3 of his career HRs, 115 of his 398 career RBIs (in no other single season did he reach 65), and a 100 point outlier in SLG Avg After a 140 point drop in OPS in 2013 you'd think there'd be at least some regression to the norm, but instead this season has just seen another 100 point in sinkage. Turns out that there's some karmic payback for taking ASG votes and a Gold Glove away from Sugarpants.

The Padres have been so anonymous lately that I had to check to see if we had even played them this year ... turns out we did, taking two of three from them at CitiField in mid-June. so they were playing Alexi Amarista at 2nd for a while (OK, NOW I remember the Padres visit to NY because I made a joke connecting Amarista to Elton John's Amoreena) while Gyorko was on the DL but they recently slid him over to SS because incumbent SS Evreth Cabrera is also on the DL ... Jace Peterson just resurfaced after playing some 2B in June so I dont know who SD plans to throws out there. Most recently it's been Brooks Conrad, a name vaguely familiar but I still had to look it up: he was a part-timer for the Braves for a few years (also Oakland, Milwaukee & Tampa) but hadn't been in the ML since 2012 until his recent call-up. Is 2-for-24 w/the Pads Also filling in is Irving Falu - a 31 y/o Puerto Rican (named 'Irving' ... Really?) by way of Community College in Iowa with previous cups of coffee in KC & Milwaukee who is 3-for-20 with the Pads... so let's just say that Muffy's bat gives us an edge here. Grandal, btw, has been playing some 1st base in Alonso's absence.

Second Half Mets -- and if those second half Mets do well, then WOW!! 67 games remaining, btw, if that helps anyone do the math.

All the PotG threads that the vacationing Mr. Grimm has [u:2grcrleo]not yet[/u:2grcrleo] closed out (I believe there are seven of them in total) are currently on either page 1 or page 2 of the main forum. So if you are one given to voting in this ongoing project, the next 24 hours or so would be a good time to catch up on any you missed as these threads will soon be slipping into the 'out of sight/out of mind' regions of page 3 and beyond **AND** new PotG threads for you to fall behind on will begin to show up starting in the early hours of Saturday morning.

deGrom - 3.5 Granderson - 1.5 Wright - 1.5 Duda - 1.5 Lagares - 1.5 CYoung - 0.25 EYoung - 0.25

Colon - 2.5 Torres - 0.4 EYoung - 0.7 Wright - 1.2 Lagares - 0.5 Murphy - 0.2

Edgy MD wrote: Three 2014 Mets have hit grand slams. None are currently 2014 Mets. Gary pointed this one out the other day. After going so long a few years back just trying to hit a GS, you'd think they'd want to hold on to those few who could pull off such a feat. Baseball Prospectus targets Zack Wheeler in their look at a handful of players who could be in store for a big second half Wheeler had a rocky first half. He battled inconsistency, struggled with pitch command, and traded disaster outings with clean starts. But the young right-hander is on the upswing, having displayed incremental improvement over the past couple of months, and he could be in store for a big second half that reminds the world why he was such a highly regarded prospect just 12 months ago. Wheeler has walked more than two batters just twice in past 11 starts (after cracking that threshold five times in his first eight games), and he entered the All-Star break with a string of three consecutive starts in which he pitched six or more innings and surrendered just a single run. He has also honed his stuff since last season, adding 0.5 mph to his fastball (which is now averaging 95.9 mph) and diversifying his pitch mix. He has doubled the frequency of his change-up, and though it is still the weakest offering in a repertoire that features a pair of plus breaking pitches, Wheeler has the potential to be dominant if he can refine el cambio. He has also kept the ball on the ground this season, upping his ground-ball rate by 10 percentage points while surrendering just seven bombs across 108.3 innings (only two homers have come since he turned 24 on May 30th), while his component stats have all trended in positive directions. The Mets are a long shot to make the playoffs, but a second-half breakout by Wheeler could make things interesting in the NL East.

#8 hitters drawing IWs is nothing new, it just seems like our #8 hitters get IW'd more often than usual. Throw in the non-intentional intentional walks (pitch-arounds) and it adds up to Ruben getting his OBA fluffed up a bit. Part of Sandy's reasoning in NOT going after Stephen Drew (his public reason anyway) was that he expected a regression to the mean for both Drew & Tejada that would shrink the gap in their 2013 performances to more what they were in 2012, a gap that wouldn't come close to justifying the $22 million or so price tag that Drew/Boras were then asking for. The Drew hold-out makes it tough to gauge where things would have been with a full Y-T-D season, but the evidence so far backs up Sandy's gamble. Drew 2012 - .223/.309/.348 over 287 ABs Tejada 2012 - .289/.333/.351 -- 454 ABs SD 2013 - .253/.333/.443 -- 442 ABs RT 2013 - .202/.259/.260 -- 208 ABs SD 2014 - .151/.218/.269 -- 93 ABs RT 2014 - .237/.353/.294 -- 245 ABs

Mets fans held hostage: Day Four Expected release: T-minus 36 hours. Looking for something to do? Well, the AMC Network is running a Tremors marathon. Yesiree. All 4 of them. (If you knew there were 4 of them, raise your hand.) I didn't know there was ONE of them.

Don't let Jeff see that model, he'll want to stomp on it. My only attempt at a "model" of Shea as a kid was a house of cards replica on my bedroom floor. And even then it was only 'Shea' because I made a complete circle one "story" high, then three more high 3/4 of the way around so as to approximate the Log, Mezz, and Upper horseshoes. Needless to say, it lacked anything resembling the details of the above and its lifespan consisted of the time I finished it until one of my overgrown feet caught an edge of it as I went by. IOW, not long at all.

Mets fans held hostage: Day Four Expected release: T-minus 36 hours.

As I've often said, it's not Jeter I have a problem with, it's the Jeter-ites. The only thing that Deadpan thing gets right is the last part about ESPN, but that's just because the folks at Bristol: a) are so star-driven that they reduce everything to just a handful of teams and players and shove those down your throats (Kobe, Kobe ... LeBron, LeBron ... Manning, Manning ... Brady, Brady ... etc) and aren't baseball fans so Jeter is one of the few players they actually know

Centerfield wrote: Wait, so you are looking for a Mets-related blog that does not re-link others' material, and offers, instead, original, entertaining, sometimes heartfelt material about our beloved team? No, I'm merely warning peeps not to treat this Bartolo "news" as if anything has really changed. I certainly don't resent MetsBlog for what they do. I only go there occasionally myself but (as far as I know anyway) they're not pretending to be real journalism or anything other then just a clearinghouse for other already-published stuff, all of which is fine and has its place. It's just that when they repackage something and stick it under a puffed-up headline devoid of any context they wind up skewing the original intent rather than illuminating it.

Farmer Ted wrote: Tony Gwynn is trending folks! Apparently MLB, FOX, et al gave a Monk-sized all-star snub to the man. This was Jeter's day, bitches! If only MLB had some kind of yearly gathering that honored the past as much as the present & future where most baseball people & writers are around along with a large video screen and a TV network to cover it all and a captive baseball-centric audience watching/attending, then they could maybe take two minutes out to do some sort of Oscars-style tribute to those no longer around since the previous time: Gwynn, Zimmer, Brosnan, Kiner, Jerry Coleman, etc. Or maybe that would cut into whatever 'Up With People' tribute to school teacher/Army Rangers they had planned, or the part where the network-connected singer stretches the Star Spangled Banner into a 3-1/2 minute vanity project opus.

Good lord Altuve looks like a munchkin out there!

MFS62 wrote: Wainwright says he grooved the pitch to Jeter. http://sports.yahoo.com/news/adam-wainwright-says-he-grooved-pitch-for-derek-jeter-to-hit-in-all-star-farewell-022534864.html If that cheapens the memory in any way, I'm all for it. Later And then just as quickly denies it. What utter silliness.

Ceetar wrote: Plenty of other sites do it too, and it's even worse without the ESPN in the headline because it's so easy to let it scroll by not realizing you've just seen two instances of the same story rather than multiple reports about a story. A long ago site that some of us here used to belonged to long ago had its share of, shall we say, over-anxious teenage types who just scarfed down every rumor as if chiseled in stone fact. So when a trade possibility was floated, by say, the Daily News, many of them expected that trade to be completed by the end of the day and acted as if they had been lied to if it didn't come off. It then got even worse if ESPN's website picked up on that "report" as most then acted as if this was Woodward and Bernstein's vaunted "second source" without ever noticing that this was nothing more than ESPN saying that the Daily News said ... And for what it's worth, Metsblog is citing various reports saying that the Yankees, A�s, Blue Jays, Angels, Orioles, Brewers, Indians, Pirates and Mariners as those possibly on the Colon trail. So if y'all want to contemplate what any of those teams have in trade return, go nuts.

Gwreck wrote: Since 2003, the team that won Game 1 of the World Series went on to win the entire series. 10 of the last 11 World Series. But not all of them where the Game 1/WS winner was the home team. Winning Game 1 is a huge advantage. Of course it is. Any win in a short series is. Having that game at home is a clear advantage. It's a slight advantage, same as Game 2, Game 3, or in any game where being at home in baseball is a slight advantage. Home teams win <55% of the time in this sport. Look, would I rather have 4 home games than 3? ... Of Course. But you still need to win the games no matter where they are, and pointing (as Buck did) to 4-game sweeps or 4-2 wins where there's an exact 3-3 split in home/away and citing the home field "advantage" as a major reason as to who won is more than stretching the truth.

I know it's been a couple of years now, but I see Altuve out there with his Astros uni on hanging with the ALers and I still think: what's he doing out there

Gwreck wrote: Frayed Knot wrote: Gotta like Joe Buck and his intentionally misleading 'stat' about how the team with the home field in the WS has won the last five times -- while failing to mention that only once in those five did the series go to a seventh game. Is it, though? I would expect there is also an advantage to having games one and two at home. I note that the home team won Game 1 of the World Series each of the last four years, and that team went on to win the WS. Home team is 16-12 over the five WS Buck was talking about and virtually all that edge came in 2011, the one year it did go seven, when the home side went 5-2 The other four years went 3-3, 2-2, 3-3, and 3-2 The larger point being being that the whole HF advantage was created for the benefit of FOX and the only reason Buck is bringing it up is that the 'this time it counts' thing has become part of their marketing campaign for the game. So if Joe can fudge the facts so as to make it seem more important than it is he's not going to pass on the opportunity.

Buck: "He [Carlos Gomez] started in the big leagues right here in Minnesota" Ummm no, Joe, no he didn't.