Frayed Knot

I'm not suggesting killing the replay idea, only that: - these things are never as clean as their proponents like to claim, and there's an element of trying to stay only slightly pregnant in it all. - we can talk all we want about how a replay shouldn't take more than X amount of time but, more than a quarter century into the NFL's experiment with this and with numerous fixes and revisions along the way, they're still taking as long as ever (if not longer) and often raise as many questions as they answer. - there's a version of 'mission creep' to these things. Just as foreign interventions often have a limited role (deliver food, humanitarian aid, etc) when they start out, they rarely stay confined to just those mandates. And just as no one envisioned a game being interrupted for five minutes while the ref sit camped 'under the hood' to determine whether it should be 4th down and just over one yard or 4th and just under one yard, no baseball fan was advocating for replay so we could minutely examine whether the ball was jiggling within Travis d'Arnaud's glove as he was making a tag. But once you open up the idea to review plays it's hard to NOT consider such things even though it adds a ton of ambiguity to it all and was never the intention to begin with. - the standardized camera angles and so on sounds nice but this isn't football with it's identical fields and network run production. - speaking of the local productions, I've still yet to hear how you guard against the local station (often co-owned by the home team) manipulating replays in order to tilt the evidence for or against a call. If YES (or SNY for that matter) has an angle which hurts the home team they have a definite incentive not to run it until after the decision has been considered, an angle that maybe the other side doesn't have, or maybe the other team isn't even televising that game (we're spoiled here in NY, not all teams show all their games).

Niese - 4.2 Matsuzaka - 0.3 Rice - 0.3 Duda - 2.0 Tejada - 1.0 Nieuwenhuis - 1.0 d'Arnaud - 0.5 Granderson - 0.5 Farnsworth - 0.3

Nymr83 wrote: Didn't the YANKEE CHEATER have his own thread? Maybe, it's so hard to keep track. Gotta like Sterling & Waldman's reaction, both of whom immediately went into: 'this is going to come back and bite the Red Sox' mode. Not sure if they're expecting the payback somewhere down the road (certainly possible) or if they thought (hoped ... prayed?) that something was going to happen by the following inning.

As Gary mentioned the other night, this club's policy* is essentially the twitter version of 'don't walk this guy but don't give him anything good to hit either'; aka: We want our players to use social media we just want them to be careful when doing so. Good luck trying to figure out where to draw that line. * and, btw, I don't suspect it's any different with just about any other team

Edgy MD wrote: Ruben had just about as solid an 0-3 game as a guy could have. Except for that whole, 'I blanked out and forgot to cover the base which extended the inning leading directly to their 1st inning run and cost my pitcher a bunch of pitches in the process' thingie.

The camera angle on the Tejada relay was terrific. At first it looked like the throw was headed slightly to the 1st base side, but then it seemed to 'slice' (maybe on account of the wind, maybe just the way Ruben threw it) towards the 3B side which played right into the direction of d'Arnaud's sweep tag and took the momentum of his glove right into the runner.

Gary brought up another thing that I worry about with the new replay rules; the whole wondering if the ball was moving inside d'Arnaud's glove thing. That drives me nuts in football and, when people think about what they want replay to do, I guarantee you that none of them were thinking about the type of microscopic evidence like whether the ball was slightly jiggling while in the receiver's arms as he was falling out of bounds or whatever. Now I haven't yet seen or heard about an equivalent call being made so far in MLB, but like everything else in replay, once you open that box it's real tough to limit what you won't consider.

WOWZERS!!

Maybe he felt that since Boston mgr Farrell gave him a pass last time on a windy and chilly day that doing it again would be no big deal. But even with the dark stain on his dark skin being less obvious than it would be on, say, me, "hiding" that stuff on your neck when you're 6' 8" isn't exactly subtle.

John Cougar Lunchbucket wrote: That's even better than getting away with it once. LOLYankees That both times came against the same team in consecutive starts just adds to the dumpth factor.

More like: Eau de Grab Some Pine

Frayed Knot wrote: Anybody see this getting to 27? Nope. No more than 26 Ks at worst thx to Young's FC.

Anybody see this getting to 27?

This time Pineda thought he'd hide his pine tar stash on his neck ... but this time he was caught and ejected. That boy just ain't right

At this point the best choice might just be Murphy & Duda 1 - 2

Umps in the Twins/Rays game last night lost track of the count during an AB after six pitches were thrown. At that point the batter should have either been walked or K'd since, whatever the mix-up was, there were no 2-strike foul balls to extend the AB. So off they went to the headphones to get things straightened out, but somehow came out of their little pow-wow declaring that the count was still 3-2 (it should have been a walk). The batter, TB's Yunel Escobar, struck out on the next pitch. I hate it when guys go down looking at a borderline 4-2 pitch. The weird part is that Escobar appeared to ask for confirmation of the count from the home plate ump after the 4th pitch, the only possible pitch in the AB which could have been in dispute. But then, with the only possible options being either 2-2 or 3-1 not one person acted as if the AB was over when pitch #5 was clearly called a strike and #6 just as clearly a ball -- one of them should have ended the AB! It never works as well in practice as it does in theory, does it?

Short analysis on each, plus some back and forth discussion afterward on the two NYM minor league hurlers.

Gee - 3.0 Germen - 0.5 EYoung - 0.5

I'm going with 51-100 and only a handful of starts and likely doesn't finish the season. The best "outfield insurance" we could have right now is for Lagares to get back and push EYJ and his one-for-last-eighteen-ness (or whatever it is) into a sub role. And, yeah, I know that Granderson is like 0-fer his last 89 or something but he's the one getting played because he's the one getting paid, plus he has an actual track record of goodness.

Quickie prediction Q here -- Number of plate appearances for Bobby Abreu this season in a NYM uniform? Let's group the guesses to one of the following: <50 50-100 101-150 151-200 201+

Hits [u:iopfqb8v]by[/u:iopfqb8v] Adam Wainwright in April 2014 = 5 Hits by all NYM pitchers combined in April 2014 = 0

EYJ continues to make plays more often than not, even on the ones where he looks bad. I had no problem with Jay's slide.

And now, after Mets bats are disposed with in about 90 seconds, Gee gets to go right back out there.

It just occurred to me that Ike got dealt from a team wearing a Ralph Kiner patch to a team wearing a Ralph Kiner patch.

Game 2 starter Adam Wainwright, despite his lengthy accomplishments and called strike three memories, is a very UNimpressive 2-4; 6.02 over 8 games/6 starts vs the Mets Let's go kick his ass.