Frayed Knot

den Dekker has the second good swing of the night but the result is an at'em ball. 12 hits now in this series over 25 innings and 11 of them are singles.

Does Young have any successful bunts this year? Wheeler's line-out was the best swing by a NYM batter all night.

This series has been like playing the Yanx over the last few years -- most of their runs coming via HRs. At least we made them wait six innings for their first one tonight. Last two nights they've gotten their first by about the sixth pitch.

Have NYM batters even had any good swings yet tonight?

If it seems like I'm getting obsessive about this topic it's only because I am. BoSox at Rays last night -- a 2-0, 9-inning game with a total of 8 hits, 4 walks, and, although six pitchers were used combined, there was just one in-inning pitching change Game time = 3:09 Now I didn't see any of this game so maybe there was a swarm of bees mid-game that I don't know anything about ... but THREE-OH-NINE?!?! That's the type of game that used to routinely take TWO:09 and even now shouldn't possibly take any longer than 2:39 I'm tempted to say that I have no idea what those guys were doing out there but unfortunately I think it's become all too clear. And, unlike many of the Boston games over the last decade or so, you can't blame it on network TV, you can't place part of the blame on the Yanquis, and they no longer have either Josh Beckett or Dice-K on their roster.

The defensive portion of WAR is erratic for all positions but particularly hard to figure for catchers. Not sure I'd trust it too much. And, yes, the era and park have to be considered. Grote had OPS+ figures over 100 in three of the ten mostly full-time seasons that made up his NYM years: 1968 = 113 1975 = 108 1976 = 110 and came in at 97 in 1971 Still more bad than good, but those numbers compare him to ALL position players, not just to other catchers who rarely hit in that era, and of course it's all before his defense is considered (however you want to measure or not measure it).

Lefty Specialist wrote: If they get into the playoffs, their season will have been saved at various points by the likes of Lyle Overbay, Mark Reynolds, Alfonso Soriano, Vernon Wells and Travis Hafner, none of which anybody would have given a dime for before the season started. Those guys are 2nd (Soriano), 3rd (Overbay), 4th (Hafner) and 5th (Wells) on the team in HRs with a combined total of 52 Only Reynolds isn't among the team leaders but he's only been on the team for 20 minutes and is inexplicably hitting .300 after .215 w/Cleveland Royals beat Indians again, so Cleveland falls into a tie w/the Yanx but KC climbs up to within a half-game

"League Think" was a slogan within the corridors of the NFL for a while, one which basically meant that all the individual owners should shelve whatever their particular wishes were in favor of whatever was consider for the good of the league as a whole. It was Al Davis's hobby of constantly flaunting that edict which got him branded a pariah. With the success of the NFL came the temptation to copy such a strategy and Bud's tenure as commish, for better or for worse, has been one of steadily steering baseball towards more of a single entity as opposed to 30 different fiefdoms. The hats on 9/11 (and on Memorial Day, and on July 4th) are, like the websites, a league-wide thing in which everyone is on board with and in which everyone shares in the profits and/or goodwill. Such cooperation surely promote the brand as a whole but just as surely stifle creativity. Could/should the Wilpons tell Bud to take a walk on this particular issue and go ahead with the service hats instead? Sure. Will they? .. Of course not.

Sucky day yesterday as not only did the Yanx win but Tampa, Texas, Baltimore, Cleveland, and Oakland all lost. Only KC won among the other contenders, and only because they were playing Cleveland so someone had to win. Just goes to show you how much an outlook can improve or darken as the result of one day. Royals & Indians going at it again this afternoon. 3-2 KC early on. And if Cleveland is going to beat us and suck against everyone else (4-7 recently not including the Met series and 1-7 vs the Yanx this season) then I'm rooting for the Royals to kick their asses out of there. Pitt at Texas also a day game today. Soriano, who hit 2 HRs last night, now has 15 HRs in just 170 ABs since the trade to the Yanx - as opposed to his [u:2g0yle8o]17 in 362[/u:2g0yle8o] for the Cubs before the deal. IOW his rate didn't just increase but has just about doubled. He also leads MLB in both HRs & RBIs since the date of the trade and only Cano has more HRs for the Yanx over the whole season. I hate when that happens and some version of this seems to happen to them a lot.

Which was louder, the planes or the band?

I have no particular reason to dislike Raphael Soriano - but I do. Maybe it's just that sour puss look on his face all the time.

We've had warning track power tonight. They haven't.

I think this might be Terry's first pitching change without a double-switch in like three weeks.

I think Muph's double improved the XBH-against ratio in this series to 11-1

OK, so who thought this constant music thing was a good idea?

Much better start tonight -- our staff cut the number of 1st inning HRs served up in half.

LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr wrote: Somers might have some real fun with this, in terms of tweaking. I really don't want to see Somers twerking. Oh wait, you wrote ... oh never mind.

Gee vs Zimmermannnnn The Mets have won each game the four games Zimmermann has started this season although he's pitched decently overall. - In April he lost 2-0 to Gee - He also gave up just 2 runs and got a ND in June in a game the Mets won 3-2 - In July the Mets got to him for 5 runs in an eventual 11-0 win - and in August Gee again beat him 3-2 Young - LF Lagares - RF Murphy - 2B Duda - 1B Turner - 3B den Dekker - CF d'Arnaud - C Quintanilla - SS Gee - P Rumor has it that Ruben Tejada is back in town.

Ashie62 wrote: Is David Wright traveling with the team or suiting up for games and staying with troops? I think he's wither already back in NY now, or is about to be, on account of there aren't any more games in Florida and also fewer folks hanging around there now to work him out or pitch to him.

That they are leaving WFAN isn't, by itself, a sign of doom or really much of anything except that the radio market is fluid and that this change is coming after only 26 years or so on the same outlet is more a sign of stability than not. When FAN was the first and only all-sports station in the country there was a certain prestige to having the Mets linked to them but that's not as much the case anymore. 'The FAN' is more like a 310 lb gorilla in the room, slimmed down from its former 800. But there are a couple of conditions on that. - Yes, as mentioned already above, it's like the wandering AAA affiliate in that it's another indicator that companies prefer NOT to cast their lot with the Mets if a decent alternative is available. Part of that is just symbolism but symbolism, to an extent at least, does count for something. - I think it IS really important to wind up with another strong-signal AM partner. The days are gone when radio stations in smaller cities, like say Albany, Poughkeepsie, or in various NJ & Conn towns towns, were happy to fill out their programming day with whatever was available from big city stations. There used to be a dozen or more outlets listed in the NYM Yearbooks where you could catch the games across the northeast but that was before nationally syndicated radio programs and cable TV and NetFlix and whatever were available in all corners of the country. Now the one station has got to reach as many folks as possible and FM doesn't provide that. The logical choice is ESPN's outlet. I never had a problem getting the signal but I know others have although they've supposedly fixed that from their early days. That that means Michael Kay as the lead-in isn't any different to me than having Francesa or anyone else for that matter (some of the NYM fans on that station bug me at least as much as those two). What does worry me about that choice is that ,.. well, that it's ESPN. When they go with local hosts during daytime hours it should be no big deal. But it's the nights and weekends when they tend to get their programming from 'The Mother Ship'* where I'm afraid that they'll tend to revert to a host and a attitude that reflects ESPN's overall philosophy which is along the lines of; 'well now that we've got that baseball shit we're contractually required to carry out of the way we can go back to talking college football in July'. IOW, it's not the actual game telecast or even pre & post game shows that'll change much if at all, but in that time slot after all that is over when you're still interested (assuming you even were) in hearing and talking about the ballgame or about baseball in general where the fan (as opposed to 'The FAN') may lose out. * former ESPN'er Dan Patrick's somewhat biting moniker for ESPN's corporate headquarters

Yeah, the key is as much keeping enough teams ahead of them as it is the number of games behind they sit as then at least some of these head-to-head matches between the other contenders assures that the Yanx can't gain ground that night on at least one of them. The flip side of that of course is that the Yanx also can't lose any ground to at least one of those teams so it's kind of a good-news/bad-news situation. Baltimore, for instance, has only AL East teams on their schedule for the rest of year while the Yanx are off facing the like of the Giants & Astros. This week alone sees the Indians vs Royals (Cleveland won yesterday) plus the Sawx in Tampa starting tonight. The best part about last night's game might have been the near manager-on-manager violence that erupted between innings. Apparently Girardi thought the the O's 3B coach was stealing signs or something like that and started yapping at him from the dugout. Showalter didn't take kindly to this and came out of his dugout steaming mad, fist shaking, finger-wagging, etc. He appeared to be mouthing; 'you got a problem come talk to ME about it' yadda, yadda. Both dugouts emptied but the umps intercepted Buck before the two skippers got close enough to start kissing or anything.

Matsuzaka - 2.0 Black - 0.5 Francisco - 0.5 Hawkins - 0.5 Turner - 2.0 Young - 2.0 den Dekker - 1.0 Murphy - 1.5

Germen - 0.5 Lutz - 0.5

Sean Henn in, but I don't see either Madonna or Robin Wright in the audience so maybe the guy just doesn't stay on good terms with his exes.

Philosophical Question: If a Nationals pitcher throws a no-hitter on the same night as a Redskins game, will anyone in the Washington DC area notice?