Frayed Knot

Young - 2.0 Lagares - 1.5 Davis - 1.0 Murphy - 1.0 Mejia - 1.0

wouldn't it be good to beat Alex Wood

It's actually Alex Wood (Travis is the one on the Cubs). Alex is a 23 y/o rookie making his 22nd ML appearance, his 7th ML start, and 3rd ML start vs the Mets. He started the 1st game of the June 18th DH but was pulled after just 3 innings down 1-0 He started again on July 26 and we chased him in the 5th while the Mets were leading 4-3. Mets went on the win both games. He's sporting a 2.61 ERA; 1.026 WHiP overall.

Yes, that's why there's a specific window for when arb cases are decided, so that if a team wants to walk away from it the player isn't screwed trying to land another job after rosters have pretty much been set. I believe that once an arb deal is accepted by both sides it becomes guaranteed for the full amount and, even if not, just the fact that a team went to arb with a player in the first place means he's unlikely to be a guy they'd change their mind on before the season even starts. The non-guaranteed type of deals that fringe or rehabbing players often get (Byrd might have been in this category this past Spring) wouldn't be the ones decided through arbitration and those are the ones that can be terminated closer to OD without the team being on the hook for the entire amount.

Niese - 3.6 Torres - 0.3 Hawkins - 0.3 Byrd - 1.4 Davis - 1.4 Murphy - 1.4 Recker - 1.1 Quintanilla - 0.5

Termination pay and arbitration aren't the same thing. Termination is when a non-guaranteed deal is not picked up after ST has started but prior to OD. The player receives something for his time depending on exactly when he's released. When a team walks away from arbitration -- either by not offering or by walking away from the result -- it's like no contract ever existed; the player becomes a FA and is free to hunt for a deal elsewhere. I don't believe there's a financial settlement due to the player in this case although I don't claim to be up on all the specifics.

Wheeler - 3.6 Atchison - 0.7 Germen - 1.0 Byrd - 2.0 Buck - 1.2 Satin - 0.75 Murphy - 0.75

Teams CAN walk away from arbitrated contracts if they don't like the result. The player then immediately becomes a FA. It's a somewhat different set of guidelines that governs non-guaranteed invite type of deals where, if a player is released by a certain date they owe him X pct of the amount and by a later but still pre-opening day date they owe him a greater pct.

Nice to see we got Laird out because I'm under the impression that Atlanta back-up catchers are batting like .800 against NYM pitching all time with numerous XBHs

I guess we have to call him d'Ar-One now

Ceetar wrote: Eric Young Jr really one has one tool, but it's a good one at least. Hits a little bit; walks at about an average rate; excellent speed; very good glove even if instincts aren't always the best; can play 2B, LF, & CF. That's a lot more than one tool even if you want to quibble with some of the above. Only in power is he significantly below ML average.

Before that AB started I had already resigned myself to being satisfied with anything that wasn't a Grand Slam.

Waiter at a Hungarian restaurant: "So how was your Terdoslavich platter?' Customer: 'Eh, I've had better, this one was kind of janish'

And the Jays were up 4-0 by the 2nd inning too!!

Then I'll revise my former statement to read: they ain't getting shit! I must have been remembering Lombardozzi's one hot week or something. Last season the Nats got much better out of him, out of Bernadina, out of the backup catchers, out of Chad Tracy, even out of Rick Ankiel for a while. Tyler Moore's RH bat was the reason they thought they could exchange Morse for Span (not directly but in effect) and still not lose that RH bat off the bench to make the opposing manager soil his shorts. But not only has Moore not been Morse, he hasn't even been Moore and no one else has either. Benches, like bullpens, are hard to predict, and it's one area all the pundits seem to have missed in their rush to put Washington in the 2013 WS so quickly. It all seemed so logical: a 98-win season now adding a closer, a real CF/leadoff-man, plus getting a full year of Harper & Strasburg and probably not as unlucky with injuries as they were in 2012 (Werth, Flores, Ramos, Desmond, Morse, Espinosa, Storen) but it also overlooked how many things went right for them last year and the bench was one of the biggies.

Mars needs women.

And to trade for DeJesus the Nats released Roger Bernandina. Odd transaction indeed. He was looking like a terrific 3rd/4th OFer for a while: fast, streaky power, real good glove [.291/.372/405 in 260+ PAs in 2012], just not as consistent as what you'd want in a full-timer. But this season he was nearly nowhere to be found [.178/.247/.270 w/167 PAs] and, at age 29, probably didn't figure to get as many second chances as what a younger player with his skills might get. The performance of the Nats' bench as a whole has been a big difference in their fall-off this season. Last year virtually everyone they threw up there was getting hits: Tyler Moore, Bernadina, Kurt Suzuki, Jhonathan Solano, etc. But this year it's an OK season from Lombardozzi but a whole buncha nuttin beyond that.

With Seawolf's votes added PLAYER25-MANMINORSOut of OrgIKE DAVIS506RUBEN TEJADA371LUCAS DUDA515DANIEL MURPHY515MARLON BYRD407OMAR QUINTANILLA254JUAN LAGARES1100ERIC YOUNG JR.902JORDANY VALDESPIN065KIRK NIEUWENHUIS281JOSH SATIN263JUSTIN TURNER443ANTHONY RECKER335JOHN BUCK407WILMER FLORES722TRAVIS d�ARNAUD1100DAVID WRIGHT1100JENRRY MEJIA821JEURYS FAMILIA290BOBBY PARNELL1001JON NIESE1001DILLON GEE704 JEREMY HEFNER317ZACK WHEELER1100NOAH SYNDERGAARD1100MATT HARVEY1100

Vic Sage wrote: But did he live in a van down by the river? No, nothing like that. He lived in a boat down by the river. And the boat was in a tree. So, did you like? Yeah I did. Little bit of mystery and interesting characters to it, anchored by teens who have been let down by most of the older folk around them. Reminded me a bit of Juno in that last regard even though a totally different flick.

Pelfrey surprises me as I don't remember him as being particularly fast (or slow). Buehrle does not; given three guesses for quickest worker in MLB I would have picked him twice then passed on the third. Relievers are definitely slower as a group. Even when they're in with no one on they tend to act as if the fate of the western world is riding on each pitch. Another thing I've noticed recently is that many of them seem to have developed the habit of coming down off the mound after the delivery as if the catcher would have trouble reaching them with the throw back unless they were some ten feet or more in front of the rubber. That means they then have to walk back before each pitch but, because they don't want to walk on their landing area, they wind up taking the great circle route around the mound and climb back to the top via the 1st base side. That alone makes it to where they don't even begin to look for the sign until 10-15 seconds are spent, and if they, as many do, have a hat-removing/sweat-wiping/deep-breath-taking/uniform-adjusting routine they've grown accustomed to then that time-span can easily get doubled.

... There is always going to be a different pace to baseball than there is to football or basketball. Its a pastoral 19th century game and that's a large part of its appeal. I wouldn't advocate trying to MTV-ize the sport so that our ADD-addled youth will find it more appealing, but there is much to be done to combat its excesses and make the sport at least more tolerable for kids to attend with their parents so that going to games becomes a family ritual they can then pass on to their own kids. And the thing is, no one is suggesting that baseball has to alter its rules or revert to some plan or condition that existed back during the William McKinley administration or anything, merely a return to how it was played 20 or 30 years ago--well within the lifespan and memory of most of its fans--prior to when this long, slow, creeping trend took the exact same game and morphed it in something with no more action yet somehow taking 20% longer. Apparently Fangraphs has been keeping a Pace stat, time between pitches, since 2007 Jim Bouton once said that if you simply banned velcro you could knock 20 minutes off the game. I'd like to see similar stats which fingered the pitchers most likely to commit clock-a-cide. Jonathan Papelbon c'mon down!! Monday's crime against fluidity: Rays 4 - Orioles 3; 9 innings; 3:56 WHAT THE FUCK WERE THEY DOING THERE?!?!!? I mean I know it's the freakin' American League and all but still, was there some mid-game swarm of locusts in Baltimore last night that I didn't read about? Did the cast of 'The Wire' come out and perform 'Les Miz' during the 7th inning stretch? That's a slightly below average scoring game which, if you sliced an hour off of it, would still be 20 minutes longer than what was the norm just a relatively short time ago.

So who would have guessed that the flick where Matthew McConaughey plays a homeless fugitive who lives on a river island is the one where he has his shirt ON most of the time?

Our consensus to date from the ten participants who responded. - The only unanimous choices (in any categories) are, not surprisingly, that Wright, Harvey, and Wheeler will all be on the 25-man roster come opening day, and, perhaps slightly surprisingly, that Lagares & d'Arnaud will also. - Voted most likely to be gone from the organization before next April: Jeremy Hefner, followed closely by Buck & Byrd - More of us think Young will be back than Byrd PLAYER25-MANMINORSOut of OrgIKE DAVIS406RUBEN TEJADA271LUCAS DUDA514DANIEL MURPHY415MARLON BYRD406OMAR QUINTANILLA253JUAN LAGARES1000ERIC YOUNG JR.802JORDANY VALDESPIN055KIRK NIEUWENHUIS271JOSH SATIN163JUSTIN TURNER442ANTHONY RECKER325JOHN BUCK406WILMER FLORES712TRAVIS d�ARNAUD1000DAVID WRIGHT1000JENRRY MEJIA721JEURYS FAMILIA280BOBBY PARNELL901JON NIESE901DILLON GEE604 JEREMY HEFNER217ZACK WHEELER1000NOAH SYNDERGAARD190MATT HARVEY1000

SWEEP!!

Frayed Knot wrote: Games are NEVER under control in the 6th inning. And immediately there are back to back hits to start the inning.