Frayed Knot

Harvey is/was certainly one positive to come out of this season. I'd be pressed to come up with a second one though. Be nice if we can hang on to this one and get him the win.

I wonder how many votes Rob Dibble would get for biggest asshole to step on the mound over the last 27 years? For those not listening to the TV crew Dibble was part of the topic of conversation during tonight's game

1st batter = Insurmountable lead Oh well, we were in it for a while.

Well, 'can't miss prospect' or not, Fred loses his start to the rain-out and the revamped line-up as a result of Philly's switch to a LHP Tejada - 6 Murphy - 4 Wright - 5 Hairston - 9 Davis - 3 Shoppach - 2 Duda - 7 Torres - 8 Harvey - 1

dinosaur jesus wrote: Frayed Knot wrote: I think that, not all that long ago, winning a TC would have automatically clinched the MVP award (and probably unanimously) for whoever got it, but I'm not so sure now. It's hard to say what "not all that long ago" means, since no one's done it since 1967. But there have been Triple Crown winners since they started giving the MVP, and only six have won the award. In 1934 Gehrig finished fifth in the voting. Suck on it, Biscuit Pants. What I'm saying is that if someone had won the TC during a span from let's say the last one thru maybe a decade or so ago the writers would have almost automatically given him the MVP because he will have led in the only statistical categories that anyone cared about. Now-a-days I'm not so sure. BB writers are far more likely to at least consider other stats and other facets of the game before voting if not as a trump to the TC stats at least in conjunction with them. The non-baseball talking heads are already weighing in on this topic with the expected; "ya gotta give it to Cabrera!" and they'll be as confused by and dismissive of 'those baseball number geeks' if he doesn't win as they were when Felix Hernandez won the CY with his "paltry" 13 wins ... but let them squawk all they want.

metirish wrote: Can you explain Edwin Encarnacion's numbers? http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/e/encared01.shtml Everything is virtually the same except that he's managed to turn about a dozen or two doubles into HRs. Nice trick if you call pull it off.

That ground-rule double by Ichiro traveled about 150 ft The pain in the Toronto half of the 8th is that they hit several just-missed liners: one foul by about a foot with two on and one a bases-loaded liner right at Ichiro in LF. Also that Yanqui pitchers throwing balls anywhere within 7 inches of the zone were getting the calls.

There's a decent chance this year of Miguel Cabrera winning the triple crown - and then at the same time NOT being the AL MVP He's currently leading in two categories and close in the other. BA: 1st = Cabrera .333 2nd = Trout .327 HR: 1st = Hamilton 42 T-2nd = Cabrera 40 T-2nd = Encarnacion 40 RBI: 1st = Cabrera 129 2nd = Hamilton 123 But then there's Mike Trout, who certainly has the RoY sewn up but also, many still think, is the leader for MVP as well. He's right there with Cabrera in BA, has 27 HRs despite spending the first month in the minors, and is nowhere near the top in RBI mainly as the result of leading off exclusively But then Trout leads the league in both SBs (46 of 50) and in runs scored (despite the missed month) and is right up there in OBA (tied with Cabrera for 3rd at .396) He also leads the league in both WAR and Offensive WAR, is 4th in slugging (Cabrera = 1st) and 2nd (to Cabrera) in OPS And then there's the whole [crossout:w8d682v2]good[/crossout:w8d682v2] great CF vs mediocre (at best) 3Bman thing to consider. I think that, not all that long ago, winning a TC would have automatically clinched the MVP award (and probably unanimously) for whoever got it, but I'm not so sure now.

Ashie62 wrote: Fred Lewis was a "can't miss" type prospect around 2007, oh well... Fred Lewis was a 2nd round pick (66th overall) by the Giants out of Southern University in 2002, two years after he passed on signing w/Montreal when they picked him in the 20th round while in Junior College. After his good season in A-Ball* in 2004, Baseball America ranked him as the #78 prospect in their pre-2005 rankings although that's not only the highest he ever got but also the only time he ever showed up in their Top-100. Promising prospect but never exactly in the "can't miss" category. * beware of Cal League stats for a hitter

Date updated on the IGT - as is the Philly pitcher as mgr Charlie uses the occasion of the rain-out to swap his pitching around, so we'll get Hamels today on his regular rest and Cloyd gets bumped to tomorrow. Harvey still starting for the Mets.

MFS62 wrote: Playing in the PCL can be an ego boosting experience for hitting prospects and ego deflating experience for pitching prospects. Especially so when Vegas is your home stadium from what I understand.

In response to both last night's eight pitcher game and their every-game-counts pennant/WC race, the Orioles are calling up 19 y/o Dylan Bundy. Bundy, a RHP who was 2011's 4th overall pick in the draft out of a high school in Oklahoma, didn't start his pro career until this season where he began the year in low-A ball (for 8 starts & 30 innings) progressing to high-A (12 starts & 57 innings) and briefly to AA (3 & 17)

I'm leavin' my family / Leavin' all my friendsMy body's at home / But my heart's in the windWhere the clouds are like headlinesUpon a new front page skyAnd shiver me timbers'Cause I'm a-sailin' away-- Tom WaitsCourtesy of 'Seal Breath Rogers'

Just looking over the O's/M's box score, there was a lot of odd stuff going on. Mostly there was a whole lot of late-inning bunting going on including Seattle players popping out twice trying to bunt runners over. And the only sac bunt that really paid off was Buck bunting while down by two runs with no outs in the 9th. A 2-RBI singled followed but that would have driven me nuts had I been watching. In the 18th the O's got a lead-off walk and then a single and Buck chose not to bunt either time ... and that paid off for him too with an RBI single and later an RBI ground-out. Dude is leading a charmed life these days. Being September each manager was able to trot out 8 pitchers - and Buck, god love him, was able to hold off using his closer until the save situation came around in the bottom of the 18th as the rest of his pen kept the Mariners scoreless from the 6th inning on. Winning 14-straight extra-innings games (especially with 9 of them being on the road) is just unreal - but they're not undefeated this year in extras. In the first week of the season they lost at home on consecutive days in the 12th & 10th innings to ... the MFYs

There appears to have been just a single 'Terry and the Pirates' movie done back in 1940, although at Five Hours Long maybe that qualifies for a series all by itself. I know there was talk of doing one about 10 years ago and maybe that would have spawned a franchise but I guess that first one never got off the ground.

I, on the other hand, liked this one, and more so than most of the seemingly endless supply of Boston-area crime flicks of recent vintage. I found the story of the lead character wanting to get out of the town and out of 'the life' believable enough. And some good side characters, like not just psycho Jeremy Renner but also the cocaine/meth chick, and from one of the final performances by Peter Postlethwaite as 'Fergie' "We're gonna take down the cathedral of Boston"

metirish wrote: Caught a few minutes of Francesca on the drive home today, he was incredulous about the Mets rescheduling the rainout for Thursday. "There won't be hundred people there , (voice rising), why would you go against the Yankees in a pennant race and the NY football Giants playing the Thursday game, did they even think about it for five minutes?" It was hilarious. So I guess the Mets should have checked with the Yanx and Giants before making their schedule then? -- Oh wait, but teams don't make their own schedule! Well then maybe they should have scheduled the rain-out as a Wednesday DH? -- Oh wait, but the Yanx were also rained out and are scheduled for a Wednesday DH so that wouldn't have been any good either. Besides, what the point of avoiding a poor attendance day on Thursday only to go with a DH instead and lose an entire game's attendance! What exactly did he want them to do in this case? Besides like not play the game at all I guess. This is almost as good as the time he was scolding MLB for having over-lapping playoff games in the 1st round -- "You wouldn't see the NFL doing something this stupid!!" Gee, the NFL has a total of 11 playoff games (vs up to 41 for MLB) which it spreads out over a 5 week span (vs 3 weeks in baseball) and yet somehow the NFL manages to slot those games so where none overlap! Man they must be fuckin' geniuses over there! And, btw, how many people do you suppose would be killed or injured if Francesa really did erupt?

Yes, it's a two-year agreement. All minor league agreements are for two years or for multiples of two. In this case they'll take the short one and see how the situation is come this time of year 2014. The problem this time around wasn't just that Buffalo wanted a change but that they did so in a year when so few others cities (and almost none in the east) had expiring agreements.

TransMonk wrote: The fact that someone in the Mets org said any of these things regarding Davis is embarrassing. If you'll note Rubin's reporting it does say 'baseball source' and not the more usual 'team source' - implying that maybe these comments aren't coming from within. On the other hand, there's not much to be gained for someone outside the organization to say anything less than positive about Ike so maybe they are. I have no doubt that someone fed Adam this info (he's not going to just make stuff like this up folks), I just don't want to jump to conclusions about who it might be. That they're contemplating dealing him (or anyone!!) over the off-season shouldn't be a surprise. What's causing these 'he's straying off the reservation' comments is a bit more intriguing but I don't know quite what to make of them. It's not like it helps the NYM org to make these public either.

John Cougar Lunchbucket wrote: What's happening is that the city is reluctant to extend the lease for the park as requested by a group trying to buy the team. This wouldn't impact the Mets if they were to get away in 2 years but the story leaves you with the impression that baseball isn't thought of too fondly there and that they know the issue is a substandard park. I wonder if that means that the group trying to buy the team is doing so with the intention of keeping it in Lost Wages or moving it elsewhere. Either way, I've never been convinced of the idea of LV as a major league quality baseball town. It has nothing to do with the whole gambling question that supposedly haunts all the sports leagues either, I just think the population is too new, too transplanted, too transient, and would be too otherwise distracted - hell, the city is built on distraction - to ever build a true fan-base big enough and loyal enough to support a top sports team, particularly for an everyday, summer sport like baseball. And now that the 'fastest growing US city' bloom is off the rose and its economy exposed as largely built on speculation (again, that whole purpose of the city thing) there is even less to recommend it.

'Bay Ridge Dave' was likely the MoFoite you had in mind. He became even more of a presence (and even more of an idiot) after this place split off. Anyway, whoever he is, the move to Vegas has nothing to do with "cheapness" unless you want to take the indirect path that being forced to reduce payroll at the major league team is causing minor league affiliates not want to deal with them. Except that it's not like this team is much worse than the ones that were finishing below .500 with near MLB-high payrolls throughout much of the 2000s and, if anything, a de-emphasis on the ML payrolls should be reflected in a more build-from-within model that would benefit their minor league clubs in the years to come. That he sums it all up with the standard Backman comment just adds to the lack of imagination here.

Vegas officials would like to replace the stadium except that Vegas got caught up in the whole wealth via borrowed money and artificially inflated real estate values worse than most places and apparently the city fathers didn't put away enough of their graft money into a rainy day fund, so now they can't. The deal is for the minimum two years so, as in New Orleans, they're going to ride it out there for the time being and see how the landscape looks down the road. It's not an ideal situation, but also not a major obstacle. And besides, just think of how much incentive NYM AAA players will have to get away from the lousy facilities an into the big leagues now!

... although the forecasts for getting this one in aren't looking too good. Apres Cliff Lee, le deluge. What we'll probably see is either a DH tomorrow or both teams have an open date on Thursday as well. If and when it does come off it'll be Matt Harvey's last start of the year before he gets shut down. Unfortunately for Matt, the offense was shut down long before he ever got here, like sometime in early August. He's scheduled to face Tyler Cloyd, who sounds like he ought to be out on his private yacht trying to land a marlin. Not to be confused with his cousin Cloyd Tyler who's definitely more at home trolling for catfish in some bayou.

Young - 2.7 Francisco - 0.3 Thole - 0.4 Torres - 0.4 Acosta - 0.2

Acosta - 0.5 Familia - 0.5 Murphy - 2.0 Davis - 2.0 Duda - 1.5