Frayed Knot

Padres give a gift, but Haiston gets greedy and winds up giving it part-way back.

I know that Seaver doubled off Koosman in his very first game at Shea following the trade, but I don't know the answer to the HR question.

Hey, Angel Hernandez even blows calls in our favor!!

Yeah I know we're past the deadline, but ... Joe Blanton, no longer a Philly, now a Dodger. Minor leaguer to be named going back the other way.

The Nats have obviously had good pitching for the entire year, but at this point their lineup also has no holes this season except for maybe catcher since Wilson Ramos went out for the year. To help plug that hole they've just landed Kurt Suzuki from Oakland. Not sure he'll be much of an improvement over Jesus Flores, but it's helps with their depth. As does the return this week of Jayson Werth

I was thinking of a flooded outfield and players with mitts on skates. Lonnie Smith can coach.

G-Fafif wrote: ... Byrdak to DL (shoulder). Brian Cashman called in to say that he thinks Bydak's been over-used. But I guess this spares Elvin the ride back to Buffalo for the time being, and Edgin for maybe even longer.

Not a good week for some of the old guys we've been tracking in this thread - Indians DFA Johnny Damon. Also Derek Lowe - Rays release Hidecki Matsui - Dodgers released Bobby Abreu to make room for Victorino. That's the 2nd release for him this year, and that's just by LA-based teams. - And Jim Thome is on the DL in Baltimore these days.

The winter olympics actually has a rule where every event needs to have something to do with either snow or ice, so that knocks out baseball unless some really interesting rule alterations are made. And that winter/summer thing is part of what makes basketball, and specifically the use of pro players, a much easier fit for the olympics; it's a winter sport here but a summer sport to the IOC.

Where: San Diego, California Who: Padres When: Tonight (late), tomorrow (not as late), Sunday (late afternoon) Record: Bad, as in worse than ours (44-63) and deservedly so (402 - 465 RS/RA) Stadium: Dog Kennel Weather: Perfect with a near 100% chance of being perfect Pitchers: Dickey vs Clayton Richard (7-11; 4.14; 1.21) Hefner vs Volquez (7-7; 3.51; 1.34) Harvey vs Marquis (4-6; 4.08; 1.35) Offense: Bad --15th in RS/G, 14th in HRs, 16th in BA, 12th in OBA, 15th in SLG Pitching: Average-ish -- 8th in RA/G, 8th in Ks, 11th in WHiP, and are the only NL team to use more pitchers (26) this season than the Mets (24) All rankings need to be thought of in conjunction with their pitching-friendly park Previous series: May 24-27, Mets win 3 of 4 Lose first 11-5 (Hefner�s 3rd ML start) then allow a total of one run over the next three games with Gee, Santana & Dickey doing the hurling. Which means now all we need is Gee & Santana. Lineup: Yes Feel free to add

Ceetar wrote: Real easy to sit with the 'Bleacher Creatures' and have a good time and say great things about them ... as long as you have secret service protection with you. Is it just me or have the critters made a point this year of having celebrities hang out there? Beats me, I've been too blinded this year by the fact that the maybe twenty different guest columns in the Sunday NY Times Sports Section have all started with some variation of: "As a life-long Yankee fan, ...". What then proceeds from there has been an assortment of self-reverential pieces on what that means to that particular author, or about how it reminds them of their grandma, or even, and these were the best, about how tough it was to maintain that fandom during the Horace Clarke years or during that gaping chasm of the late '80s/early '90s and how all the winning since is somehow not as much fun. Most of those were earlier in the spring/summer but it seems like they were printing them at about a one-per-week clip there for a while. From what I've heard, the conduct of the BCs isn't quite as criminal or quite as tolerated in the new stadium as it was compared to what went on in the old. That could all just be pr bullshit though.

Real easy to sit with the 'Bleacher Creatures' and have a good time and say great things about them ... as long as you have secret service protection with you.

A send-off for his AA career from BA's Hot Sheet The Scoop: Liberal with walks though he was in his final Double-A outing, Wheeler also struck out a season-high 11 batters in 6 2/3 innings against Harrisburg. (Naturally, he also set a season high with 106 pitches.) Forget the strikeouts and the walks for a second and think about this: Wheeler allowed just two home runs in 19 Double-A starts, at one point going 11 starts (and at least 80 innings) without anyone taking him deep. Wheeler won't have the Eastern League to kick around anymore, not after the Mets promoted him to Triple-A Buffalo, where he assumes Matt Harvey's vacated rotation spot. He leaves the EL as the leader with 117 strikeouts and (spoiler alert) he fared well in our forthcoming Eastern League Best Tools survey.

#3 on this week's 'Hot Sheet' over at BA: RAFAEL MONTERO, RHP Team: high Class A St. Lucie (Florida State) -- Age: 21 Why He's Here: 1-0, 3.00, 6 IP, 5 H, 2 R, 0 BB, 14 SO The Scoop: Montero made his pro debut last May after signing out of the Dominican Republic as an inexperienced and older prospect during the offseason. Since then, he's raced through four levels by pounding the strike zone with a 92-94 mph fastball and has impressed with his advanced feel for the pitch. On Tuesday night against Clearwater, Montero struck out 14 of the 23 batters he faced. Standing at just 6-feet, 170 pounds, he also flashes a quality slider at times and is still refining his changeup. In his last three starts, the righthander has struck out 28 while not issuing a walk in 18 innings. He's held Florida State League righthanders to a .139 average.

Top OPS + by a Met in a Season 3. Mike Piazza , 1998*: 167 *Included only 109 games. Combined OPS+ for Mets, Florida, and Los Angeles was 152. So he was better that first year as a Met than he was during his combined time with LA & Fla? That must explain all the booing then.

- As I've stated before around here, the Olympics is best IMO at those sports where the Olympics is that sport's biggest moment. That means track, that means swimming, gymnastics, even volleyball. But it doesn't mean tennis, and it doesn't mean soccer, and it doesn't mean baseball. Hell, I was more upset that they took out womens softball. - And, yes, the main reason it went away is because the IOC is a European-dominated entity backed by a U.N.-style bushel of smaller countries who all have votes of their own, who closed down baseball because it doesn't have broad enough appeal to enough countries. It has nothing specifically to do with MLB or NBC - The difficulties in getting everyone on board for the WBC shows how tough it would be to get the best players into an out-of-league tourney even before you start turning over the running of it to the IOC. In the WBC there are still arguments on where it should be held, how often it should be held, at what time of year it should be held, and finally there's IF it should even be held at all. Heck, half the Yanqui roster suddenly discovers an injury at WBC time, and if you left the decision up to Keith he'd cancel the whole thing and attempt to brainwash those who ever thought about it in the first place so it could never be resurrected. And do you thing you're getting Strasburg to pitch? I don't think so. In short, I'm fine without it being there and I don't see the benefit to either MLB or the IOC in concocting a way to match them up.

This post is a bit long (OK it's a lot long. It started short but I got carried away) all for a pretty small point, but, wtf, we�re in a 30-some hour holding pattern between games here. Let me just start this off by saying how much I love BB-Ref.com For many reasons obviously, but mainly just for the information that used to be hidden from almost everyone but now is look-up-able in the matter of minutes by almost anyone. And this morning I was able to look up something that's been bugging me much of this season. You know when you watch games you pick up what certain players seem to do a lot, and I emphasize seem because it's hard to be sure if they really do that thing more often than most or if it's just a coincidence wherever you're watching. Like at one point a bunch of years back when I swear I went two seasons without seeing Keith Lockhart make an out. I'd look at the stats and he'd be hitting .231 with a .280 OBA and yet when I watched Braves games (and I watched often in those days via TBS) he'd get hits, or he'd get walks, or he'd get hit by pitches, but never make an out. It became almost an obsession with me, especially after the one time I'm watching a Braves game and Lockhart comes up with men on and I'm dreading the double in the corner that I know is coming; except that Lockhart suddenly popped up, and I�m amazed that the Atlanta opponent is going to get out of the inning, and not only that but I'm finally going to see Keith Lockhart make an actu ... and the infielder dropped the ball! At that point I'm looking around the room for ghosts but at least I knew KL�s out-less streak was just my bad luck because it was universally knowable that he actually made outs more than 70+% of the time, even if they all happened to be while I wasn�t looking. Well I've had a similar thing going this year, and it involves a certain Derek Jeter and infield hits. I usually catch a decent amount of Yanqui games although a lot fewer than my usual this year. But I�ve still seen Jeter get what seems like (there�s that key phrase) a TON of IF hits and I'm wondering if it's just one of those Lockhart things again. And the whole problem with even bringing up this topic without being able to prove it one way or the other is that the legion of Jeter defenders will just simply dismiss my so-called observations (and admittedly partial ones at that) as playa-hating from my Met-tilting brain which is programmed to dismiss all Jeter success as the result of luck. And maybe they'd even be right in this case. But that's why it's great that we have BB-Ref Using their 'Hit Location' breakdown under the yearly 'Splits' section we can easily see that more than 20% of Jeter's hits this year (28 of 137 for 20.4%) have been in the infield. �Well sure� the Jeter-ites will say, �it�s because he�s fast and hustles more than any other human ever created�. Except that that reasoning doesn�t explain why, at age 38, his current IF-hit pct turns out to be the 2nd highest of his career (below only the 22% from 14 years ago) and nearly 50% higher than his career average of 14.3% And what we're seeing aren't speedy-guy slap/bunt hits anyway - not like back in 1980 when the career .265-hitting Miguel Dilone managed, for exactly one season, to hit .341 by slapping the ball as he ran out of the batters box. No, what I keep seeing are the kind of topped "swinging bunts" that can't possibly be done on purpose but all just happen to wind up in a place where no one can make a play on them. So anyway, this is just a long-winded way of saying that, no, I'm not wallowing in paranoia screaming to my TV set that the Yanx get all the breaks; that the facts point to Jeter really getting an absurd amount (even for him) of cheap hits this season to the point where at his normal rate (which I suspect is still higher than most) he'd lose some 20+ points off his current BA, and that I don't see any other conclusion except to think that he's just being really, really lucky these days at a pace which would be incredibly difficult to sustain.

Hefner - 1.0 Byrdak - 0.4 Rauch - 0.5 Edgin - 0.4 Hairston - 4.2 Cedeno - 1.3 Turner - 1.3 Johnson - 0.9

RRamirez - 0.8 Davis - 5.1 Acosta - 0.4 Edgin - 0.2 Tejada - 0.7 Thole - 0.3

I don't know if Seo is travelling, so the SD KTE might need to be a group job. PHIGroup ProjectWASHbmfc1/Edgy DCMIAGWreck=#00BF40]ATL=#00BF40]Frayed KnotCINEdgyDCPITTEdgy DCCHICattgigStLMFS'62HOUMGiMMILWTransMonkLADG-FaFiFSFGFrayed Knot=#FF0000]SDP=#FF0000]ABN-SeoCOLLWFSARZLWFSNYYFMan99BALJCLTORJCLTBRLWFS =#BF0000]At Bat On Deck =#008000]In the Hole

4 runs on 2 hits* in that inning - it's like this game is the bizarro version of yesterday's. * and it really should be one hit + one error

Swan Swan H wrote: Tejada-SS Torres-CF Wright-3B Hairston-RF Murphy-1B Bay-LF Cedeno-2B Johnson-C Young-RHP A righties delighty - only Murphy failing to keep the LHB's batter box undisturbed during the top of each inning. Such a lineup didn't even seem possible until recently.

Edgy DC wrote: Swan Swan H wrote: Swan Swan H wrote: I'm sure the rule is what it is, but why aren't the runners on 2nd and 3rd? That's where they would be were there no interference and Thole got thrown out at first. Because to remove the incentive for the offensive team to commit an intentional interference the remedy is that all runners return to their original bases. Think about a situation where the bases are loaded w/1 out, bottom 9, tie game. Batter hits what looks like an easy 6-4-3 DP but the runner on 1st decides to simply play free safety and "intercepts" the throw to 1st. Yeah he's already out, but without the 'runners return' rule his team wins the game. The umps, in that situation, also have the option to call the batter out when the interference is so obviously intentional - but you get the idea. If they call that a DP it's three out and no runs score anyway. It would never happen to end a game, but if it happens with none out the run from third should score whether it's intentional or not, since they didn't make a play on that runner. I'm not saying it's not the rule, just that I disagree with the reasoning behind it. Yeah, this scenario doesn't justify the rule. (And any runner who can advance far enough down the line to intercept a relay from second base to first but won't simply just safely touch first is insane beyond Jimmy Piersall levels and needs to be kept far away from baseball diamonds.) Calling the batter out and letting the runners accept their advance to the bases they'd have safely advanced to had the play been successfully and cleanly completed seems to make sense. The Mets followed up by making the philosophical point moot with a madly courageous double steal, but of course failed to score. The example I made up probably doesn't justify the 'runners return' rule on its own because the umps do have the option of calling both runner and batter out, but was merely an example of how intentional interference can occasionally be used to benefit a team if such rules didn't exist. In fact the rule allowing umps to call not just the runner out but the guy behind him also only came about after someone had done just that to win a game. The story I heard involved Brave Joe Aadock who, while running from 2nd to 3rd with one out and bases loaded, simply grabbed the bouncer that his batter hit towards SS and heaved it into the OF. Sure HE was out but the DP was prevented and the run scored. Out of such antics rules are changed. Back to last night, supposing Thole didn't just merely run in a way where he was hoping to get hit but actually took the trouble to turn around and swat the throw with his hands. If he manages to swat it in the right place the runner can come around from 2nd, hence the return rule. IOW, the rule makes no distinction between purposely interfering and when a runner, while breaking a rule, just "happens" to get his by a throw accidentally/on purpose. btw, the only person this rule doesn't apply to is Reggie Jackson. I believe Tommy Lasorda has some opinions on that matter.

Ceetar wrote: Mets are 1-0 when I'm sick and have a hot toddy during the game. Mets are 51-54 this year when I'm pounding vodkas trying to ease the anxiety. OK that's not really true but tonight was one of those times I should have been drinking.

I was sure they were going to blow that one since the 3rd inning. But they somehow managed to blow their opportunities to blow it.