Frayed Knot

Nymr83 wrote: New rules = Improved NY-Penn League play? That's part of the idea, to get the new crop into the NYP and other short-season leagues scattered around the country more quickly than in the past (which, in turn, could bump short-season players up to the next level). The new deadline will do that more so than the cap rules. I don't think I'm a fan. What if a team wants to "overpay" 9 guys and tell their 4th round pick "eh, nevermind, here's a 5K offer". There should be a minimum bonus tender by round (say 1 mil, 750k, 500k, etc) and if you don't make it the guy becomes a free agent. I'm sure teams were trying to devise ways to circumvent the cap before the ink was dry on the agreement - as capitalism always does when you attempt to artificially limit it.

I don't believe it ever got around to the point of being offered the game because the Mets simply communicated to the league office that they had no interest in hosting one while still in Shea.

Two weeks until draft time. Mets will have 12 picks in the first 10 rounds as follows: 12th, 35th, 71, 75, 107, 140, 170, 200, 230, 260, 290, 320 - and then obviously continuing with each 30th pick. What makes the first ten rounds particularly crucial is that this is the year the new draft cap system kicks in. Each club will now have an overall $$ cap on all picks in the first ten rounds; the precise value of that cap will vary according to how many picks a team has and exactly where those choices sit. Under the old system, each pick had a specific bonus �recommendation� that MLB pressured teams to hold to but had no specific enforcement procedures to make them stick. Under the new system each draft slot will still have a target price which will all stem from MLB�s devised bonus for the #1 overall pick. This year the bonus for that 1/1 pick sits at $7.2 million and each succeeding pick is based on a decreasing percentage of that going through to the final pick of the 10th round at $125,000. Specifically for the Mets that means a �slot� for their #12 pick of $2.55 mil; for their #35 pick of $1,467,400; for the #71 of $723,600; for #75 at $680,400 and so on, for a total cap for the twelve choices of $7,151,400, a figure that sits at 9th most among all teams. Now teams are NOT required to stick to those prices for any individual choice but must stay within their ten-round cap on their choices as a whole. What this means is that going over for one player must be balanced off by either going under or not signing one of the others. Teams will face financial penalties and/or the loss of future draft choices for exceeding their specific cap. Picks made after the tenth round are not subject to the teams� overall cap except for those bonuses in excess of $100,000. And now you know what gave Bryce Harper the incentive to leave HS two years early. The one legit upside of this (unless you�re part of the mainstream media who seem to believe that part of their job description is to campaign for ways to save team owners as much money as possible at the expense of the very talent they're drooling over at that moment) is that it removes the power MLB had to make teams sit on already agreed-upon contracts for fear that one above-slot deal made public would inspire other above-slot demands. Now agreements reached in advance of the deadline date can actually be completed and announced instead of being part of the phony dance where nothing could be finalized for days or weeks while MLB stalled at �approving� the contract. This, along with the signing deadline moved up a full month to mid-July, should get particularly those top picks under contract and actually onto teams in many cases while the minor league seasons are still in progress.

Well that sucked. Reverting to our form of a couple years ago where we'd score in one inning and take the other eight off is not a good way to win ball games.

Nymr83 wrote: MLB was never going to give Shea the sendoff that it gave that rundown shithole in the Bronx. The Mets also didn't want the game.

Oh joy! Now this game becomes a battle of the bullpens.

John Cougar Lunchbucket wrote: Is anyone here worried about Jon Niese? I'm starting to, and if he messes up this outing then I'm officially on the worry-wagon. Pirates have BY FAR the worst offense in the league, hitting a collective: .217/.269/.346 and scoring a league low 2.88 Runs/game (Lg Avg = 4.07)

I tend to like cold war style intrigue but instead found myself totally confused as well. Maybe it was partially my fault for being kind of tired when I saw it but in the end I'm not sure whether I wound up not following the plot because I was nodding off or if I was nodding off because the plot was so dense.

Edgy DC wrote: Yes. And the discussion that ensued has taken us far afield from anything remotely relating a Harkness-Alfonzo debate, with nobody really mentioning either player or either performance. Yes, and I discussed the question about the existence (or not) of clutch hitting and then briefly went back and added my two cents about the Alfonzo v Harkness debate. Would I have been better off using 'discussion', 'question', 'topic' instead of 'debate' or was any term sufficient to send this into one of those threads which devolves into a maddening argument about the argument?

Not to take anything away from Harkness, but the greatest one-man/one-day freak show was Fonzie's 6-6, right? Is that above quote not the basis for most of this thread?

Funny huh, that with 14 IL games someone goes and decides that the most interesting contest is the one game that's not. Wonder if Bud had any objections? And while these things are usually decided many weeks in advance and therefore is partially a coincidence, turns out ESPN got the only match of the weekend between two 1st-place clubs. First IL block ends in a 24-18 AL edge. NL East winds up with Marlins & Braves going 2-1. Mets, Nats & Phils at 1-2

Keith even noted the other day that he's looking unusually sloppy on defense. It's only a couple of errors (3 I think) but two of them were at particularly bad times and, while it's hard to condemn him for not picking better times to have his miscues, Keith pointed out him not getting in front of balls the other day and almost begging for more errors and/or bad hops that, while not errors in the scoring, would still get by him anyway. The PH today made perfect sense, particularly with a LHP out there. Hairston had a good AB, just didn't come through. Ike almost certainly would have done the same, only on far fewer pitches and with absolutely no suspense as to the end result.

It's not just that he's going bad, it's that it's seven weeks of it now and he looks no closer to coming out of it now than he has all along. The only change I notice is that he went from being in an overly passive mode which resulted in working his way into a lot of 0-2 and 1-2 counts before getting burned on the in-the-dirt breaking ball, to more recently when he's tending towards going after the first pitch but with a swing that suggests he made the decision to go beforehand regardless of the type or location of the pitch thrown and winding up with a weak swing as a result of trying to adjust mid-way through. Maybe they think it'll be a safer move to wait for the return of Bay and/or Tejada, but with Baxter as hot as he is the OF can be covered while Duda/Turner covers 1B. While here he's killing the line-up and the few hits he's getting are more flukey than encouraging. Just today his double was a broken bat bloop and his RBI was merely the result of a poorly turned DP attempt.

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** RealityChuck wrote: Most people who study sabermetrics -- including Bill James -- say there is. ** BatMags wrote: Bill James most definitely is a non-believer. James' philosophy on clutchness can be paraphrased as folllows: "Clutch hits exist. Clutch hitters don't". I suspect what Chuck is remembering is an article* James wrote (5 or 6?) years back where he essentially challenged the Sabremetric community to not simply accept the advances and claims made by the older generation of number crunchers over the last few decades a new orthodoxy never to be challenged. In the same way that James himself challenged earlier things that everyone in baseball "Knew", today's up-and-comers should do the same to his work and that of his contemporaries. About concepts like clutch hitting he wrote that; �Let�s not be too sure that we haven�t been missing something important�, a statement that marks him as maybe a bit agnostic about the concept but not a renouncer of his earlier claims as some who read the piece at the times seemed to think he was saying. * Search the net for James's 'Underestimating the Fog' to see if it's available. As for the whole Fonzie/Harkness debate; I see nothing wrong with saying that Harkness's wild day was better than Edgardo's on account of Tim's day including several clutch hits (doesn't get much better than X-inning grand slams) as compared to Fonzie's better raw stat line which occurred during a 2-touchdown blowout.

'Twas never in doubt. Mr. Pessimism strikes again!!

GIMME A K ... GIMME ANOTHER K ... GIMEE ... ?

Are GiDPs permitted 'round these parts?

My only question is how many outs there'll be when the Jays push across the winner.

I swear it's like these relievers draw straws out there to decided whose turn it is to suck that day!! And, yes, we ARE going to regret that top 8th.

Well Parnell gets to pitch to at least one hitter in the 8th so there's that. I just hope that top-8 doesn't come back to burn us; three singles plus a walk and two balls back to the screen - but no runs!!

It seems like every double and non-double (the Baxter play from Saturday) we've hit in this series has involved a sliding play at the base. It's like they're hitting them all in a 'No Standing' zone.

So with just two pitches thrown and no chance of being PH'd-for, does Parnell get to come out for the 8th?

Fact remains that, at least at the moment, Baxter is hitting better than Ike, Duda, Nieuwenhuis, and, hell, better than everyone not named Murphy or Wright. Make him play his way out of the line-up. *Some might argue "always" instead of "eventually". Rusty was definitely an 'eventually'. Yeah he was never fast, but those who missed his early career and/or his first go-around in Queens missed a pretty damn good OFer in his day.

Do you suppose Jarrod Saltalamacchia HR-ing* off Cliff Lee this afternoon -- in addition to being one of the bigger surprises of the season -- sets the mark for largest last name letter disparity in HR history? * a LOOOONG 3R shot to CF at CBP ... 5-0 Boston at mid-game