Frayed Knot

The actual minor league games usually start just a few days after the ML season gets going.

Ashie62 wrote: So Zimmerman lost 3 months to this but with David its' no problem? I will be shocked if David plays any games in April. No, Zimmerman lost 3 months because he re-injured himself during the season and required surgery. Wright's not at that point.

May is an ex-SS who only converted to catcher a few years back. That probably means he was never a very good SS to begin with but for a backup role that's fine. In the meantime that kind of versatility can be valuable as it helps solve the problem of two catchers not being enough and three being too many. Keep a guy like him who can play elsewhere and it's like having 2-1/2 catchers.

Tigers now up 6-4 thanks to a sloppy inning. Flores & Turner among the culprits. Chuck James pitching. He walked a few but also deserved better.

Ceetar wrote: Mike Kerwick wrote: David Wright said he has small tear in his rectus abdominus. "It sounds a lot worse than it is." Expects to be in opening day lineup. that's the "six pack abs" muscle. lay off the weights dude... Keith went into a mini-rant the other day about the emphasis on core training and the seeming explosion in oblique injuries. "I never did a sit-up or crunch in my entire career ... hell, I didn't even know what an oblique was!"

Main campus was in Selden I believe, with another one in Brentwood, right?

John Cougar Lunchbucket wrote: The Mets yesterday also signed a lefty out of the independent leagues, John Mincone. He is from Huntington, a 2009 11th round Cubs draftee released after blowing out his ACL. Listed by BB-Ref as the only player ever drafted out of Suffolk Community College, which they cite as being in the town of Suffolk, NY

So the word on the Byrd(ak) is six weeks. And then even at that point he'd be starting up again without the benefit of ST so tack a few more onto that. IOW, late-May to June 1 sounds reasonable if not optimistic. Sandy (via Paul Hagen on MLB.com) on searching for replacements, specifically ones that don't involve hitting the trade market: "Josh Edgin has pitched well for us. We're going to bring him over to Major League camp, effective immediately," "Garrett Olson has pitched well for us. We have Robert Carson in camp ... Daniel Herrera." The Mets also recently auditioned C.J. Nitkowski, but haven't decided whether to sign him. "We probably won't get into that for another day or two," Alderson said. Edgin, even though he's 25 years old and spent all last year pitching at Class A with Savannah and Port St. Lucie, the Mets decided Sunday to move him to big league camp. He came in to pitch in the eighth inning of what ended up as a 7-7 tie in 10 innings. With two outs and runners on first and third, he gave up an RBI double to Andy Dirks before getting out of the inning. In the ninth, Collins had right-handed hitting Avisail Garcia walked intentionally in part so he could see him face left-handers Quinton Berry and Eric Patterson; Edgin struck them both out. About Edgin possibly making the jump all the way from Class A? Collins: "I've seen unexpected guys like that, especially situational guys, surprise you. He's not intimidated. He's not scared when he goes out there. He's got a great arm. In the role he'd be used in, I certainly think he might be able to handle it."

Y'see the problem with making LP#9 your drug of choice is that it's so easily detectable. First of all the USADA has had Madam Rue's place staked out for years and that's still the only place you can get the stuff. Then there's the tell-tale turpentine smell. And by the time the user starts kissing everything in sight totally unaware of the time of day, well shit, they don't even need a urine test at that point.

It was that damn Love Potion #9 again. If I told Jason once, I've told him a thousand times ...

Between Stanton plus the player once known as Leo Nunez, the Marlins apparently picked up several players to be named later over the winter.

Just as long as they tell us in advance when the funeral is.

Yeah I don't put much stock in fielding pct but have seen & heard enough of Inge over the years to know what he's like with the glove. The odd part is that he came up as a catcher. His BA has never been anything special but he took walks and had a bit of pop. Then everything seemed to fall apart for him last year and I don't think there was an explanation. Spent some time in the minors even IIRC. Looks like we're getting most of the best Detroit has to offer today: Fielder, Cabrera, Avila, Verlander, etc. Too bad we can't return the favor.

Inge is/was a GREAT fielding 3rd baseman. Not good, GREAT! May not be AS good playing 2B but I can't imagine he'd be all that bad. His only sin (besides far too many stupid tats) was that he decided to stop hitting* right at the same time the Tiggers decided to corner the market on 1B/DH types meaning that one of them needed to move to 3rd. * OPS last three years: 720, 718, 548

Edgy DC wrote: And I choo-choo-choose YOU. OK, Done!

Got our first extended (and by extended I mean short) look at Loewen today. But considering all we had seen so far was the highlight HR from the other day when he lofted one into the jet stream for a long-and-oppo HR, this rain-shortened deal was better than nothing. A couple of glove/bat/base-path observations: - first of all he was playing CF ... and didn't do much to distinguish himself. Got a slow break/odd angle on a sinking liner and therefore just missed the sliding catch. Wasn't an error certainly, but a better CF gets that one most of the time and he even got a bit lucky in that the ball hit his butt after it missed the mitt otherwise he'd still be chasing it as the guy rounded the bases. As it was it stayed a single. Got another late break that I saw on a blooper but that one had enough air time so he had plenty of time to catch up to it; don't think he saw it right off. Then later he made an error going to his right when he bobbled the ball he was trying to cut off and turned a possible stretch-2B for a speedster into a definite 2B for everyone. Score it 1B + E - on the other hand he had a couple of knocks. Took the lefty Buerhle the other way and, even though he looked off balance slightly on the swing, he hit the damn thing HARD to the point where it sailed over the LF's head and one-hopped the wall. It got there so fast that a cleaner play by the LFer might have held him to a single - something you don't see that much on opposite field hits unless it's at a little league field like RF in YSIII or maybe LF in Houston. This one was more impressive than his HR from earlier in the week. Later he tossed in a pulled ground single to RF. - tagged up and took 3rd on a medium fly-ball. It looked like he was getting the hold sign from Tuefel but he probably figured that, at worst, he'd draw the throw away from home (there was a runner on 3rd also) and he just made it sliding head-first. He didn't show a ton of speed in doing so but it was an aggressive play, I think a reasonably smart one (depending on specific game circumstances if it were the reg season), and he's certainly not a lead-foot either.

G-Fafif wrote: Flipping by YEECH a few minutes ago, MFYs Magazine was doing a feature on Joba Chamberlain. Nancy Newman said (paraphrasing), "Of course Joba's goal is, as it is every year, to win another world championship." And by instinct, I heard myself telling Nancy Newman, "Oh, fuck you." That's not a paraphrase, that specific phrase is the one which was programmed into those specially selected Stepford Yanquis before they are allowed to speak on YEECH. No deviations are heard because no deviations are possible.

MFS62 wrote: Do you think this a Mackey Sasser/ Chuck Knobloch thing, or he really can't do it because he hasn't been asked to? Later It's always seemed to me that most pitchers - and I mean from weekend softball ones right on up to the majors - get all out of whack if asked to do anything other than throw from their normal starting routine. I mean, think about it, how many times have you watched a pitcher field a simple come-backer and look all out of sorts as he trots half-way to 1B before meekly under-handing the ball from 15 feet while the 1st-baseman has a, 'dude, just get it here!' look on his face? And how about 1-2-3 DPs? If the radar gun is still aimed correctly it'll probably clock that first throw at about 36 mph. The best remedy for this that I've heard is to get the pitcher into the habit of bringing his hands into his chest before throwing which serves the purpose of simulating coming out of the stretch-motion and therefore puts him more into a comfort zone. Can't really do that with pickoffs so much because the time spent would negate the whole intent, but when making a throw off a fielding play it should.

I just figured he needed steroids in order to keep up with that chick of his.

Even without Woody being in it, virtually every moment in it is still pure Woody.

Tom McCarthy (writer/director of this, 'Station Agent, 'The Visitor') does seem to have an affinity for plots involving seemingly incompatible strangers getting thrown together via somewhat odd circumstances. Saw it last week and give it a solid 3.5

Edgy DC wrote: IWhat a vowel dump this [Nieuwenhuis] guy is. Can we use an abbreviation? It takes so much concentration to type that name. How 'bout simply: Newhouse? Or New House?

MFS62 wrote: Pelfrey has been remarkably consistent the past 4 seasons. Kind of not though: Good seasons in 2008 [3.72 ERA; 1.36 WHiP] and in 2010 [3.66; 1.38] with a winning record both times not good years in 2009 [5.03; 1.51] or in 2011 [4.74; 1.47] while going a combined 17-25 You are right about the K/9 & BB/9 rates staying right about the same, while others point out the biggest difference being his HR/9 yo-yo-ing back and forth [0.5, 0.9, 0.5, 1.0] marking his good seasons from bad.

Get to the important stuff, somebody needs to invite Brooks to the 'Pool

Yeah, I don't think anyone's projecting him to be a disaster out there; in the short term he should certainly be adequate at worst. It's in the long-term where things become a little more questionable and I'm just warning against the idea of too quickly penciling him in as the CF of the future. And of course this is all assuming that he proves he can hit ML pitching because, without that, this whole argument gets tossed out the window anyway.