Frayed Knot

Willie Harris in the lineup and hitting second is obviously the key.

Edgy DC wrote: If the challenge seems more problematic these days, it is. Because 56% of games are now played in cities where the visiting team won't be returning to the rest of the regular season. Yup! That's one of the side issues which cropped up after you go from most teams dividing their 162 over 11 opponents (pre-1993) to spreading them out over 20 different foes in the post-expansion, multi-divisions, inter-league playing days.

bmfc1 wrote: Ceetar--good work. May 22 is a day game. What's the rule about a team playing for consecutive games? Is it 15 is the most w/o approval of the union. Besides the dates you have, each team is off on August 8. More than 19 consecutive dates requires player permission. And unless all sides find the game virtually impossible to make-up it almost certainly will be at some point. Regardless of whether or not it matters in playoff implications or seeding, MLB doesn't like to give the impression that regular season games are simply disposable to the point where no attempt will be made even though there's still the better part of four months to go in the season.

The age and kind of bonus money being talked about here doesn't suggest a huge prospect, but maybe a useful one down the road. Baseball America -- The Mets have agreed to terms with Luis Mateo for $150,000, which should end a three-year process for the 21-year-old Dominican righthander with a mid-90s fastball to get signed. Mateo originally agreed to terms with the Giants on July 2, 2008, for $625,000. The Giants had that contract voided in August, however, when a physical revealed bone chips in his right elbow. Mateo was evaluated that September by Dr. Lewis Yocum, who saw no need for surgery on Mateo's elbow or shoulder and recommended aggressive rehab. That November, the Padres agreed to a $300,000 deal with Mateo, though that contract also never became official. Major League Baseball's investigation into Mateo's background turned up "inconclusive," MLB's way of saying that it feels it lacks sufficient evidence to either confirm or reject the accuracy of a player's age and identity. MLB finally suspended Mateo in March 2010 for one year for lying about his age, and his date of birth changed from March 17, 1992, to March 22, 1990. The Mets stayed on Mateo and struck a deal with him last week. An athletic 6-foot-3, 175-pound pitcher with good arm speed back in 2008, Mateo has since filled out to 200 pounds. Mateo pitched in Colombia this winter and has thrown 93-96 mph with good angle along with a slider.

Just watched this game for sort of the first time. The main thing I remember about this game is being stuck at a friend's house and being out-voted by guys who wanted to watch the Sunday Night football game. There weren't even any local teams involved but: a) they all had bets on the game and several in the crowd were ga-ga over the Chris Berman half-time schtick and would rather kill themselves than miss it I managed to get the channel changed for part of the time to catch pieces of the game here and there (probably less than half in total) and did manage to see the climatic inning. But mostly I spent the night being told by the ignorant bunch that the fact that the game was scoreless meant "you're not missing anything". I vowed after that night to never put myself in that position again.

Tim Bogar

"On most teams, the three jobs are held by two or three different people. Because he held all three, Samuels had unfettered access to everything at the club and he operated, several of the people said, with almost no oversight. He had control of the team�s road account, tickets, equipment purchases and other matters." Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Although the two were often confused. Industrialist Armand Hammer (the actor's great-grandfather) owned/ran a number of companies most notably Occidental Petroleum. Many assumed, incorrectly, that Arm & Hammer was the one he started with but that company actually pre-dated him by many years leading to speculation that maybe he was named after the company rather than the other way around.

I talked to a guy who sold radio ads a bunch of years back and he said that the industry believes that one thing sells: Repetition! Not sure if that's true or not but apparently THEY believe it is and therefore don't think that there's such thing as overkill. If 1,000 reps of an ad are good then 2K are even better.

Pelfrey - 4.6 Isringhausen - 0.6 Byrdak - 0.3 Rodriguez - 0.9 Davis - 1.4 Murphy - 1.0 Reyes - 1.0 Paulino - 0.2

BOOKS!! Frankie actually starting to get efficient allofasudden. Still has only allowed 2 runs this season and let in no inherited; just been ugly as hell doing it until recently.

John Cougar Lunchbucket wrote: I think the whole going-to-Byrdak thing here was a bit of overdoing it, but I'm OK with stuff that works. Didn't they say something about Helton having stupid-good numbers against Izzy? Even if it's just a small sample I'm OK with going lefty-lefty there in a one-run game.

...

Gwreck wrote: It's raining in Minnesota and not an official game yet so he might get another shot. Now THAT would a case for a weird asterisk.

Edgy DC wrote: Pelf lead the league in homers yielded yet? Well at least he paid attention to my KTE (somebody has to) and wasn't walking guys in front of any of those HRs. btw, we've now been out-homered by the Rox 9-3 in the six games this season. Tulo alone is out-clubbing the Mets 5-3

Francisco Liriano joins the list of guys who don't even come close when going for "a Vander Meer" 1st start after his no-hitter and he coughs up 5 runs in 4 innings to the Tiggers

Nice change o' direction from Muffy

Nats get 2 3R HRs off Hudson (Werth & Nix) and then hold on to beat the Braves in Atlanta 7-6 Marquis started, Storen finished.

The clash of the titans NLEast/Ace pitcher style in Florida tonight. - Halladay goes 8 giving up 2 runs (1 earned) on 5 hits, 2 BBs, 9 Ks - Josh Johnson goes 7 limiting the Phils to 1 run on 6. 3 BBs, 7 Ks Nunez in for the save attempt: K (Gload) - BB (Mayberry), GO (Rollins - Mayberry to 2nd), GO (Victorino) -- and the Marlins win. In da Bronx, Yanx benefitting from several favorable calls. Have you ever seen a balk call reversed? Yeah, me either. Runner on 1st for KC breaks early and is out via a pick off (1-3-6) except the home ump called a balk on pitcher Garcia's 1st move. But suddenly the umps get together and decide that Garcia did NOT balk and the runner is out !?!!?? That's a judgement call, not a better angle thing. And besides, did the runner slow down upon hearing the balk call? Didn't look like it in this case but how can you tell? And if he did does that mean you don't reverse the call? The batter then preceded to walk ... and then get thrown out stealing. Pitcher couldn't retire anyone that inning and yet no Royal even gets to 2nd base. Later on a KC batter is called out on a half-swing call w/2 outs and bases loaded down by two runs. The bat didn't reach the back of the plate. Still 3-1 Yanx, Mariano in for the 9th.

Start Pelfrey at 3rd tomorrow if he's gonna hit like that!!

It's a contract clause that seems to be becoming increasingly popular so the draft picks part of the process may start to fade away on its own even without a re-negotiation of the CBA. Potential FAs know that the prospect of the signing team losing draft picks effectively makes them a more expensive and therefore less desirable product on the market. So if a FA has enough clout in the negotiating process [see Beltran, Carlos w/Boros, Scott] that's one of the things he wants put in. Several of the Japanese stars (both Matsuis for instance) went that route because they were already nearing 30 when they came here and didn't want to end their first contract three years later and still be three years short of becoming a FA. So in their case the no-arbitration clause effectively made them FAs if they didn't like the offer they got from their existing team. P.S. Davidoff neglects to mention Beltran's No-Trade clause. Not that that means he can't be dealt, only that it won't be a unilateral decision. P.P.S. The status of FAs are determined by their stats over the previous two seasons - and with just 220 ABs in 2010 and pretty pedestrian numbers from it there's little guarantee that Carlos would be a 'Type A' even if he did finish out his stint here. Only the top 20% rank as Type A's and that's from the group of all outfielders, not just CFs. Type A's are the one who garner a 1st (or 2nd) round pick from the signing team plus an extra pick in the supplemental round. Type B's (out of top 20% but still within top 30%) yield only a supplemental pick for the team losing him.

I was kind of hoping it was the gay thing. Y'know, just to stir up some shit.

TheOldMole wrote: Jeter gets two home runs and they put it on the front page of the News???? The font page is of course ridiculous but it's Monday morning tabloid journalism and we since didn't kill any world terrorists this week so they were out of other ideas. The thing is it wasn't just that he hit 2 HRs it's that he did it after a month of barely getting the ball out of the infield. Prior to this past weekend he had only 2 doubles for the season and nearly half his singles were infield hits (I even mocked him for it in another thread just before this game - gotta quit doing that). And when all that comes on the heels of the big contract squabble this past winter plus his advancing age and you had all the fixin's of a good story brewing.

Capuano - 4.5 Davis - 0.5 Bay - 0.2 Byrdak - 0.1 Buchholz - 0.3 Wright - 0.2 Murphy - 0.2

Have you been drinking today?