Frayed Knot

Machado is one of the players "sources say" the Mets would go over-slot to sign if they fell to #7. The others are Harper and Tallion but there's much less chance of either of those happening. BA came out with their list of the Top-200 draft eligibles - divided between pitchers & hitters. 2) Jameson Taillon, rhp, The Woodlands (Texas) HS -- Area scouts say he's a nicer version of Josh Beckett. 4) Drew Pomeranz, lhp, Mississippi -- Better than Andrew Miller at a similar stage, especially when his breaking ball is on. 5) Chris Sale, lhp, Florida Gulf Coast -- Skinny as a rail but throws two plus pitches for strikes 7) Deck McGuire, rhp, Georgia Tech -- Steadiest performer among top college RHPs 8) Stetson Allie, rhp, St. Edward HS, Lakewood, Ohio -- His pure stuff rivals Jameson Taillon's as the best in this draft. 1) Bryce Harper, c, JC of Southern Nevada -- Entered season with high expectations and surpassed them all. 3) Manny Machado, ss, Brito Miami Private HS -- Emerging power for a player who should stick at shortstop. 6) Zack Cox, 3b, Arkansas -- The best pure hitter and top sophomore-eligible in the draft. 9) Christian Colon, ss, Cal State Fullerton -- Safe college bat emerged from slow start to lead Big West in HR. 10) Josh Sale, of, Bishop Blanchet HS, Seattle -- Physical beast limited to corner outfield, but projects as a .280 hitter with 30 HR power 11) Michael Choice, of, Texas-Arlington -- Has power, patience and a chance to play center field 12) Kaleb Cowart, rhp/3b, Cook HS, Adel, Ga. -- Would go in first two rounds as 3B, first-round arm, tough to sign 13) Yasmani Grandal, c, Miami -- ACC Player of the Year should be first catcher picked

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There isn�t a single Yankee player who resents Mr. October Yeah right. There have ALWAYS been players who resented "Mr. October", most notably his teammates on each team he played on, but also managers, coaches, opponents, media. etc. So now that he's in his 60s and has no specific function other then to satisfy his own craving for attention as well as George's desire to have a "name" Yanqui (or at least one who spent approx 22% of his career as one) on hand to trot out out media events, we're expected to believe he's like a lovable little fuzzball. Someone - might have been Raissman - was detailing recently how 'ol Reg twice called up Mad Dog's show - unsolicited - to defend "his boy" ARod (kept calling him Al) in appearances that was described as being more designed to reinforce the idea that Reggie's still an insider than it was about anyone on today's team. Bay and Francoeur are two of the nicest guys around, but they would�ve never survived in the Strawberry-Keith Hernandez-Lenny Dykstra clubhouse 25 years ago. As Warner Wolf would say; "you could have turned your sets off there"

Oh OK. As long as it's something rational.

Maybe the best played game all year. Not the most dominate necessarily as the hits and walks per team were close to even until the very end, but we took advantage of every situation and stuffed them in all of theirs. Got runs via outs, turned DPs, solid 'D' all around, stole a few bases, used just two pitchers, etc. FUNDIES BABY!!

Valadius wrote: I'm almost positive Wright is one of the culprits here. Based on?

metirish wrote: Mets have been pumping Barajas at the park recently. That's the other problem. Telling - or even hinting - that your fans should vote for the local guys was always done in some places but even the teams who did usually at least pretended to be subtle about it. Now you've essentially got all 30 teams openly and loudly campaigning for vote-stuffing at any and every opportunity.

It's the same story every year; the early voting always goes towards the perennial all-stars and the biggest names on the biggest teams because when you put out ballots when the season is still too new to mean a whole lot you essentially leave the fans no choice but to vote that way. It would be much better if they'd define the voting period to say June 1 thru July 1 (or something similar) so not only would everyone know when it stops and starts but the results would reflect the current season much better. But, of course, they're too tied to whatever sponsor has their name attached to the ballots so they want to get things rolling as soon as possible. Later balloting does tend to favor the guys actually having the best season so some of these "injustices" will be countered as long as the margin isn't too big.

It's one of those songs that benefited from the music video era The problem is that music didn't benefit from the music video era.

how many backups do you need at any position? Bobby V used to talk about wanting to be "three deep" at each position. Not that there'd be three guys sitting around waiting for #s 1 + 2 to get hurt or that there'd necessarily be three guys that you'd WANT to put at each spot - but just the idea that you maintained a kind of depth chart (even if just in your head) to where each spot would be covered during those wacky games or because of in-game injuries. And, obviously, the size of the roster dictates that there's a lot of overlap. Tatis, for instance, would be the #3 guy at several positions on this team. Murphy, hopefully, could be the same.

The only thing it's going to do is hurt his service time but that's unlikely to matter much. He had a year + 58 days coming into the season and has been accruing time each day this year (around 50) for being on the DL. This temporarily stops that accrual but even at 2 years + 58 he probably wasn't going to be a "Super 2" at the end of 2010 anyway.

... but assigned to AAA Buffalo. That 'rehab while still on the DL' thing has a time limit and, seeing as how Muffy had options anyway, it's just easy enough to option him to the minors. It's essentially a book-keeping move at this point. The interesting thing, of course, is to see what they'll do with him (to him). I'm not as optimistic as some of y'all about him using the time to "learn" 2nd base. One doesn't generally move from one of the corner positions as an amateur and low-level pro to a middle of the diamond spot in the majors - especially on short notice and when he wasn't known for being a particularly good fielder to start with. Would be nice if he could fill in there from time to time, I'm just not holding out much hope for him camping out there as an ongoing thing.

NEW YORK (AP) -- New York Mets pitcher John Maine has tendinitis in his right rotator cuff and there's no timetable for his return. The Mets made the announcement Monday after the righty had an MRI exam. Maine will begin a rehabilitation program and start throwing when his shoulder feels OK. Essentially that means inflammation - though apparently not a tear - in one of more of the tendon(s) that connect the upper arm to the shoulder socket. Rest and rehab is the basic remedy.

I don't know what to say - particularly seeing as how he's (at least in a theoretical sense) not only advocating dealing a guy who was the #1 pick in a draft not yet a year old but the #1 best prospect IN YEARS according to most, but is doing so in the name of the Washington Freakin Nationals as if their .500-ish start coming off two straight 100+ loss seasons means they're in a position where the addition of Oswalt puts them over the top. Even assuming that Oswalt is/will be significantly better than this year's version of Strasburg, this trade would start to smell like last week's fish by next year or soon thereafter. Oh yeah, and then there's the $30 million of your owners money you're tossing into this deal. Are we sure he was no longer there during the Kazmir talks?

Where the hell did you find THAT? That had to be from Feb-Mar 2005. Niemann - as Manuel alludes to - was injured, and was so even at the time of the draft although he doesn't take that into consideration in his rankings. He later re-injured himself as a pro and is just now (late last season actually) getting on track. His Verlander comments stun me. True that's easy to say with hindsight although I think I might have been surprised at the time too. He does indicate that Verlander is the higher ceiling guy ("high risk, high reward") but he was also the #2 pick for a reason and the Mets said (or leaked) at the time that he would have been their choice too if still there at #3. He also got to where he was going pretty quickly. Oddly enough with Humber, I was just having a discussion elsewhere involving that year's draft with a guy citing this pick as an example of where the Mets reached for a boring & safe choice for budget reasons. He cited Niemann (and also Jered Weaver) as a better pick at the time although I could imagine the stink if, rather than seeing their recent picks get injured, the Mets simply started drafting pre-injured ones. My argument is that Humber was at or near the top of that year's lists all along and certainly wasn't an "under-slot" guy picked just to save money while obvious better choices were simply hanging around. The main problem was that the 2004 draft (esp the 1st round) turned out to be a notoriously lousy one overall.

Steve Phillips on WFAN: 'I would trade Strasbourg for Oswalt. I would not take Mejia for Oswalt'. Are you Effing serious - he said that?!?

bmfc1 wrote: Frayed Knot wrote: Oddly, I noticed that last Saturday there WERE games on MLB's Extra Innings on Saturday afternoon - whereas usually only night games can be shown via EI. That's happened two or three times this year while the rest of the weekends have had the daytime blackouts. I don't know why some weeks and not others. The exclusivity window was changed from 4 hours to 3 this year so 1 PM starts may be shown on EI when the FOX game starts at 4. If the FOX game starts at 3, then no. Stupid, right? Very much so. Now all we have to do is figure out why they're starting some national games at 3PM and others at 4PM.

Am I crazy that the NBA has seriously lost relevance in recent years? I mean, besides just with me? The NBA is in a weird place. No one thinks the quality is any good, but it's such a star-driven sport that sportswriters can't help themselves from genuflecting towards it and treating it as half sporting event, half soap opera. Even that view has calmed down somewhat from the Jordan era but, just like then, games are still advertised as being clashes between individuals more than teams. Coming attractions will be billed as: KOBE vs LeBRON (and, btw, the Lakers are playing Cleveland) The fact that ESPN/ABC has a piece of the action means that the reflected buzz it generates often exceeds the primary interest.

The knock on NY-NY matchups is that they frequently DON'T get real high ratings - possibly based on the idea that you over-saturate the one market you were going to get anyway while the rest of the country holds its collective nose and goes elsewhere. That it was a big FOX rating isn't surprising as bad night shows generally get more viewers than good daytime ones. That the ESPN game did so well - especially opposite the 'Lost' finale and an NBA playoff game - is a mild shocker.

Santana - 4.8 Bay - 2.7 Rodriguez - 0.5 Feliciano - 0.3 Reyes - 0.4 Davis - 0.4 Cora - 0.6 Wright - 0.3

John Sickels top 15 draft eligibles. Note that this isn't his prediction of how the draft will go just that it's his current opinion of the best players available. 1) Bryce Harper, C, College of Southern Nevada 2) Jameson Taillon, RHP, The Woodlands, Texas, HS 3) Manny Machado, SS, Brito Private HS, Hialeah, Florida 4) Drew Pomeranz, LHP, University of Mississippi 5) Yasmani Grandal, C, University of Miami-Florida 6) Chris Sale, LHP, Florida Gulf Coast University 7) Dylan Covey, RHP, Maranatha HS, Pasadena, California 8) Stetson Allie, RHP, St. Edward HS, Olmstead Falls, Ohio 9) Karsten Whitson, RHP, Chipley HS, Florida 10) Zach Cox, 3B, University of Arkansas 11) Christian Colon, SS, Cal State Fullerton 12) A.J. Cole, RHP, Oviedo HS, Florida 13) Deck McGuire, RHP, Georgia Tech 14) Brandon Workman, RHP, University of Texas more

Thanks to last night's game, the NL won the first weekend of IL play via a 22-20 edge Fla v ChW -- ChiSox take the first two before getting thumped by a 13-0 blowout Cin v Cle -- Cincy takes Ohio bragging rights 2 of 3 Col v KC -- Rox win 2 of 3 Mil v Min -- Twins win first game by blowout then split two cliff-hangers Oak v SF -- Giants score just one run in the whole series as Oakland gets the only sweep of the weekend LAD v Det -- Tigers salvage the final game behind Rick Porcello SD v Sea -- Padres win the rubber game as Mat Latos outduels Felix Hernandez Chic v Tex -- Cubs win 2 of 3 Tor v Arz -- Blue Jays (just 1 game behind Yanx) win 2 of 3 TB v Hou -- Astros won the opener but the current BTiB (best team in baseball) won the final two Bos v Phi -- Sox put a thumping on Halladay on Sunday to take the series LAA v StL -- Cards took two of three Was v Bal -- A Nationals walk-off (Willingham) in the 10th on Sunday gives them the 2-1 series

John Cougar Lunchbucket wrote: Frankie wins showdown of Rods - Alex truly embarrassed. Cameron & Kate both text phone numbers to Francisco.