Frayed Knot

So let's review here: We're down three-zip here largely because we've lined into two different DPs after getting the lead-off runners on, while they've got three runners in & two on w/no outs all despite getting only one ball out of the infield, bunting poorly twice and missing a base. Oh yeah, and we're down two starters in the last three days. Murphy may be down in rehab all season but he left his law here.

"In all likelihood, they�ll move Perez to the bullpen, since they can�t send him to the minors without his consent." Finally someone (presumably with knowledge on the subject) says something about this. I've been hearing over and over again that they should use the minor league option without it ever being discussed whether such an option was even in their control.

It could be worse I suppose. You could have Ron Gardenhire intentionally walking Teixeira to load the bases and then specifically bring in Matt Guerrier to face Alex Rodriguez even though Rodriguez was 4 for 7 with 3 HRs against him. Two pitches later he was 5 for 8 with 4 HRs and the Twins 1-run lead was now a 3-run deficit.

Santana - 5.0 Bay - 0.5 Davis - 0.5 Barajas - 1.0 Wright - 0.5 Castillo - 0.5

Valdes - 1.5 Medjia - 0.5 Acosta - 0.5 Pagan - 1.5 Bay - 0.5 Davis - 0.5 Barajas - 0.5

Pelfrey - 2.4 Feliciano - 0.4 Nieve - 0.4 Pagan - 1.25 Cora - 1.25 Reyes - 1.0

I don't dislike Jerry either and I suspect some of the things that seem to bother people about him: the chuckling, the over-used phrases, etc., wouldn't even be noticed if the team weren't floundering around out there -- just like for me the way what I found annoying about Fran Healy drove me even more batty during lousy games. It's just that at some point "mgmt" - whether that means Omar or Jeffie or whoever - are going to have to decide whether the way JM runs his game strategy is what they want in a field manager. If it doesn't bother them then he very well might be here for a while. If it does I wonder if they have a notion about how the likely fill-ins would do differently and how/if that would figure into their decision. Of course if Reyes is going to continue to pop-up for a living and Bay stays a very expensive singles hitter than none of this is going to matter. At least not much.

Guy with five penises walks into a doctor's office -- doc takes one look and says; "Five Penises!, how does your underwear fit?" Man answers; "Like a glove"

Keeping in mind that BA's 'Hot Sheet' is not an assessment of overall minor league/prospect talent but rather a list of who is coming off a good week, it's still nice to see Wilmer Flores at #2 this week behind only Steven Strasburg - Why He's Here: .500/.583/.818 (11-for-22), 2 2B, 1 3B, 1 HR, 4 RBIs, 4 R, 2 BB, 3 SO, 2-for-2 SB - The Scoop: As more money gets thrown in to the international market (and with the possibility of an international draft coming in the next few years), more and more international players are going to be on the prospect map for years before they legally become adults. Flores was a top international sign for the Mets in 2007, dominated the Rookie-level Appalachian League as a 16-year-old in 2008 and ranked as the Mets No. 2 prospect after the 2009 season. Yet he's still just 18, still in the lowest level of full-season ball and still likely three-plus years from being able to make an impact at the major league level, so it's important to be patient. But you can certainly be excited, since Flores looks like a prodigious hitting machine, and even the power is starting to come around with five home runs on the year. He's still learning to work himself into good hitter's counts (he has 10 walks, but three were intentional), but he's such a talented hitter that it's not an issue right now. Flores also made two throwing errors and a fielding error this week to bring his error total to eight, but nobody thinks he's a future shortstop anyway; it's the bat that makes him special.

There seems to be a campaign lately - tough to say whether it started with the mediots or is a front office planted and media fanned thing - that Francoeur is good for the clubhouse especially that he essentially replaced the evil Delgado. Not only does the front office like to tout these sort of things but I think a fair number of fans have bought into it also, both of which should buy Frenchy some more time and good will. Of course the fact that the team was averaging 90+ wins/year while Carlos II was here (and healthy) and is seriously below .500 when not somehow seems to have been lost in the equation. I think Francoeur's biggest problem overall may be that he just had too much success too early. His raw athleticism got him through the minors quickly and his first few years of ML ball before pitchers started catching up to him. I remember reading a piece of Cincy's Jay Bruce (also a 1st round HS OF draftee) saying that his early struggles, which followed his initial big splash, could be seen as a good thing in the long run because it would force him to make the adjustments and undergo the learning curve that [citing him specifically] Francoeur never did.

I suppose the asst GM is always some sort of GM in waiting, but is there anyone currently on staff that ownership actually considers to be a future GM? Manager is a different story and, while Omar getting to name yet another permanent field boss may be one more than he deserves, a finish-out-the- year interim is another story. IOW, drop-kicking Omar at the end of the season if things don't go well might be more in the plans but, no, I don't think they need to walk the plank together.

At this point you have to wonder about a few things: a) who's calling the shots? Is this Omar's call or not. whose ever call it is, are they on board with the excessive bunting often without regard for lineup spot or who is coming up next? If they're OK with it then Jerry is simply pushing the right buttons and the players aren't executing. And if they're not is there someone within the system - Oberkfell?, Melvin?, Hale? - who they think will roll the dice differently? I don't think Valentine is getting the call. 'Anytime' would be OK with me at this juncture. Jerry's not a bad guy IMO, he's just too set in his ways (the wrong ways from my view) and these one-run losses where the manager's decisions make the most difference are starting to mount up and kill us. The 50-game mark with be in about two weeks which is as fair a mark as a manager needs. If the upcoming back-to-back series vs MFYs & MFPs go badly there might be a new guy on the plane to Milwaukee. That's [u:1qfmkp3o]May 28[/u:1qfmkp3o].

Benjamin Grimm wrote: I wonder if the Islanders would consider Brooklyn, and once again rooming with the Nets. I'd tend to doubt it as Brooklyn is more than a bit removed from their "home base" of suburban LI. Moving there would almost certainly cause them to lose the majority of their current fan base and relegate them to an even more of a secondary status to the Rangers. At least now they've got a semi-autonomous territory of their own complete with a newspaper and other local media that treat them as news whereas I don't see the city papers or city people embracing them. Queens is a bit closer to home especially if a new arena is located near the Nassau border (near Belmont perhaps). Nowhere does it say that just because the Wilpons might get involved that the new joint has to be right next to Citi. A soccer joint in the middle of multi-ethnic Queens, on the other hand, would be a nice fit and, along with the Jersey-based Red Bulls, make for a good east-side/west-side of NYC choice for fans.

Unless someone - or several someones - have more to say on this topic, this is how our 2009 Rankings finished up: RANKPLAYER30Wright29Santana28Castillo27Beltran26Murphy25Feliciano24Pagan23Rodriguez22Francoeur21Sheffield20Pelfrey19Tatis18Santos17Stokes16Figueroa15Maine14Delgado13L. Hernandez12J. Reyes11Nieve10Parnell9Cora8Church7S. Green6Misch5Redding4Takahashi3Sullivan2Thole1Dessens This is counting votes from: 86-Dreamer; TransMonk; LWFS; Vic Sage; Seawolf; MetIrish; Frayed Knot; Nymr83; Ben Grimm; Chad 86; Edgy DC

Well, if you're going to spend the series giving up multiple HRs to non-HR hitters, multiple RBI hits to pitchers, and issuing walks to non-walkers (like Guzman) all over the place then you're going to lose the series more often than not.

Show biz kids making movies of themselves and they don't give a fuck about anybody else ... they're outrageous -- Becker/Fagen

And now he hits into a GiDP - which one could say was worse than a bunt, but if he hadn't got hisself into that count in the first place he might not have rolled over that pitch.

Reyes - coming off a double - bunts his way into an 0-2 count.

Nats have a track team out in their OF: Morgan, Bernadino, Harris, and Tavares None of them can hit, but they can go get 'em out there.

Also, near perfect fill-in type work from Cora. - Came in as a PH and worked a walk - Later helped build a rally with a Gee-Or-geous bunt single (something I was thinking about just before he did it) - and threw in a nifty defensive play I think between Riggleman & his pitching coach they make more trips to the mound than Posada. Well, maybe than Girardi, nobody makes more than Posada.

MFS62 wrote: After reading that story, the sports guy on WCBS Radio noted that the Mets accused the Phillies of the same thing earlier this year. Did any CPF-ers hear about that? Or was it not made (too) public? Later Somebody (Burkhardt maybe?) mentioned it the other day but that was more a case of they think Johan was tipping his pitches with hand angles and such. If that's the case it's the Mets fault, not the Phils. But binoculars and electronics aren't kosher.

LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr wrote: Frayed Knot wrote: I don't know that Queens would be a great place for hockey but Nassau County and its tangled and often corrupt politics has fucked the Islanders over for years by delaying potential projects or tying them up in a myriad of red tape and insider bullshit. As opposed to the shining tradition of light and transparency and Monserrates and Seminerios in Queens. The grass may be brown in Nassau, but it's not considerably greener across the Cross Island. Agreed, but it would at least give the team the option of playing off one band of crooks against the other. When the Nassau Republicans were still in charge they essentially wouldn't let anything go through that they weren't going to take a sizable piece of. They no longer dominate the county gov't the way they used to but the leftover red tape and myriad of committees who all want their say are driving Wang to look outward. He's a LI guy who lives there, established a business there, owns tons of other real estate, and bought the Islanders mostly out of a sense of civic pride not because he's some hockey geek. IOW, it's not like he wants to leave the 'burbs but after butting his head against the wall for so long (while bleeding piles of money) he's got to at least consider other options.

soupcan wrote: I missed this entire game. Woe is me. For the first 3 hours you missed a horrifying and slow-paced piece of shit that had me both throwing things across the room and even turning to American Idol for brief spots just so I could find people on TV I hated less than anyone in a NYM uniform. Then there was the 8th inning.

soupcan wrote: Am I wrong in thinking that a big reason that the Islanders are stuck in the situation that they are in is because they just cannot find a way out of that agreement with Nassau County? The biggest snag with the Islanders wasn't the lease with the Coliseum but with the mgmt company that's paid to run the arena, parking, concessions, etc. That was a deal signed during a period of absentee ownership which gives the team gets a ridiculously small pct of all of the above and that agreement runs for about a billion years. Only the presence of a real good cable TV contract has kept the Islanders afloat all these years - and even that's not nearly as (comparatively) good as it used to be.

I don't know that Queens would be a great place for hockey but Nassau County and its tangled and often corrupt politics has fucked the Islanders over for years by delaying potential projects or tying them up in a myriad of red tape and insider bullshit. It would serve them right if someone did come by and steal them away or, at the very least, this could light a fire under their asses. I actually think an MLS team would be a better fit for the area.