Frayed Knot

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Fartinez = 5 for 15 with a homer & a 2B during the tourney And did anyone catch that Bill Freakin' Pulsipher tossed 5 innings for Puerto Rico the other day?

Willets Point wrote: I read the book which was pretty good. The 2-minute trailer for the movie indicates that they totally Hallmarked the story. That's the main knock I'm hearing too; not that the movie is bad but that the story, rather than focusing on the kid and his horrid pre-"adoption" circumstances, revolves almost totally on Bullock's character and the kind-hearted white folks who rescue him - even to the point where he's portrayed as a big non-athletic klutz who wouldn't have learned the basics of football without their help. Ya gotta wonder about Hollywood sometimes. 'Hey, we just got the rights to this best-seller with a great story in it ... now how should we go about totally changing it?'

As long as I don't get Capt. Sulley's view of the Hudson I'm OK with it. I think sometimes that if a player 'looks fast' (read: thin and black) a rep for speed stays with him longer than it should.

What he said about Francoeur: "... looks to have averagey range, but the arm bumps him into the above average group.", is about the way I would have put it just from observation. And I wonder again if Fenway helped to "rob" Bay of some of his 'going back' range - particularly since he mentions that it used to be somewhat of a strength of his.

Whiffed on the Red Stockings to Braves one (#8) - even though I had a feeling the obvious answer was too obvious but wasn't CAHNfident enough to guess otherwise - but got the other nine. But it's questions like that one (or different ones for you others) why the argued-for 'go for it' strategy put up in the intro is stupid beyond words.

My personal view is that the Wilpon cheapness angle generally comes both as a result of comparison to the Steinbrenner Yanquis and with the notion that spending should be linked to personal wealth regardless of revenue streams rather than being connected to religious stereotype/slander.

I have to stop reading this ... I'm losing brain cells by the minute.

So is Rikers Island

I was going to say, if only Beltran had had some outrageous post-season that virtually no one could ever touch - even the ones named Reggie & Derek - then maybe he'd be remembered for something else. Oh wait.

It's not so much that they pump them up - I always felt that since getting burned by the 'Gen-K' trio I think the amount of prospect info/hype coming from the team itself has been fairly light - but that they seem to try and rush their guys (particularly the Latin ones for whatever reason) up the ladder so quickly sometimes skipping rungs and often without regard to whether the kid was ready to put his existing level behind him or not. * Tejada, Flores, Martinez, and others would still be young for their leagues even if they were dropped one or even merely "held back" so as to at least start this coming season at the same spot where they ended last year. Instead, the org seems to want to see how quickly they can get them either to the bigs or at least to the brink of it rather than making sure they're ready once they get there. And, yeah, you can say that moving them up quickly is a form of trade hype as it makes them seem closer to paydirt but other clubs aren't going to be fooled by that stuff even if fans are. In fact it might actually backfire as good A-ball numbers by a youngster often look more trade-attractive than mediocre AA stats, particularly if he'd be younger than average in either spot. Tejeda skipped low-A ball entirely and went to A+ despite his age Martinez had barely 300 ABs in low-A & High-A combined before hitting AA Flores skipped Brooklyn and so he could be the youngest player in full-season baseball last year (as was Fartinez 2 years back)

The odds that Tejada becomes anywhere near as good as Reyes are REAL small - meaning that he'd have to have one helluva year in AAA (not even sure that's where he's going to start) before I'd even consider moving Jose out in his favor and even then the option pick-up is a no-brainer as you check on Tejada's progress towards 2012

LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr wrote: The S-Trib's Joe Christensen says a basic framework is in place... but WCCO jumps all in and affirms that Joe Mauer's going to be a Twin until he's eligible for the presidency. But then who's going to catch for the Yanquis during the next decade?!?!? I thought this was all arranged.

Hey, just the fact that he said there's been discussions is at least is public knowledge that this isn't a group that exists only on paper in order to fool fans into thinking that there actually is such a NYM-HoF effort.

I once tripped and fell on my keister.

Don't teams at the very least get medical files from a player's prior team? Yes they do. And that Putz had bone chips wasn't a secret. It's just one of those conditions that pitchers can pitch with right up until that point where they can't pitch with it. I suspect what the Mets did was basically hope that his final half-season in 2008 showed that he could last a season like he was. Like a lot of things recently, it turned out to be a rather expensive gamble that didn't work.

Madden chimes in again today with his by-now standard line that the Mets have "a farm system that rates among the bottom in baseball and the absence of any real desirable trading chips" ... even though that's something that no one else seems to agree with. I never saw BA's final ranking although they indicated they saw the NYM system as average to below although specifically rules them out of the bottom feeders. Meanwhile Keith Law has them at 15th best - essentially dead center, praising the int'l players even while knocking their recent drafts and John Sickels, while he doesn't give an ordinal ranking of systems overall, said in his comments that; "Overall the Mets system is stronger at the top than a lot of people think, but could use more depth. On the pitching side, the Mets have something potentially special in Jenrry Mejia, ... Niese is ready now, and while he's not spectacular I think he will have a good career. Holt and Niesen have upside but need to sharpen their command. ... [and] I'm very intrigued by the pitching the Mets have gathered in A-ball. On the hitting side, Martinez can still be a star, but he's got to stay healthy ... Flores' numbers in the Sally League aren't great, but he was the youngest guy in the circuit and we have to cut him some slack for that. ... Ike Davis should be a solid hitter, while Tejada, Havens and Nieuwenhuis can at least be contributors and maybe more." Madden seems to have had a bug up his ass about the Met prospects at least since knocking the Milledge pick and praising the Yanx choice of (the recently released) Eric Duncan. And, of course, it's these type of comments that echo around NYC as radio hosts assume them to be accepted fact and repeat them accordingly.

The other thing is that Toronto needs to assure their fans that they're on the right track even after dealing away Halladay and others. It's one thing for fans to be wary after a bad season or about player(s) not signed from elsewhere, but dealing away a franchise-type player is a sure sign that the club is taking a step back and some convincing is needed that the strategy will be the right move in the long run.

Myers was the one who hung the 'Are we really trying?' sign next to the lineup card one day. But there was also some kind of open letter - I think in response to Jefferies' letter to WFAN whining about the criticism he'd been getting. It wasn't signed but I believe that one was later revealed to be Darling although he was just the pen-man (probably a result of being a Yalie) as others contributed as well. Definitely the inmates running the asylum in those days.

He had his two AS seasons in StL - but still, 13 ML seasons with 1,600 hits including 450+ for XBs plus 200 SBs all by the age of 32 is a bit better than 'pedestrian'. In part he was the victim of hype - although in his case the hype was external not NYM-driven (two-time BA minor lg player of the year) - and also by the ridiculously hot start. Be nice if Keith and/or Ron would come clean about their part in what went on with him. Darling, IIRC, was eventually revealed as the author of 'the letter' that the players made public the increasingly public dust-up with Jefferies - a letter which couldn't manage to spell his name correctly.

#41 on Keith Law's top 100 prospects list: Flores, as predicted, broke with a full-season club in 2009 and held his own despite playing most of the year at 17. He has very quick wrists and is short to the ball with good finish. The ball flies off his bat, especially in BP, in which he shows the promise of future plus power, and in games he has already shown that he can square balls up against pitchers two or three years his senior. In fact, of players with at least 400 at-bats in the Sally League in 2009, only one hitter had fewer strikeouts than Flores did. His main deficiency as a player is very slow feet, even though he's not thickly built, and he has no shot to stay at shortstop and little shot of handling third base, which means he'll end up at first base or in an outfield corner, although there's an excellent chance his bat plays in any of those positions.