Frayed Knot

I think Met mgmt probably thinks they caught lightning in a bottle with him and, similar to the stories about them figuring that the 36 y/o Quintana's ERA and BA-against kind of success in '24 were likely unrepeatable given his hard-hit rates, that a second season of what they got from Iglesias over 290 PAs last year wouldn't repeat either. Would have loved to see him return just for his fielding prowess and versatility alone, but would he have produced the same results? He's now 35 y/o with a career OPS/OPS+ (prior to 2024) of 701/88 which is a far cry from the 830/137 he gave us last year.

The poor wording in those statements seems to stem from the attempt to explain that 172 only constitutes a 'full' year when they occur within one season. Partials do count though but would need to add up to 185 (or whatever the exact number is) before they'd qualify as one complete. Under the other scenario, not only would a player with 12 seasons averaging 100 ML days each still be short of FA-gency but he'd be six full seasons short of it. Baty, with three partial seasons under his belt, currently sits at 1yr + 88 days; Vientos and his three partials total 1 + 102 If both make an MLB roster on opening day and stay permanently they'd wind up as FAs at the end of 2029 But if either spent more than a half year in the minors that would get pushed back to 2030

A player is eligible for free agency after accumulating six years of service time -- that is six years of service time either on the active 26 man roster or on the IL. A player is credited with one day of service time for each day that he is either on the active roster or on the IL. A player is credited with a year of service when he accumulates at least 172 days of service time in a given year or season. A season typically has about 190 days, or something close to that number. So keeping Acuna in Syracuse for about three weeks this year will prevent him from gaining one year of service time this season. This would have nothing to do with "making up" for Acuna's time on the active roster in 2024. The few weeks Acuna spent with the Mets in late September of that season was not enough to give Acuna a year of service time. And Acuna's 2024 service time does not carry over into the next year or any other year for purposes of calculating service time for free agency eligibility. A player who has half a year of service time in one season and half a year of service time in another season cannot combine those two half years to give himself one full year's worth of service time for the purposes of calculating free agency eligibility. The highlighted part isn't accurate. Not sure where you got your info but I suspect what you may be misinterpreting is that a player needs 172 ML service days within one season to get credit for a full year, but that doesn't mean he gets no service time if he falls short of that. Pieces of seasons CAN add up to a whole but those pieces need to total to the whole whole (so to speak). iow, the partials must add up to an actual full season (185-ish) where as 172 is only sufficient if achieved within one season. ex: Mark Vientos has yet to spend a full season on a ML roster* but currently has more than one and a half years (One + 118 days) of ML service time and is therefore on pace for FA-gency after the 2029 season (the one+ year he already has plus '25, '26, '27, '28, and '29) assuming he's up for good now. Contrast this to Jackson Holliday and his 78 days of ML time which puts him on the post-2030 season FA list along with Luisangel and his 16 days. * < one month in '22; didn't come up until mid-May in '23 and then later was sent down for about a month; and wasn't up permanently until mid-May in '24

=roger_that post_id=186757 time=1741397381 user_id=128] I guess I'm higher on Baty's and Acuna's potential than some of you are. I see them both with real potential to be stars this year,...

The season is more than 172 days long from first scheduled reg season game through last* but 172 is the amount of games a player needs to be on the ML roster or IL to qualify for one full season of service time. That's so you can't bring a player up on Day 2 of the season and delay his potential FA season just on that. It's more like two-to-three weeks which is what the Cubs did to Kris Bryant in his rookie season, a ploy so obvious that Bryant did the MLB version of suing them over it several years later. He lost that fight via arbitration and had to play a seventh (almost) full season before hitting the market. But it's possible that his action scared some teams into at least not being so blatant about it next time. But Acuna's 16 ML days from last year DO enter into the equation a little bit as now the Mets would have to deprive him of two-plus weeks in order to keep 2025 from being a 'full' season PLUS at least 16 more to make up for the ML service time he already has under his belt, something that would push the target date to deny him a full season from mid-April-ish into probably early May. Now having said all that, I suspect this topic is almost non-existent among NYM mgmt this Spring. Acuna is a nice prospect but he's not his brother, or the equivalent of what Kris Bryant was at the same stage. Or, to get a bit more modern, he's not on the level of Bobby Witt or Jackson Holliday. Right now, if you're a NYM fan or exec, you're hoping he's good enough to become an everyday player at some point; maybe that point is this year or maybe it never happens. And if it does happen does that mean he'll never be sent down at some point? Baty & Vientos both were, and Jackson Holliday was banished to AAA for three months last year. Is Acuna even going to be a Met in six years? And if he is will the rules still be the same by then? In short, there a so many variables and 'what-ifs' that if there's a spot for him on the OD roster then you put him on it rather than worrying about what might be the case at the end of the 2030 season, especially for a team that hopes it's going places this year. And if he pulls a 'Pete Alonso' and turns out to be good enough right out of the box and nails down a spot in the field and lineup from the very beginning and going forward without interruption then that's a good thing. * more like mid-upper 180s as obviously teams have more than 10 off days/year and remember that the season length was extended by three days a few years back

I think the reason he's gone is that he couldn't even finish the double play in the above clip. I mean ya gotta get two there, no?

I'm also dubious about Henry VIII writing GREENSLEEVES (for Anne Boleyn of course) but folks in power claiming publishing rights are nothing new.

'Lat Strains' for pitchers seems to be the chic injury to get this Spring. The Yanx' 2025 ROY starter Luis Gil has a "high grade" one and is looking at an ASB return at the earliest. I think it would have been better if he strained either his heel or one of his gills, but I guess ya can't have everything.

Senga was only supposed to pitch one. Guess that first one was a quickie so they allowed him another.

I would pardon him for his haircut. That's about all My mother would always chime in with "He's too old for that haircut" every time she'd see him on TV.

Didn't see them two either.

Never saw it. Don't remember even contemplating watching it.

Giancarlo Stanton will open the season on the IL. Elbow issues.

One of Tidwell's innings, the second of his two, was an 'Immaculate Inning' [9 pitches, 9 strikes]

Sudden thought as we're on the eve of the Oscars here. There's a small part as a black bluesman named Brownie McGhee in COMPLETE UNKNOWN. He was the guy on the public TV piece with Pete Seeger and Dylan. There's nothing wrong with the part as I guess it's meant to show how 'folkie' Dylan had always had at least one foot in R&R/blues and would therefore never be as 'pure' as the folk crowd wanted. But the part seemed maybe a bit too big to me and not really necessary for the story. Other characters with larger connections to Bob in that era (Dave Van Ronk for instance) were on screen but with much smaller parts and not even identified by name. And it's not like the thought that Dylan was never the wholly committed Folkie some fans wanted him to be wasn't conveyed in numerous other ways in the flick. So while I'm going to assume that the Dylan/McGhee TV meeting actually took place, was there any other connection between the two that made his character relevant? And then it hit me. Did they write in this part because, without one, there would have been no significant speaking parts for black actors and therefore, by the rules Hollywood put in several years ago, no possibility of an Oscar nomination much less a potential win?

Yes. Rose's baseball crimes and actual crimes are two separate categories. Trump can't do anything about what baseball does with Pete. But he does seem determined to excuse the tax evasion thing because ... well this stuff just writes itself doesn't it?

Parents (A parent in this case) outliving one of their children is always a lousy story no matter what the specific circumstances. It's unfortunately become all too common in my family in recent years.

Brad Emaus was the good get here. I remember folks being optimistic about this Rule 5 pick, although I can't specifically remember why. Maybe some publication said he had a good chance to stick or something like that. He'd wind up going 6-for-37 (all singles) as a Met before being returned, in late April, to Toronto who promptly dealt him to Colorado the next day. After a stop with Boston he wound up back in the NYM org but never played another ML game, ending his career in 2012 at age 26 with a .212/.297/.315 line @ AAA Buffalo

=Gwreck post_id=186148 time=1740675276 user_id=56] Pete Alonso, 1B, 2019 Brad Emaus, 2B, 2011 Kaz Matsui, SS, 2004 Rey Ordonez, SS, 1996 Kelvin Chapman, 2B, 1979 Two correct answers remain on the board.

Rey Rey!

I missed most or all of the Gary Mathews Jr. hours as a Met.

Cue Keith about how today's players doing too many sit-ups/crunches. Or, as it's sometimes translated: 'I played in the era before players even had obliques'!

Nothing was said about their long-running 'no hair past the collar' rule, so I guess that one's still in place. The humorous part of MFY image keeping was when they had Jason Giambi (plus one of their pitchers though I forget now which) who always wore arm sleeves as if recovering from some injury. Except it was really so the team could pretend that they'd never have a Yanqui with tattoos. That unofficial policy lasted until they simultaneously signed AJ Burnett and CC Sabathia for their 2009 squad and those guys' arms were so tatted up that they would have to play in burqas in order to hide the evidence, so the gig was up.

More likely it was to try and create a trade market for him.

It all of course stemmed from when George first bought the team in the early '70s when it was assumed by George-like people that anyone with longer hair and beards was a hippie, fag, commie. One of his early memos became famous at the time. It was early enough to where he still didn't know many of the players' names but he wasn't going to let that stop him. So he left a note to one of his underlings to the effect that: 'numbers 15, 23, and 31 need haircuts!!!'