Frayed Knot

Benjamin Grimm wrote: It wouldn't be inconvenient for the Astros. I bet there are a lot of Houston fans in New Orleans. Houston had their AAA club there for a number of years until the Nolan Ryan owned Round Rock, Tx (suburb of Austin) team upgraded themselves from AA to AAA status. Now with Ryan in the front office of the Rangers club Round Rock might shift to them - along with AA Corpus Chisti which he also owns - leaving Houston to do some off-season scrambling. New Orleans can't just decide to up and go to Ottawa especially since those are different leagues. It would create an imbalance in both. If the Mets wind up somewhere in the Int'l Lg it means that someone there now has to wind up in the PCL.

Is Buffalo even "in play"? I guess technically they all are since most agreements are for two seasons and run out after the even years, but it seems to me that they've been the Cleveland affiliate since ... like forever and I don't know if there are any rumblings of a divorce (as there apparently is with Toronto/Syracuse). And just the fact that pols (Schumer and others) have been touting Syracuse while never mentioning Buffalo makes me think no one is thinking of western NYS as a target. On edit: Article above makes it seems like maybe they are - Buffalo is certainly the bigger market although the AAA team will always be a smaller fish in a bigger pond on account of the two major league sports franchises in that town. - Not sure how the stadium issues factor into things. - Syracuse seems like it's got a better shot at being part of 'Mets country' based on being closer to NYC and further from other ML cities (Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Toronto) while Buffalo always seemed to me to be almost more part of the near mid-west than 'upstate' - I knew someone who always used to refer to Buffalo as the "city of basements". Never quite sure what he meant by that. - Felix Unger's brother Floyd lives in Buffalo where he runs a gum company. Felix's idea for including opera cards with the gum didn't go over too well. #10 in the series: Mimi get Tuberculosis

Perez - 3.5 Church - 2.5 Sanchez - 0.2 Schoeneweis - 0.2 Murphy - 0.7 Wright - 0.4 Delgado - 0.4 Schneider - 1.0 Evans - 0.7 Beltran - 0.4

Yes, but Yanqui fans are complaining that, because it was ARod, the HR would have been waved off had the game been close at the time.

That play could easily been scored an error originally, but it's good that they didn't overturn it. If you're going to give these scorer's official power to score the games their judgement shouldn't be overturned unless they totally misapplied some rule, and this one in particular would have reeked of doing so just to artificially create "a momnet".

Tonight's Yanx/Rays game had the first ever instant replay challenge. An ARod HR went down the line and over the foul pole hitting off the back of the stadium behind that. It was called a HR - the Rays went nuts - the umps disappeared for approx 2-1/2 minutes - and confirmed their original call.

Whether he can handle LF isn't really in question - virtually any big leaguer can (OK, not Todd Hundley but everyone else). He's had a few shakey spots so far but that's mostly just inexperience. But the reason you find out if he can play 2B is that the same bat is much more valuable there then it would be among the heavy-hitters in LF.

soupcan wrote: Howie telling me that they think that Duaner's ineffectiveness was a result of his tipping his pitches. Problem has been addressed... That answer is given as a solution to pitching problems far too often to be believable for my tastes.

"Besides, they had Murphy playing 2nd in AA already so I assume they do know that he can play it." Only briefly - and in a kind of 'throw him into the deep end of the pool and see if he can swim' kind of way. I'm sure they'd like to see what he can do with a bigger sample size and in a more instructional kind of setting. And since he doesn't really have a position at this point you might as well try him in the hard ones since it's always easier to adjust to the corner spots. Plus it not like Castillo's health and output precludes the grooming of platoon partners, occasional backups, or even flat-out replacements.

]I like it too, but with an eye towards what...? Not to be Captain Obvious, but towards finding out if he can play 2nd base. His bat (or what we've seen of it in a small-ish sample so far) combined with even a mediocre 2Bman's glove would make him a great weapon for a team. Especially since he's not going to play 3rd on this team any time in the near future, if he can't hack it at 2nd he's pretty much confined to either LF or 1B where the same bat is likely to be middle-of-the-pack or less at one of those spots.

Call me a cock-eyed optimist but I'll take that first inning every time.

Which means 7-4 (2-2 from here on in) is now a bare minimum and even then only if it's lose today then take 2 of 3 from Philly. A 7-4 record that includes losing 2 of 3 vs Phil would not be an ideal situation.

That's Murphy in LF obviously if Castillo is back in. You gave me a scare for a minute when I first saw 2B next to his name.

Fortunately for Ayala the corners are deep in Miller Park (344). I was sure the shot by that big galoot was gone when he first hit it.

Figueroa - 0.8 Sanchez - 0.5 Feliciano - 0.4 Smith - 0.3 Stokes - 1.0 Ayala - 0.6 Beltran - 3.2 Chavez - 1.1 Tatis - 0.8 Delgado - 0.5 Wright - 0.4 Murphy - 0.5

16-14 Braves is your final Jorge Julio (!!) for the win, Matt Lindstrom gets the loss.

Gwreck wrote: I think Wright gets tomorrow off. I bet he doesn't. Days off Thursday and Monday ... we're in a pennant race here.

7 scoreless innings out of the pen. Who cares that it took them 46 pitchers to do it?

Shouldn't Kapler be teaching an SAT course or something?

Brews fans have been bitching about Yost NOT PH-ing for Kendall, especially now that they have an extra catcher aboard w/the callups. And Yost goes to the big boy to PH.

AG/DC wrote: Not for nothing, but has Wright been a superhero on defense the last month or what? Yup! I want to pistol-whip every Met fan I hear spouting off the idea of moving Wright to 1st as the main cog in their "solution" to some perceived team problem.

I don't care about the division, I already saw them not win that last year. I want them out of the playoffs yesterday if not sooner. Would have helped today if Eric Hinske hadn't run the base like a total dork for Tampa. With none out and one on he doubles but decides to head for 3rd even though the coach has the runner. Hinske with his head down gets all the way there forcing the runner to leave and get himself tagged out heading home (by about 30 feet). So thinking that wasn't bad enough, he then stays at 3rd on an infield-back groundout (they never even looked at him) and now there are 2 outs/no runs. Took Mussina right off the hook early on. Rays out-hit the Yanx and still got blown out.

John Cougar Lunchbucket wrote: I've decided to give this developing story the no-hitter treatment until it comes to fruition, keeping my pleasure deeply contained and enveloped in paranoia. I thought about doing this too ... but ultimately I opted for reveling in the countdown like I'm a a pig rolling around in shit. So to update Einstein's theory: E=18 (E = Elimination Day)

Meanwhile, the 'O' has been shut out since the 3rd

I don't think I've ever seen a runner take out an ump BEFORE he reaches the base.