Frayed Knot

I was going to say I'd prefer the middle IFers back at DP-depth there. It's risky, but so is in all around. Now we've got Heilman, Wise & Pedro to carry us through extras.

Now we just gotta keep this thing tied.

Smith pitched a full inning, giving up only 1 hit and no runs of his own (2 inherited). No way does the Official Scorer not give him the win with an outing like that (assuming he stays POR of course). Sucks for Show that he'll get no "Official Stat" out of his nice outing but thems the breaks.

Replay rules always work better in theory than in practice.

="Gwreck"]Just got back from the House of Evil where the the Mariners got the snot pounded out of them. Gave me some perspective on the season, because as bad as it's been for the Mets so far, I could be much worse. I was probably getting an incomplete view of things (seeing as how I was only half-watching the game) but it seemed to me that the Yanx set some kind of record for consecutive cheap hits tonight. Not that it would have made any difference with that kind of score ... but, aside from Dunca's HR, all I saw were dunkers and bleeders. About 25 of them in a row.

Good things happen when you seing the bat Damion (and Willie)

Umps blow another HR call in the seriously, I just used a racist word when I really meant "Guardians"-stRangers game tonight

Nice shot by our current starting LFer

I was just about to ask if anyone on this team could hit the fuckin ball out of the infield !!!

Francesa on WFAN today said that he saw Mex at Yankee Stadium last week and asked him if the Mets offered him the job would he take it. Keith said yes. I heard this too and was beyond shocked! Not only did Keith NEVER express any interest in managing but has often specifically and emphatically said otherwise. Maybe his time away from the sport - and he sounded pretty well removed from it for a while after his career ended, as was Darling - rekindled his interest. Maybe also his new marriage and grandpa status have toned down his thirst for the night-life and he won't care as much about batting practice interfering with cocktail hour - which is exactly how he put it when asked if he was interested in a much-lower profile coaching job a bunch of years ago. I also wonder if Keith will be, uh, how you say, suprised, to hear those thoughts made public. To use a familiar term this week, he probably DID think his little kibbitzing w/big Mike was off the record.

Benjamin Grimm wrote: Now the talk will heat up again about caps on Cooperstown plaques and retired numbers. As for the cap, Keith says Mets, Gary and Ron say Dodgers. I've long been pretty much indifferent to the cap question, but Gary, in particular, immediately jumped on the "better years as a Dodger" argument, one that gets treated as if fact much of the time but really isn't all that cut-n-dried. The only stat that stands out for Piazza the Dodger is Batting Avg - and even that is somewhat skewed by the one monster year he had in '97 (.363). The rest comes out to be about the same, Piazza the Met walked a bit more and hit for slightly more power essentially reducing the BA difference to approx an extra 3 singles per month while in LA. Then you factor in the length of time plus only WS appearence and ... The following shows his LA and NY stats, both in total and then normalized down to a 500 AB 'average' season: ABPAH2BHRTBBBKBAOBASLGWk RateIsoPLAD2,7072,9908961151771,548283440.331.394.572.063.241NYM3,4783,9021,0281932201,885424546.296.372.542.077.246 LAD/50050055216521332865281.331.394.572.063.241NYM/50050056114828322716178.296.372.542.077.246

More musings about drafting 1st basemen in a recent BA Q&A: Jason from Trumbull, CT asks: Can the Mets pick up one of [1B-men] Eric Hosmer, Justin Smoak or Yonder Alonso with the 18th pick? Also with the 22nd will Andrew Cashner [RHP - Texas Christian] still be available? A: Matt Blood (BA): There is a chance that Alonso would be available at that pick, and if Hosmer slides—due to signing bonus demands—he might be there too. I don't see Smoak lasting that long. With Delgado's production declining, Alonso might be just what the Mets need. He is an advanced hitter with solid defense—it won't take him long to reach the big leagues. Cashner has been a hot-topic as of late, and we have him projected to be taken right around pick 22. Among those 1Bs mentioned, Hosmer is a HS kid who might have the most upside but will probably scare some teams near the top of the draft with threats of high bonus demands and/or taking a college scholarship, meaning he could range anywhere from being long gone by the time we draft to remaining untouched for a while afterward. Alonso and Smoak are college players (U Miami & S. Carolina)

Willets Point wrote: If instant replay is done it shouldn't be done with the TV cameras but with special umpire cameras that focus on places like the outfield wall and foul lines throughout the game. A point almost no one has brought up (at least publicly) is that baseball - unlike the totally network televised NFL - has most of its TV cameras controlled by the home team and those cameras, plus any replays that come from them, are run by folks who have an interest in the outcome of that play and the games overall. I'm not against using IR for HRs in concept, but it's always much tougher to implement the system than it is to imagine it and it's at least as tough to limit it to the original guidelines once it's in place.

Beltran - 1.5 Santana - 2.5 Delgado - 1.5 Feliciano - 0.5

="Benjamin Grimm"]Didn't they also shift the field when they rebuilt Yankee Stadium? I know they dropped the field a few feet so as to have the effect of raising the shell of the stadium and the front row of seats relative to the field. Not sure if HP and the bases are in the exact same spot or not. If they did move it wasn't more than a few feet. Basically the idea of this new-new version is to construct a stadium with the pre-renovation exterior and the post-renovation interior ... plus lotsa luxury boxes of course.

Alou HAS been DL'd and Casanova activated. Why Casanova? Basically, he's the only ML-ready bat. Church not starting but probably available for PH-ing.

Perez - 4.4 Church - 1.2 Reyes - 2.0 Wright - 0.7 Alou - 0.6 Delgado - 0.4 Schneider - 0.8 Castillo - 0.4

Time for the 40-game checkup. All win totals shown where the team was [u:37e979bd4a]as of its 40th game[/u:37e979bd4a]. O/U trend say 'CLOSE' if full season projection is within +/- 4 games, or 'WAY' over or under if +/- 15 games TEAMProj O/UWins thru 40Proj thru 162TrendNYM93.52185UNDERPHIL87.52289CLOSEATL84.52081CLOSEWASH70.51665UNDERFLA68.52393WAY OVERCHIC87.52497OVERMILW84.52081CLOSECINC79.51769UNDERStL78.52393WAY OVERHOUS72.52289WAY OVERPITT68.51977OVERARIZ86.525101WAY OVERLAD87.52185CLOSESD84.51561WAY UNDERCOLO82.51561WAY UNDERSF71.51769CLOSE

Oh and one more thing; How the fuck is the ump at 2nd calling Jeter safe when he's 4 feet from the bag?!?!? I mean either you make an out call or [u:4766ce26bf]NO[/u:4766ce26bf] call - but not a safe call. We all know Jeter can do things that no one else in MLB history can do, but do we have to make his baselines only 85 feet too?

(copyright MM enterprises, Inc. - no rights reserved) 1. Pettitte Ks the side in the 1st!! 2. Santana walks the first hitter then gives up a Jeter HR!! 3. Great relays by Church and Castillo to nail Damon at the plate !!!! OK, enough of that 4. All right look, there's two ways to look at the 4th inning: a) we suck cuz we shoulda had more and one more hit breaks that puppy wide open we're resourceful cuz got three runs out of an inning where only 1 ball was hit even semi-hard and it's not like we've been doing a whole lot of that lately. 5. Not only did Santana shut the Yanx down after our 3-run inning, but did so on 6 pitches in each of the next two frames - putting Pettitte right back out there after his loooong inning. I would have hated to try and nurse that lead for more than the 4 outs we turned out to need. 6. Even before Reyes's HR you could see he was getting much better looks at Farnsworth. Pettitte must have had some good stuff today because almost no one got good looks off of him. 7. I can't believe Abreu's ball carried out !! 8. Beltran triple off Joba the mutt might have been my favorite AB of the game 9. Bitch at Wagner all you want for "making it interesting", but the two hits he did give up travelled a total of about 200 ft and I think the pieces of the bats went further than that. Plus he faced 4 batters w/the tying run at the plate and got them all with only 1 ball leaving the infield. 10. If one of those meatheads (Duncan or Ensburg) had "run into one" and tied the game up Girardi would have entered extra innings w/no position subs. He only has a 3-man bench these days and the only one not used in the 9th (Molina) would have had to go in to catch.

Santana - 3.8 Beltran - 1.9 Wright - 1.9 Reyes - 1.0 Delgado - 0.6 Wagner - 0.8

Matching those projected picks with the thumbnail descriptions posted earlier from BA - Jason Castro - Catcher, Stanford Third-string catcher last summer in Cape Cod, Castro has plenty of bat and enough ability to stay behind the plate - Ethan Martin - RHP/3B, HS Georgia More evidence that Martin's pitching skills have moved to the fore—he threw a complete-game no-hitter with 11 strikeouts in a start April 23

Yanx will skip Rasner, Mets to keep rotation as is. So Saturday it's Santana v Pettitte Sunday = Perez v Wang

bmfc1 wrote: I bet they're seeing if ESPN wants the game for Sunday night, 6/29. I odn't see the point in that. Why would a two-stadium DH be prefereable to a single locale DH? Or are the Yanx trying to stall until ARod is healthy again?

"No makeup date has been announced" What the fuck are they waiting for? Saturday, Sunday or Monday (off day for both) -- Pick one!