Frayed Knot

I'd be shocked if the Mets approve a second DH in the same week - especialy seeing as how it comes the day before the NYY series. Plus, don't they have a DH in Atlanta next week too?

Benjamin Grimm wrote: I was at this game: ]• Tom's Return, 8/21/77 Seaver vs. Koosman; I so badly wanted Jerry to win that game. Oh well I was at that one too. I remember being pissed off at fans rooting for Seaver rather than Koos and the Mets.

I meant to mention Greg Maddux winning his 350th game in the weekend wrap-up thread but its noteworthy enough to deserve its own anyway. Hell, the Padres winning a game these day is almost noteworthy enough. Maddux is the 9th hurler ever with 350, and only the 3rd (Spahn + Asshole are the others) among those starting their careers after 1910!!

Perez - 3.4 Reyes - 1.2 Castillo - 1.0 Beltran - 2.0 Church - 1.4 Schoeneweis - 0.5 Felcicano 0.2 Alou 0.3

Weekend wrap-up: - Phils wind up losing 2 of 3 to San Fran. Utley suddenly in a mini-slump. - Marlins sweeps Washington and now owns the NL's best record - Braves lose twice to Pitt then get rained out on Sunday (lots of rainouts in the mid/near-west on Sunday and it's all headed this way) - Brewers take 2 of 3 from StL as both closers (Isringhausen & Gagne) lose their jobs (both still on their rosters, just taken off 9th inning duty for a while) - Houston sweeps the Dodgers even though they were being no-hit today into the 7th. LA back to just 1 game over .500 after their hot-streak a short time ago. - DBacks get swept by Cubs, that's 8 losses in 10 for them (NYM, Phil, Chic) "I was doing great Dad until the big kids got home from school" - Tampa Bay sweeps the Angels, including 2 shutouts - Yanx & Tigers split a pair and then got rained out today - Jays Vernon Wells broke his wrist, out at least 6-8 weeks

Finally got around to this one ... and it's decent enough. The flick gives a reasonably accurate, even if condensed and simplified, version of the chain of events that led to an otherwise non-descript Congressman being able to both virtually invent as well as fund (to the tune of a billion dollars) a covert war, one which not only was never voted on but was barely even discussed outside of a handful of insiders. They play it for laughs more than you'd expect for a movie about funding a secret war would normally generate, giving P.S. Hoffman a bunch of good lines that even the coarse, wise-ass CIA character he plays probably never came up with. Hanks is OK, but hardly great, as the larger than life Texas rogue who takes little seriously until he hits upon the idea that arming the ferocious but out-gunned Afghans as a way to kill and embarass Russians was a worthwhile project.

Some interesting stuff on Friday night while we got the night off to do other stuff: - Phils beat San Fran as Jimmy Rollins returns w/a HR & 2B - Braves fall to Pitt on a walk-off hit breaking their 6-game winning streak Glavine pitched well but is still winless - Marlins beat Nationals for their 5th straight win and a 21-14 record - Cardinals had a 3-2 lead in Milwaukee and Isringhausen got the first two outs in the 9th ... and then went: single - single - walk - single to lose the game - Cubs beat Arizona nothing particularly notable here except that the high-flying DBacks ran into the Mets, Phils and Cubs this week and promptly dropped 6 of 8 (w/2 more still to come w/Chicago) That 'Best Team in Baseball' label might have been a bit premature. - Houston 7 - Dodgers 1: Not only has Houston won 7 of its last 9 and is a surprising (to many) 2 games over .500, but Lance Berkman is [u:d55b3172f5]18 for his last 24[/u:d55b3172f5]!! (w/5 2Bs & 3 HRs) and is hitting .380 On a related note, MLB checked Berkman's urine and he tested positive for jelly doughnuts - Yanx lose to the Tiggers for the 4th straight time as (off)Kei Igawa gets raked over the coals in his 1st 2008 ML start - Papelbon gives up 2 in the 9th to Minny and blows his 2nd stright save opp (not sure if he re-arranged the bench after this one too) - Tampa Bay tops Angels 2-0 on a CG 1-hit/0 BB shutout from James Shields LAA starter Jon Garland tosses 8 scoreless but the Rays win on a 2R walk-off HR from rookie Evan Longoria Rays now 19-16 and are passing word that they're not going to be pushovers this year. They have 4 w/the Yanx next week. - Indians 6 - Blue Jays 2 as Sabathia (1 ER - 7 IP) bests Halliday (4 ER - 6 IP) in the best on-paper pitching matchup of the night - Texas 2 - Oakland 0 That's 3 consecutive shutouts for Texas!?! and 1 run allowed over 4 games (31 straight scoreless innings) behind the world renown staff of Ponson, German, Padilla, and Feldman (who Are these guys?)

Griffey out, Freel in.

Weird in that they show him with 19 runs against but then the splits show up as 2 (0 outs) + 2 (1 out) + 18 (2 outs) = 22 Maybe they're counting inherited runners in the splits also?

Sosa's only given up 19 runs the whole season (and just 13 earned) - and [u:39f70a0cbe]all but one[/u:39f70a0cbe] have come with 2 outs?!?! Assuming that's accurate that's certainly a problem, although to be fair to him he's probably the most likely to come in in mid-inning and therefore pitch to a greater majority of batters with 2 outs.

More Fernando love from BA's new "Hot List" For the week: .360/.370/.720 (9-for-25), 4 R, 1 2B, 1 3B, 2 HR, 7 RBIs, 1 BB, 5 SO The Scoop: [Martinez is] the youngest player in Double-A—heck, [u:d28ecddfd9]if he were in high Class A, he would still be the second-youngest player[/u:d28ecddfd9] at that level. Teenagers in Double-A shouldn't be hitting for power, a skill that normally blossoms later in a player's career. But that's exactly what Martinez did last week, as four of his nine hits went for extra bases, highlighted by yesterday's two-homer game, the first multi-homer game of his career. [u:d28ecddfd9]It's not as though Martinez is dominating the league[/u:d28ecddfd9] — in 144 at-bats, he's hitting .264/.297/.403 — but his ability to drive the ball against much older competition is encouraging as he starts to take advantage of his prodigious tools in game situations.

="John Cougar Lunchbucket"]Perez is an offender, feels like. My guesses were Pelfrey & Heilman "What are the leaguewide figures?" Dunno "I might be dumb but I'd guess 1 out is the most popular run-scoring out, followed by 0 then 2." My only guess is that w/2 outs is probably lowest under normal circumstances seeing as how you can't score on an out. btw, my 2-out figures do NOT include those scored as the 2nd out was being made. IOW, I counted the runs based on the number of outs as the AB began, so technically our 2-out runs allowed would be even bigger if you counted differently. "The Mets 2-out against number (48%) seems very high" Yes it does.

I don't think the starter/reliever breakdown would say much since coughing up runs w/2 outs is strictly a within-inning stat - and if whoever is pitching could get that 3rd out at what sould seem to be a normal rate that runs against stat would drop by 15 runs or more. Now some of those might be garbage-time tack-on runs that wouldn't change the result while others would be at more crucial times. And while you can never know for sure how the W-L results would change but, on average, cutting that amount off the RA side is normally enough to turn 17-15 record into 19-13

There's always a temptation (see what I did there?) to think the bad stuff happens to your team more often than to others. But I was getting the feeling that our staff was letting up a lot of 2-out runs. Not only just more than random distribution would explain but also a lot more than we're scoring. Well, in this case it doesn't just seem that way: Runs scored = 152; scored after 2-outs = 46, or 30% of the total Runs against = 143; scored after 2-outs = 68, a whopping 48% I'm not quite sure what this says except for the obvious part that we almost getting out of innings a lot of times. Heilman & Pelfrey seem most guilty in my mind although I didn't break this down per culprit. Maybe this is a "luck" thing and the law of averages will bring that down somewhat as we go on.

]I presume the 22nd is the sandwich pick for Glavine #22 was our own pick -- iow, we finished 2007 with the 9th best record #18 was the Braves' 1st round pick (they finished with the 13th best record) which they cede to us for signing Glavine #33 is the so called "sandwich" pick, the name deriving from the fact that they're extra picks stuffed in between the 1st and 2nd rounds. It's an extra pick because Glavine qualified as a 'Type A' FA so it's a pick we gain but the Braves don't lose. There's around 15 sandwich picks so the first pick of round 2 is not #31 overall but somewhere in the mid-40s. There's also a handful of extra picks "sandwiched" between rounds 2 and 3 After that it gets back to normal and your team goes every 30 picks.

btw; Angel's header into the stands the other day has resulted in a "bruised shoulder". No DL is required which means Angel is listed as -- *say it with me folks* -- Day-to-Day

The problem with drafting 1st basemen is that if they don't turn into mashers they've generally got few secondary skills to fall back on making them even more hit-or-miss than your usual draft pick. From the little I've heard on these guys none of them are athletic enough to play elsewhere. And, as usual, you need to resist the temptation of drafting for immediate need. The rep of this year's crop is that it's lacking in can't-miss blue-chippers but is reasonably deep otherwise which, theoretically at least, is good for a team with 3 picks in the mid/late 1st round.

AG/DC wrote: Can you imagine what a good architect could do with a neoclassical ballpark? So you believe there'd be time for meditation in cathedrals of their own?

I'm willing to cut Schneider a bit of slack at this point seeing as how he hasn't really had a decent run of games since he showed up in February. In - out - in - out. Hammy - bruised arm - thumb. Yadda, yadda. Yeah I know that's the life of a catcher but this 2 month stretch has been particularly interrupted all while he's trying to get used to a new club.

One month to go until draft time. Baseball America published their latest tracking poll. I make no claims of knowing anything about these guys except for what's written here. Note also that this list makes no attempt to try to match a player's slot to the particular needs and tendencies of the teams and their drafting order, it's merely trying to note whose stock is rising or falling in the eyes of scouts as the HS & college seasons wind towards a conclusion. Mets own the 18th, 22nd, and 33rd picks this year. Their 2nd rounder would then be around #70 somewhere and then approx every 30 picks after that.

The popular vet who's traded away or just let go is one of those things cited as a sign of looking forward when the team wins afterward (NYG: Tiki; NYY: Mattingly, Mike Stanley) but lamented as the missing piece when they don't (Knight, Backman) even if their post-trade career suggests otherwise.

Worst. Kwiz. Ever.

="Benjamin Grimm"]Really? Didn't Darryl Strawberry and Dwight Gooden do the same? Ummm, yeah they did. I got the info from a column in 'The Hardball Times' and he's quoting a recently published book as the source. Either that's a really sloppy book (sloppier than me even) or something's getting lost in the translation.

Grimm got it. They were the ONLY MLers to start and end their careers in the same city but on different teams

Maybe I should re-read it with a little more perspecitive and time between now and that year -- but I don't see how the authors' attempts to hammer square pegs into round holes in order to fit the pre-determined agenda would be any different. Their insistance, for instance, that the loss of Strawberry was a major factor in the plummet of the team (and not just their notebooks) while totally ignoring the fact that he had basically 1/2 of one good season as a full-time player in his post-NYM career. And why do I get the impression that if they had kept him and his health and personal problems had caused the same decline in his skills that THAT would also have been cited as a reason for the decline? IOW, let's start with the conclusion and retro-fit the facts to serve as evidence.