Frayed Knot

On a July 7th game in Houston, Smith enters a tie game in the bottom of the 12th with 2 out and 2 on. After hitting Craig Biggio with a pitch (hell, everyone does that) Smith K'd Hunter Pence with the sacks loaded. He then went on to pitch scoreless/hitless innings in the 13th & 14th (1 BB + 1 more HBP) in a game the Mets eventually won in the 17th. The 2.1 IPs constituted Smith's longest outing of the year. Now the tough task for the next person is to figure out which one of the two Lino Urdaneta appearances represents his best day of 2007.

seriously, I just used a racist word when I really meant "Guardians" living dangerously here in game 7 and are lucky to be down only 3-1. Sox have been all over the bases against Westbrook but have left numerous runners on plus have hit into 3 DPs in 4 innings. And as I type this the Indians get 3 straight hits to start the 5th but haven't scored as Manny threw Lofton out at 2nd on the first of those hits.

Well y'know what they say, if the orthopedic shoe fits ... I guess it's a wear-n-tear kind of condition which would make it more common with age, or with a high-stress. repetitive type movement like a pitcher's push-off foot. Remember that Pedro had a foot problem as well.

O. Hernandez had surgery on his right foot Friday and is expected to be ready for spring training. "El Duque had a bunion -- a growth often causing mis-alignment of the bones around the base of the toes (I had to look that one up) -- removed from his second toe"

The real problem was moving the WS without moving the end of the regular season. That's what has led to the same number of games over more days. Then throw in the fact that most of these series have barely gone the minimum and we're looking at a helluva lotta blank days in the PS sked.

The idea with the extra off-days both between and within the early rounds was to stagger the dates so that the WS does not start and end on the weekend as has been custom. This year it'l start on Wednesday and only cross one weekend. Saturdays are traditionally the least-watched TV night of the week and the thought is that putting Game 1 on that day causes a lot of folks to skip it and many of the recent ones are ending in 4 or 5 games and never even getting to the 2nd weekend.

David is also rumored to like 'Sports Authority' stores as well as John Cougar Mellencamp's 'The Authority Song'

Considering that most believe that Torre leaving was the ultimate aim of Yanqui brass, I don't think there's much chance of that. Torre to hold some sort of press meeting this afternoon.

Gammons suggested this morning that the Yanx would be nuts not to talk to Valentine, but ultimately thought that he'd be viewed as too volatile for their tastes. Meanwhile, BP's Nate Silver pretty much nails things on the head: This was not a serious offer to Joe Torre. Nobody with any modicum of self-pride would be willing to accept a 33% pay cut at a late stage of his career, which is what this ultimately amounts to, from a base of $7.5 million in 2007 to $5.0 million in 2008. And nobody with any tangible sense of the randomness inherent to postseason baseball would be willing to give much benefit of the doubt to incentive clauses that are difficult to achieve under the best of circumstances, and which have little to do with one’s own performance. No. This offer was a public relations stunt, designed to make it look as though the Yankees had not put Joe Torre out to pasture. It was not an offer that had any chance of being accepted, nor was it an offer that that had any chance of facilitating future discussions. It was an insulting offer, quite frankly, and a conversation-ender. That is not to a render a judgment about what Joe Torre is ultimately worth to the Yankees. Very probably, the marginal revenue that Torre produces is not worth $7.5 million more than what Don Mattingly would give you, nor is it worth $5.0 million more. But it’s not like Torre went from being worth $7.5 million yesterday to $5.0 million today, just because the Yankees lost three out of four games to another very talented baseball club. If it were my business, I would not have made this offer. I would have offered Joe Torre more, or I wouldn’t have made him an offer at all. I can’t entirely blame the Yankees for trying to triangulate the situation. But I hope that people see this offer for what it was.

]This would make it unlikely that they would hire a guy like Tony LaRussa, however. He would insist on big money and no performance-based deal. He's actually won more games than Torre. Even LaRussa is/would be making about half Torre's ~$7.5 In short, no matter who they hire they'll be saving money on the manager. I just find it funny - and Joe likely found it insulting - that they decided that a form a "incentive-based motivation" (their words) was needed for a guy who led them to the playoffs 12 straight years.

Yancy Street Gang wrote: Mattingly's recent whimpering about how he's "not ready" should rule him out, for this year and probably forever. They should hire a guy who wants the job. Mattingly denied ever saying that. ]Willie? How, he's under contract?

They won't have to give the next guy a performance-based deal because they'll be able to pay him approx half what they were paying Torre. What they apparently objected to was that they got it in their heads that they were paying him approx double what any other mgr was making BECAUSE he reached the WS every year then got pissed when that run ended.

Yancy Street Gang wrote: Good for him! He should have told them to fuck off a week ago. Better late than never, though. I still like it this way better. If Joe just preemptively quit the upper crust could always claim that they really wanted him back but that he backed out before they ever made an offer. This way it shows that there was an element of wanting to "punish" him for "only" getting to round 1 the last few years as both the pay and the vesting of the option were conditional on how far the team made it into the playoffs. That he made them make the offer and THEN turned it down puts more of the onus on them IMO.

NOT SO FAST!!!! Joe Torre has [u:cc1f76db36]TURNED DOWN[/u:cc1f76db36] the team's offer of a 1-year plus option at a reduced rate plus various "incentives" based on progress in the post-season. NYYs will now start looking for a new manager.

Hello Joe, he ain't gonna go, Me-oh-My-oh Reports have it as being a one-year deal with a club option for 2009 - and most likely at a pay-cut as compared to the ~$7mil/yr rate from the just completed contract. Kind of makes Steinbrenner's pronouncement from last week sound kind of hollow and makes George sound like and aging wolf who's lost his bite. Maybe this was the result of a compromise between those who wanted to keep him and the George faction (whoever that is these days). The pro-Joe-ites got to keep their man but didn't get a multi-year deal (making it easier to can him mid-season next year if things are going south) and had to cut his pay so as to show him he done wrong by not winning the whole shebang for lo these many years.

Hey, I remember a lot of the talk right after the McReynolds/Mitchell trade was made was about how getting Walter as a throw-in was just another example of the rich getting richer; about how Walter was exactly the type of set-up lefty every team was looking for. Obviously the fruition of that view was not to be.

Yancy Street Gang wrote: We should try to collect 2,000,000 pennies. Well he's probably already got them. Or at least has the makings for them.

Frayed Knot wrote: Of the ones who did get a handful of points here or there, I believe only Kranepool, Wright, Reyes, and (probably after this season) Heilman reside in the top 100. Plus Jeff Innis, currently residing at #77 while trying to hold back the oncoming Pedro, Carlos, Aaron & Billy

Well there looks to be 9 who are active and in the organization in one form or another: Wright, Reyes, Heilman, Feliciano, Milledge, Smith, Gomez, Pelfrey, Humber & Anderson Hernandez Of the long-timers, Kranepool obviously, and the much-maligned Ron Hodges get the longevity awards.

Cool. There's 101 of them, by my count, or about 12% of the total who ever suited up -- probably a bit higher than I expected. What's NOT unexpected is that most of them were real short-timers to the point where I'm guessing that at least half never even made it to the back-end of the CPF Rankings list. Of the ones who did get a handful of points here or there, I believe only Kranepool, Wright, Reyes, and (probably after this season) Heilman reside in the top 100.

So what we need now is the intersection of those two lists, showing those who, as MLers, were Mets and only Mets.

1) "Jeter is great, just look at his numbers!" But what about the numbers that show he's not so great? 2) "Jeter's greatness can't be measured by numbers!"

Morgan, even if he were handed the results of the research, would have pronounced it a fallacy derived by those who never played the game.

]why is this so hard to figure out? It shouldn't be, except that "baseball people" (McCarver included) long held that HRs (whether leadoff or not) tended to stifle further scoring on account of they cleared the bases and therefore short-circuited rallies. 'Keeping the line moving' with BBs and basehits is much better for multi-run innings ... or so went the conventional thinking. I never bought it either.

This was the one game that was actually sailing along ... until it hit the bottom of the 5th. Obviously a big inning like the Cleveland 5th slows the game down a lot - but I think it's the relievers too. Pen guys seem to be used to working slower; they think about every single pitch, check the runners 4 or 5 times, and work v-e-r-y deliberately which, in turn, gets the batters steeping out each time, etc. And since these games all have relievers in for the majority of the games they just grind to a halt pacing-wise.