Frayed Knot

Burnitz career: - 14 seasons (or parts of them) - 315 HRs & 741 Xtra base hits - .253 / .345 / .481 (BA/OBA/SLG) Plus a pretty good OFer and decent runner Not going to the Hall of Fame obviously, but not a bad body of work. Some might argue that you'd want more than that out of a 1st round pick (#17 overall in 1990) but 1st rounders who never spend a day in the majors out-number those who become regulars by more than a 2-to-1 margin and many of those regulars won't last as long.

The split squad beat Detroit 4-2 - 3 more hits for Carp - also 3 for Fernando Martinez - And, the one thing that even might have an influence on this year's squad: Aaron Sele: 3-1/3 IPs, 1 run, 5 hits

Mets lose ... again! Gave up 1 in the 9th then another in the 10th The Good: - Nice four innings from Ollie Perez - Numerous HRs: Ben Johnson & Newhan (back to back), plus Milledge & Valentin. Also Sierra was robbed of one - Another hard opposite field 2B from Green (ground rule) The Bad: - Blew a 6-1 lead - Awful outing from Soler: Buncha walks

]SNR is in New York at 620AM They were there a few years ago but aren't anymore. And, even when they were on that frequency and briefly had BV & the Liberty, that was before it was affiliated with The Sporting News. It was then a Chicago-based network called 'One on One Sports'. TSN later bought One-on-One out and the station disappeared from the NYC airwaves soon thereafter/ ]most mags lose $$ on subscription/delivery ... They give it away so they can go to advertisers with inflated numbers Agreed, except that part of my point is that the mag doesn't seem to have any advertisers either.

What I don't understand is how The Sporting News still makes money. I've told the story before about how I just followed a link to a free 1-year subscription a couple years back. Sales can't be all that good if you're just giving it away to people who stumble on a free ad. During that year I had numerous opportunities to extend at ridiculously cheap rates which I ddclined to take once I realized that the quality of the magazine was such that even my free subscription was overcharging me. Plus the mag is virtually devoid of ads so it's not like they're making up for the lack of sales rates that way. Another thing they run in addition to the magazine is 'Sporting News Radio' - a network of stations around the country devoted to sports talk - although a trip to their web site doesn't appear to provide any guide as to which stations those are and where they can be found. And, between the local sports stations which are in virtually every decent sized town these days and the always-present ESPN network of stations, I picture SN-Radio as an equivelent to the UPN-9 of sports talk.

Yancy Street Gang wrote: Am I really the only out-of-towner on this forum who watches the Mets on Extra Innings? If our (small) sample size is anything to go by, maybe this won't affect many people after all. The number ordering 'Extra Innings' isn't all that many when viewed on a national scale -- about 700-800K homes from what I've read - with more than half of them already getting it through DirecTV and a certain portion of the rest will (or at least can) switch to it now. All of which explains why both Selig and sports radio jocks have been quick to dismiss the fuss over this as "no big deal". My father lives out of state and has been a EI customer for years now (thru DirecTV) specifically to get Met games

The Good: - 3 scoreless from Maine - Two hits from Green, including an opposite field 2B - HR from Beltran The Bad: - Blow-up inning from Heilman - Blow-up inning from Humber - Leadoff HR surrendered by Adkins The Ugly: - Still no Delgado

On a side note from the TV world, the traditional Saturday afternoon 'Game of the Week' is somewhat improved. First of all they're actually having one every week, and they're doing so right from the beginning of the season through the end -- Sked No more weeks-long gaps because ... eh, because they felt like showing something else instead. The other change is a move to a 3:30 EDT (prolly 4:00 actual game time) start for those games on the network. What that means it that, since local telecasts can't compete with the national games, things will essentially work backwards from how they've been done in recent years: Now, if the Mets are NOT part of the GotW package, their Saturday games will be 1PM starts (or the occasional night game) - and if they are part of the regional package (like the first week of the season for instance) it'll be a 4PM game. Looks like we're on tap for about 8 Saturday GotW games plus maybe 1 or 2 more at the tail end of the season if those games affect a pennant race.

I've done all kinds of things to make up for the income I'm not receiving from Major League Baseball.

"Fans disliked Kranepool intensely. He had zero personality, he pissed his teammates off with his colossal arrogance, he was greeted with choruses of boos and cries of "STIFF!!" when he batted" Not to mention borrowing Chico's soap and not returning it.

As per Eddie C on WFAN sometime post-game this afternoon: Duaner Sanchez was sent home today by Willie for showing up late ... something which not only wasn't the first time this Spring but is also apparently part of a pattern where the club doesn't think he's been working hard enough at his rehab over the winter leading into camp. Sounds at the moment like it was just a one-day punishment but I guess this is something that bears watching going forward. OE: More Details

Working on his swing

]DirecTV Group Inc. and Major League Baseball relented to political pressure and signed a seven-year deal that lets rival pay TV services continue to broadcast out- of-market games. Well, sort of. What they're doing is offering the Cable systems an opportunity to match the deal DirecTV signed ... but the kicker is that they'll need to agree to place the yet-to-be launched MLB channel on a basic tier. That - to most if not all of the cable systems - is akin to a poison pill. They don't want program suppliers dictating to them where and how to market their packages and I can't see there being that big a demand for the channel (not available until 2009) for them to swallow this. On a grand scale there simply weren't that many subscribers to the 'Extra Innings' package to make that worth that bargain. ]If I were DirectTV, I'd be pissed Why? For DirecTV and their viewers nothing has changed.

]If I were an opposing picture You mean like a mirror?

]All you P.C. people make me sick. I know you all agree with me ... but you won't say so in public, I understand. I can't tell whether this was an attempt at humor or not, but (speaking for myself); - if yes; it fell flat - if no; you're wrong

The teams in Arizona are (mostly) located closely together because the population of the state is much more centrally located. I don't see how Florida duplicates that. The number of teams training out west is starting to close in on half but, of course, that makes sense since the league as a whole has shifted west over the years. The Dodgers are/were the last remaining holdout of a western team still training in the east. But all of the east coast teams (and some of the mid-west clubs) still train in Florida and, since they all have to maintain stadiums there for the Fla St League and the Gulf Coast Lg minor league teams, it's not like they're going to abandon that state just for shorter bus rides.

Raffy was average defensively but in the more smooth-n-steady mode of average-ness -- as opposed to the occasionally spectacular yet mistake-prone average-ness of say Shawon Dunston.

And, btw, I don't neccesarily mean to pick just on ballplayers and imply that they're all lying lyers with lyer sprinkles on top. The human memory is very fallable as cops will tell you about even first-hand recollections of accident or crime scenes. Or, as they sang in Gigi: He: We met at nine. She: We met at eight. He: I was on time. She: No, you were late. Both: Ah yes! I remember it well. He: We dined with friends. She: We dined alone. He: A tenor sang. She: A baritone. Ah yes! I remember it well. It's just that when things are heard directly from a player there's a tendancy for fans & media to simply accept it as gospel even though they're no better at it than the rest of us and, from an unbiased perspective sort of view, sometimes much worse.

'Mr. Happy' isn't officially his nickname, I just made it up for this post. It's just that we haven't had a, 'Gee whiz, every day on the baseball diamond is a great day' type since Carter retired. And did the dopey reporter who posed the ARod question really think he was going to get a different answer? I guess, as I think about it, that Reyes qualifies as someone every bit as happy as Wright and even Beltran said on the radio last week that he L-O-V-E-S spring training ... but neither of those two get as many microphones stuffed in their faces as does young David so they don't get as many chances to show their happy & peppy and bursting with love side.

I'll take cultrual stereotypes for $200 Alex

I was born a curmudgeon

There are no rumors. The only reason it even got into the papers is that the daily tracking of ARod - both his play on the field and the soap opera aspects surrounding it - is going to be the subject of endless facination to the NYC media (and, to some extent, the national media as well) this summer. The basis of it all is that ARod has a clause where he can opt out of his deal at the end of this year and it seems to be widely assumed by the scribes that he'll do just that on account of his "fragile psyche", the indignity of living in the shadow of the great Jeter, and his "proven inability" to live up to being a Yankee in October. Of course all that ignores the fact that to void the remaining 3 years of his deal means he'd almost certainly have to take a sizeable pay cut even if he can nail down a longer deal in the process. Also, the team can't deal him w/o his permission so none of this is even remotely close to being contemplated. As mentioned, someone asked Wright about ARod hypothically being available at the end of the year and Mr. Happy answered; 'golly jeewillickers that'd be great!! I'd even switch positions ... anything to help the team y'know!' There's a discussion about this somewhere on the board [rant]but it's buried in one of our endless "All Purpose" threads[/endrant]

Up until the mid-point of the '06 season I would have answered Wright without a question. I wasn't sold on Jose's improved OBA skills and saw his occasional bouts of power more as a source of worry than as an asset. But then the OBA gap between the two plummeted from 88 points in '05 down to 27 in '06, and the 'IsoP' gap tumbled from .103 to .043. So, while Wright still has the edge in overall hitting, between the speed, glove, position, and my general sense of where both are with respect to their own ceilings ... my vote's with Reyes. And maybe the biggest sign of Reyes's surge is Francesa admitting the other day that his (two years back) mocking of Met fans who didn't want to part with Reyes for Soriano might have been premature. Benigno on the same station took his same stance back a while ago but hearing his opinion change every time the wind changes direction is something I've come to expect from him. Francesa tends to admit mistakes once every thrid lunar eclipse.

And a kid born in 1986 drove them all in.

We've now got 3 seperate stats in this thread for Uecker v Koufax. Between them they say that he had: * 29 ABs * 38 ABs and * "over 50" The Uecker story I've never heard the details of is the one where his career was said to have ended prematurely due to injuries received in a bar fight.