Frayed Knot

Maybe that kit contains "The Plan", in which case there's no limit as to what you should spend to get it.

Back to M(ets)TV news, from Bob Raissman's Tuesday column: "While execs at SportsNet New York have yet to give a launch date for the new TV home of the Mets, cable industry sources say SNY likely will debut on Thursday, March 16. As of now, SNY has carriage agreements with Time Warner and Comcast, who are partners with Fred Wilpon in SNY. The network is still in the process of trying to cut carriage deals with Cablevision and satellite providers such as DirecTV and Dish Network."

Typical ARod. By trying so hard to make a decision that will piss off as few people as possible and put himself in the best light, he resorts to torturing himself for weeks on end and winds up pissing off a whole lot more people than he would have initially and comes off like a sniveling wimp in the process. There's always a guy in every niche who -- despite the best of intentions, and despite the advantages of being reasonably smart, good-looking, popular, and accomplished -- manages to look and sound like a complete dork with almost frightening frequency. A-Rod is offically the Al Gore of baseball.

And, if nothing else, we'll at least have someone who can help us in the event of an attack from hostile pork chops.

I'm not sure that Hamlet was this wracked by indecision.

]Another new feature, statistics broken down by month Pitchers' W-L stats don't seem to be breaking out per month

So the son of the owner - the one who has nothing to do with running the franchise - has a dingbat for a wife ... whoop-de-damn-do!!

There's also the notion of the "extreme fly ball pitcher" that's part of the basis for this whole thing. A quick check of the NL pitchers with significant innings shows only 7 with GB/FB ratios of less than 1/1. Fly ball pitchers are not like ground ball specialists where it's difficult to hit them "the other way"; Brandon Webb, Derrick Lowe and the like can have 3/1 or even 4/1 ratios of GBs to FBs while the results from all but the most extreme FB pitchers are still on the ground [u:495a5bbd02]half the time or more[/u:495a5bbd02]. So it's not like this newly formed hole in the defense is going to go unexploited due to the guy on the mound or that the batters are going to have to tie themselves in knots (frayed or otherwise) trying to take advantage of it.

"In '85 [Hayes] smacked 2 and drove in 6 in one game" Not just in one game, in one INNING!

"I hate common sense" Obviously. So your point here seems to be that this defensive lineup would make it more difficult for the other team to have a BIG inning even as it makes it easier to allow them to score just a couple of runs ... or does it prevent runs being scored in general? --- Maybe teams should look into this more often then. But then it's OK even if they score more anyway since we'll now get 1 AB (or maybe even 2) from a somewhat better hitter since our weak-hitting MI-er has been replaced by that all important and frequently available slugging 4th OFer!! No telling how many runs he could erase during his AB(s). Essentially it sounds like you're trying a Chinese defensive scheme in order to get an extra AB from one of your bench players. Why not just PH him for your 2nd sacker and leave the big sloppy brute in to play 2nd if you're that desperate for offense?

"Why not?" Common sense?

Mike Krukow - The Polish Prince He was 22 - 7 overall in 44 games (39 starts) between his stints on the Giants, Phils & Cubs. Boiled down to a "average season" (206 IPs) it comes down to: G/GSIPW - LERAKBBvs NYM37/3320618.5 - 63.6914273vs ALL34/3320611 - 103.9013872 Obviously a great W - L record without being wildly better in any of the components stats. The "Killer" tag probably comes mostly from the fact that he was 4-0 vs the great Met team in '86, plus 3-0 then 2-0 against their good teams in '88 & '89

Now y'see, I would have thought that if you were going to get up at 4 in the morning to make Piazza jokes you would have jumped on the previous picture instead. Maybe something along the lines of; 'Hey look, it's a shot of a broken down Italian icon ... and he's standing in front of the Coliseum'

"but still his numbers were pretty good. I knew there was a reason I have always hated him!" Schmidt's numbers are good, but that's mostly because he's Mike Schmidt! The trick in finding "A Killah" is to find guys who were better than their norm against the Mets. Schmidt, it turns out, was actually somewhat worse (worse being a relative term and all). I suspect the subset of MLB players that fans of a given team THINK were better against their squad probably approaches 90%

And I suppose to be REALLY accurate here we'd want to first take out the player's 'vs NYM' numbers from the total numbers so we'd be comparing how he did against the Mets only to how he did against NON-Mets. With Burrell that would make the power numbers even more lop-sided as he's actually somewhat LESS than a 30-HR guy against all others (approx 27.6/yr) ... and nearly double that against the blue & orange (although normal in most other respects except for the not-surprising accompanying rise in SLG & RBI)

Gwynn's numbers from UMBD Pretty durn good, but it IS Tony Gwynn we're talking about here. Boiled down to an average length season (617 ABs acc to Bas-Ref) it winds up as: RH2BHRAVGSLGRBISBvs NYM972194210.356.4867518vs ALL92209369.338.4597621 Better, but not ridiculously so. Probably closer to just random variation.

The guy they were chatting with was the station manager Mark Chernoff. They called him in just to go over some details because of the new TV announcing being in the news and all even though FAN really has nothing to do with that. All they were really doing was pressing Chernoff on the state of the radio side: - Howie, as the new "lead" guy will do 5 innings of p-b-p (including 1st & 9th innings) and the new guy McCarthy to do 4. Cohen and Howie had a 6-3 split. - Eddie C. to still do pre-game (Mets Extra) plus post game with McCarthy: Eddie downstairs in the clubhouse, McCarthy up in the booth. - Eddie still to be the fill-in guy on radio; particularly before hockey season ends when Howie is still doing Islander TV The M&MD "offer" was to switch jobs for a day with the [u:a114f1bea9]radio[/u:a114f1bea9] team: M&MD would do the game while Howie & McCarthy would take the afternoon drivetime gig (presumably the same day). Chernoff's OK with it but said the decision is up to the Mets since it's their announcing team. Neither of them have ever had any steady p-b-p experience - although I've heard them do basketball before: MD on p-b-p, Mike on color - but it might be fun just as a change of pace. Worrying about whether an announcer actually roots for your team or not is a waste of time IMO. Benigno & Sid used to make the same offer (read: beg) all the time but thankfully no one ever took them up on it. Both of them [u:a114f1bea9]ARE[/u:a114f1bea9] Met fans but that doesn't mean I want either one of them - much less both - anywhere near a booth during a game.

]While you're editing, you might try crediting the progeny to Shawn (sp?) Kemp, who I was thinking of, and reducing the lifetime totals of ex-White Sock/Tiger/Yankee Steve Kemp D'oh!!

]Wasn't there some pro basketball "playa" who had sixty gazillion kids with forty-eleven women or something? If by "some" you mean "the vast majority of the league" then, yes, you're correct. Steve Kemp was the primo example most cited (7 or 8 .. maybe 9?) but, at one point, it was estimated that they were more illegitimate children by NBA players than there were players in the league. Not sure any "official" records actually exist.

I suspect if you polled most fans on memories of their first game there'd be more incorrect and hazy recollections than actual ones ... a ratio which would probably increase even more when the fan in question is in close contact with a 16 y/o girl.

Children

Writers will occasionally do that just to throw a bone to a player they were buddies with; kind of a way to give him the right to say he received a vote even though it means nothing in the long run. There was a big to-do over Jim Deshaises getting a nod a few years back from a writer who admitted he was doing just that. How Jefferies got his votes is anyone's guess.

]Its amazing to me that Healy could be so universally disliked by everyone who either follows or is a fan of this team, yet somehow the guy was a fixture for years. How the hell did that happen? The answer all along has been that Healy was a favorite of the Dolan clan of Cablevision, the ones who have been responsible for the Met games for 20+ years at this point via SportsChannel/FSNY/MSG, all stations that they owned and operated. My guess is that they saw him as the perfect vanilla-type host who could fill the 20-hour/day with all that off-hour programming while there was no game going on. Of course given the personell decisions that the same crew has made since they've been running MSG and it's two main sports team tenants ... it kinda speaks a lot about their decision making don't it?

This signing would have been much worse than another year for Roberto or even a arbi-decided 1-year deal for Looper IMO. And when you consider that the original rumors were for more than 2 years and for bigger money than what's stated above ...