Frayed Knot

dinosaur jesus wrote: I got to see him play. I've been bragging about that for fifty years. Yeah, I caught some TV games towards the end of his prime plus at least two at Shea. One as a SFG but also was at Shea for one of his first NYM HRs. I don't remember if it was his first HR/first game as a NYM. Looking at his sheet at BB-Ref: in 1971 at age 40 he played a mostly full skid (136 games/537 PA) and put up a 907 OPS/158 OPS+ It was his last good year ... but he was 40!!

Time to put the hittin' shoes on. Mets got the first two on in that inning too but then never got another ball out of the infield and had to settle for one run. The Rangers got several out of the outfield after getting two runners on to start things.

Edgy MD wrote: [FIMG=500]https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/may0-048-mays-IH107277.jpg[/FIMG] The 5' 10" Mays didn't look like a physical specimen in ordinary street clothes. But with the shirt off it was a different story. When asked what he was most proud about in his career one of the things he mentioned was coming into the league at 175 lbs and leaving it at 175 lbs.

Mays merits a league-wide memorial patch. The Yanx will probably opt out.

Edgy MD wrote: How was this guy even for real? I remember a Howie Rose interview with Willie a bunch of years ago. And one of Howie's questions was that, at some point, you must have realized that you weren't merely good. Willie's answer was, yes, it was when I was about 14. That surprised even Howie, but Willie's explanation was that at that age he was the point guard on the HS varsity team, the QB on the junior varsity HS team, and he was playing semi-pro baseball on the team where his father played. iow, against MEN! Shyeet, when I was in 8th grade I tipped the scales at about 100 lbs flat and couldn't have held my own vs 9th graders much less against full grown adults. Fourteen!

For the first time in over nine decades we now live in a world without Willie Mays in it.

... and it's a poorer world for it.

Bob Alpacadaca wrote: Makes it fun. Every game matters. A lot more fun than having all those teams out of it. Well, there are two very different forces in play here. #1 is that the WC expansion era has of course created a situation where more teams 'are still in it' for a longer period. That's simply a numerical fact. Whether or not you consider that 'more fun' is a matter of opinion. #2 is what the league will no doubt trumpet as 'parity' and pat themselves on the back for it. But what's really causing this middle-class log-jam currently going on in both leagues is more a case of disparity. In most baseball seasons most of the teams fall between a .400 and .600 winning percentage. The average number of teams over the last 26 full seasons (since 1998 but I'm chucking 2020 out the window) Not ending up between those two goal posts is between five and six. At the extremes, twice it's been as high as ten (2002, 2019) and in 2007 there were none. Currently there are nine which continues a recent trend where the number above .600 or below .400 has been higher (nearly 9/yr since 2018) 2018 = 8 (3 above, 5 below); 2019 = 10 (6, 4); 2021 = 9 (3, 6); 2022 = 9 (5, 4); 2023 = 8 (4, 4) Not sure exactly what this recent trend shows except maybe that, once again, the "fact" that increased salary caps promotes increased league parity has once again been shown to not hold water. But this season there's something more, namely that we've currently got a number of teams WAY over or under those 60/40 benchmarks: Yanx who just lost 2/3 to fall to a .676 winning pct; Phils = .667; Orioles = .662; Guardians = .638, while the currently teetering Dodgers squad squeaks by at only .608 On the other side we've got: A's = .351; Rox = .347; Marlins = .319; White Sox = .260!! So basically the top teams are beating up on everyone while the bottom feeders are being beat up on by everyone. And while you can claim that this is the normal state of affairs in sports I'd argue that this recent trend of more very good AND very bad teams exaggerates the effect and pushes the middle class folks away from both extremes and therefore closer to each other. The closest team to the A's, currently the best of the bad, is LAA (teetering on the fringe at .403) which is the only team within .100 points of the bottom feeders. And only a handful of teams is within striking distance of this year's elites [ATL, KCR, MIN, SEA] ie: in the upper .500's That leaves 14 teams currently between a .450 and .510 pct, and that's where the biggest 2024 "race" is. Or, as WFAN jock Jody McDonald liked to put it, 'it's like a fight to see who's going to be the tallest midget in the circus'.

Clusterfuck is more like it. Amirite people?!?

Not that we're going to see anyone from their good bullpen. But raking the opponent's pen in Game One of a series is always a nice way to start things out.

So it was right about one month ago when, if told the.Mets had amassed 12 hits you might ponder, 'hmmm, I wonder how many they'll manage to get next week'? Here they have 12 and the 4th inning isn't yet complete [now it is].

With [CROSSOUT]7[/CROSSOUT] 9 runs on [CROSSOUT]10[/CROSSOUT] 11 hits to his first [CROSSOUT]19[/CROSSOUT] 20 batters, I'm surprised he isn't gone already. And now he is. btw, two first pitch swings that inning = two runs on two pitches.

Lots of IL news as a new week starts: - Mookie Betts, broken hand (HBP). No definite, or even indefinite, timetable is announced. - also involving LAD, Yoshinobu Yamamoto will deal with a 'strained rotator cuff' while sitting on the IL Remember when the words 'rotator cuff', not elbow ligament, was the scariest thing to hear about one of your pitchers? After a rough ML debut (back in South Korea in late March) Y^2 had been pitching well but he might not be heard from for the next month or two. - Anthony Rizzo (NYY) fractured forearm after a Sunday night collision. Four to six weeks is the early favorite. On the flip side, Trea Turner returns tonight, and Gerritt Cole will make his first start of the season on Wednesday vs Baltimore. - Paul Skenes started tonight against Cincy. The Reds scored the first run Skenes has allowed in the 1st inning during his brief ML career. They haven't scored since. 4-1 Pirates, top 7 Phils are hosting the Padres to start the week. Braves hosting Tigers Marlins hosting StL Nats welcome the Snakes (starting tomorrow).

So that guy with the above 'Tweet' (X?) is arguing that DJ Stewart is simultaneously getting too many ABs and not enough.

Fun fact: there are four players named Gray currently active in MLB: Jon, Sonny, Josiah, and Tristan. And there's a Grayson Rodriguez. Only Tristan is not a pitcher. Jon Gray is not so sunny right about now.

=Fman99 post_id=159503 time=1718669090 user_id=86] Ugh stupid spherical Earth. There's about a 100% chance I am sleeping before this game ends.

It's a Single-a-thon!!

=DocTee post_id=159447 time=1718643034 user_id=85] I disagree. His diving catch yesterday was clutch and he made a strong throw home to keep a baserunner at third in the eighth inning. The guy is a physical specimen.

... Marte is fast becoming a defensive liability. He was terrific two years ago, a classic case of a GG CF moved to a corner as he ages and immediately giving you better range than is usually expected in a corner with the bonus of a true RF'ers arm. Last year not nearly as much but I think we wrote that off to him being in surgery recovery and diminished all around. This year though he looks healthy and rejuvenated both at the plate and on the base paths. But out in the field is a different story: he's taking bad routes; has become very tentative particularly on balls in front of him; and is plain misjudging a lot of stuff. There were two examples just yesterday, one over his head and one which dropped in front of him. Neither was a gimme, but both were catchable by a good RF and that includes by Marte himself circa 2022. Instead he didn't come that close to either. Not sure there's any real solution at hand. We've already got two DHs on the team and so hardly need a third. And Tyrone Taylor would be an offensive downgrade if used beyond the occasional fill-in rest in DGaNG or turf days, etc.

Frayed Knot wrote: Ted Williams, who rarely swung at the first pitch (at least in his first AB, although he would do so occasionally just so pitchers couldn't take his taking for granted) Well, yeah. But hardly anyone else is Ted Williams. Williams supposedly had about as good a batting eye as anyone in baseball history. And he was impossible to strike out. A batter with command of the strike zone and excellent contact skills can do whatever the hell wants to do. If he wanted to take the first two strikes, that would've been fine by me. Who the hell am I to second guess Ted Williams? But my point in telling that story wasn't just to say, 'Hey, just do it like Ted did', but to get to the point where Ted said the goal was to get to where you could anticipate (he hated the word 'guess') a predictable pitch and, if you were to get it when and where you were expecting, to tee off on it. I appreciate the act of taking pitches that aren't to one's liking, but that's a means to an end rather than the goal itself.

Frayed Knot wrote: Define "Til ya Gotta" Well however we define it, doing so literally needs to be taken off the table: MLB composite stats thru games of 6/14 [9,000+ PAs] 0-0 count: BA = .332; OPS = 900 1-0 count: .328 / 888 2-0 count: .336 / 942 3-0 count (occasionally known as the ‘automatic take' count): .351 / 1633 Even the ‘take one strike' philosophy doesn't hold water here, much less one where you take until forced to do otherwise approach. Hitters still do well, though slightly less well, on 0-1 and 1-1 counts: .315 / 807; .318 / 839 And then stats go up again on 2-1 & 3-1 counts: .324 / 879; .321 / 1292 But if you're waiting for any count with a 2 as the second number then that's when things start to plummet. All two strike counts: .167 / 503 Or, broken down: 0-2 count: .148 / 380; 1-2 count: .163 / 411; 2-2 count: .170 / 434 And even full counts aren't exactly the best friends of batters [.190 / 777] though certainly the possibility of a free pass has the ability to perk up the OPS even as it does little for the BA Ted Williams, who rarely swung at the first pitch (at least in his first AB, although he would do so occasionally just so pitchers couldn't take his taking for granted) used to talk about ‘getting a predictable pitch to hit'. But plate discipline doesn't just mean seeing as many pitches as possible. Oft times it means sitting on a 2-0 offering and smacking the snot out of it. So while there are situations [inning, score, batter, pitcher, outs, runners, on-deck hitter(s) etc.] that could make one want to take a strike (or even two), and you certainly don't want to employ a strategy where hitters are pre-deciding to swing at the very next offering, someone is going to have to more narrowly define “til ya gotta” for me before I do anything other than strenuously disagree.

Frayed Knot wrote: Define "Til ya Gotta"

We can dance. We can dance. Everybody look at your hance.

Frayed Knot wrote: Yes, but this time they may actually win while wearing them. Let's not get crazy, it's only the 7th inning still. Well now it's a four run lead with only three outs to get. There's no way we could blo ... OK, you're right. It's a coin flip.

Another replay with JDM =kcmets post_id=159306 time=1718489481 user_id=53] OMG, they're wearing those uniforms again!!