Frayed Knot

I thought it was about chess.

https://www.mlb.com/news/tyler-rogers-2026-free-agent-case Mike Petriello at MLB.com makes the case that not only is Tyler Rogers unique, but he's also purdy damn ****ing good.

So Puma in the (NY) Post has a headline right up this thread's alley. I'm not sure how the article reads as it's behind the pay-wall for certain NYP sports articles that they installed a year or so back. But, anyway, under an "Exclusive" panel in their SPORTS+ section, a headline reads: Revealed: Francisco Lindor, Jeff McNeil battled again, and Mets shortstop's chilly rapport with Juan Soto helped doom '25 season If accurate, both the Lindor/McNeil redux story and the Lindor/Soto tidbit are interesting and previously undisclosed (I don't remember either being even hinted at) on their own. Whether either/or had anything to do with a dearth of 'chemistry' (often a catch-all cause for losing when all others have been exhausted) which in turn helped to "doom" the season is a whole 'nother kettle of fish. https://nypost.com/2025/11/28/sports/revealed-second-lindor-mcneil-battle-soto-relationship-underscore-mets-issues/

There are likely few, if any, who remember my pre-CPF identity. But my post-CPF persona was not a popular one among the crowd at that time.

One way to find out would be to sign up with our old handles and see how quickly someone chimes in with, "Are you the same ******* who used to post on MOFO back around the turn of the century?"

No you don't ... Ha-ave ... to post like a Refugee That's all I got.

Well then let's hope that Mauricio and Williams are forcing the issue in the near future ... cuz they sure haven't so far. I'd be surprised if Semien isn't the main starting 2B-man for at least '26 & '27

This is the thread I meant to start for a couple of weeks now figuring that this logjam of 2B/3B/DH (and even CF) types has got to be broken somehow. And now the (not quite yet official) Nimmo deal kicks untangling this situation from top priority to double secret top priority. So Semien is the starting 2B next year for sure and likely for a year or two beyond that. He's a superior glove and no one short of maybe Acuna has a shot at being even close to that. So what does all this mean? - Bye Bye Baty? While he's yet to hit consistently as a major leaguer, he is coming off an 829 OPS second half (4th in WAR in '25 behind only Soto, Lindor, Alonso), can play 2nd or 3rd reasonably well, and just turned 26 last week. So that makes him potential trade bait, or maybe he moves to 3rd which could mean ... - Vaya Con Dios Vientos? The monster he was in the back half of 2024 simply never materialized this past year to the point where the kind of thunder he showed seems like a mirage in retrospect. Clearly part of the Nimmo/Semien deal is to shore up the defense and keeping Vientos at 3rd doesn't really fit in with that scenario. So does Baty move to 3rd while Vientos DHs? Does Vientos move to 1st if Pete leaves? Are they already resigned to Pete leaving? Or do they deal the 26 y/o (next month) Vientos for pitching/OF with the idea that his power potential can bring back something positive? - Mauricio/Acuna Neither has proven they can consistently hit in the majors despite brief flashes of it. Either could also go to 3rd or stay on as utility players. And could either/or work as OF'ers? Trading one or both brings you something less proven but if it brings back something at a position of need it may be worth that kind of challenge trade. - McSquirrel Is he the next vet to be dealt? Turns 34 y/o on opening week with two years left on his contract. Good at times but often frustratingly inconsistent. Defensively versatile but more in a jack-of-all trades/master-of-none kind of way. - Jett Williams/Carson Benge Does this deal mean that the team is higher on one or both of these guys than they are on say Acuna/Mauricio? Benge seems to have the better chance to make the team out of ST with Jett maybe a few months behind, but the baseball gods laugh at plans like that. Anyway, something has to give to break the logjam among this crew. That was true yesterday and now it's even more true tonight.

As I said above, there was going to be some kind of culling the crop from the McBatyCunaRicioIentos grouping this winter. You can only kick the can down the road for so long. And while I wasn't expecting a 2B import to be launching the whole thing off, now there is a whole menu of young/young-ish players with which to make deals for OFs and pitching. I see this less as a salary dump than a reduction of further commitment. We get the older guy but Texas gets the longer contract. I guess we'll see how it all works out. In the end I'm not thrilled with the deal either as I've been a Nimmo guy since he was still in the minors. But I think we all knew something had to give.

Sure. Just speculating that winding up in the second closest ML city (Houston slightly closer) to Austin might have given him incentive to approve the deal.

Nimmo's family relocated from Wyoming to Austin, TX a few years back.

Semien will play at age 35 next season with three years remaining on his deal while Nimmo turns 33 in March w/five years remaining on his, so there's a trade-off to be made on both clubs. And if he doesn't have a no-trade in his contract he'll gain 10/5 rights after the '26 season so that gives Texas an incentive to do something this winter. Semien had a good peak from '21 thru '23 (combined 20.5 WAR) but has fallen off in the recent two seasons (offensive WAR = 3.1 & 2.7) about the same as Nimmo (2.6 & 2.6). The main thing is the positional difference. Semien is more valuable defensively (he'll be a 2B here plus Lindor insurance at SS) but we've got about seven other guys itching to play 2B full-time and that's really the BIG question to be answered this winter: what to do with the quintet of McNeil, Baty, Acuna, Mauricio, and Vientos for the 2B/3B/DH roles, plus whatever is possibly coming up from the farm, maybe later, maybe sooner. I was going to start a thread on the subject of how that 2B/3B situation gets resolved as there is almost certainly going to be a trade (or two?) this winter involving one or more of that crew as it's the most logical source of trade bait. What I wasn't contemplating was the idea of importing a 2nd baseman.

I wasn't old enough to have seen much of the legendary (and not in a good way) Dick Stuart's ML career* ... and certainly not wise enough to notice the subtleties of defensive play at 1B. The worst defensive 1B I can remember was Adam Dunn -- yes, worse than Kingman. Dunn might have been one of the few who was less of a liability in a corner OF spot than at 1st. He just plain had bad hands. Never seen a guy drop so many throws that hit him right in the glove. A quick glance at his defensive page at BB-Ref shows that he has big time negative numbers on the 'Defensive Runs Saved' column, so that at least jibes with my eyeball test. * 'Don't handle the ball, Dick, you'll scratch it!' was a phrase about his hands. And he had the misfortune to have his career overlap with a certain hit movie which earned him the 'Dr. Strangeglove' nickname.

What is it good for, absolutely nothing!

A. J. Minter pitched 11 innings over 13 appearances, pitched on b-t-b days twice, and was done for the season by April 25th b-t-b #1: Apr 16 & 17; 15 & 9 pitches b-t-b #2: Apr 24 & 25 (his final two games); 10 & 10 pitches Danny Young made 10 appearances for a total of 8-1/3 innings before exiting one day after Minter He went b-t-b-t-b on Apr 7-8-9 (10th thru 12th games of the season) on 18, 14, 4 pitches Does someone really want to make a case for ab-, mis-, over- use as the cause for those season ending injuries?

Couple of things: - Yogi played 18 seasons but Willie played 19 and, not being a catcher, sat out less often so racked up more than 1,000 extra PAs compared to Lawrence Peter Berra. That all matters because WAR is a cumulative stat. - Randolph was also a 2nd baseman so has a better chance of accumulating Defensive WAR while Yogi's was almost entirely offense (in offensive WAR alone Yogi holds a 2-point edge). Evaluating catcher defense is a slippery thing to quantify even today and was, I'm sure, much tougher without modern tools to project what it might have been back in the '40s & '50s. - Randolph also racked up an impressive .373 career OBA, drawing walks at a Keith Hernandez like rate for his career. Batting 8th (or 9th)* often helped (as it would have for Buddy Harrelson) but, still, that's a well above average rate which is a key component in WAR. Yogi's BB rate was better than I thought (slightly below average) but he was too much of a free swinger (a notorious bad ball hitter) to ever get his rates very high so he loses some ground there. * Randolph hit 8th or 9th in the lineup approx 11% of the time. So all that is apparently enough to make up for the sizable gap in power: Isolated Power** = .075 for Randolph; Berra = .197; league avg tends towards .150 I'd still rather have Yogi on my squad, but Willie had himself a very nice career. Neither went on to be very impressive managers. ** essentially one's Slugging Avg with singles removed

Is the inaccuracy because all your employees are actually showing interest in downtown office space in Joliet rather than Chicago?

Wait, I thought no one watched baseball anymore?!?

The Braves, who always seem to start earlier than most in the off-season with a series of small headline moves, resign FA closer Raisel Iglesias to a one year contract. The soon-to-be (Jan 4th) 36 y/o has been in the ATL pen since being acquired at the trading deadline in 2022 after stints in CIN & ANA I suppose this doesn't totally kill rumors that the Braves might be on the trail of Sugar Diaz this winter but it certainly lowers the odds. They then dealt IF Nick Allen to Houston for utility player Mauricio Dubon

I had to look up the specific game and the details, but I remember watching this game at the time and being ... disappointed at the start. Jones walked the first four Expos batters of the game [Jerry White, Mike Gates, Andre Dawson, Al Oliver] and was promptly pulled in favor of Ed Lynch The fourth walk 'drove' in the first run obviously. Lynch then got two IF pop-ups to limit the damage until a two-out single plated two more. Mets went on to lose 4-3 BB-Ref doesn't list individual pitches from that era but in my mind (and I'm pretty sure I'm right on this one) the four walks came on 16 pitches. https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/NYN/NYN198206220.shtml Side notes: Jesse Orosco pitched two innings of relief for the Mets and Jeff Reardon pitched three for MTL Mike Scott pitched the 9th for NYM Jones made 41 appearances for the Mets and recorded zero outs on three different occasions (2 starts, 1 relief) facing 4 (3 H, 1 BB), 6 (4 H, 2 BB) and 4 (4 BB) hitters . He also recorded just one out (6 batters faced) and 2 outs (9 batters) as a starter. All but one of those was in '82, his second and final year as a Met. Known as a control pitcher before they got him [2.3 BB/9 as a Padre and only once in his career above 2.5], his rate more than doubled as a Met: 4.8 BB/9 iow, when he was bad, he was Really bad.

Speaking of guys whose career ended as a NYM.

... or so says ESPN's Jeff Passan who goes on to say that 'multiple executives anticipate the Mets trading the 32 y/o (33 in January) pitcher during this off-season as the yearly revamping of the pitching staff continues. We all know the track record so far - Year one was terrific: 29 starts, 2.98 ERA, 2nd ROY, 7th CY, All Star - Year two was all but non-existent: 1 game/5.1 innings pitched - Year three started out well: a 1.47 ERA thru his first 13 starts ... but then Pete broke him with an errant flip. He missed a month then had a 5.90 ERA after that before finally being (reluctantly) sent down to the minors. In all he's made 52 starts/113 IP over three seasons. 113 innings used to be considered barely over a half-season. There are two years remaining on his contract. Hard to know what "extremely available" means specifically, but the idea of a trade can't be too surprising even if they're not exactly selling high here. I wonder also if the seemingly high-maintenance quality of Senga has maybe worn out his welcome to some degree, from his reluctance to pitch unless he feels everything is perfect mechanically to his initial reluctance to rehab/regroup in AAA

Montas, who also pitched for Oakland, Cincinnati, the White Sox, and Milwaukee, oddly ends the NY/NY portion of his career with injuries limiting him to just nine appearances as a Yanqui (8 starts) throughout his two year contract there, and then appearing in nine games as a Met (7 starts) throughout this current two year contract racked by injuries. I say he should be awarded a statuette of Tony Fernandez for his contributions to Big Apple baseball.

Mets DFA Montas ... although this is really more of a paper move than anything. Signed through 2026 but, with his TJ surgery in September, is already out for all of 2026 so they're going to owe him $17 mil either way. But this will remove him from the 40-man roster and therefore frees up a spot for someone else. Nick Morabito, a 22 y/o speedy OF'er who spent 2025 in Binghamton, is reportedly that someone which will shield him from the possibility of being taken in the next Rule 5 draft.

He wanted that last year too but it doesn't seem like any team came close to going there. Granted he's coming off a better season this time but is also a year older. I thought last year that the Mets might go to four but were willing to let him walk if someone went five. With another year under his belt it's possible the Mets would balk at four this time around. Naylor? I just met her!