Frayed Knot

I didn't realize he was only one season from FA-gency already; also turns 29 in a few weeks. Drafted in '18 (9th round - just like deGrom!), debuted in '20, then really hit his stride in '23 but only w/a partial season (15 starts / 80 innings). That he followed that up with a unanimous CY season and possibly a second one is what put him on the map and in this position. One wouldn't think a Boras client would agree to a trade/extension on his FA-eve season. And, of course, that limits what a team would agree to give up for him. From California, HS in Arizona, college in Seattle. Not sure if any of that will play a factor.

The problem with the Nieuwenhuis game is that it was a dreary affair for the first 8 innings. So much so that even as he came up as the potential winning run the thought of him actually coming through was the furthest thing from my mind. I'm usually standing and often pacing during a tight NYM 9th inning, but I was still prone on the couch when he connected. I was so stunned by the result that I bolted upright before the ball even landed. Still, that win moved the Mets up to a meager 13.5 G out of 1st and 14 G below .500, so, probably not a top of the quarter century kind of game.

If your last name is Albert that probably serves as a powerful incentive to stay thin so as to not give people a ready-made nickname to hang on you.

Oh I get it, this -- "I wonder how we can get Mendoza to feel the stress." -- was all about Mendoza's dignity. Don't know how I missed that the first time around.

So let's hope he gets enough of it that he'll need to resign for personal/mental/medical reasons! Grow up!

Really! That's what you take from that?

Apparently via his own choice as he cited stress of the job which took a "severe toll" on him. "It's time I take care of myself and exit on my own terms"

Right around this time last year I speculated (somewhere on this thread) that the Mets would hold off on anything north of four years for Pete and be willing to walk away if some other team went to five. Turns out it seemed like nobody even went to four. So now you can just take that same mindset only maybe holding the line at anything over three years given that he's a year older. That gets you his age 31, 32, and 33 seasons. Would they swallow hard and match a fourth year if some other suitor offered? Maybe. OTOH, three years is a tricky length for camp Alonso/Boras to accept as it's not like going into age 34 season is an inviting time to be a FA for a 1B/DH

During the discussion on this thread a year ago I was saying that if someone offered Pete five years then the Mets should be willing to walk away. So now that it's a year later, the same argument applies except that the number should revert to four years as opposed to five. Pete had a better '25 season than he did in '24, but he never got an offer close to seven years then and I don't know he'll get one now.

So we're down to the final four. - all are division winners, no wild cards. First time that's happened with the expanded WCx3 format - in both cases the surviving teams finished with the best (MIL & TOR) and 3rd best (LAD & SEA) season records in their league and all won 90+ games (90, 93, 94, 97) - one team has neither won a WS nor appeared in one (SEA) over 49 seasons - one never won a WS and only appeared in one 43 years ago back when they represented the other league - one last won a WS 32 years ago. It was their second of two in a row but they haven't been back to one since (TOR) - and one won two of the last five including just last year (as you may recall) Pulling for MIL & SEA

Except that simply deciding to swing more often won't necessarily produce the same results in greater quantity and could very well result in a declining output. I had never heard the 'treat it as a 3-1 pitch' analogy before but it sounds like a good benchmark to me. There the attitude is, "I'm going to swing if it's MY pitch where I want it". But once that flips to, "I'm going up there a'hackin' cuz the numbers show I'm 'good at this' " then there's a good chance that you're no longer going to be good at this, or at least as good at this. cross-posted with above And, of course, there are always various game/score/inning/runners/outs/pitcher circumstances dictating that 1st pitch swinging isn't (or is) the right move at that time.

Yeah, IIRC, Cox had gone from managing the Braves, to managing the Jays, to GM'ing the Braves, to his second stint as managing them starting in 1990 ... and basically ran that gig straight through to retirement. He's recently had a stroke but is apparently doing reasonable OK.

Former managers David Ross (Cubs) and Walt Weiss (Rox), along with former ATL catcher Eddie Perez, and Mark DeRosa (came up with the Braves and, more recently, Team USA coach in WBC) are said to be leading candidates to helm the Braves going forward. Since Bobby Cox was named Atlanta Braves skipper 66 games into the 1990 season (replacing Russ Nixon), the Braves have had only three managers: Cox (1990 - 2010), Fredi Gonzalez (2011 - 2016), and Brian Snitker (2016 - 2025)

So I figured I'd revisit this thread with the second half of the season in the books. As expected, the Mets weren't nearly as un-clutch in the second half as they were in the first: regression to the mean and all that. It wasn't quite enough to make the year as a whole 'good' in that sense, but it was at least less bad. When we looked in June, the Mets were 6th (of all 30 teams) in OPS but 14th in runs scored, the second highest gap between expected RS rank and actual RS rank (only ATH had a wider gap). By the end of the season they were still 6th in OPS but had jumped to 9th in runs scored. Still not quite where you'd like to be, but a much smaller deviation from the expected. Several teams were as many as five or six slots lower (MIN, HOU, KCR). Looking at how the Mets compared to the teams closest to them in OPS (as we did back in June) they averaged some 15 fewer runs scored (or about 1/10th of a RS/G) as compared to the three teams above them and the three below. The average would have been closer to 25 runs fewer except that West Sacramento was even worse than the Mets so they dragged the average down. Back in June the Mets were right around 2/3 of a RS/per game below what their most similar OPS teams were scoring which put them around -50 runs scored. As far as individual players went, all the regulars except for Alonso were significantly worse across the board when hitting with runners on base vs bases empty. Vientos, Alvarez, Nimmo, and McNeil all were around 100 points worse with runners on and w/RiSP than w/bases clear. Meanwhile the big boys, Lindor & Soto were considerably worse, Lindor around 300 OPS points worse, Soto a stunning 500 points. Final numbers Lindor: 862 (OPS w/bases empty) 720 (men on base) 750 (w/RiSP) Nimmo: 765 - 754 - 888 (no wonder he set a personal RBI high) Soto: 1027 -- 786 -- 859 (still bad, but compared to where he was ... ) Alvarez: 714 -- 879 -- 800 Vientos: 685 -- 726 -- 747 Baty: 740 -- 759 -- 810

Who is this "they" that you refer to? The implication is you believe that every NYM decision maker over the past 60+ years operates under one long continuously unchanging philosophy.

I'm not sure that the market for Pete will be a whole lot different than it was last off-season. To his advantage, he's coming off a better year than he had in '24. On the down side, he's a year older. Not sure if those two exactly cancel each other out, but it's hard to see the landscape looking drastically different for the same player just a year apart.

'Toe' Nash was the perfect wish-upon-a-star ballplayer for the early days of the internet. The publicity generated by a few actual articles about him, which were in turn amplified by the echoing drumbeat of the early on-line world during his brief time with Tampa Bay, was enough to convince some fans that the next great thing had been discovered and it was only a matter of when, not if, he took the baseball world by storm. And why didn't the Mets sign him?!?!?!?!? ... ****ing lazy, cheap-ass Wilpons! Both sad, but also not surprising, to read of his death at such a young age.

I'm sure Jarred Kelenic has been mentioned in this thread somewhere. And he's in the news this week because, after spending most of the 2025 season on the Braves' AAA team, and not doing well there or in the majors, he was outrighted to the minors by the Braves and has chosen to become a Free Agent. w/Braves this season: 65 PA, 10-for-60 w/two 2Bs & two HRs plus 5 BB/23 K [.167/.231/.300 // 531] w/AAA Gwinett: .not a lot better 213/.286/.309 even with a much bigger sample size [399 PA] Sometimes the expected path must never materializes. - 6th overall draft pick in 2018 - traded just six months later in the Diaz/Cano deal (formerly the Cano/Diaz deal) - immediately shines in Mariners system jumping from mid-60-ish prospect status (pre-2019) to top-10 (pre-2020) then top-5 (pre-2021) - ML debut in May of '21 still just 21 y/o and was given regular playing time (377 PA) though not much success - ditto in '22 although with less playing time - '23 seemed to maybe be a breakout year (400+ AB / 111 OPS+) for a guy still young, but it wasn't going to be w/Seattle following an off-season trade to the Braves It was at this point where I figured the Braves, at worst, got themselves a good platoon OF'er and maybe a rising star. But an 679/87 OPS/OPS+ despite another season of 400+ ABs just didn't cut it and he both regressed and barely played in '25 Now he's job seeking and anything better than a split contract w/a ST invite seems like an overly optimistic scenario for the just-turned 26 y/o

Albert Pujols to interview for Angels managerial job.

I tend to view Actual vs Pythag differences as more random than anything, particularly when the number isn't all that high. So two things I found looking at the league's Pythag numbers overall: 1) MLB teams as a whole had eight fewer Pythagorean wins than actual wins. That seems odd in that one would expect the positives and negatives to more or less cancel each other out. Not sure what would cause that other than an accumulation of rounding errors, although you'd think that those errors wouldn't collectively tilt in one direction enough to skew things about 1/4 of a win per team. 2) A difference of three wins (in either direction) isn't that much. Eight teams won four or more games more they were 'supposed to' [8, 7, 7, 6, 5, 5, 4, 4] based on Pythagorean projections, and five showed a negative Pythag of more than three wins [-4, -4, -7, -9, -11]. So if the Mets Win total is different from where it 'should' have been, it's a variation of less than what nearly half of all other teams (13 of 29) saw this year.

If the damaged ligament requires a replacement will that make it Tom Thumb surgery?

Jonah Tong - Minor League Pitcher of the Year Nolan McLean - Minor League Breakout Player of the Year

And once you know that it's predictably easy to figure out which game goes where. DET @ CLE: 1:08 - ESPN SDP @ CHC: 3:08 - ABC BOS @ NYY: 6:08 - ESPN CIN @ LAD: 9:08 - ESPN (And the schedule would have been the exact same if it was NYM @ LAD) They could never do this schedule prior to the speed-up rules era because when 9:08 came around the Yanx/Sawx game would have been in the top of the 6th. I mean they still would have done it this way but the CIN/LAD game would get bumped to ESPN2 and stayed there until it was close to half over thereby ****ing up anyone who didn't think ahead when setting their DVRs.

Stearns, speaking to reporters today at CitiField: (posted 3:45 by NY Post/Justin Tisch): “I believe Carlos has all the same traits and assets that I believed in when I hired him two years ago,” Stearns said. “I still believe he’s a very good manager, and I think he’s gonna demonstrate that.” “I’m the architect of the team. I’m responsible for it,”

Sports betting commercials running on any and all sports programming (like that's ever going to happen). Those ads aren't openly dishonest but they creep right up to the line while implying it's merely a matter of how often you cash in, never if.