Frayed Knot

What I learned today was that there were a bunch of pitchers who pitched briefly for SDP that I have no memory of them pitching for SDP: David Wells, Randy Johnson, Bartolo Colon, Greg Maddox, etc. Some of those names would have been useful in filling out the grid. Also, that Yu Darvish has 1,929 career strike outs.

I either don't remember him or simply keep conflating him with all the other Yolmers we've had over the years.

I wasn't advocating for a full abandonment of Sat night games although I thought going almost exclusively to them was overkill the other way so I do like that they cut back. And, yeah Apr & May Sat night games were moronic.

Jesus Made Good, but not as good as Jesus Wept

These include shortstops Leandy Mella and Yensi Rivas, along with catcher Yovanny Rodriguez and outfielder Edward Lantigua. First guy who says that they shouldn't be signing catchers and shortstops cuz we're already set at those spots is gonna get hit.

Maybe the biggest knock on him is that he doesn't go very deep into games, like even by today's standards, although some of that falls on the managers he's had and the organizational philosophies of the teams he's been on, particularly Tampa.

=G-Fafif post_id=144977 time=1705126617 user_id=55] Diego Castillo DFA'd to clear space for Sean Manaea.

Edgy MD wrote: Well, I know I never complained about retired numbers. I thought that was something the Mets historically did more or less right, and now I think they don't. There are plenty of good ways to celebrate history — many that are yet to be tried. Allowing ourselves to get into a cold war race with other teams in inflating legacies seems so half thought out. This! On the field, I can't complain about spending to get Scherzer because the idea was to pair him with the all-world ace deGrom and have a studly top of the rotation, or at least one ace when one or the other went down. The [2002??] deadline deals sucked, but they didn't want to give up what little prospect capital they had. I'm not complaining about Scherzer or any of the FA market deals specifically. The problem was that trying to remake the team all at once by signing older players and/or ones on the final year of their contracts led to a situation where yearly remakes were needed each winter--particularly so because there was such limited minor league capital--when those older and short-term players turned out to be old and short term. I understand why he did it but it was a high wire act which worked right up until the time when it didn't. I'm assuming you mean the 2022 deadline deals up there but those (and the 2021 deals) Did give up limited prospect capital and for very little in return all for a 'go-now' approach which was then abandoned by the time the next season was halfway done. Having said all that, if you're going to reverse course I like that it was done decisively and that he used his bankroll to do it the best way moving forward rather than to simply dump payroll. You just hope now that, particularly with POBO Stearns in place, there's more of a coherent plan in place as opposed to having to remake things on the fly each winter, a plan that almost immediately goes awry when it turns out that other teams are going to be high bidders for that year's dream acquisition too [see: Yamamoto, Y.]. As I said starting off this thread, this isn't a final assessment but more of a first semester report card where there were some positives but some negatives as well. I think what this last year or so has mainly been is a bucketful of cold water on the heads of those Met fans who thought that a moneybags owner was going to instantly solve everything (I wasn't one of them). Look, the Wilpons were lousy owners. But it wasn't because they didn't want to win, or that they didn't care, or were secretly were rooting for the Dodgers, or even that they were cheap or underfunded (at least until Madoff). The problem was that they just didn't know how to be good ones. So in addition to the whole deal about acting as if the teams' history began the day they took ownership, the bigger problems being that they were reluctant to delegate any real power away from themselves and that they simply lacked the vision to see what might be possible beyond whatever circumstances existed in the present. In Bud Selig's (mostly forgettable) book, he relayed the story about how news of George Steinbrenner's then shocking $40-50 mil/yr cable deal with MSG Network was made public during an owner's meeting. Steinbrenner wasn't in the room but Fred's immediate reaction was to disbelieve the figures. He didn't think those kind of numbers were real because he never dreamed they were possible. He was quite happy at that time with the payouts from the long-term cable deal he had (not entirely his fault as it was the one Doubleday negotiated against advice from MLB for being too long) but Fred had no idea up to that moment that his kind of deal was already in the process of becoming a dinosaur. By the time that deal did come up, and the 'Pons paid dearly to slip out of its final year, they were then Johnny-come-latelys to the idea of their own network as well as to analytics and other more modern tools right up until the Madoff scandal led to the house of cards collapsing. What we know now is that Steve has a lot more money and that certainly helps. But it also doesn't cure everything and it remains to be seen what direction this team takes under his watch and whether he can find a plan he likes and stick to it while letting the baseball pros do their job. Not waking up in the middle of the night and deciding to throw long-term money (presumably without the GM's knowledge) at the recently rejected (and fielding position already taken) Carlos Correa only to then slink out of it by re-hiring the doctor who had already rejected him in order to see if he'd approve him this time, for instance, would be a nice start.

Johnny Lunchbucket wrote: In a matter of taste, I don't think they needed to add fireworks to the home run apple. That's on Steve! I could do without the smoke show as the players come out of the dugout ... but I'm old so no one cares what I think about such stuff.

=kcmets post_id=144948 time=1705090102 user_id=53] Maybe Stearns is one of those guys who thinks he can get gold out of pyrite ...

Edgy MD wrote: ... as Harrelson spent the 1964 season in Salinas, California. Good thing we didn't let him slip away.

=kcmets post_id=144853 time=1704996475 user_id=53] What I found out was that Bud and Seaver were road roomies. I don't think I knew that until just NOW!!!

Report on Metsmerized site says that "the Mets have $10 million left to spend". Based on?

'The Throwing Philosopher' Imanga to the Cubs

I've been mulling over this topic for a while now and I think it's time for a thread. Not that we'll be rendering final judgements or anything this early in the game, but maybe something more akin to a first year/first semester report card. On Field Assessment: The initial spending spree certainly signaled that things had changed and it was nice to see particularly as it was coming on the heels of the under-spending during the previous administration's post-Madoff years. But, sort of like a new President signing a bunch of Executive Orders 20 minutes after taking the oath, that kind of thing only gets you so far. Then you have to sit down and do the real work and I think the verdict on that work can be described as maybe a C+ at best. OK, the new guy wanted to make a splash by grabbing headlines and hopefully getting the team into the upper part of the standings in a hurry. Fine, I get it, and, in the short term, it worked. Good for him, good for us. That they didn't go further in that year's post-season shouldn't be seen as a reflection on that roster or the process that got them there. But the leftover problem is that ‘Watch me spend!' isn't a strategy, it's more like a conceit really, and when many of those short term fixes that worked in '22 either had to duplicate their results in '23 or left and had to replaced by new short term fixes, the success rate wasn't nearly as good. So what that left was a pitching staff that hasn't merely been augmented by short term fixes from aging vets but one that has been expected to be anchored by those guys. That all resulted in the likes of Stroman for two seasons, Taijuan Walker for two, Carlos Carrasco for two, Chris Bassitt for one and, most notably, Scherzer for 42 starts and Verlander for 16. This leaves only Senga and Quintana as holdovers going forward from the second wave of FA/trades and we're already into our third. There was a bit more (mostly inherited) youth and stability on the offensive side but still, 2022 import successes Canha and Marte were gone and barely there in '23 leaving the team's run scoring prowess in an even worse state than the run preventing. So is there ‘A Plan!!!' ? Too soon to tell I think, but certainly not a consistent one as of yet. The early ‘Win Now!' phase saw the likes of Pete Crow-Armstrong dealt for two months of exciting-tho-flawed Javy Baez, plus the disaster that was Darrin Ruf obtained for JD Davis plus three minor leaguers. I mean, even before Ruf bombed beyond all expectations one could look at that equation and say, ‘Are you kidding me'? It reeks of someone that wanted to make a deal so as to show he made a deal without regard to the cost. ‘Oh, it's going to take Scott Kazmir to get Victor Zambrano? … OK, Sure!' Then he pulled a 180 last July but denied it was any kind of rebuild. So are they still in ‘Win Now' mode? A rebuilding mode? A hybrid of some sorts? Or is he going to lurch from one strategy to the other like the Wilpons who found themselves forever chasing the Last fashionable trend just as smarter teams had moved on to something newer? The one encouraging sign is that, during the sell-off of last July, Steve realized the folly of clinging to sunk costs and put his financial clout to use by eating the majority of the outgoing contracts in order to secure a higher caliber of prospects in return. It remains to be seen whether this signals a newly found patience and realization that remaking the team each year by throwing money around on the open market is both a limited and high risk tactic. And, finally, we'll have to see how the new POBO affects things. Is Sterns going to have [Minaya]full autonomy[/Minaya] or is Steve going to periodically go over his head whenever this year's shiny new bauble catches his eye a la early GMS III or a baseball version of Jerry Jones? There was another fresh owner who came into his sport touting himself as a longtime super fan of the team he just bought and proceeded to chase stars and spend beyond the cap all while talking about tradition etc. So how did that Daniel Snyder guy eventually work out anyway? Not a perfect analogy I realize, but perhaps a cautionary tale. Off Field: To some extent, there's stuff to like: mainly that he was and is a fan and that he recognizes that the team has a history prior to him taking majority ownership, something the previous administration seemed to miss. On the other hand, I'm not sure if he knows when (or even if) to stop. - the Mondo Scoreboard: OK, fine. But it's really just another reflection of ‘Watch me Spend'. Showy, but not an improvement on the field which means it can be seen as a distraction from the lack of improvement on the field. - The spree of number retirements. You don't need to hear from me again how I think it's already gone way too far but the real problem is that I don't see any sign that it's going to stop anytime soon. Again, it's like he's doing it in order to show that he can. - And now apparently we're going to have dancing girls [on the dugouts? in the on-deck circles? with the grounds crew?]. I don't even know where to start.

Just shoot me now.

Teoscar Hernandez to ... the Dodgers on a one yer deal.

Don't look now, but our pitching staff has consisted almost entirely of stop-gap acquisitions over the last few years. The crew below were all acquired from outside the org in the Cohen era and combined to make 334 starts. Yet only two made as many as 50 starts (61 & 59), just three remain on the 40-man, and only two (Senga and Quintana) are likely to make a significant number of starts going forward. Pitcher Acquired APP/Starts 1st NYM G Last NYM G Marcus Stroman FA 44 / 44 3/28/19 10/2/21 Max Scherzer FA 42 / 42 4/8/22 7/28/23 Chris Bassitt Trade 30 / 30 4/9/22 10/2/22 Carlos Carrasco Trade 61 / 61 7/30/21 8/26/23 Taijuan Walker FA 59 / 58 4/8/21 10/4/22 Rich Hill Trade 13 / 12 7/25/21 9/30/21 Joey Lucchesi Trade 20 / 17 8/7/21 ?? Trevor Williams Trade 40 / 12 8/12/21 10/5/22 Justin Verlander FA 16 / 16 5/4/23 7/30/23 Jose Quintana FA 13 / 13 7/20/23 ?? Kodai Senga FA 29 / 29 4/2/23 ??

This entire pitching staff has been full of stop-gap moves for several years now.

The Ravens have, I believe, a statue of Ray Lewis outside their stadium. All he did was help in a cover-up of a double murder.

Manaea, two year deal (though opt-out after one) - Hey Man! https://nypost.com/2024/01/07/sports/mets-sign-sean-manaea-to-two-year-28m-deal/https://nypost.com/2024/01/07/sports/mets-sign-sean-manaea-to-two-year-28m-deal/

They also gave Sale an extension so he'll be there thru '25 at least.

I punted on the entire thing. I have no idea how you people remember this stuff.

What could this mean ? That the Mets have decided on a new Pope for their organization.

Nice second act in Houston after it looked like injuries had derailed an early promising career.