Frayed Knot

In the non-U.S. born category I went all Canadian: HoF = Larry Walker All Star = Jason Bay Cy Young = Fergie Jenkins

Lindor slugs Silver What did the NBA Commissioner do to Francisco to deserve getting punched?

Yeah, that's a pretty bad slash line for '23 He never walked much so a .245 BA and the .286 OBA to go with it are bad enough. But then his power disappeared too: 100 of his 121 hits this past year were singles. 50 or so 'Isolated Slugging' points is Bud Harrelson/late-1960s territory.

Russo wouldn't know Mendoza if stuck on an elevator with him. He's just railing at analytics and the perception that, under Stearnes and just as Boone is under the current MFY regime, he'll be beholden to dictates from above rather than allowed to be a "real" manager like Bochy.

One of the ass't GMs will likely be the contact man to the agents for contract negotiations while Stearns makes the final decisions. I agree that not having a titled GM isn't a big deal. If nothing else it gives the POBO time to evaluate who he's got in house. You (Grimm) should go to the next press conference and point out the Mary/Lou analogy to Stearnes. You'll probably get tossed out of the room on your ass but it'll be totally worth it.

Essentially that just means that he's the GM for now.

He did slide. His mistake was either not going on contact and likely being thrown out at the plate but limiting the Mets to just one out, or staying on 3rd once both Olerud and the pivot man looked him back. He took the hybrid plan and broke too late forgetting that the 75 pounds of bulk he had recently acquired made not quite as swift as he was in his early years.

Frayed Knot wrote: This reduces the franchises without a WS title to their name to the Mariners, Padres, Rays, and Brewers Only the Mariners have failed to appear in a WS I neglected to note the Rox as a winless WS franchise, so it's five with only SEA failing to reach one. If you cut off history to include only the 'Super Bowl era' then CLE gets added to the non-WS champ list (last win in 1948) but not the non-appearance list. NFL franchises without a SB you ask? Twelve [bUF, CIN, CLE, JAX, HOU, TEN, LAC, DET, MIN, ATL, CAR, ARI] with three never appearing in one [CLE, HOU, DET] So how's that parity-inducing salary cap thing working?

$8mil/yr x 5 years for Counsell No other Mgr is the game is making as much as $5/per

One of those cheering voices at Shea for that play was mine. My friend Joe was about 10 seconds late in returning from the bathroom. Close enough to hear the cheers but too late to witness the magic (of Barry's poor baserunning).

=metirish post_id=140558 time=1699289754 user_id=72] Cleveland name Vogt as new manager, don't know if he was in the Mets radar or not

Swanson, not Lindor, wins the NL SS GG. Apparently the GGs were announced sometime last night on ESPN. I had no idea, so if the idea behind making pre-nominations weeks in advance was to generate interest leading up to the announcement of the awards I don't think it worked very well.

In a way, I kind of like that hs threw that many pitches. One doesn't train for longer games by throwing fewer pitches. And, again, he's 25.

A Boy Named Seo wrote: This is from earlier in the week in The Athletic: https://theathletic.com/4987867/2023/10/23/mets-yoshinobu-yamamoto-offseason/Yoshinobu Yamamoto, the Mets and the factors that could impact a potential pursuit This part had me twisted a little: Regarding Senga, some Japanese players are uncomfortable being major-league teammates with other Japanese players, The Athletic's Ken Rosenthal wrote earlier this year, because of the importance of seniority in Japan's hierarchical culture. Not Yamamoto. He is believed to have an open mind about the possibility of playing alongside another Japanese player. League sources said that Yamamoto's experience playing in the World Baseball Classic with other stars from Japan helped influence his thinking in that regard. What do yall make of that? Would this hierarchy be harder because there are less Japanese teammates and the dynamic would be more pronounced with only 2 dudes? I couldn't quite figure that one out. Seems like having a fellow countryman to help with a new city, new teammates, new culture, new languages would be more helpful than difficulties navigating seniority. It's mostly an age thing with the Japanese. The culture dictates always deferring to elders. I remember there was a case of two Japanese opponents meeting in an MLB game for the first time. I even forget now which players were involved, but when one of the two was asked if he was going to speak to the other prior to the game if he got the chance his reply was, 'Oh no, as the younger player it would not be proper for me to approach him. As the elder it would be up to him to decide if he wanted to initiate any conversation' [not an exact quote]. So, translated to the case of two players being the only Japanese teammates on an MLB team, the younger one might not want to be in a situation where he's disconnected to his western hemisphere teammates by language and culture while at the same time feeling he has to constantly remain deferential to his one countryman strictly due to age and out of respect to homeland manners and of not wanting his parents back home to feel they've raised an uncouth lad. As far as this particular and hypothetical case of Senga and the younger Yamamoto being teammates, perhaps the part about Y^2(*) 'having an open mind' about playing with a fellow countryman translates into him perhaps being bolder about not always clinging to old world customs in a new world environment. If he does show up here he'll come with a more highly touted pedigree, will almost certainly be better compensated than Senga and quite likely will be more accomplished (see below). He might take all that and be just brash enough to think: 'Maybe it's You who best be deferential to Me, Ghost Boy!' With the Japanese WS still yet to wrap up, Y^2 pitched the Orix Buffaloes into a Game 7 (presumably tonight) with a 14 K, 0 BB, 138 pitch CG 5-1 win over the Hanshin Tigers last night. Nice way to hit his expected FA period running. * Copyright Pending

They got to the ALCS in 1995, 2000, and 2001, losing 4-2, 4-2, and 4-1 But all they've got to show since then is a 2-0 WC win (vs TOR) followed by 3-0 ALDS sweep loss last year to eventual champ Houston with 21 seasons of nuthin' in between.

I'll give Russo this, he probably pays More attention to baseball than just about any sports-yakker with a national platform. Now maybe that's not saying much as national sports talk now essentially consists of: 'We interrupt this football talk to bring you football talk'. Many in that business are either indifferent to, or ignorant of, baseball while the rest openly despise the sport and the fact that they're forced to acknowledge its existence on occasion. But Mad Dog genuinely likes baseball, enjoys talking about it, and is up to date on what's what and who's who. It's likely the reason (or at least A reason) why he landed a slot on MLBN despite not being a baseball-only guy. Does that make him 'smart' about it? Depends on how you define it I suppose. I mentioned up the thread somewhere that he's big on home field as a factor and that could be expanded to say that anything one could call an 'intangible' is going to rate highly with him. Not surprisingly he's not a fan of analytics [neither was his ex-partner as the two fo them tag-teamed on Michael Lewis to savage MONEYBALL despite neither one having read it] and will get into heated arguments with 'stat-heads' on MLBN. Not the arguments I'd make but I'd stop short of saying that makes him stupid and certainly not ill-informed. Mostly over the years I've found him to be exasperatingly and often times comically stupid on just about any NON-sports topic to the point where I'd wonder at times if he could actually tie his own

This reduces the franchises without a WS title to their name to the Mariners, Padres, Rays, and Brewers Only the Mariners have failed to appear in a WS And speaking of post-season success (or lack there of) for those keeping track (meaning: me) this keeps the number of MLB teams with a WS title during the last 20 years at 13 as the Rangers jump on that list just as the Marlins and their 2003 title fall off it. 19 different teams have played in the last 20 World Series. And the Diamondbacks had been one of the five teams who hadn't appeared in one or the other LCS in that time [2001] but they now jump off that list while the Marlins jump on it. Reds, Pirates, Mariners, and Twins are the current others.

It was a weird series in a lot of ways. Arizona out-hit Texas 47 - 38 over the five games but got outscored 26 - 22 and even that takes in their 9-1 Game 2 win plus the garbage time runs they scored late in Game 4 after they were already down 10-0 (game wound up 11-7). But the Rangers did what the Yanx used to always seem to do and that's to somehow manage to bunch their hits together. They did it all series long but no better example of it than Game 5 when they were no-hit for 6 innings before finally getting a cue ball down the LF line to open the 7th. Two pitches later they had their second hit and two pitches after that got their third and a lead they'd never relinquish. While this was going on the DBacks had runners on all over the early innings and managed to strand all of them. - ARZ made two errors in the series and Texas cashed in big after both of them (5 of their 26 runs were unearned). - prior to their late inning runs in Game 5, virtually ALL of Texas's runs in the first four games came after two were out - not only did Texas win all three games in Phoenix they won all 11 road games they played in the post-season, beating 99 win Tampa, 101 win Baltimore, and defending champ Houston eight consecutive times on the road.

Last meaningful baseball game for the next 148 days

So now the longest running Dallas area team without a championship is ... How 'bout them Cowboys! In fact each of the Mavs, Rangers, and Stars have won titles since the 'Boys have been to an NFC title game.

Kevin Burkhardt dislikes the nickname hung on him by his FOX football colleagues.

The '23 Mets didn't invent as many ways to NOT score the the DBacks have in this series. One BB allowed, but Gallen is now hitless thru six

Gallen is perfect thru 4 with only 35 pitches thrown. Given the (lack of) success and the (over) use of the ARZ pen, Louvello needs to ride this horse til it drops tonight.

Garcia being out means the WS now has some hot, smoking Travis Jankowski action.

also by my own stupidity I found out that it wasn't "first round pick by team in question" but first round pick that played with team in question (but could be picked by any team in the first round ) Yeah, I just found that out when they showed Adam Wainwright as the most common answer for StL even though he was drafted by Atlanta. For the NYM pick in that category I almost got too cute by picking Steve Chilcott before remembering that he never reached the majors and so would gave been rejected. Dennis Ribant for my NYM/PIT netted me a 0.07% score