Frayed Knot

Put another way, "all the Zach Pops", aka: the eight pitchers on the 2025 NYM staff who threw the fewest amount of innings (minus Torrens & Jankowski), combined to pitch less than one percent of all innings for the season. So the combined angst about how David Stearns 'done us wrong' by signing all these replacement level pitchers to all these 'catch-and-release' deals, is vastly over-blown. iow: the 8 pitchers (not including Torrens & Jankowski) at the back of the bullpen combined to throw a combined 12 innings, or less than one percent, of all innings pitched for the 2025 NYM [12 of 1,432 = 0.084%]. Otherwise known as: this is hardly a topic to worry oneself over, much one to carp about it time and time and time again.

Well now, Zach Pop did face 9 batters for the Mets in 2025 (one more than Luis Torres and three more than Travis Jankowski) so I can see how equating his signing with that of Freddie Peralta is a valid comparison.

MLB.com releases its off-season list Mets: #100 - Brandon Sproat (now Brewers) #97 - AJ Ewing #51 - Jett Williams (now Brewers) #48 - Jonah Tong #16 - Carson Benge #6 - Nolan McLean Top Ten: 10 - Max Clark - OF - Tigers #9 - Colt Emerson - Mariners #8 - Samuel Basalo - C - Orioles #7 - Sebastian Walcott - SS - Rangers #6 - Nolan McLean - RHP - Mets #5 - JJ Wetherholt - SS - Cardinals #4 - Leo De Vries - SS - Athletics #3 - Jesus Made - SS - Brewers #2 - Kevin McGonigle - SS - Tigers #1 - Konnor Griffin - SS - Pirates

It's not often that MLB gets the names Gore and Vidal into the news on consecutive days.

Big trade involving the Rangers and Nationals as Texas packages FIVE prospects, including their 2025 1st round pick, in exchange for LHP MacKenzie Gore Rangers receive: LHP MacKenzie Gore Nationals receive: SS Gavin Fien (12th overall pick in 2025), RHP Alejandro Rosario (Top-50 prospect in pre-2025 lists), SS Devin Fitz-Gerald, OF Yeremy Cabrera (No. 16) and IB/OF Abimelec Ortiz You may remember that Gore, once a 3rd overall draft pick (2017), was the big prize going to Washington in the deal which sent Juan Soto to San Diego

And while I'm certainly not counting on a Luis Robert return to his 2nd RoY and mid-pack MVP years, he is only two seasons removed from an All-Star/Silver-Slugger/130 OPS+/12th MVP year (2023), plus he doesn't even turn 29 until August. So that puts him into a category where a bounce-back is at least plausible. iow, he's not some old guy where you hope he can suddenly dial it back a half-decade or more and any rebound that does occur is likely more of a short-term 'dead cat bounce' kind of deal than it is a fountain of youth.

Acuna came here because Cohen was willing to eat a lot of money, and now he goes away because Cohen is willing to take on a lot of money. Robert is due $20mil this year and also $20 more next season or a $2mil buyout. iow, unless Robert suddenly rediscovers his 2021-23 form [.287/.331/.511; 130 OPS+ over 311 G/1,392 PA] while also maintaining his elite defensive rep, he's essentially a 22 million dollar, one-year stop-gap.

HoF'ers Frank Thomas and Jeff Bagwell share an exact birth date (5/27/68) although were not in the same HoF class.

My statement had nothing to do with liking (or not) any particular player.

Major League Baseball owners are “raging” in the wake of Kyle Tucker’s free agency agreement with the Los Angeles Dodgers and it is now “a 100 percent certainty” that the owners will push for a salary cap, one person briefed on ownership conversations who was not authorized to speak publicly told The Athletic. “These guys are going to go for a cap no matter what it takes,” the source said. So begins a piece in The Athletic by Evan Drellich The idea of the owners trying to push a salary cap has been hinted at for a while now but this leak seems to all but chisel it in stone. The article also cites the Bo Bichette signing as an impetus to push a ceiling and suggests that the Dodgers and Mets 'might be the only teams that will try and stand in the way of a cap'. That may or may not be an accurate assessment [Me: I can't see the Yanquis suddenly supporting one for instance] but at least eight owners would have to join forces in order to nix the idea. But of course division within ownership ranks is hardly the biggest obstacle to a cap. They're going to try to sell the idea of a cap matched with a salary floor in order to get the players union to even consider it [me: and I doubt even that will be enough]. Better revenue sharing will also be a strategy but there's a limit to how easily the owners (at least half of them anyway) will agree on that. There's not really a ton to talk about now since even the beginning of negotiations is at least two months away. So just consider this to be the opening chapter of our next (at least) year-long thread.

I'm good with Beltran ... not so much on Andruw.

Last I read, he was at an impasse with the Yanx as he was asking for seven years and the Yanx unwilling to go more than five.

re: Wilbur Wood I went looking for what I remembered as having happened but wasn’t sure if it was true, and that involved Wood starting both ends of a DH. And I was right, I did actually find one (maybe there are one or two more, not sure) although it appeared to be more an accident of circumstances rather than something pre-planned. Plus the results weren’t all that pretty. 7/20/73, YS1, Friday, Game 1 of a twi-night DH, Wood faces six batters in the bottom of the 1st and doesn’t retire a single one. - he actually K’d leadoff man Horace Clark but he reached on a passed ball and stole 2nd - Matty Alou walked before Roy White doubled in 2 and Bobby Murcer singled in White - Thurman Munson followed with a double before Graig Nettles singled in both of them and that was it for Wood. The nightcap was only better by comparison: Wood pitched 4.1 allowing 5 runs on 7 hits. The Yanx swept the DH on a combined score of 19-2 The other thing I found (while looking for the first) was that in 1971, his first as a full time starter, Wood started four of the White Sox’ first nine games of the season [on 4/15, 4/18, 4/22, 4/25]. He lost 2-1 in 11 innings in the opener (he pitched the first nine) but following it up with CG shut-outs in each of the next three. He'd start 42 games that year and follow it up with seasons of 49, 48, 42, and 43 starts for the years 1972-75, combining for 736 innings pitched just in '72 & '73

Ha-seong Kim, expected to be the Braves starting SS this season, will be out "four to five months" (presumably from now) following surgery to repair a torn tendon in his right middle finger sustained when he fell on ice back in his native Korea. The Braves selected him off waivers from Tampa in September '25 and then was signed to a one year contract in the off-season. Kim won a Gold Glove with San Diego in 2023 but has been limited by injuries in the two seasons since.

Yeah, I remember that joke from childhood, only it was a thrown tin can into the street.

Aside from his injury-riddled and outlier of a season in 2024, Bichette's career OBP is close to .350, so he's clearly a lead-off candidate. Even Nimmo's OPB wasn't that high since 2023

The Phils react to having Bo swiped out from under their nose by resigning JT Realmuto to a three year deal. He turns 35 during ST and is coming off his first sub-100 OPS+ season (91) since his rookie campaign in 2015 with Miami (92). During the nine year run in between [2016-2024 - 3 w/MIA, 6 w/PHI) he averaged 114 OPS+ and 132 G/yr (once you filter out 2020) as a backstop and twice a Gold Glove winner. What he's got going forward for 2026 thru 2028 is almost certainly going to be a significant cut below all that.

The new site has (or is going to have) a forum!!!!

The Guardians transfer $1.5 of international pool money from their account to the account of the Mets so that the former has that much less to spend this year and the latter the same amount more because, just like energy in the universe, international pool money cannot be created or destroyed, merely transformed from one form into another. Everyone knows it's Wandy Said to be the second best int'l prospect as the new signing period begins, the 16 y/o lefty hitting SS was thought to be headed to the Yanx but then backed away after the team fired their international scouting director last month. Here he is hiding his stormy eyes. [FIMG=300]https://pbs.twimg.com/media/G-uRS7abIAAdWrT?format=jpg&name=small[/FIMG]

The Puma says the Mets have offered a fourth year, presumably at, or at least close to, the same $50 AAV

Yup! And probably a couple other seasons in the early '20s as well. NYY = 158 (Ruth + Gehrig = 107) PHA = 56 SLB = 55 DET = 51 CHW = 36 WAS = 29 BOS = 28 CLE = 26 This means that the NYY other than Ruth & Gehrig out-homered more than half of their opponents. Also: Cleveland all year = 26; Ruth in September = 17 In the NL, the Giants (109), Cards (84), and Cubs (74) out-HR'd G.H.R. that year.

Most of them shouldn’t have been there Well, if the of the pitchers who should have been there actually were there then a chunk of those 46 wouldn't have been needed. btw, of those 64 pitchers that Babe faced back 99 seasons ago, he homered off of more than half of them (33). Obviously that means he took various guys deep multiple times with two poor souls leading the parade at four taters served up each. Boston wound up being the team victimized most often (11) that year ... because of course they were. Final note: one thing I noticed in flipping through the box scores for the Yanx in that '27 season is that they just bludgeoned opponents on a daily basis. 110-41 (and one tie) was their record for the year (plus 4-0 in the WS) and a 975 to 599 RS/RA gap, or right about a 1.63/1 ratio. They were more than 200 runs scored better than lg avg and 131 ahead of the second place club. In runs allowed they were 157 below the lg avg and let up 103 fewer than the runner up. If that kind of dominance has been bettered over an entire season by anyone in any year in MLB I'd be very surprised.

Plus he's only 29 (or will be come Saturday) so there should be at least a bit less reluctance to go longer term.

I have a weird analogy concerning the last two MLB commissions, but I'm sticking with it anyway: Selig and Manfred are the Bob Dole and Newt Gingrich of commissioners. Bob Dole was a Republican leader, in title or otherwise, like, forever. But he never had his name on a single piece of legislation unless it was one of those tack-on co-sponsor deals. He simply worked behind the scenes, made deals, counted votes, and didn't get out in front of an issue until he knew the vote was going in his party's favor. Selig was like this. Keeping all his cards close to the vest and only announcing a new policy once he knew the votes were in the bag. Gingrich, on the other hand, used to throw out ten ideas a week only to have his own staff tell him that seven were non-starters and should never be mentioned again while two others could maybe pass in the future but only after heavy editing. That left him no choice but to turn his energies to the one good idea from his list. This is more the way Manfred governs, not afraid to publicly air fifteen changes that MLB might consider before eventually settling for the two or three best received ones.

Not splitting a season into halves a la 1981, more like interrupting (for lack of a better word) the season for an in-season tourney such as the NBA has been doing for the last 2-3 seasons. Either way it's still a terribly awful idea (I don't even understand the whys and hows behind the NBA version) and, especially with rising attendance since the advent of the sped-up game, it's not clear what about the regular season he thinks needs spicing up. Manfred likes to float ideas out there, probably to gauge reaction -- as opposed to Selig who wouldn't even mention an idea until it was a done deal -- so this doesn't mean anything is set in stone.