Frayed Knot

I think he'll be gud 'n stuf

Just watched the sequence; the best thing about that AB is that it started out 0-2 against a guy throwing 100+ Maybe this helps nudge along the notion that there's room in this game for contact hitters.

They can do it however they want, but if each change is going to take 2 to 2-1/2 minutes it hardly matters whether they cut away or not and nobody, not within the game or even the writers who are suggesting all kinds of stuff, are mentioning this huge area of dead time.

Well, the number of pitchers used per game has measurably increased over the years and every one that occurs mid-inning adds a break in the action at least as long as the two-plus minute gap in between innings.

Luis G also started the game today with a defensive gem at 2B

Edgy MD wrote: There are three guys in the booth, but Ron Darling's is the only voice I recognized. They're running the gauntlet from A to Z today with Apple and Zeile

=Ceetar post_id=57890 time=1615744888 user_id=102] Sure but they're contributing to making each of those pitching changes take 3 minutes+... but I do think if they commited to hurrying the guy in, having him through 8 pitches, and going, instead of demanding teh full commercial break every time. ESPECIALLY if you don't cut away.

My objection to the shift-ban is that for every part of extra ground the defense is covering by using a shift (extreme or otherwise) they are, by definition, leaving other parts of the field Less covered and it's up to the offense to exploit That. But hitters have decided to hit with one form of offense [pull, launch angle] and don't want to be bothered with another, and mgmt doesn't seem to want to find or use all-field/contact type of players. The hitters and the teams that do that won't find themselves facing extreme shifts.

I'd rather they experiment in the minors as opposed to deciding they've got the next great idea and simply implement it in the majors. Not that I'm going to like all the experiments but I'm willing to consider just about anything.

For some reason Farmingdale sticks in my head, but I have nothing to back that up. (cross-posted with Greg)

=TransMonk post_id=57647 time=1615323805 user_id=71] I've seen several level swings producing opposite field hits today. I like it.

I certainly remember him as being somewhat erratic defensively; probably more raw athleticism and more than likely to make the tough play as compared to JDD but at the same time less consistent and more wild with throws.

So, is this it? I dunno ... Third Base https://nypost.com/2021/03/08/mets-among-teams-in-talks-with-third-baseman-maikel-franco/Mets among teams in talks with Maikel Franco Not that the one-time Philly Phenom is anyone's answer to hot corner defensive woes but he had a decent season in KC last year [.278/.321/.457] while playing in all 60 games and has hit 25 HRs in a season including 71 over a three-year span [2016-18]. Still just 28 y/o (29 in Aug)

Even without him playing a meaningful game for us yet, it would suck to find ourselves sans Francisco a year from now.

Now that I have a chance to check, there are 12 home Friday night games on the sked this season and 8 Saturday night home games So maybe S-A-T-U-R-D-A-Y ... NIGHT! is the way to go if they insist on doing so.

I care less [ab]out the subtleties of unis than most of the crowd here so I'll stop short of "abomination", but the rarer the better for me. Pick a time/occasion-- Friday night home games might be a good one -- and don't push it beyond that. That'll give it 10, maybe 12, appearances during the year which should satisfy those who like(d) em and move enough merch for the club's liking.

Relievers: Can't live without 'em, can't shoot 'em.

=whippoorwill post_id=57378 time=1614886498 user_id=79] Mets game was on the TV at Ruby Tuesdays but I couldn't read it

Yanx manager Aaron Boone is taking an immediate leave of absence to have a pacemaker installed . Surgery to be done later today. Boone, 47, has had heart issues going back to his college days, but this is still a big whoa!!

Back to Kelenic for a second (the ballplayer, not the band). The Mariners actually have a good case for not promoting him. Between his age [not 22 until July] and his (lack of) experience [663 total ABs as a pro, just 83 of them above A-Ball] to promote him off that could be considered the definition of rushing him. Covid, of course, has a lot to do with that but neither side is to blame there. For comparison, Wright, also a HS draftee, had ~1,500 ABs with 337 at AA or AAA when he got called up; Reyes, who started younger and may have been somewhat rushed, had 1,262 / 435; Dom had racked up 2,300 / 1,000+ and at this time last year many Met fans were hoping he'd be a throw-in on a trade package Again, the M's biggest problem was essentially admitting that delaying his service time was their reason for holding off on his promotion and seemed to only fall back on the lack of games and ABs after catching flack for it.

I just wonder sometimes if we're not anticipating more problems than are warranted.

I'm one of the 'Little Disappointed' votes. He might be a handful at times and has admitted he doesn't have a lot of friends inside baseball, but that's always been the case for him. He was essentially a science nerd in HS (he graduated from HS a year early) who also just also happened to be big and strong and good at sports. But he was too nerdy for the jocks and too jocky for the nerds so he's always gone his own way. He and current MFY Gerritt Cole didn't get along at UCLA (although both claim the degree of animosity has been overblown) but I also don't know that there's a history with him and past ML teammates that caused any big rift in clubhouses. He's clashed with coaches now and then (not necessarily a bad thing IMO) particularly in Arizona when he didn't agree with the training methods that he and his father worked out in the same way that Tim Lincecum (a guy Bauer at least in part modeled himself after) didn't want the non-standard way of doing things that he and his pop concocted altered either. The Snakes got rid of him to Cleveland fairly quickly (as part of a massive three-way deal) but the Indians hung onto him for six-plus seasons and the biggest issue I remember from there was the time his post-season start was (quite literally) cut short due to an injured finger he got while trying to fix his toy drone. I also don't read Twitter so I don't particularly give a shit who he's jousting with over there and I'm usually pretty cautious about there often being a gap between what somebody actually said vs hearing what some folks claim said person said. And I'm sure he'd have sparred with the press at times but the number of media outlets is so vast these days that I think the long-held view of the vaunted NY media's ability to 'make or break' certain guys is mostly a relic of the past. Some here have made reference to his career numbers but he was also in the majors by 21 and a full-time starter by 23. Over the past three seasons/72 starts he has a 3.18 ERA (144 ERA+), 1.12 WHIP, 11.2 K/9, a 1st & 6th in CY voting. He just turned 30 and would have been on a short-term contract. But he chose not to be here so I'm not going to lament what might have been. But I'm also not going to celebrate that he joined the NL's already-strongest team nor, absent future evidence, believe that we dodged a bullet when he chose to reject our offer.

A similar thing happened with Salary Arbitration a bunch of years back. Originally, salary arb was after just two years. The owners cried poverty and, in a rare example of an MLBPA give-back in those days, they agreed to move it to three years. The owners then did what they were used to doing if given an inch, they took a mile by doing the "late" call-up thing and effectively turned arbitration into a four-year deal. That got fixed in the next round of negotiations and what they settled on was a cut-off with no specific date but rather one that involved all players with 3+ years of service plus approx 1/6 of those with between two and three years. So the deadline became around the end of May but it was impossible to know exactly what date was "safe" to call up a player because it depended on other players on other teams over which you had no control. If there were 60 players with more than two but less than three seasons of service, the ten who had to most time under their belts would qualify for arbitration while the other 50 did not. Clubs could still try to manipulate but it was harder and the stakes less stark than a Freedom/no-freedom situation. One would think a future FA threshold would resemble something like that as well, although there's been talk of a sliding scale based on the age of first call-up. Older players would be tied to a team for a shorter period so wouldn't have to wait until their early 30's for their first crack at FA-gency while clubs would Not get extra years of control by delaying a player's call-up.

[vaudeville]"If I could walk that way I wouldn't need the talcum powder"[/vaudeville]

The thing the Mariners did wrong here was to basically telegraph their move and their reason for it. I mean, it's legal and there's nothing Kelenic can do about it -- at least while still under this CBA which doesn't have long to live anyway so this may become a moot point (or, as it was often called on the MoFo, a 'Mute' point but that was also the forum which brought you the 'Pre-Madonna' ballplayer) -- but it's not going to build any good will with their player going forward. Maybe that matters, maybe it never does. Like I said, there's a good chance that the rules are different by this time next year. In all, it hasn't been a good week for Seattle execs speaking out. When the Cubs did this with Kris Bryant they brought him up the day after he was assured of belonging to the Cubs for a 7th season. iow, they didn't say they were doing so ahead of time, but then they probed that that was exactly what they were doing. Bryant later filed a grievance against them (two years ago?) but lost seeing as how he was arguing against a work condition that his union agreed to. 2021 is now the extra year that the Cubs got out of him and they're (maybe) actively trying to trade him so yaneverknow.