Frayed Knot

VERY surprised that he had a green light there ... and that (the subsequent GiDP) is why!!

Tangible Tension = It's being talked about because it's being talked about.

Well, if Mickey is going to get fired for getting swept in this series, it's going to happen sooner than he expected. As the 7th inning was getting ready to start in our game, the other EDT games, all of which were at least scheduled for a first pitch at either 1:05 or 1:10, were in the: - Top 3rd in Philly - Top 2nd in Boston - Top 4th in the Bronx - Top 5th in Cincy - Bottom 4th in Cleveland - Top 5th in Detroit - Top 5th in Atlanta (1:20 start)

His "team sources" are used to say that: - Callaway "won't be fired this weekend" ... which I guess means today. Well, shyeeet, I could have told you that. - and that his moves "cause eyes to be rolled in the clubhouse" Were there eyewitnesses to this eye-rolling? And how large a factor of eye-rolling was there (computed as ER+ perhaps?) as compared to those clubhouses where every player loves every move the manager makes including the ones that reduce his playing time?

Edgy MD wrote: Callaway safe ... https://www.yahoo.com/sports/sources-mets-manager-mickey-callaway-safe-through-the-weekend-015414187.htmlthrough the weekend. Whether Callaway gets fired tomorrow, next week, or never, that article is a mess of conjecture and just plain bad writing.

Just effing pathetic. You could understand Game #2 vs Gnats with the pitching matchup badly tilted against us. But the three games since have each been so pathetic in their own ways that it's tough to pick which was the worse, which the worser, and which wins the prize as the worsest.

1111111

I know how we can speed up baseball, just start all Met hitters with an 0-2 count because that's where it's going to be after two pitches anyway!

So in addition to the 12 Mets in a row retired since McNeil's first pitch double, I'm not sure the next dozen have gotten a ball out of the infield in that time, even the ones who didn't strike out.

And now we're the victim of Cano

We got burned by the tack-on runs yesterday, and may be victim of them again tonight. But if you're Don Mattingly and you've got an Anderson and a Cooper batting back to back in your lineup, how do you have them slotted in the opposite order? That just shouldn't be allowed.

I was thinking, even prior to the game-ending K yesterday, that it was only a matter of time for Broxton. His strengths were said to be defense and at least sporadic power, but he really didn't display much of either -- 7 hits w/6 being singles, and there was nothing special about the way he played the OF He and Lagares were pretty much redundant and JL has looked much better (and is *SO FAR* healthy) in the limited role either was going to fill. And then there's the: .143/.208/.163 with 22 Ks over 49 ABs which is about all of an explanation that's needed

Couple of umpiring observations there: On Jerry Crawford -- there's no way he could have missed any of the ball/strike calls on Sutcliffe because he swore, back when he was interviewed the HBO: REAL SPORTS story concerning Robo-ump a year or two ago, that HE NEVER MISSED A SINGLE CALL! In fact, he went on to claim, none of the umpires he worked with ever missed one either so there's no way the electronic version could be an improvement. Joe West -- my total non-baseball fan brother in law somehow found himself down a YouTube rabbit hole recently scanning baseball argument & blooper reel kind of stuff and made a few observations that he stored away so as to ask me about next time we talked. 1) he found out, for the very first time I believe, that Joe West was an umpire which is only significant because he went to high school with Joe West. Didn't really know him as West is a couple years older but knew of him as West was the upper-classman/star quarterback in town which tends to get you noticed & remembered, particularly so in the south (eastern NC) 2) he further hit upon some sites which informed him that the same Joe West is said to be the worst umpire in baseball so he wanted to know if that was true. "Apparently" he said, "the consensus seems to be that it's either West or some guy named Angel something". I got a kick out of a total non-fan, having probably never spent 30 seconds of his life thinking about MLB umpires, hitting upon those as his first facts just from a half-hour or so of mindless web surfing.

Well, this was the one game in the series where the pitching matchup was decidedly NOT in our favor. Would have been nice if we could have kept it a bit more competitive though. I do like the fact that the Nats feel compelled to go to their closer -- and, really, their one reliable arm out in the pen -- in a four run game in front of a quick turnaround leading into a day game. Bring it on Doolittle!

Not strictly NYM related, but remember when Ben Zobrist as a potential Met was a hot topic a few winters ago, and there were various mentions made at the time about his Christian singer wife? Well Zobrist, now in the final year of his FA contract with the Cubs, has been absent from the team for a week now dealing with a divorce from said wife of 14 years. He filed for divorce recently claiming that Julianna “has been guilty of inappropriate marital conduct, which rendered further cohabitation impossible”.

You don't suppose his wife's name is Arial, do you?

Johnny Lunchbucket wrote: Damn I thought Davis tied it up there I did too. But at least Cano didn't give us any such false hopes.

Some other miscellany from Tuesday: -- Chris Sale was working w/a 3-2 lead and had K'd 17 thru 7 innings [2 Runs, 3 Hits, 0 Walks, 108 Pitches] when he was pulled by manager Alex Cora, 3 K's short of the single game MLB record, 4 short of breaking it. The Sox pen coughed up the lead and Boston went on to lose the game in extra innings. Given how poor Sale had been early in this season combined with his history of slumping late in seasons, I can't fault Cora for this one. Plus it's only a strikeout record which are seemingly falling every week now. -- SD's Chris Paddack got smacked around by the Dodgers [6 runs, 3 earned, 5 hits] and out-pitched by Kershaw in his first game since out-dueling deGrom. Second loss for Paddack in his season/career following three straight wins.ERA 'jumps' to 1.99

So THIS is a bit more like it. As promised (or at least as hinted at), here is the pitching staff breakdown after 40 games and compared to how it was 20 games ago. ERALg AVGDiffERA+RA/GNL RankStarter ERARel ERABAA-A Thru 20 Games5.614.28-1.33726.3515th5.565.91.280 Games 21-403.27——————3.50——————.215 Thru 40 Games4.424.56+0.14884.9310th4.294.75.248 As you can see, the staff is no longer DFL in the NL in ERA but rather has rocketed up to 10th in the league and is actually above average by a shade, although the home park factor and the distribution of runs allowed across the league means that their ERA+ figure is still below par. But check out both the ERA and BA-against numbers particularly for the games since game #20 The only thing I'm missing here is how the starters and relievers ERA breaks out but that's because the BB-Ref page isn't working right now and I'm tired of waiting for it, so I'll fill it in at some later date. =#4040FF]on edit: starter/reliever stats now filled in, both are much improved 2019 season ERA of 4.42 now projects to the 5th worst season ever: behind 1962; 2017; 2003; 2009

Despite Ainge and I being almost the exact same age (I'm two weeks older although he currently leads me two to one in heart attacks): the combination of being in college at the time (less time to follow baseball), my utter cluelessness concerning college basketball (even less aware then than now), and the newness and irrelevance to me of the AL expansion Blue Jays, I don't believe I had any knowledge of Danny Ainge the baseball player until I heard it years later after he was already a pro basketball player. In short: I missed his entire career, such as it was. But, yeah, that sounds like a pretty good summation of a virtually impossible-to-succeed route. Not sure how good a prospect he was at the time -- scouting/drafting was less sophisticated then and this was the era when the Yanx drafted John Elway in the 1st round simply for 'Splash' purposes -- but it's unlikely that he was good enough to have made his chosen career look like the wrong choice in retrospect, and he's followed up his playing career with a good track record as an executive as well.

Had you put that fact into a quiz I'm not sure that Danny Ainge comes up with the right answer. Junior's not built like his old man -- thicker though not as tall and rangy -- yet his running gait is similar.

I haven't seen many DD films either, although I'm not sure that NOT watching them constitutes a sheltered childhood. In fact, one could argue that it's kind of the opposite. There's an old joke concerning Doris and the studio-created chaste image that served her for many roles and many years. I can't remember now to whom it was first attributed, but whoever it was claimed that; 'I knew Doris Day before she was a virgin'.

What's up with the color text thing going on? #lgm #ygb #bbbyyy If you refer back to my 7:30 PM post you'll see that I declared this to be: 'talk like a British soccer announcer' day. In the end it was quite a nice night on the enemy's pitch for the men in blue and orange, much to the delight of the traveling supporters in the visitors section. One just hopes that they're playing this well when the front half of the New York derby comes around in less than four week's time.

It's a choice between Syndergaard, Ramos, and Conforto for Man of the Match.

The Mets will pickup in the table on all the NL East teams if the in-progress scores all hold. And with the next nine fixtures all being NL East teams, there's a chance for some real progress coming up.