Frayed Knot

So here's a way of looking at things: If the Mets had scored just three runs* in each game Jake started, his record would be (or would potentially be at the time he left the game) 21-1 with 10 No-Decisions Scherzer, under the same conditions, 23-4 with 6 ND's * 4.38 is NL league average. 4.24 is NYM per/game avg

The NL side, on the other hand, got more interesting on Tuesday night Rox won while the Dodgers were losing, which puts the Rox ahed of the Cards for the #2 WD slot and brings them to within a 1/2 game of the Dodgers Also, the Cubs lost while the Brewers were thumping the Cards which brings the Brewers to within 1/2 game of the long presumptive NL Central champ Cubbies. The Cardinals can't win the Central so they'll have to either catch the Brewers (-4.0 so unlikely) or the loser of the COL/LAD race (-0.5 and -1.0) Brewers vs Cards again today. Then the Brewers host [u:11ebissk]the Tigers[/u:11ebissk] for their final three. Hey, somebody's gotta play IL on the final weekend. Cards are at Wrigley for their final three games but the Cubs still have two more vs Pirates before that. Rockies are home for the Phils x2 and the Nationals x3 Dodgers have one more in Arizona before heading to SF for the final three where you just know the Giants would love to fuck them over

Shed a tear for the final TWiB of the season Oakland's late night loss in Seattle on Tuesday both clinched the AL West for Houston and pretty much kills any chance that they had of hosting the WC card. Yanx are now 2.5 up (3 in the loss column) with five to play - four to go for the A's - and they hold the tie-breaker. The A's lost by allowing two runs to Seattle in the 8th, one more in the 9th, then two in the 11th. This was all after leading 6-3 and later 8-5 Familia didn't pitch but apparently Blake Treinen remembered that he was a National and therefore is pre-programmed to cough up late runs when the weather starts to turn chilly. The Mariners used ten different pitchers who got, in succession, 4, 2, 9, 1, 2, 3, 3, 3, 3, and 3 outs, but the last five held the A's to one hit combined so it's tough to complain.

Edgy MD wrote: Jock-in-the-Booth isn't an easy job, but it's a tough job to get and it's a lot easier to build a long tenure with than GM-ing a team And it pays!! Particularly if you spin your local job into an additional network gig, or two (MLBN + TBS)

Or not (via the NYPost): "“I don’t [want to be NYM GM] ... I work for three different networks. I don’t have time to work as a general manager, nor do I have probably the skills to do it." “So folks, I’ll just be here between [Gary & Keith] for as long as I can do it.” Always fun when you get completely different statements -- both accompanied by quotes -- from the same person presumably just hours apart with the second set as a reaction to the first. Now it shouldn't be surprising that he's not going to use his main current job to campaign for a different job and, just as obviously, that a move to a front office position would be instead of his current gigs rather than in addition to them so the 'I don't have the time' statement is pretty meaningless. It also helps to keep in mind that this is all in reaction to Sherman's think piece floating him as a possible candidate, not because there's any actual info that he's being considered and that all these non-traditional GM targets Sherman speculates about are contingent on the creation and hiring of a team president type of position between the new GM and ownership for which there is also no actual info.

Hey, they struck out the side!!!

Didn't Touki Toussaint open for Dr. John and the Neville Brothers on their last tour?

... speculating about Ron Darling as a GM-type And Darling says he's interested, acc to Raissman in a NYDN piece money quotes: "if someone wants to sit down with me and talk about putting a team together I would absolutely take that meeting,” “I know a lot of things would have to change with my family to take that task on, but everyone who loves the game wants a chance to put a team together, and I’m no different, ... I would prefer that to managing a team. The day-to-day stuff (involved in managing) would not be my favorite. But the behind the scenes stuff… I would be more qualified for those personal relationships away from the field.”

Edgy MD wrote: That lock-up-the-young-guys-early strategy was canned after they first canned the GM who instituted it, right? Yup. It was a house cleaning both above and below decks. Wasn't there also some illegal stuff going on at the same time involving international players? I forget the details now.

The biggest thing keeping the Braves' spending down wasn't a conscious decision necessarily but having multiple rookies and/or near-rookies -- guys who are, by definition, cheap in baseball terms -- all blossom at more or less the same time. Acuna (true rookie - debut 4/25/18); Camargo & Albies (each 200 or so ABs in 2017), plus the second full season for Swanson. That's half your starting eight making probably just over $2 mil combined. If Rosario, Nimmo, Conforto, Smith/Alonso, McNeil were to do the same in Queens it frees up spending to plug holes elsewhere. Much better than having to buy on the open market and losing flexibility when things have to be changed in mid-course. The Braves have had success over the years in pushing particularly their young, Latin players and getting them in the big leagues very young -- Furcal (although he later turned out to be older than he claimed), Andruw J., and now Albies & Acuna. Neat trick if you can pull it off or if they've found some kind of formula for making it work more often than it backfires. Also, give them a ton of credit for totally reversing course from a couple years ago. They had signed many of their then-young players to multi-year FA and pre-FA deals [A. Simmons, Kimbrel, J. Upton, F.F. Freeman, Uggla, etc.] but then weren't afraid to clean house and bail on that strategy when it wasn't working. I'd have to go looking things up in order to determine how much of the loot they got from those deals are part of the current roster (Swanson is I know, some of the arms as well) or if the main thing they got was out from under the commitments, but it was a reasonably quick turn-around even if they had to eat three straight 90+ loss teams to get there.

Centerfield wrote: I think only Markakis and Suzuki are free agents at the end of this year. Young core, money to spend, these guys could be a threat for a long time. Maybe. But part of the premise here is that so many things went right for them this season and can their starting eight manage to miss less than 60 games combined (iow, start more than 95% of the man/games for the entire season) next year too? Or will they have more of a NYM 2018 year, which, even without counting not necessarily regulars like Rivera and Lagares (or Wright for that matter), sums up to more like 400 games missed (more than 30%) [Cespedes - hasn't played since May 13; Td'A - not since Apr 13; Lagares - not since May 16; Frazier - missed gaps of 24 + 19 games; Bruce - out for a 59 game stretch; TJ Rivera - whole season] The other amazing thing about this Braves team is the amount of holdovers from their last division title in 2013 (lost to LAD in NLDS 3-1): Freddie Freeman, Julio Teheran, and that's it! Andrelton Simmons, Craig Kimbrel, Jason Heyward, Justin Upton, Brian McCann were among their big players that year.

So Joel Sharman continues on his suggestion streak on what the Mets need for their front office, this time floating ideas such as: - seeing what it would take to lure Billy Beane away from Oakland - seeing if dangling a GM role would be enough to lure Alex Cora away from the bench in Boston after just one year - going to the booth and speculating about Ron Darling as a GM-type - or even dipping into the pile of agents to run a team (been done before) such as with Brodie Van Wagenen (currently reps Frazier, Cespedes, Syndergaard, Nimmo and others)

So good news/bad news for the Yanx this weekend. Didi Gregorius scored the winning run in extra innings with a mad dash and dive home in Saturday's game to clinch a WC berth for the Yanx ... but then tore cartilage in his wrist in the process (the old headfirst slide into home plate maneuver) and could be lost for the remainder of the year. Currently he's getting cortisone shots and they'll know more in a few days. Meanwhile, both the Yanx & Oakland lost on Sunday (to Baltimore & the Twins) keeping the gap at Yanx +1.5 games for the home field advantage in the WC play-in game. Yanx finish with 4 @ TBR then 3 @ BOS whilst Oakland also closes out on the road with SEA x 3 and LAA x 3 I believe the Yanx hold any tie-breaker with whatever the deal is after head-to-head as those two went 3-3 vs each other during the season. The Orioles will wind up winning close to 1/4 of their games this year vs NYC teams: 3-1 vs NYM, 7-12 vs NYY [10 of 45 = 22.2%] and finishing up with 7 games vs BOS & HOU [current record vs those two teams = 2-17] means they may have already topped out with those 45 wins Only against TB (8-11) do they have more wins than vs the MFY, and only vs the Mets and Braves (2-1) do they have a winning record.

Well I was wrong ... this game DID end.

With four hits in just five innings, McNeil is taking dead aim at Rennie Stennett

Maybe, although Atlanta has been scoring and coming from behind late all season. 23.2% of their runs scored have come in the 8th & 9th innings compared to a 18.8% league average. Bad week to be Anaheim. They've been out-scored 53-11 in their last four games: 0-10, 3-21, 3-11, 5-10 (vs OAK, OAK, HOU, HOU) They actually had a four run lead late in Saturday's game but then had a wee stumble when they allowed the Astros to [u:b238ovuc]put up a 9-spot[/u:b238ovuc] in the bottom of the 8th There's a call-up OF on Houston named Myles Straw. Do you suppose his nickname is Strawberry?

Are you saying that you didn't enjoy our hit?

And, once again, Harper goes less than halfway to 1B on a ball hit to the wall. Third time this series.

Man, Philly didn't even make this remotely interesting, going now 6-14 in September (after a 13-14 August) including losing three straight to the Braves in their last opportunity. They'll be lucky to finish over .500 I've been thinking about how quickly this all turned around for the Braves -- 95, 93, 90 losses in 2015, 2016, 2017 -- and it occurred to me that sometimes the best ability is availability and I think that one applies in this case: 1B - Freddie Freeman -- Braves have played 154 games this season, FFF has played 154 games this season (and it looks like he started all but one) 2B - Ozzie Albies -- played in 150 games. the most consecutive games he sat out was 3 so never on the DL SS - Dansby Swanson -- 134 GP. Missed 14 consecutive games (iow, just over the minimum DL time) back in early May 3B - Johan Camargo -- 127 GP. After sitting out the first 16 games of the season (during the quickly abandoned Jose Bautista experiment) Camargo was called up and never sat longer than 4 games LF - Ronald Acuna -- 103 GP. Was called up after the season was 23 games old, then missed most of June (28 games). Played in every other one CF - Ender Inciarte -- 150 GP, never missed more than one in a row RF - Nick Markakis -- 154 games played, 154 games started ... at age 34 and his 13th ML season! ... and made his first ASG and turned in his best offense since 2012 and even the catchers -- Tyler Flowers & Kury Suzuki -- started 145 of the 154 games, and ALL OF THEM since April 25th. Two replacement catchers combined for 9 starts and 35 ABs, fewer, iow, than Jose Lobaton Can someone tell me what color the sky is in the world where these things are permitted to happen to the ENTIRE starting lineup? I have no experience with such a phenomenon.

After Acuna totally mis-judged and whiffed on a fly ball allowing two runs to score in the top of the 7th, the Braves have come back with a five-spot in the bottom half, most of it with two outs and now lead 6-4 (and are still batting). One of the Braves' strengths this year (whether you think it's a skill or not) has been their late inning rallies. An Atlanta win here eliminates the Nats and would set up a potential NLE clinching tomorrow.

Edgy MD wrote: I'm looking at the boxscore here and there's a "(W)" next to deGrom's name, and I'm not entirely sure what that's supposed to mean. It's an indication that he recently joined the Workers Party, dedicating himself to making sure all hourly employees get free potato chips on their lunch break.

[bigpurple:25hsa248]W[/bigpurple:25hsa248]

Tough to call Soto a 'Five Tool Player' when you admit that his speed isn't that good (and if it's not good as a teenager ...) and that he's not a good fielder either.

d'Kong76 wrote: Harper has often been a douche, I hope it costs him a bunch of years and $10's of million on his next contract. Y'see, I've never really had a problem with him prior to this. But this season, probably because of the FA contest to be held this winter, he seems to have reasoned that more HRs = more $$ and so he's put everything else on the side, as if nothing other than a HR does him any good (or any harm for that matter).

2/3 of the way down the first base line on that dribbler before downshifting once deGrom gloved it ... after barely leaving the box during his fly outs last night* and his two K's so far in this game, that's as far as Harper's run in two games now. * for which G, K, R rightfully roasted him