Frayed Knot

I'll go with 'Like' as well even if that wasn't my initial knee-jerk reaction. Look, it's tough to know how to evaluate minor leaguers. We rarely see them, their stats are sometimes subject to the oddities of minor league parks, and guys progress at different rates. It's also easy to hear about a 'good prospect' and have it take hold in your mind that he is going to be good one day, something that's often true right up until it's not. Most prospects, even some of the better ones, never become anything special. Plus Gilbert will be 25 in September and while he was on the pre-season 2024 prospect lists it was mostly on the back half of those lists [#93, #53, #29 / BA, MLB, BP] and he didn't repeat on any of them in '25. So while I don't want to say that he had become expendable, the key to managing prospects is in choosing which ones to bet on and maybe they simply decided that he wasn't the best one to retain. This isn't the same as dealing PCA just one year and 24 minor league ABs after drafting him in the 1st round (19th). Butto had a bunch of big contributions in the last year and a half, getting a replacement with not only a different look but a low walk rate, something that may continue to keep Butto from ever being consistent enough. Tidwell I know even less about but, again, several other starters in line seem to clearly be ahead of him. He seems like maybe a higher floor/lower ceiling type which is fine but not necessarily special. High price for a rental? Yeah, but also a needed piece and, with 1/3 of the season still to go, it gives him plenty of opportunities to make his time here worthwhile. Plus the team is in position for this type of move right now. btw, I never heard Gary say anything like 'Gilbert won't be ready for a ML roster until 2027'. That doesn't even make sense.

Ryan Dalton Helsley: 31 y/o (two weeks ago); R/R; 6'2"/235 Been with the Cards org his entire BB life, drafted in 2015/5th round out of Northeastern State U (Tahlequah, OK) 5+ year player so eligible for FA this winter. Got good starting in 2022. His combined stats from '22-'25 = 2.03 ERA; 1.03 WHIP; 6.0 H/9; 3.3 BB/9 (meh); 11.8 K/9; 0.6 HR/9 (14 in 204 IP) But a bit less good this season: 3.00 ERA / 1.39 WHIP!! mostly on account of a pretty bad month of June [8G, 8 IP, 4 ER, 8 H, 2 HR]. Better since.

Tyler: 1.80 ERA / 0.86 WHIP Taylor (just dealt from CIN to PIT): 2.45 / 1.46 You choose. Besides, we got the younger one!

For that price we should get Tyler AND Taylor!

But there's a big gap between a "mid grade prospect" and a "very high price" (whatever that means) as the speculative cost for Robert. THAT's what I'm questioning!

Siri was acquired to be a part-time defensive CF w/some pop and cost the Mets a 27 y/o reliever with 2 ML games under his belt. He also makes 1/5 of what Roberts does now and more like 1/8 of what he's scheduled to earn going forward. Not even remotely a good comparison. If Luis Robert is obtainable for a 27 y/o reliever with no ML track record, count me in.

Reds deal for Pitt's Ke'Bryan Hayes The son of ex-ML'er Charlie brings a great glove with him but just has never hit the way folks hoped: a career OPS+ of 86 (and 56! this year) despite being top-10 in the pre-2021 season prospect lists MLB's Mark Feinsand opines that the Phils, Mariners, Cubs, and Tigers are considered the primary suitors for Eugenio Suarez

Aah, I didn't read the fine print over at BB-Ref. OK so we might be buying his theoretical prime years. [$20M x 2 or $2M buyouts for each '26 & '27] The downside is that his cost is escalating just as his production is declining. Makes one wonder what justifies the optimism is going forward considering recent trends. 2024 & '25 combined: 187 games played (out of 271); .216/.286/.366 // 651; OPS+ = 83

Yeah, I don't get a high level of interest in Robert BA last five seasons: .338, .284, .264, .224, .206 ... I think that's what they tend to call a 'negative trend' He's also always hurt -- 2023 was his only season in six with with 100+ games played. He should pass it this season even though he's missed 20% to date (87/108) And, yeah, he's still just 27 y/o, but he's also a FA at the end of the year so it's not like we'd be 'buying' his prime years.

Look, the Mets should be willing to consider trading any of their young players, those already in the majors and those not yet there. There are a mere handful of Bobby Witt Jr-type of young players upon whom you slap an 'Untouchable' sign, the rest are fair game. The key is to decide which ones to keep and which to move on from, and just as important is the timing of those decisions. The stupid way to deal with it is to cling to a dichotomy where young players/prospects are either future stars or forever busts, especially when most are far from being either. And the part about describing them as they suck now and are only going to get worse so we should trade them for someone really good or else I'll whine about it like I do each time Stearns fails to grab stud relievers off the waiver wire is really stupid. Do I want to trade Vientos? No. But the fact that he (at least theoretically) has the higher ceiling and a great (mostly full) season under his belt means that other teams are going to consider that too and maybe he is the only one who nets you what the team really needs, especially seeing as how there are several already in the system who can step into his role and position. Keeping him and dealing someone else is fine too but the return is likely to be lower. I don't think you understand trades. The goal is to get the better of the other team. -- I do understand them and no it's not.

Perhaps more a spin-off than a sequel, but Brad Pitt's character from ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD, Cliff Booth, will be the subject of a forthcoming movie, apparently to be called THE ADVENTURES OF CLIFF BOOTH. Annnnd Brad Pitt will reprise his Oscar winning (Best Supporting) role so there will be a degree of continuity. Leonardo DiCaprio and his Rick Dalton character are said to not be part of the movie. Quentin Tarantino, the writer and director of Once Upon ... is writing the script.

Not precisely. But "they're all duds" (or so I've heard) so do we keep and play them anyway even though we already know this apparently irreversible fact? I suppose we could trade them all but wouldn't we just be getting different duds in return? Or is this one of those make believe scenarios where we get really good players in return because only WE know they're duds ... so don't tell anyone ? Or there's acknowledging their collective dud-ness and releasing them en masse so as to not fall into the trap of chasing sunk costs?

It's certainly disturbing to hear that the owners (Manfred is just their mouthpiece whether he agrees with this notion or not, he probably does) have not only NOT given up on the idea of a salary cap but may be more determined to get one despite the fact that they've never come close to even coming close to getting one while also showing that they'll fail to stay cohesive long before the union does. I'm sure Manfred's message here, as he bunny-hops from clubhouse to clubhouse, is to try and make the case that their (yet-to-be) propsed cap will also come with a floor and therefore the net result will NOT be total lower payrolls overall but merely the same amount (or more!!) distributed differently and more uniformly. But this is a similar type of theoretical scheme that politicians sometimes offer where they think that they're really, really good at manipulating the economy and that they know what prices and wages should be much better than that pesky free market does. And how well has MLB's pseudo-salary-cap, the luxury tax plus revenue sharing system that's been in place in one form or another for years now, resulted in more equitable payrolls? This attempted next step sounds like: 'OK, our attempts to 'correct' the inequalities have so far failed miserably, so what we need to do now is to take the same concept and expand it further!!!'

So you'd just release them all now?

1) anyone who treats every player who ever had a 'prospect' label attached to him as some kind of promise of future greatness deserves all the disappointment he/she gets 2) betting against EVERY prospect in every system is going to make one right a lot more often than wrong so stop acting as if you're being lied to against your will 3) didn't know that the book was closed on all these guys. When was it decided that this (partial) season is the truth on Vientos and last season (the larger sample size) the mirage ... other than, y'know, for purposes of cherry-picking evidence so as to confirm a predetermined conclusion?

This one seems appropriate right about now. [YOUTUBE]7xBxZGQ1dJk[/YOUTUBE]

Suarez was hit on the hand by a pitch in the 9th inning of today's game in Detroit - thus causing at least half the teams in MLB to hold their breath and/or change their plans. But X-rays were negative, so 'Day to Day'

Ryne Sandberg - 65 He had dealt with cancer off and on in recent years.

But none of them when it Really mattered .... or so I heard somewheres

KCR reaches an extension agreement with Seth Lugo so he's not going to be available at the deadline.

I hadn't heard of that one ... and now that I know I wish that I didn't. At this point in the band's existence the drummers are going to be dying of natural causes in Florida retirement homes.

Clase came in vs the Royals today with a one run lead and the ghost runner on 2nd in bottom 10 and went: Walk, Pick-off (2nd), Walk, 3R game-losing HR (Jonathan India) So 3 runs (2 earned) in 1/3 of an inning and retired none of the three batters he faced. Just sayin'

Every once in a while I check in to see how Hollywood's march towards putting out absolutely no original material at all is progressing. So currently in theaters, or soon to be, are: - SUPERMAN: no ordinal or Roman numerals here so I don't know how you differentiate this one from the (who knows how many) other iterations of this near 100 year old idea - JURASSIC WORLD REBIRTH: I have trouble remembering whether it's been 66 million years since dinosaurs went extinct or if that's just how long the first of this franchise was released. - I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER: This is at least the third one here. I know this because I remember that the first sequel was called I STILL KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER, a flick which picked up the same story a year later. Which means that it was no longer 'Last Summer' that the incident on which the whole thing was based occurred so the proper title should have been I STILL KNOW WHAT YOU DID THE SUMMER BEFORE THIS MOST RECENT ONE ... but I guess they figured that was a bit unwieldy for movie marquees and that the audience, based on the fact that they paid their way into this movie, was too dumb to know the difference.. - SMURFS: I have no clue if this is an ongoing thing or not. But I'm guessing 'Yes' so am including it here - 28 YEARS LATER: So is 28 YEARS LATER a sequel to a movie that came out 28 years earlier? I think it is. - M3GAN 2.0: Fill me in here, is this the sequel or the prequel to M2GAN 3.0 ? - THE NAKED GUN: Apparently someone has decided that Liam Neeson is the new Leslie Nielson. 'Hey, same initials ... it's Gotta Work!!' But just wait until Trump finds out that this is the second non-American actor playing this role. There will be hell to pay! - THE FANTASTIC FOUR: This is either a movie about four fantastic people or it's the third sequel to a movie called THE FANTASTIC - NOBODY 2: NOBODY was a Bob Odenkirk vehicle from a couple years ago trying to cash in on his fame as Saul Goodman. But, as far as I know, nobody saw NOBODY so it's likely that nobody will see NOBODY 2 too. - FREAKIER FRIDAY: Because there's no shortage to the number of people clamoring to see what kind of actress Lindsey Lohan turned into as an adult. - HAPPY GILMORE 2: Judging by the buzz among those populating sports talk radio stations, this one will play to packed houses for months. I'm sure there are several (dozen) I've missed, and by that I mean missed out on putting in this list. As far as missing the movies themselves I plan on missing all of them.

I think there's at least a 50/50 shot that those two names rhyme.

The last ballplayer I remember with that issue was Pittsburgh (and LAD, HOU, NYY) pitcher Rick Rhoden. His, IIRC, was more severe to the point where it affected his gait in a noticeable way. Might have had something of a club foot too though don't quote me on that. Edwin's, for all we know, may be barely noticeable and 'fixed' by a small adjustment in set-up or stride. Despite Rhoden's "deformity" OTOH, he lasted 16 seasons in MLB, won 151 games, 3 Silver Sluggers, and once placed 5th in the CY award. He also totally dominated the celebrity golf tour after his retirement that catered to athletes, actors and other celebs. Some of the participants would refer to it as 'The Rick Rhoden Tour' on account of how everyone else was usually playing for second place. oe: [from Wiki] Rhoden overcame a childhood bone disease, osteomyelitis, and he wore a brace until age 12. I think that should, but doesn't, read 'leg brace' oe take two: He has qualified for the U.S. Senior Open ... and also played a number of Champions Tour events and has three career top 10 finishes: T-5 in the 2003 Allianz Championship, T-6 in the 2006 3M Championship, and T-8 in the 2005 Constellation Energy Classic. His career earnings on the Champions Tour exceed $250,000. iow, he was doing more than merely holding his own against, not just other current and ex-athletes, but also against guys his own age who were professional golfers during the time his first athletic career was going on.