Frayed Knot

Fman99 wrote: I'm watching. I like when the Mets are winning, and I'll be sad in another 10 days when there are no more Mets games to watch. Yup!

Harper looks increasingly disinterested in anything that doesn't involve him hitting a HR His BA is 30+ points off his career avg and more than 70 off last year He has ZERO triples this year after hitting 9 as a rookie He walks a ton but one gets the impression that's more because he's waiting for the perfect pitch to wail on rather than actually working the count He was a good fielder when he came up and was more than capable of holding his own in CF. He now looks not just ordinary but more like bottom of the barrel He runs the bases only occasionally and often badly on those rare occasions His OBP is just shy of .400 yet he manages to slot in as only 10th best in WAR (1.2) on his own underachieving team, a feat which I would have thought impossible

Yanx have two more HRs tonight including their 4th in 13 innings (3 yesterday) that landed in the [u:3ld8sd6s]first row[/u:3ld8sd6s] of the RF stands. And actually it may be five but I didn't see the other so I don't know where that one landed.

6th triple of the (partial) season for McNeil in not yet 200 ABs It comes on the same night as only his 2nd two-strikeout game.

Hope this won't affect his speed.

While the Angels were getting steamrolled 21-3 by Oakland this afternoon, LAA rookie Francisco Arcia played catcher, pitcher, hit a HR, and allowed a HR (2 actually), becoming the first to do that combo in one game. He started the game behind the plate but then moved out to the mound to absorb the 7th & 8th innings allowing 3 runs on 4 hits in the process. His HR came in the top of the 9th so he technically hit it as a pitcher.

seawolf17 wrote: Benjamin Grimm wrote: So how many runs do the Mets have to score tonight to get Scherzer's ERA over 9.00? Around 150. 2% of the way there.

To be fair to Price, at least as far as Wednesday night's game goes, he gave up 3 HRs that, put together, totaled maybe 920 feet That and Eduardo Nunez allowing a 2-out bases-loaded grounder to go through his legs.

So, not too good so far. 4-0 Philly, end of five It is good to see that several hundred fans have come out to support their Phillies in this late stage of their division push.

Well nobody has started one and it's an early 6 PM start tonight for reasons unknown. Rosario - SS McNeil - 2B Conforto - LF Bruce - 1B Frazier - 3B Nimmo - RF Jackson - CF Nido - C Syndergaard - P Philly - some guys

Sounds a bit like 2013's BEGIN AGAIN, where a past-his-prime hipster record company man, Mark Ruffalo, tries to lure shy singer/songwriter Keira Knightly into recording her music and, in turn, tries to form a connection with his hipster daughter in the process. This one, from the Irish writer/director Jim Carney known for his music movies [sING STREET; ONCE], wasn't bad

The A's had their own 'Bartman' incident last night. Up 4-1 vs the Angels in the 6th inning at home, LAA's Andrelton Simmons lofted a one-out foul fly to RF which a fan in Oakland gear reached out onto the field and caught (then dropped) just as RF'er Steven Piscotty was getting there. Looks like the umps should have ruled it an out but they opted not to. Simmons then hit the next pitch for a two-run single en route to a six run inning. Oakland went on to lose the game 9-7 dropping them 2.5 games behind the Yanx in the WC race and 5.5 ahead of charging Tampa

Yeah, Houston and Texas have been haggling for control of Austin/Round Rock for years now, a state which coincides over their fight for the rights to Nolan, his son, and their banking buddies. It also involves TV/radio affiliate loyalties and a fight for control of an otherwise neutral fan base in a fast growing area that's more or less equidistant from their two stadiums.

I think it's a fairly minor deal also -- although, sure, you'd rather be close than far -- but one of the minor positives out of Vegas was the number of flights available on a daily basis just from Vegas being Vegas At least if there's a lack of flights next year then the call-up can stick out his thumb and try hitching a ride down the NYS Thruway

So it's the Nats who wind up as the odd team out this time. The problem is that there are 16 PCL teams but only 14 in the International League so one eastern org always winds up getting saddled with a far away western top farm team. Now sometimes it's not so bad seeing as how some PCL teams, like say Nashville, are nowhere near the P, but it all depends on what kind of deal you can strike. This year featured a five-team game of musical chairs resulting in: - Astros dumps Fresno in order to reunite with Round Rock (Austin), a place where they had been years ago - Oakland, who had the easternmost team they could find in the PCL with Nashville, now inherits our former home in Vegas. Perhaps Oakland fans can visit the Raiders while they're out there (yes, I went there) - the Brewers are technically staying with the same affiliate but are moving the Colorado Springs Sky Sox to San Antonio where they'll presumably be called something different and, if recent trends are any indication, something stoopid - the Rangers, formerly linked with nearby Round Rock, are now officially going steady with Nashville - and that leaves the Nationals to strike a two-year deal with ... the Fresno Grizzlies Much of this chain reaction was, of course, triggered by the Wilpon's purchase of Syracuse

Centerfield wrote: Edgy MD wrote: Anybody want to lay out what size contracts they are willing to proffer? Darvish signed for 6 years, 21 per. Arrieta signed for 3 years, 25 per. All three are better than these guys. So on the free market they'd be $25 million plus. Then the question becomes what, if anything, do you take from those signings? The Darvish deal has been a disaster although the Cubs expect him ready for ST and have five years to try and get some value out of it The Arrieta signing has worked out better but not great as the Phillies slide back toward .500 and Jake's H/9 & HR/9 rates slide back up to near where they were in his Baltimore days [5.9, 6.3, 8.0, 8.5] [0.4, 0.7, 1.2, 1.0] in 2015-2018 2019 will be Arrieta's age 33 season (Mar) while Darvish will turn 33 in August

Sawx @ Yanx for the first of three, and the first of six to finish the season. Of course the division is no longer in play as merely One Sox win would clinch the division. So the Yanx are up 3-1 thanks to a late 3R Neil Walker HR (just moments after the Phils 3R HR). Sox get a runner on in the 9th with one out but then start hitting GiDP balls. Yanx messed up the first one (everyone safe), Yanx messed up the second one (everyone safe and a run scores), and the Yanx ... finally completed the third one for the final two outs of the game. Yanx win 3-2

He's a frustrating helluva n'athlete.

I'll say this for Matz, he's a helluva n'athlete

Second replay of the game was a more acceptable 1:15 / 1:45 to the decision / next pitch That we've had two replay reviews through the first seven batters of the game is less acceptable.

2:45 from the pickoff move to the (ultimately unchanged) decision, then another 30 seconds to throw the next pitch. And of course the pickoff came some amount of time after the previous pitch making it somewhere between 3-1/2 and 4 minutes between pitches ... on a one-inch (one way or the other) call ... in the top of the 1st

It's always tough to know how to rate scouting/development. First of all, are they even the same thing? When a high draft pick fails was it a bad pick or did he fail due to poor development afterward? Was Heilman the wrong choice at #18 overall (he had been drafted 31st the previous year then went undefeated as a Senior at ND) or not handled correctly? Or was he a good pick that only briefly panned out? And then 18 picks later they chose David Wright who was apparently the right choice AND handled impeccably. But Wright being the better player clearly wasn't known at the time or they would have drafted those two the other way around and not given an additional 17 teams a shot at him. Getting off the Mets for a second, consider these groups: Group A) Joe Vitello, Michael Tucker, Jeff Granger, Dan Reichert, Jeff Austin, Kyle Snyder, Mike Stodolka, Colt Griffin Group Zack Greinke, Chris Lubanski, Alex Gordon, Luke Hochevar, Mike Moustakas, Eric Hosmer Group C) Christian Colon, Bubba Starling, Kyle Zimmer, Hunter Dozier, Foster Griffin, Nolan Watson If you're a normal baseball fan you probably recognize almost no one from Group A or Group C, yet almost all from Group B And just in case you haven't figured out where this is going already, those are consecutive top draft picks (from 1991 - 2015) for the Kansas City Royals And remember that the team's lengthy lack of success for much of that time made EVERY ONE of those picks (until 2014 anyway) a Top-10 choice in the whole draft, and 11 of them were Top-5s * Did they get smarter and then make better draft picks? Or did the picks themselves make them look smarter in retrospect? And if they were smart and developed the players well, then why were they not so smart both before and after? - cuz following nearly eight straight misses [Michael Tucker had himself a career, just not much of it w/KC although he did help them land Jermaine Dye in a trade] - they then hit on five in six years and hit YUGE on four of them resulting in two WS including one title (you may remember that one). Gordon, Moustakas, Hosmer and, to a lesser extent, Hochevar were MAJOR pieces in that crew and trading Greinke directly landed them Lorenzo Cain & Alcides Escobar, and, indirectly, Wade Davis & James Shields. - and then I guess they got stupid again because, for some reason, they stopped drafting future stars (although the door hasn't yet closed on some of the more recent ones) What is probably the most likely explanation for the above is that their hits and misses are par for the course over time (although with so many Top-5/10 picks you'd think you'd see better) but that the unlikely distribution of the successes -- bunched together as they were -- made them look like geniuses for a several year period and resulted in their championship run of seasons which in turn got tons of praise rightfully heaped upon their heads for expert player procurement and development; a condition which was absolutely true except for when it wasn't. * just for comparison purposes, while KCR was on that run of 18 consecutive Top-10 picks w/11 in the Top 5, the Mets had 8 & 2 over that same span Preston Wilson (1992 / 9th pick), Kirk Presley ('93 / 8), Paul Wilson ('94 / 1), Geoff Goetz ('97 / 7), Philip Humber ('04 / 3), Mike Pelfrey ('05 / 9), Matt Harvey ('10 / 7), Michael Conforto ('15 / 10)

On the '80s Mets, "locking up" their top players had a different meaning.

I enjoyed the book as well, and I think the movie did it justice. Funny at times, charming in others, faithful to the story with a few added notions. The two leads are good, and Hawke is fine as the re-emergent object of Duncan's obsession. He of course doesn't have to pull off 'Rock Star', merely a middle-aged, one-time brooding singer-songwriter type with more than his share of flaws. His character does sing once although does a Kinks tune rather than one of his own.

The Holt HR seems devastating, but it's really meaningless as deGrom already lost the game with the Sac Fly.