Frayed Knot

You forgot the most important factor: the fans inside are Canadian and therefore too polite to make noise.

And now he belongs to us again. Sounds like he'll be back tomorrow to replace Herget who'll likely get a ticket to SYR following his contributions tonight.

Cubs are said to be in on the hunt for Suarez.

It brings the game to a city that's not within 300 miles of any ML city potentially exposing the game to some who have never seen a live ML game, and does so in a state where possible future movement/expansion is possible.

There's gotta be a decent amount of money for the players/orgs involved here cuz how else do you convince a bunch of guys from the DR & PR to play in NYC in mid-November.

Heard Kurkjian saying the other day that the DBacks are the big wild card in this year's trading deadline. They currently sit right at .500 (50-50) and 4.5 G out of the final WC slot but with StL (-3.5), SFG & CIN (both -2.5) between them and current 3rd WC slot holder SDP (Mets are #2 at +1.5). So do they see themselves as buyers or sellers at the deadline? Or is that decision still TBD and subject to change based on what they did in the previous game ... or inning!

Let's not lose sight of the fact that this will be one game this year out of 2,430

The back side of the field part of the stadium is where the pre-game Tim McGraw/Pit Bull concert is going to be. (Finally, those two together at last!!) It's unclear to me if one ticket gets you into both or not. As far as the tiered stadium goes, my guess is that there are so many seats you can get out of just one tier given the MUCH bigger plot of land the "field" takes up to begin with (Wiki sez that Bristol has a capacity of 146,000 though not all of that is seating) that there's simply no need to build second deck. btw:https://phpbb3.ultimatemets.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=33641&p=166027&hilit=Bristol#p166027

But his ML BA/OBA, after pieces of four seasons and nearly 1,000 trips to the plate, is .223/.298 with only his power getting his OPS+ close to average (98). That kind of low-average/decent power numbers profiles more as a perpetual backup catcher (only without the good defense) and in this season even the power wasn't there (29 hits / 23 singles). Now the 2025 numbers are a small sample size which might have justified him being sent down but shouldn't be tagging him as a career second string label, especially for one still just 23 y/o. But what I am saying is that, at some point, he'll need to show he can improve or risk getting hung with a rep as a platoon C/DH vs LHPs or, even worse, as a AAAA player who'll bounce around looking for work in between getting released on a regular basis. So there's still time for him (especially seeing as how his FA year just moved one year further away) but there's also no time like the present for him to get going.

So that's seven HRs in a six game span in AAA for Alvarez vs six XBHs (3 2B, 3 HR) in a 35 game span in MLB It would be nice if some of that translates to the higher level because his profile is starting to trend towards that of a low-BA/low-OBA catcher with occasional puncher's power. And that kind of profile is usually how they refer to ML backup catchers, except that those backups are also usually top-notch defensively which F.A. is not. He's still young (24 in Nov) so none of this is set in stone. But you don't want to see him top out at as a poor-defensive feast/famine backup or as one with a rep as a AAAA hitter.

Wasn't Jared Porter the one who had a few too many shots ... and chasers?

Never saw it. My aversion to all things Madonna-related started early.

So two starters [Holmes / Peterson] plus those five relievers available all along ... and then 28 spare parts.

Is that overall or just this season?

Bobby Jenks was huge, both personally [listed at 6' 4" / 275 - and was every bit of that] and as a rookie out of the pen for the ChiSox WS team of 2005 My one over-riding memory from that post-season was the time Sox had two right-handers warming up in the pen. When manager Ozzie Guillen signaled for a reliever the crew in the pen didn't know which one. Ozzie, seeing their confusion, spread his arms out wide to indicate the big dude and the pen immediately knew what he meant. Typical high octane reliever in a lot of ways. Capable or dominant outings but, like a lot of that type, walked too many and ultimately had a short prime and short-ish career. A seven season career, six with white socks on and his final one wearing red socks, but was done by age 30. 44 y/o

Pete [737 -- 1090 -- 1150] sometimes seems like he's the only thing keeping this team from being shut out every night. Also Torrens and some marginal gain from Taylor, but neither of them play everyday or gives you much offense to begin with. And it's not just that production is down from the rest of the crew when 'ducks are on the pond' (whether in scoring position or not), it's that it's not even close. Every one of them loses at least 100 points of OPS when bodies are on base with Lindor losing over 300 and Soto over 500 (the latter of which scarcely seems possible). Even when it's a stat as simple as HRs: the Mets are 6th in MLB in the number hit but a shade over 2/3 of theirs are solo (and lately more like 90% *) while the MLB avg is 59% * actually 90.48% -- 19 of their last 21

Worst offenders Lindor: Bases Empty 882 OPS -- Men On 571 -- w/RiSP 566 Nimmo: 820 -- 705 -- 679 Soto: 1134 -- 618 -- 596 McNeil: 917 -- 686 -- 754 Alvarez: 672 -- 626 -- 561 Vientos: 675 -- 603 -- 571

Why Thank You, Ben. I'm enthusiastic about you too. [FIMG=300]https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/h4Danx25bhtuorh7fZW8bJ-650-80.jpg.webp[/FIMG]

And right now it involves (OF) Carson Benge and (P) Jonah Tong. Those two Binghamton Rumble Ponies will be representing the NL in the ASG-week Futures Game in Atlanta (Sat July 12, MLBN and mlb.tv)

We're playing semantics here. No one is arguing that 'clutch hitting' is something that certain players or teams do or do not "own", or that what happened last week is predictive of what will happen next week. But we can assess what has already happened and that's that this team has been lacking with timely hits for essentially the entire season and in doing so their output of runs scored has been far lower than what would normally be expected from the input. Compared to the six teams closest to them in OPS (the three just above them plus the three just below) the Mets are averaging nearly 2/3 RS/G lower than the average of those six, a rate that puts them more than 50 runs* fewer than expected for the season to date. * 43 fewer than the Yanx, -80 to Cubs, -64 to Tigers, -29 to Red Sox, -35 to Rays, -17 to Phils

Clutch remains not a projectable thing. That doesn't make it non-existent. When a team is in the upper echelon [top 6] in OBP, OPS, SLG and yet middle of the pack in runs scored that points to consistently not getting hits as often at the right times or situations. The fact that, through more than half a season now, the team's OPS is 70 - 80 points lower runners on (in scoring position or otherwise) than it is with bases empty backs that up. With bases empty the collective team is bit better than this season's version of Francisco Lindor. With runners on they're somewhere between Brett Baty and Francisco Alvarez.

There will come a future day when I will have totally forgotten that Colin Poche was ever a NYM. That day may occur sometime later this week.

The turnstiles at Grand Central don't turn as rapidly as the Met Count does these days. You can't tell the players With a scorecard.

808 PAs / 674 ABs going into today's (Sat 6/28) game -- so that's 25.7% of their PAs w/RiSP [3,144 total PA] or 24.3% of ABs [674/2,771] . Mets have a higher than average OBA so it stands to reason that a higher pct of their plate appearances would come with runners on while their BA is right at MLB average. A simpler way to look at all this is via OPS which is the stat that most closely correlates to runs scored. The correlation between RS and BA is positive but not all that strong. SLG is a stronger link, OBA is better still, and OPS better than all of them. Mets started today 6th of 30 in MLB OPS, yet 14th in runs scored. Of the top 11 OPS teams, every other one has their RS (1-30) rank within two slots (one way or the other) of their OPS rank The only team with a wider disparity than the Mets (-8) is the [fill in the blank] A's who are 12th in OPS but 24th in RS The Brewers (+12) are the team on the other extreme: 19th in OPS, 7th in runs scored. Not surprisingly the Brews' 703 overall OPS turns into 740 w/RiSP while the Mets go in the opposite direction: 743 to 694 This all comes on the heels of the stat thrown out during last Saturday's game by the FOX crew which showed the Mets 3rd in hard hit pct, behind only LAD and NYY. And since you figure that a higher hard hit rate should beget a high OPS, the Mets are somewhat failing to turn their hard hits into bases won. Not a big gap (3rd to 6th) but one that implies a few too many at'em balls and not enough fortune in finding holes. Then, once you tack on their failure to turn that already lower-than-expected OPS into runs at the expected rate, their run scoring troubles just get compounded.

Jason Heyward just released by San Diego [.176/.223/.271 in 95 PAs]. You wonder if that's it for him after 16 seasons even though still 'only' 35 y/o (36 in Aug)