Frayed Knot

Only four hits by the Crew thru six and of those I remember two bloops plus an infield single. There were a couple loud outs thrown in here and there but even those were more long-ish fly outs than hard-hit liners.

As per Gary on Thursday's telecast, the last -- and in fact the only -- foreign born player to start a ML game past age 44 was born in the fuckin' Austro-Hungarian Empire (present day Slovakia) in 1883 John Picus "Jack" Quinn, born Johannes Pajkos, pitched for 23 seasons between 1909 and 1933, making his final appearance 6 days after turning 50

That five pitch inning gets Matz back to 'average' for pitches/inning (75 thru 5) so he could be good for six or even seven!!

Edgy MD wrote: 1. I realize there are no outs, but I'd've sent Rosario. No chance. Roasrio held up to make sure the ball would clear the RF and then the ball came off the wall and right back to Yelich. Cabrera finally gets the Mets a NiSP, that a hit with Nimmo in scoring position. Hell, nobody else gets as far as 2nd on this team so we might as well call it that.

Centerfield wrote: ... the brutality is scoring 4 runs total in 3 games against the Marlins. Or, looked at another way, one fewer run than the Braves scored against the Marlins in the 9th inning of Sunday's game after there were already two outs!!

Kerwin Dantley (behind the plate tonight) being a crew chief can't do wonders for Angel Hernandez's lawsuit claim that he's only being kept from being a crew chief due to racism.

It seems to me that if teams released players by first dangling them off the upper deck and then releasing them, that that would make quite an impact. OK, I'll step away from the keyboard now as I'm clearly not a well man

"torrent of boos"?, no, but there clearly was a lot of frustration which led to the whole 'do we express our frustrations or stifle them for fear of driving him away?' discussions that raged for the better part of the next five months. Edgy MD wrote: He also did well batting average-wise the first few weeks, but the prodigious power show wasn't on instant display. Yeah, although 9 XBHs out of 27 hits across 88 ABs in June for an IsoP mark of .197 isn't exactly no power, but there was that 8 RBI mark that touched a nerve, especially when considering that half those RBIs were him driving in himself. (7 of his first 9 HRs as a Met were solos) Also, people were being kinda jerky. My main point. I guess mostly I was just a bit disappointed in Gary for not acknowledging the subtleties of MP's early days, instead he just latched onto the "troubles" he had at the plate as if his early months here were a prolonged slump that could only have been brought on by bright-lights/big-city. But of course Gary repeats the simplistic summations of Benitez too (never blew a save prior to Aug 31st, never converted one after) and is a fully tithing member of the Jeter = Mega-clutch church as well.

The boys were talking about this last night during the game with Gary mostly instructing R & K, who were both into their post-career self-imposed baseball exiles at the time, the standard story of what a rough go of it Piazza had in his early weeks/months in Queens ... except that all that doesn't really stand up to scrutiny. It did get better as the year moved along, but it's not like he was bad right off the bat. Piazza as a '98 NYM: .348/.417/.607 June (first full month in NY): .318/.365/.511 July: .326/.421/.576 August: .347/.414/.663 September: .378/.457/.720 The biggest problem, both the way I remembered it at the time and confirmed mostly by the cold numbers, is that he had some 'clutch failures' early on which fans, expecting a savior and not realizing that players on other teams didn't bat 1.000 in runners-on situations, immediately diagnosed as both a physical and moral failure on Piazza's part and this just proved that he'd never be able to "handle New York" and that the Mets had gotten taken in a trade once again as shirley Geoff Goetz and Ed Yarnell were going to win eight Cy Youngs between them over the next ten seasons just to rub it in. Those June numbers [.318/.365/.511] came with just 8 RBIs in 96 ABs and THAT was the source of all the booing and the booing itself became a whole cause celeb to be discussed and analyzed in the papers, on bar stools, and also quite loudly on talk radio.

- Wheeler pitched well, the only problem being that the one inning where he got himself into trouble (couple of hard hits on top of a couple of loud outs) was the same inning where he also had shit luck (error plus a couple of seeing-eye hits). He could have survived one or the other but not both. His final line will be 6 innings, and because of that error, 1 ER. But this is the worst offense in baseball. Gotta get out of that inning. Well, again, his biggest problem wasn't his inability to get out of that inning, it was his complicity in setting it up in the first place. But I'll at least take some solace (but not Salas) in the fact that after he gave up probably the four hardest hits all night [Double - Single - Single - Lineout] that, rather than fall apart, he did everything to limit the damage but got shit luck: - first came the bunt disaster which combined a bad decision with a bad throw with a clanked catch (the throw, though low, did hit Cabrera in the glove and the 'E' really could have gone either way) - he followed that with a Pop-out and then the killer was the 2-RBI 86-hopper under two gloves - and then, when the game really had a chance to be blown wide open, he K'd Bour to end the inning.

- Until the Dietrich HR off Ramos, I really thought this was one of those games we were going to pull out in the end. - Wheeler pitched well, the only problem being that the one inning where he got himself into trouble (couple of hard hits on top of a couple of loud outs) was the same inning where he also had shit luck (error plus a couple of seeing-eye hits). He could have survived one or the other but not both. - They're making too many mediocre pitchers look like Grover Jason Alexander. Every young and/or journeyman pitcher is seemingly having their best day of the season at CitiField - Y'know who'd be a good replacement for Reyes? ... TJ Rivera

Did we ever do a complete list? I seem to remember a discussion about trying to 'back-determine' an accurate* accounting of who came in what order going back prior to when we started concocting these annual threads (which, IIRC, was when we started anticipating Mr. 1,000) but I don't remember if we ever really went through with it or, if so, what we might have done with the info. * accurate meaning: based on our self-determined criteria

metirish wrote: Desperation but whatever, worth a shot , looking forward to his first At Bat Desperation? Sure, but that's what having five different RH batters on the DL at the same time will do [Cespedes, d'Arnaud, Frazier, Plawecki, Lagares] including (at least!!) two gone for the year (waiting for the news that Frazier's hamstring issue has progressed to his kidneys and pancreas).

d'Kong76 wrote: Looks like spray-on beard in that tweet. I suspect Bautista is one of those guys who could grow that thing in about an hour and a half.

Not at all excited about this ... but hoping for the best.

If he does sign here, would that qualify him as a returning Met considering his 'paper Met' status for a day and a half 14 years ago?

Nats (who were a half game behind us to start the day) won vs SDP Phils shut out the Braves, so the whole division (minus Miami) gets a wee bit more snug. Braves up 0.5 on Philly, 2.5 on NYM, 3.0 on Washington

If you're the Marlins there, why do you even wait to check with your video guys before challenging. What, are you saving a challenge for later on in the hotel bar?

Edgy MD wrote: I don't know what Rosario's walkup music is, but it sounds like an autotuned dancefloor remake of The Marshall Tucker Band's "Heard It in a Love Song." I like that Guillorme's is the refrain from 'Brother Louie'

And now we're at 5 off-balance swings plus 4 punch-outs (three looking IIRC) thru three perfect innings. It's like a completely different human out there who just happens to look like the previous one.

When all three 1st inning Marlins batters put the ball in play, they all did so off balance -- so that's a good sign that Vargas is putting the right pitches in the right place. And, if nothing else, that quite a change after seeing so many batters just dig in and tee off on his stuff over his first couple (brief) outings.

Would a more standard error break the streak? I think it would and this probably gets put in the same category.

bmfc1 wrote: I'm surprised that Wednesday's game is at night. The Mets are in MIL on Thursday night which isn't across the country but it's not next door. I think the new rules say that a day get-away game is required if traveling two time zones but not when it's just one (and Miami has Thursday off) so that means it's up to the home team and Fred & Jeff do like their night games on $NY.

I've been following this since opening week but haven't said anything on account of small sample size. But now that the horses are past the Quarter Pole on this season, that's a very lopsided head-to-head result in interleave play and, if it or something roughly like it keeps up, it will be the first time the NL has held an edge in IL play since 2003. The AL has won the majority of games in 17 of the 21 seasons that IL play has existed and holds an overall .529 winning percentage which basically means that the AL has been playing like an 85 to 86 win team over the last 21 years while the NL has been playing the part of the 76-77 win squad. That's significant over a long stretch of time, a gap which I've always been at a loss to explain just as I am to find a reason for this year's sudden turnaround. The biggest edge ever in a full season was in 2006 when the AL won 61% of IL games (154 - 98)

I don't know whether to scream Muthafuckin' Braves! or Muthafuckin' Marlins! Miami was up, at various times today, 6-0, then later 8-2, then 9-4 heading into the bottom of the 9th ... and you can probably guess where this is headed. Braves score six in the 9th to walk-off the win, including five times after two were out. Swanson - K Flaherty - Walk Albies - Single Acuna - Sac Fly Freeman - infield single, run scores on error Markakis - RBI Single Flowers - Walk Suzuki - RBI Single Camargo - Walk Swanson - 2 RBI double .. Please Arrive Home Safely On the other hand, the Nats got smoked in the late innings 7-2 as the Dodgers complete the three-game sweep.