Frayed Knot

Had to look up Nieuwenhuis just to see if he's still playing these days. The answer, it turns out, is yes, in the Seattle org at AAA Tacoma And Niuey is essentially being Niuey so far in 2018 over 27 G/93 ABs (so he's playing more or less regularly, prolly sitting vs LHPs): low BA, lots of walks, even more Ks, and around half his hits for XBs -- aka: .237/.368/.419; 9 of his 22 for XB (3 HR); 18 BB, 29 K

HahnSolo wrote: I'm learning to understand how useless the phrase "Xrays were negative" is. Because X-rays are looking for a break in a bone in the toe, which there isn't in this case. He did subsequently undergo an MRI which showed, in addition to a hyper-extended toe (lots of hyper-extending going on lately), "a complete tear of the big toe plantar plate, a ligament" (DiComo - mlb.com). And them ligament things don't heal so quick.

HahnSolo wrote: He was Brandon Boyy when he was drafted.

If you had to pick one current ML pitcher who was best prepared to take a line-drive come-backer in the belly -- and then both get the out and stay in the game -- is there really any other choice?

Turns out that that old expression isn't necessarily true because Justin Smoak has never faced Mike Fiers even once in their concurrent ML careers.

Once the game starts it's in the hands of the umpires, so what the Mets think -- booth, dugout, or front office -- is irrelevant at this point. Only prior to a game starting is the home team in charge of things -- like the time the Yanx canceled a game some six hours in advance when their weather people decided there was a 100% chance of Strasburg forecast for right around game time.

18 minutes since the last pitch. Either they're having some field problems or Jonathan Papelbon is pitching to Odubel Herrera (Hey-Ohh)

Just a tiny bit of perspective here for a sec: Guillorme = ~675 OPS over the A/AA levels in 2016-17 Reyes = 828 over the second half last year iow, let's not go too crazy over 3 ABs (or even over Reyes's 48 so far this year)

Gary mentioned during the game last night about how two different columnists almost immediately ran with pieces suggesting that PED suspicions -- based at least in part on Cano's BFF status with the previously nailed ARod & Melky Cabrera -- were a large part of the reason why the Yanx were amenable to letting him walk during his FA year ... so how quickly after the news broke on the suspension do you suppose it took MFY mgm't to dive to their phones and email machines in order to make sure that info got out in public? Because, after all, they have a long history of staying away from 'roiders (except, y'know, when they don't) and they were apparently so concerned about being associated with Cano that they only offered him a seven year 150-ish million dollar deal before (wisely) walking away only after Seattle went all 10/240 crazy.

Red Sox reliever Carson Smith has been put on the DL due to a shoulder injury sustained while he threw his glove in the dugout following a surrendered HR. Reminiscent of Dwight injuring his toe after kicking the dugout steps during the Tuffy Rhodes games.

I had forgotten the name Dwight Smith (too common I guess) but now that you remind me of it, my biggest memory was of Jerome Walton and Smith finishing 1-2 in the RoY voting for the 90-win 1989 Cubs, and then neither of them ever having the kind of sustained success that those rookie years projected. Neither really was a full-time player after that season. Not surprisingly, the Cubs went into a series of sub-.500 seasons after that too.

Paternity leave is three days with (to my knowledge anyway) no variations in either direction.

Hits w/RiSP, 2-out RBIs, cats and dogs living together ...

Centerfield wrote: I try to be careful with that sort of thing. I mean, unless there's some evidence (and more than just "look at the guy, he's huge"), I try to give the benefit of the doubt. Sure, so do I. But too many treat the lack of a positive test as 'proof' that the player is cleaner then freshly fallen snow and then find themselves shocked, SHOCKED! that there was PED'ing going on in the back room. I remember Chris Russo screaming 'I WANT NAMES!' back during the time of that first preliminary test MLB issued to its players because, to him, this was going to give us the definitive separation of the clean from the dirty rather than just seeing it as a snapshot in time which, even if 100% accurate, still did nothing to distinguish the one-time users from the hard-core lifers, or the better cheats from those too dumb to pass.

During the stretch where Houston had the top pick three years in a row, they actually wound up whiffing on two: Carlos Correa (2012), Mark Appel (2013), Brady Aiken (2014) Appel floundered in the minors and has, at least temporarily, retired. Aiken didn't sign after the Astros didn't like the results of his physical; lawsuits followed and he was picked the following year (#17 overall) by Cleveland. Pitched in low-A last year, hasn't pitched so far this season. What they did do was hit big on some later picks [George Springer #7 overall; Lance McCullers #41; Dallas Keuchel 7th round) and on some imports [brad Peacock, Charlie Morton, Collin McHugh] which were hardly obvious choices for missing pieces to a 100+ wins and a WS The Cubs (currently only 1-1/2 games better than the Mets btw] hit big on Kris Bryant (#2 overall) and well on Addison Russell (11th) but then mainly on a whole lot of international FAs: Baez, Contreras, Almora -- a 'strategy' which may be part money (I don't know if any or all of them were big-ticket signings or not) part scouting skill, and, as always, part luck. So to tack onto what JCL said about fans not necessarily having the patience for a rebuild, there's also the problem of the iffy-ness of it even working. Some fans have convinced themselves that finding the next generation of stars is simply a matter of adjusting mindset and choosing to do so. Except it's not that easy.

MFYs will, of course, reason that just being caught now means Cano never took them as a Yanqui, confusing absence of proof for proof of absence. But then that kind of reasoning has been the story of the entire steroid era regardless of team. Post-Bonds, ARod was considered by some, particularly the Steinbrenner boys, as the 'clean' answer who was going to reestablish a pure HR record and, not coincidentally, make sure it was back in pinstriped hands. After that it was Pujols who is often mentioned as someone known to be clean based on nothing more than the whole absence of proof thing. And then there's Griff Jr. who rode his image to the highest HoF voting mark ever and, like Pujols, certainly deserves the benefit of doubt but no more so than anyone else in my eyes which is to say, innocent until proven otherwise but hardly proven innocent. And now adding to that line comes Cano, just another guy about whom you don't know until you now know. Or, as John Sterling would put it: Robbie Cano, dontcha know!

Also, the "one of the worst offenses in all of baseball" thing is exaggerated by the fact that we're tied for second fewest games played so far this season (and the Saturday rain plus upcoming Monday/Thursday off days this week ain't gonna help). Four different teams have played as many of five more at this point while only the two Chicagos have played as few (37) and only Minnesota (36) less, all of which I assume is due to multiple April snow-outs in the upper midwest. Anyway, the point being, that if instead of looking just at runs scored (where they're 28th) they creep up to 20th when you consider RS/G - still solidly below average but also ahead of 10 different squads rather than dredging the bottom ahead of only the ChiSox and Miami.

So now we have a pitching change which didn't work to go along with the non move that didn't work. Tack that on to the 3 DPs plus the caught-stealing erasing four of our many baserunners and this one isn't looking like it's going to end well.

I was OK sticking with Seawald there. Results sukked, but I'm not going to second guess the (non) move.

So just as Cespedes was teeing off, I was in the midst of composing a post pointing out that the Mets offense had scored in just 3 of the previous 37 innings, a streak which began right after they had scored in opening five frames of the first game in Cincy. But after putting up a goose egg in the final four innings of that one, they've scored in just one inning in each of the next three, now four, games: - a 2-spot in the 6th inning of our 7-2 loss in Cincy - a single run in the 3rd of the Wednesday afternoon 2-1 10th inning loss - and then the 3 runs via the Conforto and Mesaroco HRs in the 9th of Friday's game. - and now, so far anyway, once in six frames here so now it's 4 non-zeros half-innings out of 38

smg58 wrote: So we pushed Thor back three days to give DeGrom one inning? As it turned out, yeah. But of course you don't know that going in.

Eh, a bunt only nets him a measly double. Why settle for that? 12 of Gallo's 30 hits this season are HRs (also 5 doubles/13 singles) and he's hitting a robust .208 with a K-rate of merely 36% so he probably doesn't think he needs to make more contact or that his 16-25 team needs to change what it's obviously doing oh so well. Not sure if Houston put on that shift each time in that (Friday's) game. Gallo got up four times, three of the ABs came with the bases empty (even leading off an inning twice) so if you're going to do it once there's no reason not to do keep doing so, at least in those ABs when there were no runners. He wound up grounding out twice -- listed as 'to deep 2nd' and 'to 3B' (although who knows where the 3B man was at the time) -- plus a line-out (to RCF) and a walk. The walk came with runners on 1st & 2nd btw, nice set of lessons on how to suck from Oakland on Saturday 1) get a 6-2 lead lead in the Bronx then give it all back in one inning 2) load the bases in the 9th w/no one out and fail to score [K plus FO/DP - originally safe but overturned on review] 3) get runners on 1st & 2nd in the 10th w/no one out and fail to score again [K, K, Foul Out] 4) issue 9 walks including 2 in the 11th inning and hope that doesn't come around to burn you 5) it did.

Rescheduled as part of a DH on Sunday Aug 19

Ceetar wrote: he impressed? he was exactly the same guy that got DFA, the Reds just suck. 1 baserunner across 4 innings with no HRs on a below average number of pitches ... that's the exact guy who got DFA'd? Not that I'm going to treat this one shortened outing as a sign of his long-awaited turn-around, but the guy who was just DFA'd averaged more than 3 runs allowed and nearly 7 baserunners per every four innings pitched over the last season-plus.

SHIFT AHOY! The Astros go to an extreme shift against the Rangers' Joey Gallo (one could say it was Crazy) with six fielders stationed on the 1st base side of 2nd while leaving, aside from the pitcher and catcher in their required spots, no infielders and just one very lonely looking LF'er on the entire other half of the diamond. Gallo wound up grounding out to somewhere in the vicinity of short right field. Not sure who actually fielded it; could have been the 3rd baseman, or maybe the bullpen coach.