Frayed Knot

As far as I can tell, the basis for this whole "rumor" stems from some off-hand remarks given to the Pioneer Press by Twins hurler Ervin Santana. [u:29rghps1]HE[/u:29rghps1] mentioned Colon and the Mets but it's not apparent that either Colon or the Mets have yet to mention each other. * and the Mets now claim to be surprised by the mentioned and deny even thinking about it

Nymr83 wrote: This year's group can hardly expect 50 million. All the top guys have serious concerns and none play a premium position I bet if we were to dig up one of those early off-season prediction columns baseball writers seem to be required to write each year that there'd be projections of $100mil+ contracts for several of the still-unsigned dudes. Not that that means they all should get those numbers, but judging from recent trends ... yadda yadda At some point this winter there was a rumor that the Yanx had extended a $130-ish offer to Darvish (IIRC) although the Darvish camp quickly denied that was ever the case - so who knows. But other than that there's been very little from the rumor mill even about which teams are talking (or NOT talking) to which players much less what kind of money they're talking about.

Maybe the players are simply holding out for too much based on recents trends that they thought were sure to continue? Joe Posnanski on mlb.com points out the most recent $150 mil or higher signings: Dec 2011, Albert Pujols -- 10 years/$240 -- that one hasn't turned out well now has it? Jan 2012, Prince Fielder -- 9/214 -- I assume Detroit/Texas got some financial relief when the injury ended his career, but the Tigers still paid chunk of the freight to make him go away only partway through the deal Dec 2013, Robinson Cano -- 10/240 -- didn't start well. Is going better now but the now 35 y/o still has six seasons to go on his deal and his team hasn't sniffed the playoffs since he got there Dec 2013, Jacoby Ellsbury -- 7/153 -- Yanx are wishing he'd just disappear Dec 2015, Jason Heyward -- 8/184 -- not off to a good start, eh? At least (Moody Blues) Justin Heyward is going into the (R&R) HoF this year. Jan 2016, Chris Davis -- 7/161 Not that this year's crop is necessarily expecting 150 million dollar deals (although who knows what Boras is whispering in their ears) but y'all know about the whole definition of insanity thing.

Never a bad time to toss some Paul Carrack into the mix [youtube:1nsc0bbt]Vo_GMMLULXw[/youtube:1nsc0bbt]

Second post of last year's Ranking thread (1/4/17): seawolf17 wrote: We definitely already did this. I remember doing it. (Didn't we?) I suggest that the mods put Seawolf into the concussion protocol; there seems to be a trend here.

Thought I forgot about this, eh? ... Not Bloody Likely!! Actually, I kind of did. At first I didn't want to step on Grimm's Tabloid Project, then I figured it best to wait until after the holidays ... and THEN I forgot about it. But now, with P&C only a few weeks away, it's back and [crossout:33lr0z7h]better than[/crossout:33lr0z7h] well, pretty much the same as ever. Anyway, you guys know the drill: Vote (no state-issued photo ID required) for 30 players from 2017 and rank them as to best/least contributors to this most frustrating of NYM seasons. And you get to choose your 30 from this outstanding group of 53 candidates - a group only slightly larger, and, sadly, about as charismatic, as the 2016 Republican field. Hitters (ranked from most PAs to least) REYES - CABRERA - BRUCE - CONFORTO - GRANDERSON d’ARNAUD - FLORES - CESPEDES - WALKER - DUDA LAGARES - TJ RIVERA - NIMMO - R RIVERA - SMITH ROSARIO - REYNOLDS - PLAWECKI - AOKI - CECCHINI TAIJERON - EVANS - NIDO and pitchers (most to least IP): deGROM - GSELLMAN - MONTERO - LUGO - HARVEY WHEELER - MATZ - SEWALD - SMOKER - ROBLES REED - BLEVINS - FLEXEN - SALAS - EDGIN BRADFORD - GOEDDEL - SYNDERGAARD - MILONE FAMILIA - PILL - RAMIREZ - RAMOS - RHAME McGOWEN - CALLAHAN - WILK - GILMARTIN

No reaction over Tebow surprises me anymore.

And this news comes on the same day that Tom Petty's autopsy reveals he died from an overdose of a variety of prescribed medications.

Centerfield wrote: Yup. I'm one of those that don't care about game time at all. If there were measures in place to shorten the work day, I'd be out picketing in support of it. But baseball games? Let's play forever. Except that we're not getting anything extra for all the extra time we're being forced to invest. 1987 had averaged slightly more runs/game (0.16) and saw more plate appearances/game (0.7) as compared to 2017, yet games averaged nearly half an hour shorter (24 min). Even *I* have enough of a life to where I could be doing things with that time.

Buck Showalter makes that argument all the time, except that he says no one cares about game times except the writers and umpires - and I think part of the reason the players haven't gotten on board with this (aside from pitchers and hitters coming at things from an opposite viewpoint) is that they don't perceive a problem either; they're getting paid so things must be great! But the players, and Buck, are wrong; it matters. It matters to those who have to get up early in the morning and so have trouble staying awake for the end of east coast games, and then totally punt on ones in the C/M/P time zones It matters to parents who have kids with 2-1/2 hours worth of patience but not 3-1/2 It matters in those cities (many of them) where public transportation doesn't run 24/7 - ask Nats fans about that whenever a game runs long or just about every post-season game in their short history And it matters to the casual fan who's not going to attend or tune into a game if he doesn't have a vested rooting interest because he doesn't want to invest three to four hours. We're all geeks here. But just because we (some of us anyway) stay up until 2 in the morning doesn't mean everyone does and you can't run a business that increasingly caters just to the geeks. In 2007, when I believe the same between inning break times as now were in place, 1/3 of all MLB game were done in under 2:40 -- this past season it was less than one game in eight (11.9%) Less than 9% (8.9%) of 2007 games ran over 3:20; in 2017 nearly 1/4 of them did (22.7%) Name any cut-off you want and the difference is huge and that's just in the last decade, I'm not going back to when the games were played only in black and white (except there was no black) and the home gate accounted for most of a team's income. I'd like to back things up to maybe where the games were in the late 80's -- the '86 Mets for instance played Six games that year which ran over 3:20, this past year we witnessed 30 -- but at the moment I'd settle for 2007 And these numbers, btw, only include 9 inning games as are the 'averages' that MLB releases. Throw in extra inning games plus post-season and things really blow up.

We can dream about cutting between inning breaks all we want but: a) those times are set into contracts with networks both local and national so it's not something Manfred would, or even could, simply alter by decree. And that's all before he'd need to get around to telling the lords of the realm that they'd be losing some 25% of their in-game ad revenues. those mandated commercial break times haven't increased in a number of years now and game times are still going up anyway so the real culprit of in-game dead-time lies elsewhere.

Not to pick on Familia who, at least as far as I know, isn't particularly slow in delivering pitches (at least for a reliever) ... but I just couldn't resist the pun. Anyway, with the talks between the player's union and the commissioner's office once again breaking down over the topic of pace of play changes -- the union has told MLB that their side can reach no consensus among its members over alterations -- Commissioner Manfred seems prepared to unilaterally impose a pitch clock starting in the 2018 season. No formal announcement is expected until the owners meetings which take place from Jan 30 thru Feb 1 (in Beverly Hills if you're in the neighborhood and want to drop by) but the league has the power to impose changes without the union's approval with one year's notice and that notice was given when the union basically gave the same answer last year.

Nymr83 wrote: ... Defense is mediocre If it improves six or seven notches it might get up towards mediocre. OK maybe that's overstating it, but not by much. He's a train wreck as a SS and merely less bad elsewhere.

Consider also that you'd be giving up six years of Nimmo for one of McCutcheon.

John Cougar Lunchbucket wrote: The Giants are pretty idiosyncratic as an organization, aren't they? They're liable to do these things every so often that don't make a ton of sense to the general baseball world There was one deal a bunch (8-10?) of years ago where Sabean purposely signed a FA (I forget who specifically but not a star by any means IIRC) prior to the tender date knowing that would assure that they'd lose a draft pick for it in order to save the signing bonus money they'd have to give the pick. And three WS wins later ...

Ashie62 wrote: Longo is in his prime IMHO. OPS 2008-2013: 874, 889, 879, 850, 896, 842 [AVG = 872] OPS 2014-2017: 724, 764, 840, 737 [AVG = 766] and he's now 32 years old so, yeah, he kind of IS past his prime. And, look, these SF guys being mentioned -- Cutch, Pence, Longoria, Crawford, etc. -- probably have some good years left in them, but it's a bit more iffy these days and none are nearly as close to the top as they were 3-5 years ago.

Edgy MD wrote: MLB.com has Crick has Reynolds as their #4 and Crick as their #16. The Mets equivalent would be something like Thomas Szapucki and Anthony Kay. Which doesn't mean those pairs are equivalent at all.

On the Smith service time thing: he rung up 52 days of it last year, or ~30% of a full season. If he makes the 2018 opening day roster and never again gets sent down, he'd be arbitration eligible following the 2020 season (two years plus 52 days ain't gonna cut it for 2019 eligibility) and would qualify for FA after 2023 (assuming no major rules changes occur between now and then). In order to delay his FA season by an extra year he'd have to lose around 1/2 a season of ML time. To delay his arb status until 2021 it would need to be more like 3/4 of a year. You certainly don't make roster decisions with that kind of stuff in mind and I don't even think it becomes a consideration except maybe as to the timing of bringing him back up following a demotion for actual baseball reasons. And even that risks the possibility of a grievance if the player/agent believe the recall was delayed for just that reason.

Sure. Your championship team is adding a good (though not great) pitcher during a window when you've got two other top hurlers and the bulk of your offense under contract -- even while hoping that his HR-rate* spike last year was a temporary fluke. That doesn't make the players going back crap. Pitt looks like it opted (or wasn't given other options) for ML-ready players, at least three of which should contribute this season, rather than higher ceiling but further away prospects. * Cole's ~0.5 HR/G pace for 2013-16 nearly tripled in 2017 to 1.4/per. A bit scary while heading to that stadium.

Doug 'The Lord' Harvey - 87 31 years as an ump (all with the NL); 18 as a crew chief; 4,673 games. HoF Class of 2010

Don't know what you're basing "Blows" on concerning Moran. He's been up and down since being drafted 3rd overall four years ago, but is coming off a good year in AAA [.308/.373/543 -- 18 HRs in 300 AB] John Sickels: Colin Moran, 3B-1B-OF, Grade B: Age 25, first round pick by Miami Marlins in 2013 from North Carolina, then traded to Astros; stock has gone up and down but back up again; he missed two months after being hit in the face with a foul ball; at this point I don’t think he is the star the Marlins thought they were drafting but he’s getting to his power more often now and has added defensive versatility to his resume, giving him a chance to still have a long career as a decent regular or excellent role player. ETA 2018. And he comes with three other guys, at least two of which will help immediately. Cole's salary is set for this year; he then is under team control for 2019 before being eligible for FA. That gives the defending champs a nice 1-2-3 of Keuchel, Verlander & Cole for this season (plus Charlie Morton, Brad Peacock, Lance McCullers, Colin McHugh) Verlander is under the same control as Cole so Houston is hoping that age (35 y/o next month) or Kate haven't worn him down and he's got at least two good years left in him. Keuchel can be FA after this coming season.

We're presently up to: Mets are in "serious discussions" to sign Adrian Gonzalez -- Bob Nightengale and "there's a good chance this may happen" -- Jon Heyman https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2018/01/mets-in-serious-discussions-to-sign-adrian-gonzalez.html

Pitt ace and former # 1/1 draft pick Gerrit Cole has been dealt, not to the Yanx, but to the Astros. This is now the second time that Cole slipped through the yanx' fingers. They had drafted him with their 1st round pick (28th selection overall) in 2008 only to see him accept a scholarship to USC instead. Three years later Pittsburgh made him the top selection in the 2011 draft. Pitt gets RHPs Joe Musgrove (25 y/o, pitched pieces of 2016 & 2017 w/Houston) and Michael Feliz (24, pitched parts of 2015-17), 3B Colin Moran (originally a #3 overall pick by Miami) and OF Jason Martin (21, spent 2017 in A+ & AA) Musgrove, who could be ued as a starter or reliever, or Moran, who had a breakout season at AAA this past year, seem to be the main bait here.

As I've said before, Duda is getting no more than a one-year deal (maybe 1 + 1 if he's lucky) and I highly doubt it will be from the Mets. And if by some chance it IS with us I'd see it as a way of delaying Smith by another year (or partial year) but NOT with the idea of jettisoning him.

Mets have avoided an arbitration hearing with Noah Syndergaard and agreed on a 2018 salary of $2.9 mil They also struck deals with Matt Harvey ($5.6 mil), Jacob deGrom ($7.4), Jeurys Familia ($7.9), AJ Ramos ($9.25), Hansel Robles (900 K), Travis d'Arnaud ($3.4) and Wilmer Flores ($3.4) They are, barring a last minute settlement, seem likely to be headed to a hearing with Zack Wheeler to determine an amount of either $1.5 or $1.9 million