Frayed Knot

FREE TACOS!!!!! Not that I've taken advantage of any of the other free tacos over the years (not sure I've ever even been to a Taco Bell) but I like that it didn't go unfulfilled.

Man, Houston out-hitting the Dodgers 12-4 thru 10 innings and they still can't hold the lead.

Free baseball tonight but not yet any free tacos!?!

I certainly wouldn't plan on going into the season with that in mind. If either was going to be the full-time 3B (even for part of the season) then I'd go with Asdrubal.

2nd night in a row that Dodgers bust up a 1-1 tie with a 2-out walk followed by a HR in the bottom of the 6th. Houston still looking for their first WS [u:14nvqjoj]Game[/u:14nvqjoj] win ever. In 2005 they lost by 2 runs, by 1 run (walk-off bottom 9), by 2 in the 14th inning, and by 1 (1-0 by an 8th inning run), and then by 2 runs last night.

Do you suppose Steve Garvey's hair has even moved since the 1970's?

Removed from the 40-man: Wuilmer Becerra (age 23 as of opening day 2018), along with 2017 Mets Erik Goeddel (29), Tyler Pill (27), Travis Taijeron (29), Phillip Evans (25) Doesn't mean that they automatically lose all these guys of course. The biggest name on there is the one guy who has never come close to the majors in Becerra. The throw-in guy in the d'Arnaud/Sydergaard trade, he showed promise early on but injuries and lack of progress has stalled his career and dampened his future stock. Mainly the power has never developed--22 HRs in 1,700+ ABs all in various levels of A-ball across six seasons--and singles-hitting 240-lb corner OFs just aren't all that sought after. Which leaves his reported great throwing arm as his main calling card and I'm not about the status of that since shoulder surgery last winter.

Background of Callaway

I'd prefer neither one as a starter, but have no problem with either/or as a backup/fill-in.

btw, while I'm sure you could make an argument that there's less of a need for an experienced pitching coach on account of the manager being a former one -- and I'm more interested in the bench coach specifically being an old hand -- if at the moment you happen to be in the market for a PC there just happen to be longtime and well respected types like Righetti & Maddux available, you'd be nuts not to at least talk to them.

I think you (Mex) are making too much of the pitching coach background. Pitching coaches to managers are rare because pitchers themselves becoming managers haven't been that common throughout the years. Not really sure why that's been the case but there's no logical reason why an ex-hurler is going to be at a disadvantage as compared to former position players or bench riders. Nor is there any reason to treat an ex-pitcher/coach as someone who will remain forever locked into that aspect of the job. Mex17 wrote: ... This particular manager was hired clearly to, among other things, set the policy and the philosophy with regard to how the pitching is going to be handled. If he isn't going to be permitted to do that, than there were other candidates out there. But they selected this candidate. Managers aren't hired to set policy or philosophy so much as carry out the organization's policy and philosophy so the idea would be that the new pitching coach (and the hitting coach and the bullpen coach, etc.) are going to be hires who are on board with it too. Ted Williams as a manager wasn't going to hire someone from the Charlie Lau / Walt Hriniak school as his hitting coach because he vehemently disagreed with that hitting approach (nor was old Ted shy about saying so) and if his bosses were fans of the Lau/Hriniak philosophy and were going to force one on him then they were wrong to hire Ted in the first place.

Even with Keuchel having trouble putting away the 6th inning, this game is still well under 2 hours to this point. Not sure when the last sub-3:00 WS game was and I'm pretty sure there haven't been any in any of this year's playoffs up until now.

What delivery system gives you FOX Deportes but not FOX itself?

Edgy MD wrote: Andre Ethier is still on the planet? And he's still a Dodger, you say? Ethier's never been anything but a Dodger, is still a Dodger and, except for Kershaw and Adrian Gonzalez, is probably the highest paid Dodger even though injuries limited him to 16 games/26 PA in 2016 and 22/38 this year. But he was 2-for-9 with a Homer during the playoffs so far which is more than Grandy did. The kicker is that he also has an option for next season although I doubt the vesting option kicked in considering his lack of playing time so I'm assuming they'll just buy him out and send him on his way. But they can't buy Adrian Gonzalez out because he Does have a contract for 2018 and it's at $22.5 million. Not sure that his .287 OBA, 3 HRs, or 69 OPS+ in 250 PA quite justifies that. Plus there's that Bellinger kid currently playing his position. It's kind of like the Yanx where two of their bigger salaries this year were ARod and Ellsbury and ARod had almost as many playoff ABs

Considering that Grandy hit .161 with 33 Ks in 112 ABs following the trade (albeit with some power and walks thrown in) and then had a single single across 15 ABs during the playoffs, leaving him off the WS roster surprises me not, especially seeing as how Andre Ethier has seemingly come off his death bed (just 58 ABs since the end of the 2015 season!!) to provide similar LH OF/PH skills. With Seager back and Puig both hitting and behaving himself (at least by Puig standards) one of Ethier/Grandy had to go so it's not surprising that they chose the one with the 12 years of Dodger pedigree over the one with 12 weeks.

I think older Wally looks a lot like younger Wally, he just happens to look like a younger Wally who then ate younger Wally. btw, I'll always maintain that the least similar looking celebrity young guy/old guy combo was Frank Sinatra

Yeah, Dusty has managed in 19 of the last 22 seasons so I'm not sure he'll be mentally ready for the co-pilot's chair quite so soon, particularly when there are still open top jobs out there. Also, Dusty's strength, at least as far as I read it, is that he's a good people manager but not the best strategist. I'd kind of want the opposite in a bench coach. Torre & Zimmer were a good pair in that way. Torre was hardly an innovative manager but he read and managed his players well while keeping them shielded from the exuberant press and the often irrational owner. Zimmer, when he did manage (Boston, Texas, Chicago) mainly managed to piss off many of his players the longer he hung around and in the six weeks that he ran the Yanx during Torre's cancer treatment at the start of the 1999 season, that club, in the middle of what was one of the best six year runs ever and coming off their 114 win season, stumbled to a barely over .500 record while Zimmer ran them. When Torre came back they almost immediately took off and wound up with 98 wins (off a 21-17 start) But from an in-game strategy viewpoint, Zimmer would sit next to Torre the entire game whispering suggestions in his ear that Joe was free to act on or ignore and Zim's gambling style was a perfect counterpoint to Torre's natural conservatism and kept the manager on his toes.

41Forever wrote: Astros get points for having this guy: The wrong guy is in the costume.

8:09 first pitch (or so they claim) tonight - FOX Network Keuchel vs Kershaw, so I guess we should appropriately expect a lot of Ks Expected Game Time temp at first pitch: 97 degrees! after peaking at around 101 a few hours earlier. Sun will still be up too on account of it being 5PM local time which probably gives the fans even more reason than usual to show up late lest they wind up baked in their seats over the first 2-3 innings. I knew that October* is sometimes the warmest time of the year in parts of California, but I wasn't expecting this! Wasn't sure that it ever got this hot there, not in coastal California anyway. * a quick check shows 10 days hitting 90 or above in LA for this past July & August combined. Today & tomorrow will make it the 8th & 9th days in October alone including five days at 97 or above.

On Val's plan, I'll just re-mentioned my previously stated arguments against going to an 8 division/4 team format. As nice as all those neat little regional 'pods' might look when circled on a map, there are various reasons why I think adopting such a format would be a grave mistake.

Curious to see who his bench coach will be. Hopefully someone better than Dick Scott. Well it'll definitely be someone other than Dick Scott as he's the one person on the staff of whom it is said will definitely NOT be back next year. On the other hand, I can't remember a single incident which made me either positive or negative towards Dick Scott so I'm not going to know 'better' or 'worse' if it bites me, at least not right off the bat. As far as other coaches go: - hitting coach Kevin Long is understandably "disappointed" after interviewing for the manager's job but not being selected. "Right now, I think it's still a possibility he will be back on the staff, but we'll have to wait to see." said Alderson. Long said his future is up in the air with the Mets and would not commit to 2018. "We'll see," he said via text. - Dan Warthen has been offered another position within the organization but Sandy says he hasn't heard back from him yet. Alderson also added that the hiring of the new pitching coach would be a "collaboration" with Callaway. - 1st base coach Tom Goodwin and bullpen coach Ricky Bones were "uncertain of their status" although both their contracts run out on Oct 31 - only 3rd base coach Glen Sherlock is signed for next year http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/baseball/mets/hiring-mickey-callaway-manager-mets-lose-kevin-long-article-1.3583916

I thought I caught a brief glimpse of Fred - and if he's staying more in the background these days then that's a good thing too.

Well I don't think specifics such as, "We've decided we're going to bat Cespedes cleanup", is the type of thing that typically gets announced at these things.

I was hoping it was Mitch. [fimg=350:2dd5647j]https://changingsame.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/mitch_mickey.jpg[/fimg:2dd5647j]

Selig used the occasion of the sale of the team to the current owner to pretty much strong-arm Houston into switching leagues. My main problem with their uniforms over the years is that they keep switching them every other week; not just styles but colors and logos too. Their Blue & Orange scheme now doesn't come close to matching the brick red they had during the Biggio/Bagwell era and the early days of this current stadium, and at some point the shooting star gave way to the open-ended star which morphed into the current H within the star ...