Frayed Knot

Dominic seems to have a bunch (relatively speaking) of quick -- three or four pitch -- almost 'no contest' strikeouts so far in his ML stint.

Aaaaaaand ballgame

Say hi to Jacob -- [fimg=150:344pz2s6]https://d3k2oh6evki4b7.cloudfront.net/req/201707131/images/headshots/e/ea2b324d_mlbam.jpg[/fimg:344pz2s6] 6th round pick in 2013 out of Grayson County College in Denison Texas according to John Sickels: Good year in Triple-A, 3.73 ERA in 41 innings, 49/8 K/BB, but went on DL July 16th with undisclosed injury.

That's the second pop-up that Rosario has missed despite seeming to have it lined up. Neither was an easy chance, but in both cases he looked like he did the hard part by getting there only to then whiff on it.

Nuthin' like getting shut down for some 15 innings by the likes of Justin Niccolino and Vance Worley and leaving the likes of Flexen & Montero with ZERO margin for error. TGI-GiDPs

Grandy wasted no time getting to his new gig, serving as the DH for the Dodgers in his old haunts of Detroit where he's 0-4 He did wind up at 2nd when his infield pop fell untouched (scored an error) due to wind or sun or incompetence (tough to tell). It came w/2 outs and he scored to break a scoreless tie two hits later. Many ML'ers, including those a decade or more younger, wouldn't have reached 2nd on a play like that; Cespedes might not have reached 1st. Dodgers are, of course, winning.

Joanne Worley and (Mary) Tyler Moore?!? ... it's like they don't even feel they have to put an all-male lineup out there to beat us, so just let a couple of '70s TV comediennes handle it.

Basically was popped out of the mold for backup catchers: Squat, strong, slow, good arm, and well-traveled (Cubs will be his sixth ML team and ninth org in nine ML seasons across 14 years). Our backup catcher models feature a low BA but w/occasional pop, is willing to spend time in the minors between gigs (Rivera came up in 2004 but then got only 104 ML ABs from 2007-2012) and comes with a rep for handling pitchers (your mileage may vary as to whether that rep is accurate or not). In that role the Rene Rivera model B.U.C. was, at worst, perfectly adequate and probably a shade better than most. Enjoyed having him around.

Granderson as a NYM in April (cumulative): .183/.287/.324 Granderson as a NYM May - Sept (cum): .250/.351/.468 Amazing how that pattern consistently repeated itself for four straight seasons. Wound up with 216 more PA as a Met than as a Yanqui ... so there's that, though still had most as a Tiger

Signed to a four year/big bucks deal, from the Yanx, at the age of 32, coming off a season lost to multiple injuries, with a history of being stymied by LHP, and power numbers inflated by a Little League ballpark. That's a deal that had potential disaster written all over it and, with each slow start, Met fans kept expecting that this was the year the contract would leap up to bit us. And yet, while it was far from the greatest deal ever made, it somehow never did bite us and we had as good a 3.75 seasons as we had any right to expect and a solid citizen who would never embarrass us. Well played CG His wife seems pretty and real nice. Does Barack know? Actually, considering how 'out there' Curtis was the go-to media guy, I never had any idea about his personal life or even if he is married. Ended 2016 at #62 on the CPF Rankings list (just ahead of RA Dickey, right behind Turk Wendell) and has a chance to move up as much as 20 more slots depending on the results of this year's list.

It's amazing how a market barely exists for all the excess we were holding at the deadline.

Except that, against us, everyone is a shut-down closer.

And as I mentioned on Page 1 here, Ramos's replacement Brad Zeigler has not exactly been a shut-down closer.

If Grandy gets dealt tonight -- or at least prior to tomorrow's game -- his swan song AB will be that Grandy Slam

And we're still looking for our first XBH of the night -- seven innings, seven singles.

Is Minervini still working the Marlins sidelines for their broadcasts?

9-6 Boston is your final ... and in a tidy little 4:09 Good thing it was in Fenway and therefore only 8-1/2 innings, otherwise it might have run long.

After our recent four game debacle, I feel so cheap rooting for the Sox to do what we couldn't ... but not so cheap that I'm going to stop. Sox jumped out to a 3-0 lead -- Yanx came back with six unanswered -- Sox just put up a four-spot to take a 7-6 The game is now at the 3-3/4 hour mark and they just finished the 7th inning. Lots of factors but I think the MFY catcher had 17 meetings at the mound in the 7th inning (could be off by a few). Our game may wind up finishing first despite the two hour rain delay even though this one isn't breaking any speed records either.

seawolf17 wrote: Bet you all miss ol' Tom Koehler NOW. I miss him, we useta kick the shit out of that guy!!

41Forever wrote: At least we have their closer. Yeah, we just don't have ours. Since we last saw the Marlins - they've been riding Giancarlo's hot streak (he's hit 46 HRs since Tuesday) to a 9-6 record in August and, as a result, are now in 2nd place five full games ahead of us. I suppose that gives us something to shoot for - 1B Justin Bour in on the DL, as is 3B/NYM-pain-in-ass Martin Prado, and starter Edison Volquez (TJ surgery) - closing since the AJ Ramos deal has been Brad Ziegler. He has 4 saves in 4 tries since taking on the job with no runs allowed even while allowing hits each time. On the other hand this nice streak only served to lower his ERA down to the mid-5.00's Also, rumor has it that he's recently been offered the job as White House spokesman as apparently the Trump folks mistook him for former Nixon press aide Ron Ziegler but he turned it down figuring that even closing with a 5.50 ERA for the most unstable franchise in baseball while it's in the midst of an ownership change has better job security than trying to explain DJT's tweets with a straight face.

I remember a time when the agate type of the hockey boxscore in NEWSDAY listed a Ranger goal as: Messier assisted by Leach (sucks) I didn't see this myself but it came to light via a Ranger fan calling in to WFAN spitting apoplectic over it threatening to cancel his subscription and everything else short of bombing the paper's headquarters. As it turned out this "misprint" occurred only in editions distributed in eastern Suffolk County (separate printing outlet I guess) where it was almost certainly the result of a prank by some copy-boy without enough supervision, although it was still enough to feed into the Blue-shirt mindset of believing that everything east of the Cross Island Parkway was hostile Islander country and therefore could only have come down on orders from the top as part of some grand conspiracy against everything NYR.

I suspect Ackert is somewhat paraphrasing Alderson when she says that he says it's the team's "goal" to get five innings from the starters then go to the pen. Rather I think it's more a case where they have to plan for things to go that way and not simply depend on starters you think can dominate often enough to get you to the short men at the end of the game. This bullpen buildup is certainly the trend in the game (Royals & Yanx most prominently). The Yanx are 10 games over .500 with a starting staff that, aside from Severino, has been both mediocre and injured all while nominal closer Chapman has missed time and been probably the weakest link in the chain even when he has been available.

Zvon wrote: The GrandySlam really upped my hopes ... The Grandy slam, like Rosario's 2R HR in the earlier game, depressed me more than anything because I knew it wasn't going to lead anywhere and instead only serve to make the result seem less lopsided. Like I said, tough to find a series less competitive than this one despite being all 1 and 2 run games.

It's dart throwing speculation folks, don't worked up over it. Since when did off-season speculation ever come close to hitting a target - particularly the type that begins three months before the off-season even begins?

I don't think I've ever bailed on a Met/Yanx game before, but I did tonight. Oh I checked back here and there, but I just couldn't hang with it for any length of time. And for a series decided by 2, 1, 2, and 2 runs, none of the games seemed even slightly close.