Frayed Knot

Once again a NYM bat manages to hit the ball directly at the lone glove on the opposite side of the infield. It takes some sort of talent to do that so consistently and not cause the infielder to even have to move. And then their 112 pound midget hits a seven hopper that never comes near any of the infielders. ... and game over!

This game makes it now 104 runs allowed in 119 1st innings for the Mets. That's an ERA of nearly 8.00 and a slash line (before today) of .305/.367/.517 w/26 HRs No other inning has more than 80 RA I'm not going to look up every other team to find out if that's the worst in all of baseball but I can't imagine that it's not.

Edgy MD wrote: Wow, Céspedes chases the slider low and away. Again and again. That pitch would have needed to be two feet closer to the plate before it could be classified as merely low and away.

I was looking forward to seeing deGrom starting at 3rd or some other such machinations.

There's a distinction between being forced to retire due to not getting medical clearance (David gets money, Mets get whatever the policy dictates) and one where Wright simply announces one day that he no longer has the desire or energy to go through the rehab work needed to get back to playing shape (David does not get the money, insurance no longer matters). Sherman here seems to be assuming the former, retiring because he [u:8jusrpft]can't[/u:8jusrpft] play, rather than the latter where he simply chooses to no longer play.

Yeah well you figure that the only player, beside deGrom and mostly Conforto, to give us a season as good or better than we had a right to expect was probably Bruce, and even he was a guy who fans were expecting, if not flat-out anticipating, would be gone practically from the moment he got here, so it was kind of tough to get too invested. Almost everyone else either missed large chunks on the DL, or they underperformed, or had one foot out the door, and sometimes several of the above. And then of course the exciting part of this team was supposed to be the starting pitching where, as I tallied last week, only deGrom among the seven top starters has appeared in more games than 'Other'. It all adds up to not being a real warm and fuzzy bunch.

Well seeing as how NYM bats scored a whopping total of 7 runs combined off that other team's three worst starters, all they did was put themselves in a situation where they have to salvage the series, hell, the the season, against their best starter. Matz vs Luis Severino Severino [9 -5; 3.32; 1.11 in 23 starts] had given up one run or less five straight starts [3 runs total on 21 hits over 32.2 IP] before getting blitzed by the BoSox in his last one. Mainly he got wild in one inning then served up a 3R HR to Andrew Benintendi. Then, a couple innings later, he gave up a few hits and served up a 3R HR to Andrew Benintendi Problem is, we don't have Andrew Benintendi on our team. We also don't do 3R HRs. Plus we don't really like hitting in general and we're not too keen on walks lately either. But, hey, we got Matz going backed up by a stellar bullpen so no problems (ugh) Ahh no worries. All that's riding on this game is the series, the season, our dignity, our self-worth as fans, plus any reason for even getting out of bed come Friday morning.

We not only don't score leadoff hitters, we rarely even move them. Instead they just get a 10 minute conversation with the opposing team's 1B

The strike-out/passed-ball is what passes for a rally these days.

With Harvey having a good rehab assignment in Bingo -- 3 innings/36 pitches/1 hit -- Gsellman would be wise not to assume his spot in the rotation is safe even with Lugo out of the picture.

Wow, a stranded leadoff hitter. No way to see THAT coming.

WE WANT ROBO UMP!

They get extra base hits with runners on, we get Sac Flies (if we're lucky) so as to keep our one run at a time limit in effect.

Yeah, let's issue a few more free passes, nothing bad ever comes from that.

That was definitely an interference (obstruction, actually) indication but no way was Cespedes going to score without it so he wasn't going to be awarded home. What I was worried about is that he was going to pull the idiot move of assuming he was going to be awarded the base and get tagged out as he loafed between 3rd & home. That came up in a (non-NYM) post-season game a few years back but I forget the specific actors. That's also at least the second time this season that G, K, & R seem confused as to how that rule works.

Edgy MD wrote: Which Mets pitcher has the most Subway Series wins? I'm guessing Trachsel. I don't know who, but I'm guessing the amount is two or fewer.

so now, even when our HRs are preceded by a walk and a hard smash they still wind up as solos. And isn't it amazing how often, even when they do hit against the shift, they manage to find the one fielder on the off side? And now walk-walk-double doesn't score a run!! It's like they're inventing ways not to score.

Leadoff double followed by .... absolutely fucking nothing for the next four innings/thirteen batters. And, yes, Gary, d'Arnaud has been hidden defensively. The problem is that he's also been hidden offensively!

So basically our bench is Zimmo deGrom & Matz will be the first PH'ers off the bench

Back in 2006, Travis Snider was the 14th overall pick in the draft by the Blue Jays out of a Washington state HS By the winters of 2007/08 and 2008/09 he was being ranked in the Top-10 prospects lists by both BA (11th & 6th) & BP (7th & 5th) He got his first taste of the majors in 2008 at the age of 20 (maybe that was part of the problem) hitting a tempting .301/.338/.466 across 73 ABs And then came the years since. He played in at least a piece of the Majors every season from 2008-2015 but never full time and with only middling success.244/.311/.399 in nearly 2,000 PAs By that time he had been moved from the Toronto organization to Pittsburgh, and more recently to Baltimore, KC & Texas without getting back to the big leagues since 2015 Career minors league numbers are good enough -- .300/.377/.492 across 11 seasons/700 games/3,000 PA -- but it sounds like he may be one of those guys labeled as a "tweener": not good enough with the glove to play CF and not enough bat to play a corner. Getting ahead of myself here, but if the Mets promote him in September and then keep him on the 40-man I think it'll keep him from reaching FA status this winter. He surely has enough time in the minors to qualify as a six-year FA, but is still around 100 days short of his six ML seasons. He'll turn 30 in February so the clock is certainly ticking on him. He's sort of Aaron Hicks-ish in that they were both high picks (exact same draft position - two years apart) who never clicked with their original squads. Hicks is two years younger and is blossoming given the chance this season but the paths were similar otherwise. Long story short, he could be a guy in the mix for 4th/5th OF next season depending on how a whole host of other factors fall.

Or we can go with Mr. Pop-Up in the leadoff slot.

I'm not so sure it's been established that Nimmo is a better CF than Conforto.

We currently do have an uninjured soul who can hit 3rd and get on base at a .400 clip (.389 anyway). What we could use is someone, or several someones, who can get on base at a decent clip in front of him (and Cespedes) then maybe our offense in this series wouldn't consist of just four swings, at least two of which would probably have been outs in any other park. Maybe Rosario turns into that guy, too soon to tell, and with Lagares being consistently unable to play in more than 12 consecutive games without breaking something we have no idea about him either although his .299 career OBA five years into his career suggests not.

As mentioned during the game last night, Robert Gsellman replace Seth Lugo in the DL merry-go-round and will start in his place. Gsellman was last seen limping off the field with a pulled hammy on June 27th. Not quite clear what's up with Lugo but I think it's possible he's pitched his final game for the year. For that other side will be recent pick-up Jamie Garcia. This will be his 3rd start for the Yanx -- neither of the first two were very good -- although we've already faced him twice this season when he was with the Braves and seven times in his career prior to that with the Cardinals Mets won both 2017 games, hitting up Garcia for a total of 6 runs on 13 hits over 13 IP

Yeah, I wish I could say that either one of those HRs excited me, but I really felt it was merely rearranging the deck chairs without altering the result.