Frayed Knot

Edgy MD wrote: Tying runs on second and third with no out. You guyz watching American League games, we need you. I'm perfectly capable of monitoring multiple games at one time #multitasking P.S. if you think the Yanqui game was fucked up it had nuthin' on the BoSox/Indians Too many weird plays to go into, but the bottom line is that the Sawx re-take 1st place by 1/2 game

Why does every team decide to get stupid and play like shit when they face the Yanx? - 9th inning tonight, Detroit up by one, 2 outs no one on and an 0-2 count on Ellsbury ... so the next four pitches are out of the strike zone and the tying run is on - strike one to Brett Gardner, but a pick-off attempt goes awry and Ellsbury goes all the way around to 3rd - so with an 0-1 count they decide to intentionally walk Gardner. Yeah it's lefty/righty BUT HE'S THE FUCKING WINNING RUN and it's not like HE's not going to steal 2nd and put that run in scoring position - Gardner immediately steals 2nd and puts the winning run in scoring position The Tigers wind up getting away with it as Clint Frazier popped out to end the game but, still, that might be the worst two batter stretch I've seen in a long time.

Lotsa assists so far for young Amed. Bit of a loopy sidearm throw but he's had plenty of time with each of them so there's been no need to really cut one loose. Quite different from, say, young Shawon Dunston who'd fire it over there at max speed whether the situation called for it or not.

BA's final scouting report: Since the day he signed for a then-Mets international record $1.75 million signing bonus, Rosario has been a step ahead of his peers. He’s the rare shortstop who can impact the game both with his glove and his bat. Defensively he has plus range, quick hands and excellent anticipation. His has plus arm strength but his accuracy does sometimes waver, something that should improve as he matures. At the plate, Rosario is a top-of-the-order hitter with excellent contact skills. Since the beginning of last year, he’s proven himself to be a plus hitter thanks to strong wrists and bat speed. His power is his weakest attribute. He can pull the ball over the fence at times, but it’s not really his game. Rosario is better as a top-of-the-order table setter who posts high on-base percentages thanks largely to high batting averages. His plus speed plays well on the basepaths and makes him a threat to swipe 10-15 bases a year. WHAT TO EXPECT Francisco Lindor’s power has taken off as a big leaguer. Rosario projects as a similar defender and similar hitter, although he’s more likely to hit five to 10 home runs a year rather than the 15-plus Lindor provides. His combination of defense and hitting ability makes him a potential 4+ WAR player.

8:40 is better than 9:10 Matz vs Hoffman is the same matchup as the final game of the CitiField series in mid-July, that was the one where Matz gave up 7 runs on 9 hits while getting just 3 outs, which is bad even by his recent standards. Met bats got to Hoffman for 4 runs in the middle innings to temporarily cut the drubbing to 9-4 but then Salas, Bradford, and Ramirez happened and the final was 13-4 ... of course it was, it was a Sunday game. Rox (60 - 46) are holding on to the 2nd WC slot (1/2 back of ARZ) as Milwaukee and the other pretenders sink towards or below .500

Ceetar wrote: meh, he's one of the best hitters on the team and Smith is a prospect. He could still flame out for all we know. You could push for the DH for the other 150 games, juggle the position, play Duda in RF sometimes since the Mets don't seem to care about defense anyway. I mean, just handing the job to a prospect with less than two months of major league experience shouldn't ever be a given. Duda has a .911 OPS. Smith is cheap, and young, and will play better defense, but .900 OPS guys don't just fall out of a tree. So what's the point here, that we should keep Duda for QO money (probably north of $18 mil) or resign him to a multi-year deal at market prices AND try to work Smith in at the same time even though they both swing lefty and are limited to the same position on the field? That's nuts folks. Duda will be 32 next season and has a career 800 OPS. And even if you want to look at only 2016-17 and claim that 900 is now his new normal, while also ignoring that those years totaled less than a full season's worth of ABs (barely over 400) due to injuries, AND that you expect him to keep duplicating that as he turns 32, 33, 34 - it means you're content to see the 22 y/o Smith sit around for the occasional PH appearance and/or wait in Vegas for another injury. If you're that intent on keeping Duda then you need to deal Smith off in some sort of 'challenge trade' for a prospect at a different position; this has to be an either/or proposition. And as long as you keep in mind that a 1B prospect will probably get you a lesser prospect at any other position, you're free to submit your WATPs for Smith anytime. Will Smith ultimately be the better player? I have no idea but we're going to need to find out at some point and if that time is not when the existing guy's contract is up and the replacement is hitting .340 in AAA I'm not sure there ever will be a time. Ultimately I'm going to bet on the guy who's going to be 22-27 in the next five years over the one going to be 32-37, but that's just me.

smg58 wrote: The Mets were in a bind in a market that was openly hostile to two-month rentals. Particularly when it came to hitters In Duda's case, you would have to have been willing to try out Dominic Smith at third in order to go that route. Not an option since Smith throws lefty. As much as we may have liked Lucas he had to go and it makes zero sense to bring him back. The others will clear waivers. Barring character issues that may or may not be overblown, there is no urgency in dealing Cabrera. It would basically cost the Mets $6.5M to pick up his option, which is not unreasonable. One could make an argument for either Cabrera OR Reyes in 2018 as an all-around backup IF, but that's an issue to discuss in more detail this winter.

Edgy MD wrote: I guess it's notable that two of the Something-J's on deck, waiting to fill in their slots in the AlphaMet, are namesake (and therefore J-initialed) sons of longtime Mets, who both originated in Brooklyn. Which means at some point in their lives they probably took the J train.

Chad Ochoseis wrote: And Bruce? QO at the end of the season, I would think. If he gets a better offer, good luck to him and we get the sandwich pick and an outfield of Cespedes-Nimmo-Conforto. If he stays, it's Cespedes-Conforto-Bruce with Nimmo as a 4th OF. It should be noted that changes to the CBA last year further limit the value of picks received by a team for a player rejecting their QO starting in the 2018 draft. From now on only those teams which are in position to receive revenue sharing money get a pick between the 1st and 2nd rounds (pick # 30-something). All others pick up a pick between rounds 2 and 3, one that's more likely to be in the 70-80 range. The result -- or at least the intent -- will likely be fewer 'borderline' QO offerings in the future. I doubt Walker, for instance, would have been offered last year if MLB was operating under these new rules.

Actually Darvish isn't all that good this year and might wind up being the least scary LAD pitcher you could draw at the moment. Dodgers also dealt for two LH relievers today and the Nats for Twins closer Brandon Kintzler (third reliever they've added in the last three weeks) as those two team look to each other as their biggest competition.

sharpie wrote: I have to think that Asdrubel or Neil Walker would get through waivers. And probably Granderson as well.

Well, we were sitting on a slew of bats in a year when virtually ALL the deadline movement across MLB has been pitching. Only the relatively minor deal involving Lucroy was a for bat.

seawolf17 wrote: Sonny Gray to the MFYs, apparently. For three "Top 12" prospects -- meaning Top-12 within the Yanx system, not overall -- IF Jorge Mateo, RHP James Kaprelian, OF Dustin Fowler Sonny Gray has a name almost as contradictory as Angel Pagan

Not quite as good a second year as the first, but both were better than the season he had leading up to his NYM tenure so we got as much or more out of him as we had any right to expect. Was valuable in either the set-up or closers role and the fact that he was seamlessly able to transition from one to the other and back again (all without complaint) added another level of value.

LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr wrote: Quick question: why are we AIMING at guys who are minor league relievers? Because our requests for Evan Longoria and Mookie Betts were turned down?

Francisco Liriano, who's been real good, real bad, and everywhere in between in his career since first showing up with the Twins in 2005, is moving from the Blue Jays to the Astros who are expected to use him out of the bullpen. OF Nori Aoki and a minor leaguer go the other way. Also the Cubs filled their backup catcher hole last night, getting Alex Avila and LHR Justin Wilson from the Tigers in exchange for a couple minor leaguers. Chicago's need for a backup backstop was a source of rumors that they were looking at Rene Rivera. btw, Detroit GM Al(berto) Avila dealt away his own son Al(ex) in pulling off that trade.

Mets Willets Point wrote: Wasn't it Manny Ramirez who overheard all the people talking about the O.J. car chase and thought they were talking about Ogea? That sounds right. Manny was a great hitter but probably didn't spend the off-seasons working on his doctoral thesis. I recently saw a mini-docu on those mid-90s Indians teams and that's probably where I heard the story.

Then there was Cleveland pitcher Chad Ogea (pronounced Oh-Jay) who arrived in the big leagues during 1994 - aka: the summer of O.J. I recently heard a story about him having a hard time convincing one of his none-too-bright teammates that he was NOT in fact related to Simpson.

Nogosek -- RHP, strictly relief to date. 6th round pick in 2016 out of U-Oregon (so he would have pitched with our 2017 #1 guy) good numbers this year in Low-A: 2.55 ERA, 0.99 WHIP; 11.5 K/9; 2.8 BB/9 Callahan - RHP, a starter initially but a reliever of late. 2nd round pick 2012 out of HS in SC. Split 2017 between AA & AAA, combined 32 games/42 innings; 3.21 ERA; 1.17 WHIP; 12.0 K/9, 2.8 BB/9 So it's two months of a good reliever in exchange for 3 potential future relievers: Callahan maybe could help in 2018, the others have higher ceilings probably but are further away

bmfc1 wrote: MFYs just made another "dealio" getting Jamie Garcia, most recently of the Twins who had him for just one start after getting him from ATL. MIN apparently traded a prospect to ATL and then received a better prospect from the MFYs. So the Twins trade for pitching, then lose six of seven (the one game they won was the one Garcia started) and so decide that they're out of it to the point where they trade that pitching to one of the teams they could potentially be fighting against for the WC. And you folks thought the AJ Ramos deal was strange! Be interesting for Twins fans to track the future progress of the one prospect they sent to Atlanta to get Garcia vs the two they got back from the Skanks since the net effect of this deal is a two for one swap of minor leaguers.

And that doesn't even include J. C. Martin - that would be Joseph Clinton Martin for those scoring at home (or even if you're alone) AJ, as noted in another thread, is named simply Alejandro so the J is either Junior or just a shortened version of the lengthy AleJandro Others on that list: John Christopher Nitkowski Joseph Jason Putz Thomas Javier Rivera and William Henry Dozier which somehow morphed into D.J. Reminds me a bit of J. D. Drew whose name was David Jonathan Drew, so now we have an example of initial names for dyslexics. Either that or he didn't want people thinking he spun records for a living. I always found the use of initials in place of a name to be an odd choice. In his book, Robert Allen Dickey simply passes off his name as, 'at one point people just started calling me R. A.', as if that were the most logical thing in the world and once that decision was made for him there was no way for him to stop it or not go along with it. The J. middle initial seems to happen most often these days as a sub for 'Junior' so as to differentiate the son from dad. My thought to that would be if you don't want him to be confused with dad then don't give him dad's exact name ... but to each his own. Then there's the whole initial first then middle name thing which usually starts with the concept of 'we're going to name the kid this but call him that'. Sure, OK The other problem with that idea is that I grew up assuming anyone with a name like that was automatically connected to Watergate since the first people I "knew" with that split were the likes of G. Gordon Liddy, E. Howard Hunt, H. Robert Haldeman, etc. Then there was a president of Duke University for a time who went by H. Keith H. Brodie. His full name was Harlow Keith Hammond Brodie so you can hardly blame him for going with Keith but the H. Keith H. part is just too pretentious even for an academic. President Brodie was at Duke when one of my sisters was and she and her friends labeled him: aka H. Keith H.

Jonathan Lucroy to Colorado from Texas which is where he was dealt at this time last year. He had NOT been having a good 2017 for the Rangers and so a PtbNL is the only thing going the other way.

Ashie62 wrote: Sometimes you don't have to do anything. Yeah but this isn't one of those times. Well, I suppose they don't HAVE to do anything but, seeing as how they're going to lose most or all of these guys at the end of the season anyway, it's certainly not an ideal time to sit and do nothing. But it does take two to tango and your mileage may vary and yadda yadda blah blah.

4 PM Monday is the deadline and it's probably tough to think of a year when a team clearly out of it had so many potential, and potentially useful to someone, FAs-to-be. Any or all out of Granderson, Bruce, Reed, Cabrera, and Walker could have already played their last NYM game. Also, because he's already been DFA'd so as to make room for Ramos, Edgin becomes a package sweetener in a deal as well. I already suspected Reyes was safer than the other potential FAs and the injury from Sunday's game (even though X-rays were negative) almost shirley makes that even more the case. Several of the above could survive the purge only to be dealt in August as their salaries make them probable to go unclaimed on waivers. And, of course, one of the known things about trading deadline time is that some shit will happen that no one even considered.

Met #1034 - A.J. Ramos As mentioned by Gary, there are no periods in AJ His listed name in BB-Ref is Alejandro with no middle name included. That leads me to believe that AJ probably stands for Alejandro Junior shortened to AJ and forgoing the punctuation.