Frayed Knot

Revising my list: 30 - SYNDERGAARD 29 - CESPEDES 28 - CABRERA 27 - COLON 26 - deGROM 25 - GRANDERSON 24 - MATZ 23 - REED 22 - WALKER 21 - FAMILIA 20 - REYES 19 - FLORES 18 - LUGO 17 - GSELLMAN 16 - LONEY 15 - CONFORTO 14 - JOHNSON 13 - ROBLES 12 - R. RIVERA 11 - BLEVINS 10 - d'ARNAUD 9 - HARVEY 8 - TJ RIVERA 7 - WRIGHT 6 - DUDA 5 - BRUCE 4 - DE AZA 3 - SALAS 2 - HENDERSON 1 - VERRETT

LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr wrote: Not sure about the circumstances with Marte [oe: also a car wreck] but the other three all involved accidents and several if not all involved some combination of drugs + alcohol + recklessness. And while it's maybe too easy to stereotype, there's probably something to be said about acting out of control as a side effect of being young and suddenly rich while coming out of an environment that's mostly poor. [Puts on amateur sociologist hat] I'm not sure how much "poor" has to do with this behavior; "young" (as in 25 and younger) and "rich" as in unaccountably so, versus owning/running a company) probably is 75 percent of the equation (with the other 25 percent being "childless male"). [Takes off amateur sociologist hat; returns "It's 5 o'clock somewhere" trucker cap to rightful place] Not being poor itself necessarily but going from a situation of never having anything resembling luxuries to suddenly being able to own a whole array of the biggest, baddest, most expensive toys around. At least I had to take intermediate steps from Volkswagen Rabbit and Ford Escort before I graduated to owing my current vast collection of high-powered sports cars. Add that to the usual attitude of the athlete who thinks that neither rules nor the laws of nature apply to him and it's a bad combo.

The one common detail about all these recent crashes (Ventura's, Marte's, and Fernandez's anyway, don't remember about Taveres) is that all were described as occurring "early Sunday morning", aka: late Saturday night.

It's not been a good last couple of years for young, Latin stars - or at least potential ones. - Ventura hadn't quite lived up to some of the hype coming up (the mentioned temper I think was part of that) but was still just 25 with 38 wins and three full ML seasons already under his belt. - Oscar Tavares got only 1/2 a ML season (StL) before his death, but he was a top-5 prospect across everyone's board prior to that and was just 22 y/o - Andy Marte (mentioned above) was older than the others and turned out to have a checkered ML career [oe: was erectly playing well in Korea], but years ago he was neck and neck with (and usually slightly ahead of) David Wright as the best 3B prospects in baseball. - and then of course there's Jose Fernandez That's all in barely over a two-year span and even then I get the feeling that I'm leaving one or two out. Not sure about the circumstances with Marte [oe: also a car wreck] but the other three all involved accidents and several if not all involved some combination of drugs + alcohol + recklessness. And while it's maybe too easy to stereotype, there's probably something to be said about acting out of control as a side effect of being young and suddenly rich while coming out of an environment that's mostly poor. Hopefully there will be someone from within that community who can start spreading the word about how dangerous it is to take the gift for granted rather than simply reveling too much in the toys it brings them. One of the things that stuck with me in the aftermath of Jose Fernandez's death was the four generations of women (grandmother, mother, fiancee, not-yet-born daughter) who not only won't have him around but also will benefit from just a fraction of the earning potential he still had left in his career.

Although it's not like we were getting above average production from the likes of Bruce and Conforto. Plus neither Grandy nor Conforto had ever played 1B (Bruce barely had) and by the point of the season when Loney was wearing down Flores was filling in at 2nd after Walker went down for the final month. Not sure there were a lot of good other options.

Edgy MD wrote: Shit, that enhanced Rodriguez' legacy with me. I wanted to retire his number in Flushing. The fact that he continued to play for three more seasons as an adequate part-timer after giving the Yankees the worst two months of his life—that was gravy. So you're saying only Raines goes into C-Town with a Yanqui hat from this year's bunch?

Benjamin Grimm wrote: I had completely forgotten that Tim Raines was ever a Yankee. Even having been reminded of it, I still don't remember it at all. Then you probably remember even less that Ivan Rodriguez was one as well. A trade deadline pickup in 2008, he wound up doing not much at all while getting less than 100 ABs over the final two months as that year's MFY team missed the playoffs for the first time in 14 seasons. All of which leaves us with the following questions: When are the number retiring ceremonies in the Bronx for Raines & Pudge and will they also get plaques?

Well, net negative as compared to what? As compared to a 1B you can find if you set your sights towards getting one in the off-season, then sure. As compared to what was available in mid-year to replace a short-term injury that quickly became long-term, then I'd say his availability and timing were a definite positive for us. Would have been nice to have turned to Flores when Duda went down but Wilmer was either always injured himself or was needed to replace the casualty on the other side of the diamond. After all it wasn't like Campbell was working out, and instead of having two hitting catchers leaving us the luxury of using one to play 1B on occasion we didn't have any, nor was Dom Smith anywhere close to ready, and so on. That said he's certainly generating the widest divergence of opinion in our year-end ranking, out scores on him to date are 17, 0, 15, 1, 17, 0, 13, 1, 18, and 0 So, according to us, he was either an average player for the 2016 Mets or he brought less to the table than the likes of Jay Bruce, Alejandro De Aza, or Logan Verrett.

I think it's clear that he is.

Schaefer was significantly lower than our emerging consensus (haven't added TMonk's vote yet) on Gsellman (9 slots lower), also Blevins (11), TJ Rivera (7), and Lagres (5). But our PotG votes were higher on Loney (+5), Harvey (9), DeAza (7), and Verrett (11) Not really sure what all that says. Schaefer tends to be a bit more erratic year by year than we as individuals are but I've never be able to suss out a particular pattern [low on relievers, too high on part-timers, etc.] to predict how it varies.

John Cougar Lunchbucket wrote: John Cougar Lunchbucket wrote: Walker over cespedes? need to think about that one. Seems like Cespedes might be getting dinged a bit too much for the CF play when it was more of a desperation thing. There's just no fucking way Neil Walker was the best player on the Mets last year. I can't see him any higher than 3rd and even that's a stretch. To me he's neck and neck with Grandy for 3rd best offensive player. Then he drops from there depending on how many pitchers you want to slot ahead of him.

Vic Sage wrote: Vic Sage is high on (well we won't know for sure until the lab comes back with the results) but also Lagares, Salas, Henderson, Kelly; low on Loney, Wright, Conforto, Flores, Reyes how can i be high on my rankings for Salas and Kelly when i didn't even include them? This makes me question your record-keeping. I DEMAND A RECOUNT! Yeah, not sure what happened there, maybe I was the one who was high. I seemed to have mis-copied only your list and even then only part of it - so at least the whole thing wasn't a mess. As it stands now, you're low on Loney, and then less so on Flores, Reyes, and d'Arnaud. Higher than most others on Lagares & Henderson.

btw, if you do make adjustments to your list, re-print the list or at least point out what you changed. If you just re-edit the earlier post I probably won't see it.

can we post the high/low/avg for each player so we can have a frame work for some debate? Like I said earlier, most of the variation is among the part-timers, those in the middle/bottom of the list. The top is more or less consistent. As of now, compared to the existing consensus: - EDGY is coming in high on Lagares, Salas, Ruggiano, and Kelly; low on Flores, Conforto, and is off the board on Loney & Wright - Nymr: high on Bruce & Wright; low on Reyes & Harvey - Vic Sage is high on (well we won't know for sure until the lab comes back with the results) but also Lagares, Salas, Henderson, Kelly; low on Loney, Wright, Conforto, Flores, Reyes - Seawolf is high on d'Arnaud, Henderson, Verrett; low on Gsellman, Harvey, Duda - JCL is a bit up on d'Arnaud & Harvey; low on R. Rivera (off the board) & Johnson - Grimm is high onDe Aza; down on d'Arnaud - Ceetar is up on Walker, Harvey, Lagares, De Aza; low on Blevins, Loney (off the board), Flores None of that means you're wrong about those listed, only that you're higher or lower than the pack on those particular guys.

And even before you get to Monteleon, who wound up being drafted 20th in that round by the Pirates, there were still two other pitchers taken in that draft before Dwight (5th overall). Jimmy Jones -- 3rd overall, Padres Bryan Oelkers - 4th overall, Twins Sometimes you're good, sometimes you need to be lucky, usually it helps to be both.

I'm going to say the end of January for this one. So if you still want to contribute and/or change/update an existing submission, do so by the close of January or forever hold your peace.

I believe the total public ballot thing doesn't begin until next year - although certainly more and more writers are making theirs public and the interwebs help spread local ballots to a larger audience. JEFF BAGWELL - 86.2 TIM RAINES - 86.0 IVAN RODRIGUEZ - 76.0 TREVOR HOFFMAN - 74.0 VLADIMIR GUERRERA - 71.7 EDGAR MARTINEZ - 58.6 ROGER CLEMENS - 54.1 BARRY BONDS - 53.8 MIKE MUSSINA - 51.8 CURT SCHILLING - 45.0 LEE SMITH - 34.2 MANNY RAMIREZ - 23.8 LARRY WALKER - 21.9 FRED McGRIFF - 21.7 JEFF KENT - 16.7 GARY SHEFFIELD - 13.3 BILL WAGNER - 10.2 SAMM SOSA - 8.6 ----------------------- JORGE POSADA - 3.8 MAGGIO ORDONEZ - 0.7 EDGAR RENERIA - 0.5 JASON VARITEK - 0.5 TIM WAKEFIELD - 0.2 ... and a whole bunch of zeroes: CASEY BLAKE (I have no memory of Casey Blake), PAT BURRELL, ORLANDO CABRERA, MIKE CAMERON, JD DREW, CARLOS GUILLEN, DERREK LEE, MELVIN MORA, ARTHUR RHODES, FREDDY SANCHEZ, MATT STAIRS

Edgy MD wrote: Chris, use your inside voice. That IS his inside voice.

Phils signing Michael Saunders this week and the Jays re-signing Joey Bats just shrunk the market a bit more.

Yes, it seems that MLB players apparently suffer from ADHD (or similar afflictions) at rates far above our already over-medicated population as a whole and therefore "require" special exemptions for these otherwise banned drugs. It's like medical marijuana in a sense, saying it'll be restricted only to those who need it is a tricky standard to maintain.

That's the Fran I remember, talking up to the pitch, through the pitch, adding sound effects to the play itself and then completely taking over once the play ends (if he even waited that long) right up to the first pitch to the next batter. In the first video when Howie says, "He threw it from his knees Fran", FXH never even picks up on the cue - although maybe because he knew the inning was over and they were headed to commercial. There had to be some reason the head honchos at Cablevision liked him so much.

Well of course that was Steinbrenner who was never at a loss to blame others (see: Winfield, Dave) for his bad business decisions (no wonder he was pals with Trump). He used to get pissed at Mattingly during his arbitration years and then even more pissed when Donnie would have the nerve to publicly point out that he volunteered to sign a multi-year deal as a 2nd or 3rd year player which would have wound up saving the Yanx millions but it was George who insisted on taking things year by year. Dellen Bettances is the lone NYY going to arbitration this year, let's see if there are any leaked reports in the near future about him not being all that plus a bag of chips. In general though, it would probably have to be the most acrimonious arbitration case of all time before either the player or the team wrote each other off one or two or three year down the line when the player qualified as a FA. If there has been a case where that's happened in recent years I certainly can't remember the specifics.

Eh no biggie, there's still time for the two sides to reach a negotiated settlement. And, if not, then they go the arb route to settle things. Arbitration isn't always the most pleasant solution, but even bad hearings are more likely to result in some temporary ruffled feathers than in Game of Thrones level blood and guts, and I can't recall hearing about even one player who cut ties with teams over whatever might have been said during a years-earlier arb hearing.

- The best thing one can say about Gilkey's defense was that he was a good hitter. Or at least that he was briefly. - the thing I always liked about that play wasn't just the throw from the knees, it was the improvisation by him adjusting to the poor relay before he could even execute the throw itself. That was the kind of play where Rey-Rey was at his best, the ones where he would make it up as he went along. - I was never a Fran guy and the stunning part from that clip was the times we didn't hear him; I don't recall many instances where he kept quiet for as many consecutive seconds as he did there. If he had duplicated that more often I'd have spent fewer hours yelling at him through my TV set during those years.

Probably none, but of course MLB players aren't paid strictly on the results of their most recent season. And now Travis d'Arnaud checks in with a $1.875 mil deal.