Frayed Knot

You can't fire me, I QUIT!! [youtube:2q38uuy8]GwFqBa3lpKE[/youtube:2q38uuy8]

From the Puma: “I will have plenty to say later,” Backman said. A source added that Backman was told he would have been fired three years ago if team COO Jeff Wilpon hadn’t intervened on his behalf. Backman was a finalist for the Mets managerial opening when Terry Collins was hired before the 2011 season, but clashed with Alderson on numerous occasions afterward. According to a source, Backman was reprimanded in writing by Alderson before the 2015 season because the GM was unhappy that Backman made public comments about the organization’s young pitchers. Alderson was also ruffled by Backman’s boast that he would fix Ike Davis, after the slumping first baseman was sent to Las Vegas. http://nypost.com/2016/09/12/mets-fire-wally-backman-after-manager-went-rogue/ FK: Not that I can claim to have seen this coming, but neither am I surprised. I just never saw Wally as a Sandy type of manager and doubted that he'd ever be given the top job which essentially meant that it was always just a matter of when they'd part company rather than if unless Wally was content to remain a company man forever and I didn't see that happening either.

Ashie62 wrote: Was Wally obstinate? I think Wally Backman translates to 'Obstinate' in some upper German dialect.

In St Louis: 3rd pitch of the 9th inning = HR by Jeremy Hazelbaker. And now somehow this all leads to Joe Maddon getting tossed from the game although it's not exactly clear why B followed A

Zvon wrote: Cardinals don't have a hit through 7 innings, they trail the Cubs 4-0. Now thru 8 Also Pitt losing and Marlins losing in addition to the Cards. Giants play late in SD. So maybe we'll survive tonight intact despite it all.

Zvon wrote: A Sept. race for a spot is not the time to be giving a pitcher with such a glaring problem a second chance. Which leaves the question, if not him then who? This team has already gone ten deep in starters so it's either giving one of the other spare parts a second (third?) chance: Ynoa?, Merrett?, Niese is no longer in the equation, or give it to a completely new starter: Gilmartin? Smoker?

Yeah, good idea Dusty. At 2-1/2 hours for 6 innings this game was moving much too quickly, so switching pitchers prior to the first pitch of the inning was completely necessary when facing a switch-hitter with an 7-run game lead and a 9-game division lead.

So the Yanx (and, let's face it, their failure is my only interest here) won 2 of 3 vs TBR over the weekend (3 of 4 going back to Thursday) but remain the same distance back in the AL East (-4.0) and in the WC race (-2.0) as before. They did make gains relative to Toronto (moving from 3 games back to just 2), Detroit (were back 1.0, now tied), and added some extra cushion above Houston (up 1.5 instead of 0.5) but Seattle swept their weekend in Oakland and so they moved a game closer to the Yanx (-2.5 to -1.5) and to the whole pack. This week's AL match-ups see the Yanx getting a 3-game visit from the Dodgers who won 2 of 3 this weekend but still saw the Giants creep a bit closer. Suxx to have to root for the Blue here but we gotta. Tampa goes to Toronto so maybe they'll wake the fuck up. Baltimore & Boston go head to head at Fenway so another series where there's no bad result for the MFY Houston sees the Rangers, who they can't beat: 3-13 this year!, for the final time this season. And on the left coast the Mariners head to Anaheim; and it's KC's turn to beat up on Oakland With 20 games left, Yanx have these 3 w/the Dodgers plus: Boston x 7; Baltimore x 3; Toronto x 4; and three more w/Tampa -- so they're going to have to earn their way in.

Well, look at it this way: it could have been a lot worse.

Series for Sept 12-14: Monday - Montero vs Mat Latos Latos faced the Mets in relief eight days ago during the Sunday game of the last series and managed to do something very few pitchers have, he served up a HR to Jay Bruce. That was his Nats debut and he's pitched to just one batter since. This will be his first Nats start. Tuesday - Syndergaard vs AJ Cole Cole started the Friday game in the last series, the one game the Nats won as he out-pitched Syndergaard while holding the Mets to 1 R, 3 H over 6 IP. His other three ML starts this season have been less than successful but, then again, a pitcher having his best start of the year vs the Mets has been a common theme in 2016 Wednesday - Gsellman vs Tanner Roark This will be a rematch of the middle game in that series where the Mets and Gsellman prevailed 2-1 -- and that's pretty much the way we'll probably have to win this one as we essentially never hit Roark ever. With the exception of one bad relief outing in 2015, the Mets have never scored more than 2 runs against him in 14 games/8 starts giving him a career 2.70 ERA / 1.12 WHiP across 60 innings pitched

Winning the WC play-in game is MUCH!! more important than the simply determining where that game will be played and the gap from Thor to whoever (at least as described in this scenario) is larger than the small (if any) advantage you'd get from being the home team in that one game ... Bump him! Home field/court/ice advantage is the single most over-rated sports topic of the 21st century.

An update on Cecchini on the occasion of his big league call-up http://www.minorleagueball.com/2016/9/8/12840448/mlb-rookie-report-gavin-cecchini-ss-new-york-mets At age 22, Cecchini is in a good spot on the age curve, having fully proven himself as a hitter in the high minors. Even with the questions about his defense, he should be a valuable player going forward. I would not under-estimate his chances to improve even further with the bat. He's done enough to merit a Grade B entering 2017.

Frayed Knot wrote: Teams don't really make money on minor league guys. Even if Tebow winds up boosting the hell out of the attendance in whatever minor league stop he makes (assuming he even gets that far) that windfall will mostly benefit the minor league owner at each level which, with the exception of Brooklyn and the Gulf Coast squad, isn't the Wilpons. At the moment I believe the outlay for Tebow is around 100K which maybe sounds like a lot for what is so far just a winter commitment, but at the same time it's less than what many teenage draft picks get and most of them won't see the big leagues without a ticket either. Finding and developing players is expensive and you miss a lot more than you hit. Tebow's path to get there is different for sure but at this point he's just another hopeful whose journey will end far short of CitiField. Actually the Mets/Wilpons do own the Port St Lucie team also. They do NOT own their affiliates at low-A Columbia, AA Binghamton, or AAA Las Vegas They appear to partially own the Appalachian League team in Kingsport.

So the bottom line in this whole weekend is that we lost a game to the Giants, broke even with the Cards, and lost a game in the East to the Nationals. But, as CF said before the weekend started, the match-ups this weekend made it more of a 'hold your serve' type of situation where the object was to not lose any ground. And considering that the main competition were winning 5 of 6, we did OK for ourselves. Also on the plus side, the Marlins & Pirates dropped further off the pace making this more certain to become of a three-into-two deal. But the road starts to get tougher for the competition soon. Can't play MIL or ARZ forever. The Giants have half of their remaining 20 games against either StL (4) or LAD (6), while the Cards are slated to face either the Cubs (6) or Giants (4) in half of theirs. The slate for early part of the week coming up: - Cards hosting the Cubs for three. Cubs' magic number for the Central was six coming into tonight (and they're winning big right now) so they should still be looking to put the hammer down on StL as each win will count double and they could clinch as early as Wednesday. - Giants head home to host Sandy Eggo for a three-game set as, at least for now, their tour of the dregs of the NL West continues. Marlins head to Braves, Pirates to Philles Meanwhile ... the Dodgers play host to the Yanquis!!

d'Kong76 wrote: The way I understand it they don't need to make a Metsian offer to retain him, they need to give him $1million. They need to give him $13 million in order to keep him for 2017. The $1 million is to make him go away. The other alternative is to negotiate a different contract entirely, a deal which would go beyond 2017 and replace the current one. I doubt they'll take that road but maybe it's worth discussing.

Benjamin Grimm wrote: According to Baseball Reference, Bruce's contract status for 2017 is "$13M Team Option, $1M Buyout" That's still a 'must pick up' option to me. Even if you're aiming to trade him you have to pick it up in order to do so. For all his problems since he showed up here he still has more XBHs this season than does Cespedes (61 in 533 PA vs 51 in 458) and gets them at about the same rate. Plus it's still just 119 ABs for Bruce, and while that's beyond just merely slump territory, you still have to look at his career as a whole and figure that's the norm and this sample the exception.

And it's not like you can argue that he looks like he's close to finding it. If it's possible to hit a soft .198 and seem like he's swinging even worse than that then Bruce has found a way. Meanwhile, problem #2 is d'Arnaud who now has nearly as many PA this season as last. But while he had 27 XBH in what was essentially 1/2 of a season in 2015, he has all of 10 this year and I can't remember a single "big" hit from him all season which pretty much explains the whopping 14 RBIs (4 since mid-July).

Benjamin Grimm wrote: If I had a million guesses, I couldn't have told you that the Braves' manager was a guy named "Snitker." I suppose I missed (or forgot) the story of Freddi Gonzalez' departure. In reaction to the managerial change back in May, we spent most of the time on Page two of this thread making jokes about Fredi's name that we barely got around to making fun of Snitker's aside from JCL's quip that 'Snitker Satisfies'.

And, btw, Cespedes with more RBIs in today's two ABs than d'Arnaud has in nearly two months.

Atlanta pitcher Williams Perez is the rare pitcher who has his entire pitching arm tattooed while his throwing arm remains bare. Not sure if that odd choice is what led to either the Grand Slam (speaking of things tattooed!) or his removal from the game, but his choice of body art is the opposite of how most hurlers are doing things these days.

With two outs, sending him was the right move IMO. You hope to get a bobble or a bad throw in a case like that but it didn't happen. Teufel's made a bunch of mistakes this year but I don't think this was one of them. The bigger problem was, after being gifted two runs in the 1st inning, scoring just once over the subsequent nine innings against a bad pitching staff.

Cardinals have scored four times in the 8th and are still batting. 4-1 over Brewers. Giants lead 5-1 in the 5th.

Had to send him but our only real hope there was a bad throw ... and we didn't get it. Didn't get a good slide either.

Nice also of the Braves to decide that they're not going to challenge the call after looking at it on video for like a minute and a half.

Benjamin Grimm wrote: Gant induced 3 double-play grounders in the first and got zero double plays. That looked like the Mets earlier in the season: three potential GiDP balls yielded exactly one out and allowed both a couple of runs and also tacked on to the pitchers pitch count. Now we just have to make sure that those aren't our only runs tonight.