Frayed Knot

And the Nats lost to the Dodgers in an afternoon game while most of us weren't paying attention, so there's that. Most notable about the game is that it was Strasburg's first loss of the year, his first in fact since we beat him last September 9th when a Kelly Johnson 8th inning HR tied it and then was followed by a 2R HR by Cespedes (off Drew Storen but with Strasburg's runner on base), it was the final game of a three-game sweep at CF. Yesterday's loss was due to him serving up a 2R and a 3R HR to Justin Turner in the 1st & 4th innings. Remember when Turner got off to a slow start with just 3 HRs at the end of May and we all assumed (and by 'we' I mean 'me') that it showed he was finally coming back to earth following two partial seasons of above-his-head success? Well he's knocked 14 HRs since June 1st in only 160 ABs. I think I was less down on Turner while he was here than a lot of NYM fans but I can't claim to have seen this on the horizon, not the last six weeks nor the last 2-1/2 seasons.

When he first came up, Niese. His was more of the slower, big-breaking type. Later not so much.

Yeah Leiter used to call his signature pitch, that one that looked like a strike right up until it wound up bearing in on the toes of a RH batter, a 'cutter' but that thing had some serious downward movement and better fits the modern definition of a slider.

Pelfrey was drafted with the sinking fastball he had in college although that seemed to have disappeared in his pro career. I would say splitters probably are a separate category.

Part of the challenge of this exercise is that the definition of pitches has tended to morph over the eras. The classic 'slider' was originally so named (at least in the stories I heard) because its break was horizontal, the pitcher would throw it with a stiff hand on one side of the ball so it 'slid' across the strike zone as opposed to the curve which was thrown with the snap of the hand causing it to break nearly straight down (go back far enough and the curve was often referred to as 'the drop'). But now-days everyone wants their slider to have 'tilt' to the point where it may still be harder and with less downward action than the curve, a 'flat' slider is derided as a meatball, particularly when thrown to a pitcher's opposite (LHP to RHB, etc). The old definition of slider probably fits 'cutters' best now, at which point I think of Rick Reed (but maybe that's a separate category).

- I have no idea whether he is/was a juicer, but I don't think this injury adds any evidence one way or the other - nor do I see any similarities, in type or in causation, between YC's strained quad muscle and ARod's degenerative hip condition - It was clear at the time which play he hurt the leg on and, IIRC, the word came down fairly quickly and specifically that it was a 'strained quad'. You can choose to believe that or not but they weren't being vague. - the injury occurred 13 days ago on the Friday prior to the ASB. Less than two weeks is a pretty quick trigger on labeling the injury as "chronic".

Jim Bouton's BALL FOUR talked openly about 'Greenies' and the release of that book was now 46 years ago and was about a season 17 years prior to '86 so, yeah, nothing really new about that. Oddly the subject of pills seemed to cause the least concern at the time of BF's publication as Commissioner Kuhn and other fuddy-duddies of that era seemed more concerned about the 'revelations' that players sometimes stayed out late at night drinking and -- GASP! -- maybe even had sex with women who were not necessarily their wives. Not that anyone actually believed, even way back then, that players all went back to their hotel after road games with a copy of 'Field and Stream' and wrote letters home to Mary Sue while drinking a milkshake, but it seemed important to those who were slow realize that 1969 wasn't exactly 1959 that the image that they did stay intact.

I got the impression from reviews and what-not that it was more about Ronnie going shit in Game 7 of the WS than 86 rumor stuff. Yeah that's pretty much it, as the subtitle: 'Failure & Triumph in the Biggest Game of my Life' indicates. Ronnie has a tendency to be a negative guy at times. I personally feel he overdoes the 'I wasn't all that good when I played' angle whenever he refers back to his own career, something that's often a go-to move for ex-player talking heads which I'd prefer he not follow, but that's just my take on it. In any case, he's definitely talked before about how while fans always want to bring up his best games ever his mind is much more liable to revert back to his worst outings and, while he didn't exactly fail in Game 7 of '86, he did need to be relieved by Sid early on after serving up back-to-back HRs and it plainly bugs him even given the eventual outcome. He's also talked/written about Game 7 1988 NLCS vs-Dodgers where he totally laid an egg. I think for the athlete -- and certainly for This athlete -- those kind of games linger longer than the good times and he's described this book as a kind of catharsis for him to hopefully get it out of his system all these years later. So, yeah, more self-analysis and less gossip than we've come to expect from tales of the NYM of '86. And I suspect turning down a big advance from the publisher was incentive as well. As an ex-athlete with both a NYC gig and national network exposure he's probably about as 'hot' as he's going to be right now so it's a good time to cash in.

As far as I know it's the only one. I haven't gotten around to this book yet.

Kelly Johnson: Four for four, none of those hits drove in a run and he never scored a run, and only the wild pitch that followed his 9th inning single allowed him to get as far as 2B Not blaming KJ, just saying that that's what kind of a game it was.

Who do you want Terry to put on the mound down six runs? And, after an outing where he gets five outs w/2 Ks and an infield single as the only blemish ... Really? Look, I understand that neither Bastardo nor De Aza are going to be fan favorites around here, but we're starting to turn those two into all-purpose punching bags anytime they're not chained to the bench whether they were the problem that day or not.

And this game just got out of hand.

Edgy MD wrote: Five hits in four innings, but no runs? Now six hits in five innings and still no runs. And they've managed that despite going a stunning 2-for-5 w/RiSP (REGRESSION TO THE MEAN!!!) but of course neither of those hits scored runs and one of the three non-hits was a GiDP

And now even a rare hit w/RiSP doesn't actually score a run. Had to send him though, just the lack of team speed showing its head.

Note to NYM pitchers 1) stop walking guys 2) stop giving up 50 foot singles Follow those rules and the rest will likely take care of itself.

Yeah but you need a backup catcher to play once every 5-6 days anyway so if there's a beneficial matchup between him and one pitcher then it makes sense to take advantage of it, even if the edge turns out to be merely a psychological one and not necessarily something that can be proven through metrics. Now if d'Arnaud could actually stay on the field for more than two weeks in a row and/or if Plawecki hadn't hit a soft .200 over 400 ML PAs then Rivera wouldn't even be here, but Td'A hasn't yet and KP did and so RR is.

Meanwhile, the Cubs having got to be kicking themselves over this game. Not only did their 13 baserunners (10 hits incl. 3 doubles + 4 BBs) result in just one run, but the way they got those runners made it almost impossible not to score more: - 1st inning: 1st & 2nd, no outs - 2nd inning: 2nd & 3rd, no outs - 4th inning: runner on 2nd, 2 outs (run taken off the board after replay review) - 6th inning: leadoff walk - and of course then there was the 9th inning So of course the only inning where they did score started with 2 outs/nobody on and was essentially gifted to them via a Wild Pitch + Error Cubs were 2-for-13 w/RiSP and neither of those 2 hits scored a run: the play at the plate that was reversed, and then 9th inn bunt single that loaded the bases -- that's certainly 2016 Mets-like (in)efficiency. Mets were 1-for-5 last night w/RiSP, Rivera's single being the magic hit

I keep telling myself that there's going to be a (good) regression to the mean of our RiSPy numbers and that, even if that upward regression is only to our stinky mean of well below average BA & OBA, the result is going to be more runs scored and a less HR-reliant offense. And then someone like the normally reliable Cabrera heads off on a run where he's nearing on-fer-30 in RiSP situations and my logical optimism gets shot to hell all over again.

I think it's safe to say that replay saved our collective asses last night -- first the play at home, then Walker's negated GiDP -- and, as much quarrel as I've had with the rule since expanded beyond HRs, it was nice to see it work as designed: - the two calls in question were simply horrible and not some 'Oooooh I think maybe possibly his spikes lost contact with the base for 1/4 second' type of call for which the rule was never intended - quick calls by the team to ask for the review rather than going into a game stall while the bench coach waits on the phone for their review specialist to examine the evidence from nine angles looking for possible loopholes - reasonably quick decisions from the Chelsea headquarters although you still wonder why it wasn't even quicker. Would have been fun to see the umps put on the headphones and then take them off like 5 seconds later because their colleagues in NY already knew that they so obviously blew it - and no rules were spontaneously ignored allowing additional reviews for a team after their supposed quota was spent

John Sickels' Mid-Season Prospect Report Keep in mind that, as always, this is not a new or re-ordered list but merely last winter's list with updates on the half-season since. As expected the most glowing review is of Rosario: 3) Amed Rosario, SS, Grade B: Breakout; hitting combined .330/.377/.472 between High-A and Double-A, 14 steals, still just 20 years old; good defense, too; Mets version of Xander Bogaerts? Grade A- prospect at this point and maybe more.

Marlins win. THAAA Marlins win ...

8-4 Dodgers in Washington, 2 out in the 9th Marlins & Phils tied at 1 in the 10th. Nats lose. THAAAAAA Nats lose!!!

That was so awesome that I never ever want to see it again!!

Oh wow!! Gutsy move by Reyes to go to 2nd there. My first inclination was to take the out at home.

Isn't this guy Strop the one Billy Squire wrote a song about?