Frayed Knot

So when we last saw these guys they were slightly ahead of us in scoring runs (.18 RS/G) Yet somehow with all that hitting they're just barely ahead of the Mets in run scoring: 12th at 3.93 RS/G vs 13th at 3.75 Now they're significantly ahead of us (.52 RS/G) which points out more about the way we've hit over the last month than it does about what they've done but they have picked up their offense recently. Mainly what's happened is that Giancarlo has started to wake up after bottoming out at .192 in mid-June but hitting ~.310 since. Mets took 2 of 3 in that last series, losing only to Jose Fernandez 1-0 No Fernandez this week though and, theoretically anyway, they should have the pitching edge in this series overall. Monday - Harvey vs Kohler: 6-7; 4.45 3 runs on 6 hits over 6 IP off Kohler in the game on June 3rd. Mets won 6-2 Tuesday - Matz vs Justin Nicolino (L): 2-4; 5.34 Mets beat Nicolino on June 4th, 2 runs on 9 hits over 5 innings. Mets won 6-4 Wednesday - deGrom vs Wei-Yin Chen (L): 4-3; 5.11 Mets have never faced Chen, either this year or during his time with Baltimore. As noted above, Fernando Rodney has been added to their pen. AJ Ramos still closing with Rodney now in the 8th. We start the series 1.5 games ahead of them.

The old stadium in Washington had a bunch of seats painted an odd color in an upper deck where Frank Howard had knocked HRs during his era there. I like the idea that the seat(s) be marked if/when they occur, I just don't think it should be a Cespedes-centric thing even if he remains the only one to reach up there for a while.

As Gary mentioned during today's telecast, this is a [u:7i6u2eli]4 PM start[/u:7i6u2eli] despite it saying 1 PM on a number of pre-season schedules.

Amed Rosario porn

The recently un-DL'd Matt Belisle un-does Strasberg's no-hitter allowing Cincy three hits in the 8th. 11-1 Nationals

Get that man an egg roll! [fimg=250:18uufzuh]http://www.cedmagic.com/v-title-database/zorr/with-six-you-get-eggroll-1.jpg[/fimg:18uufzuh]

Frayed Knot wrote: Madden seems awfully liberal with his position player changes in this series but just the opposite when it comes to swapping out pitchers. And his odd usage continues, pulling a pitcher in favor of a position player just after allowing said pitcher to hit the previous half-inning. Montero is also his 3rd catcher and he's now used all of them in just 7 innings.

Speaking of pulling pitchers, Strasberg just yanked after 6-2/3 despite a no-hitter.

If nothing else they should certainly acknowledge/mark the seat in some way. I'd actually prefer it NOT be in canary yellow which, in a few years (if not sooner) will seem like a silly fad that will have to be explained to anyone not here during what will quite possibly be a player's short-term NYM career. But the Agee shot was not recognized in its time and the painted mark was basically a 'somewhere around here' kind of guesstimate done many years after the fact. I'm almost surprised they got the date right when they did get around to it.

Edgy MD wrote: Should Nimmo be called back from first? Didn't he seem like he took that HbP with intent? Well, he's back in the dugout now.

Mets Guy in Michigan wrote: Edgy MD wrote: So, maybe we haven't seen all there is to see from Wilmer Flores. Not that he's not always trying his best. But I wonder if the idea of Reyes playing third base exclusively and Loney doing pretty well at first has been a factor. Well it wasn't spurring him on to multi-hit games prior to today so the cause-and-effect thing is a tough sell. Madden seems awfully liberal with his position player changes in this series but just the opposite when it comes to swapping out pitchers.

Mets Guy in Michigan wrote: Adios Lester! But I have to say that a fair number of these hits were of the 100-bouncer, bloop, broken bat variety. Not complaining, mind you. Mets gave Lester his share of Bangs too: 3 HRs, Reynolds 2B, a hard single or two.

Lefty Specialist wrote: Ashie62 wrote: I wonder if Grandys job is in jeopardy before the end of the month. If it's not, it should be. If, at some point, Lagares, Conforto, and Nimmo are all up and hitting at the same time then, yeah, you start to figure out how to handle/phase out Granderson. But they're a ways from that point now.

LAGARES - CF GRANDERSON - RF CESPEDES - LF WALKER - 2B FLORES - 3B LONEY - 1B REYNOLDS - SS RIVERA - C SYNDERGAARD - P ZOBRIST - 2B HEYWARD - CF BRYANT - [u:1b3ch4cm]RF[/u:1b3ch4cm] RIZZO - 1B CONTRERAS - LF CANDELARIO ?? - 3B BAEZ -SS ROSS - C LESTER - P

July the 2nd 2016 will forever be known as a TH day. 1st - Colon out-duels Jake Arrieta and Familia has a perfect 1-2-3 9th for a 4-3 NYM win over the Cubs 2nd - Cincinnati takes advantage of several Washington errors to score 5 times in the 10th inning for a 9-4 win 3rd - Andrew Miller pitched a no-hit inning in the 8th to preserve the 1-1 tie, but his first pitch of the 9th got hit for a walk-off HF by Justin Upton. I guess not having the lead caused Girardi to deviate from his 'formula' of Bettances - Miller - Chapman but, cause-and-effect or not, it looks like this was just the 3rd time this year that Miller has worked into a 2nd inning. Bonus - The Braves put a'hurtin' on Jose Fernandez and the Marlins opening up a 1-1/2 game gap between 2nd & 3rd

Reed & Familia last night faced: [AR] Bryant - Rizzo - Contreras - Montero - Russell - [JF] Baez - Ross - Zobrist (slots #3-1 in the lineup) Two of them hit fair balls, a ground single and a ground-out. K - 1B - K - K - K - K - GO - Foul-out That's some nice closing in a one-run game.

Looks like my reverse psychology plan is really paying off in this series. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Nats lose. Thaaaaaa Nats lose!! Cincy notches 5 in the 10th, mostly at the expense of reliever Sammy Solis but, really, there were several Washington errors, passed balls, and just general fuck-ups. Reds were without Votto tonight and even with Votto they're still the Reds so the Nats losing one to them is like found money. Wonder if they had fireworks after the game. The show was scheduled for Friday night and they even moved up the start time an hour to 6:05 in order to get them in. But rain delays and an overall long game pushed the end of the game passed the hour where DC allows fireworks to go off so at some point during Friday's game they had to announce to the paid crowd that there would be no show after the game. The best laid plans ... And, as noted elsewhere, the Braves put a whuppin' on Jose Fernandez -- 9 runs over 6 innings -- so that pus the Fish a bit further back in the rearview.

Y'know, with Lagares scheduled to play, Zimmo maybe leading off again, possibly Granderson slated to be back, all combined with Lester's odd throwing/holding problems with runners at 1st ... the Mets might even get a chance to run in this game

At least that gets our pitcher/position player ratio back to a better mix. I suspected that De Aza would survive the return of either Lagares or Conforto but probably not both. Unless of course a Granderson DL'ing saves him. Apparently they're going to decide on that in the next day or two.

Nimmo - LF Walker - 2B Cespedes - CF Loney - 1B Cabrera - SS Flores - 3B De Aza - RF d'Arnaud - C Colon - P Not sure what the purpose of reactivating Lagares if they weren't going to start him. Will shirley start vs the lefty Lester tomorrow. Zobrist - 2B Heyward - CF Bryant - 3B Rizzo - 1B Contreras - LF Montero - C Russel - SS Coughlin - RF Arrieta - P Arrieta this year: HRs allowed = 4; HRs hit = 2

Braves put a smackdown on Jose Fernandez; 9-1 'lanta over Miami after 6

One of the position players who pitched in that game, Ryan Goins for Toronto (who induced a bases-loaded GiDP to keep the game going), has been DL'd for "forearm tightness". Blue Jays won today, breaking Cleveland's 14 game winning streak - the longest, I believe, since the 20-game streak by the 'Moneyball' A's of 2002

That guy's not going to corner me and try to sell me insurance right after I step out of the voting booth, is he?

He's certainly big enough to hit HRs and #1 for him certainly had plenty of room to spare. Plus there's the old adage about power being the last skill to come around with young players. Just now watching the early innings of the game that I mostly missed last night, Maddon trying to squeeze an extra inning (the 5th) out of Hammel isn't going to make the top managerial moves of the year highlight reel.