Frayed Knot

How many "incidents" is that now involving Yodano Ventura since say the beginning of last year? Got to be at least 4 or 5 at this point.

Obviously the main culprits are the bats who aren't there (Wright, Duda, d'Arnaud) and the bats who currently aren't hitting (Cespedes, Conforto) which leaves us with ... not much. When you're getting a combined (approx) .205/.285/.330 from the catching & 1B position you're starting out in a deep hole. I do also think there's a bad luck factor involved that has to at least partially turn around at some point. As bad as their BA is (.230) is comically worse in run-scoring situations. It drops to .223 w/men on and then further to .215 when those runners are in scoring position, and a stunning [u:3qbplwh2].168[/u:3qbplwh2] w/2 out + RiSP. They hit .293 w/2 outs and the bases empty, but a ridiculous .189 with 2 outs and runners on base. It's almost like they sabotage things so as to make sure that the few hits they are getting go to waste. KC and I were briefly bitching about GiDPs in one of the IGTs. Now you'd figure that a team that Ks as much as this one (3rd highest in NL) and makes as little contact (BA 2nd lowest) would at least have the good fortune of avoiding DPs, but instead their total (41) is only slightly below the league average of 44, indicating a perverse talent for hitting balls hard right at people at the exact wrong moment. BABiP (BA on balls in play) is also absurdly low -- 2nd worst in NL, 21 points below lg avg. Some of this stuff has to get at least a little bit better, even if only by accident.

d'Kong76 wrote: The Kang stealing third but on the starting side of a DP isn't something you see much. Baseball. I think that was the first time a Pirate actually hit a ball AT a Met today. Not that we're not playing like shit, but we're also getting a bunch of shit luck in the process.

By contrast the Mets are near the bottom of the league at turning DPs

d'Kong76 wrote: Do the Mets lead the the league in hitting into DP's? They're actually close to the bottom (last time I looked) but for a team that never gets on base and rarely makes contact, they hit into onefuckofalotof double plays!! oe: 4th from the bottom in NL -- might be a few slots higher before the night's out though

If we get out of this inning no worse than 6-1 I'll call it a victory.

Well, if nothing else, this loss is going to be very quick. Not painless, but quick.

Yeah, he has 51 Ks on the season, but here he gets 7 of the first 11 batters he faces. That Cespedes then broke things up with a first-pitch weak-ass fly out to left may actually be looked at as a good thing.

Edgy MD wrote: know everybody's down on Niese, but Hawk is twice the pitcher Nicasio is. Which means we'll get half as many hits.

Well, Game 2 out of reach. Hopefully Syndergaard pitches well tomorrow and we don't get blitzed by an ML debut.

If anyone in blue and orange would like to make hard contact sometime today -- or, y'know, contact -- it would be greatly appreciated.

John Cougar Lunchbucket wrote: Niese implosion watch ON Three innings too early.

Although not really in the 'monster' contract realm of this thread, the Cardinals signed Kolten Wong to a five-year deal over the winter buying out his arbitration years, a deal which followed his 3rd place RoY season in 2014 and then the further improvement he made on that in 2015. On Monday, however, Wong found himself demoted to the minors, a victim both of the return of Jhonny Peralta and of the unexpectedly hot start of Cuban SS Aledmys Diaz (Peralta looks to be headed to 3B with Carpenter switching to 2nd). Mainly tough, the fault was a Wong's, hitting .222 with just 4 XBHs over 1/3 of a season. Unlike Crawford and some of the others in this thread, Wong, at age 25, will still have plenty of opportunities to make good on the deal.

The Angels are playing almost all of the Hamilton contract for this year and next.

Well that essentially has to be the target date now that he's started a rehab assignment which has a 20 day limit. The test comes when he starts throwing again.

Edgy MD wrote: Frayed Knot wrote: The problem with the immediate replacement (beyond the time squeeze of getting someone across the country for a day game) is that it requires an immediate DL or some separate move. If it just turns out to be a couple day thing -- like say with Cespedes and his hip -- then going a day or three minus a guy is often better than having a regular miss the minimum 15 even though he'll likely be healthy for maybe 10-12 of them. If all DL trips were apparent immediately such calls would be easy but it doesn't always work that way. I think they'll probably know on Lagares either today or tomorrow and make a call then. One thing every roster needs in such situations is Fungible Interchangeable Backend RelieversTM. You send down Verrett, call up Nimmo, live without a seven-man bullpen for a day or two (the horror!). If the injury, after that day or two, turns out to be serious, Lagares hits the DL, Nimmo stays, and Verrett returns. If the injury turns out to be much ado about nuttin', then Nimmo returns to Vegas, and Verrett returns to New York. If it's too soon for Verrett to return within the rules, then the team calls up one of Verrett's fellow FIBRs, Sean Gilmartin or Rafael Montero, both already on the roster and big-league experienced, for whatever that's worth. I don't know about you, but my life has seen a vast improvement since I switched to a high-FIBR diet. It's changed my outlook and allowed me to do things I never could before. I'm never changing back. Well either way you're still down a man on the roster; your way just means that you're a man short in the pen rather than on the bench. Sometimes that will be the better option, but not always. The major question still remains whether being short a man (whether hurler or position player) for 1-3 days is worse than maybe being without a key player for most of two weeks unnecessarily. Not trying to pretend that there's one blanket answer for these situations, but there seem to be a whole lot of people with internet medical degrees who already know how long Lagares is going to be out.

Try it times two. DH starting at 4 The DH means they get to call someone up for Game 2. Traditionally that's been a pitcher but, with Lagares on the (maybe temporary) shelf, a position player may be more likely.

The real problem here is that, in the over-saturation coverage surrounding Ali's death, it was inevitable that every famous or semi-famous person in America was destined to be asked their opinion of him, even those who were barely alive (or not even) when Ali actually had his career, or weren't yet even adults by the time -- close to two decades now -- he was virtually silenced and isolated from the public because of his condition. Not that those minor inconveniences were going stop anyone from sticking a microphone in LeBron's face on the topic, but it's not like most interviewers stop to pre-consider whether the odds of the answer being interesting or enlightening before plunging ahead.

There's a lesson there about relying on 'speed' players as they age into their 30s Crawford had a 781 OPS with Tampa (806 in his prime age 22-28 seasons) over ~5,000 ABs He's most of 100 points lower (717) since signing with Boston and the subsequent trade to LA (ages 29-34 years - turns 35 in August) but even more than that is that he's had only one season where he played over 120 games.

Centerfield wrote: It looks like the Mets will, as they have many times this season, go with no one at all. Ron was pretty outspoken about how he thought the Mets should have had Lagares checked out ASAP and a replacement brought in just in case. Well the initial story was that Lagares wasn't going to see a doctor while in Florida. MLB rules require that a doctor, provided by the home team, be on hand at every game but apparently the Marlins had only a GP at Saturday's game but no orthopedist (lousy cheap-ass Loria spending it all on fish tanks) so no exam was done at the park that day. Turns out however that he did see an outside doctor on Sunday where X-Rays revealed no break with further testing to be done by their own guys in NY today. The problem with the immediate replacement (beyond the time squeeze of getting someone across the country for a day game) is that it requires an immediate DL or some separate move. If it just turns out to be a couple day thing -- like say with Cespedes and his hip -- then going a day or three minus a guy is often better than having a regular miss the minimum 15 even though he'll likely be healthy for maybe 10-12 of them. If all DL trips were apparent immediately such calls would be easy but it doesn't always work that way. I think they'll probably know on Lagares either today or tomorrow and make a call then.

Fman99 wrote: Matz v. Tanaka, LGM YYY BBB EMA If by 'Tanaka' you mean 'Niese', then yes.

They pretty much feel the same way. Watching a game on the Pittsburgh station one night a couple years ago after one or another of whatever latest realignment "fix" was being floated around the baseball world, and the one thing the two guys in the booth agreed on was that they were for anything that got them back in the same division with the Phils & Mets. Essentially they feel like an eastern team at heart that's been 'centralized' against their will for the past 20-odd years.

Madison Bumgarner wants to participate in this summer's HR Derby. He has 13 career ML HRs, including 11 in 175 ABs since the beginning of 2014 (twice off Kershaw). That pace projects to over 31 per 500 ABs

- Carl Crawford, hitting .185 over just 81 ABs so far this season, has been DFA'd by the Dodgers. Now six years and two organizations into a seven year deal he signed in the winter of 2010-11, Crawford, who will turn 35 in August, is owed nearly $36 million over the remainder of this season and next. - The return to the Rangers of once-hot prospect Jurickson Profar following two full lost seasons to injury has sent Prince Fielder to the bench over the last few games and maybe for the foreseeable future. Hitting .187 with just 3 HRs in nearly 200 ABs (Profar = near .400), the 32 y/o Fielder is signed thru 2020 with about $111 million remaining. And if Fielder, a slow player who was essentially a full-time DH by the time he turned 30, isn't hitting HRs, then what exactly is he giving you? The only good news for the Rangers in all this is that Detroit, who originally signed him to a nine-year contract, is responsible for around $28 million of the remainder. Plus there's always the .200 hitting ARod, but we've known about that one for a long time now. And Ryan Howard hasn't started in six games and has been at 1B only three times in the last two weeks.

Last I heard, they planned on taking Juan Lagares to Pittsburgh, and then evaluating him after the series when they get back to New York. I suppose that ... could ... make sense, but I sure haven't figured out how yet. Rubin is saying that Juan will be seeing NYC doctors on Monday and that he expects to be back in Pittsburgh for the start of the series. I suppose that timetable could still make him doubtful for Monday's game even if there's no bad news on the thumb -- he claims there's no pain, just a little swelling -- but probably for Tuesday. Of course if the diagnosis is worse than that then the discussion for a replacement kicks in. Cespedes sounds like he'll be back starting on Monday or Tuesday at the latest, especially seeing as how he was OK to PH today. And, just on a side note and because I have it on TV, the Yanx & O's have resumed after a lengthy rain delay and, with Chapman on the mound, the O's turned a 1-0 deficit into a 3-1 lead with a two-out bases-clearing single by Matt Weiters on an 0-2 count. Watching the Yanx lose (still top 9 to go) a game they've led for about five hours of innings and delays (and on a get-away day too) because of their vaunted back-end of the bullpen would be almost too good for words. oe: Thaaaaaaa Yanquis lose!!