Frayed Knot

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Niese - 2.4 Murphy - 2.4 Conforto - 1.6 Granderson - 1.6 Parnell - 0.5 Reed - 0.5 Nieuwenhuis - 1.0

Mets Guy in Michigan wrote: Seems to me that when you pick a guy with zero prior managing experience, you need to give him a year just to figure out what he's doing. Or that if you have a team you think should be contending that maybe you shouldn't pick a guy with zero prior managing experience. See also: Rizzo, Mike - Washington DC The Astros on Sunday won a game a lot like we did -- 3 runs down in 9th on the road, 2-out/none-on -- but did so with much more on the line as their lead is far smaller than ours and they did it against one of the teams hot on their tail. Closer Huston Street for the Angels got the first two hitters but then went: HR, 3B, 1B, 1B, 3R-HR for a five-run 9th (they didn't bother with that whole extra innings stuff). Astros at Rangers for four games starting tonight. 1.5 game lead for Houston. Angels 4.5 back go to Seattle.

Granderson's OBP since ASG = .403 Since Sept 1st = .472

More MORE MORE How do you like it, how do you like it?

Uggla & Melvin Upton are certainly the main culprits. I suppose they'd argue that breaking it apart when you start to realize that this particular long range plan isn't working is better than waddling in mediocrity until those contracts die a natural death and then do the rebuild that you already know you need to do. This way they get new blood on board while those they did keep -- Freeman, Teheran, and Simmons -- are still young and under control. Problem is that at least some of the reports on the haul they got for the likes of Kimbrel, Gattis, various Johnsons, et al. aren't all that high. But they've also been smarter than conventional wisdom before so time will tell.

Changing horses in the middle of the stream by trying to bail out of as many of the L-T deals they signed in just the last few years with an eye towards the opening of their new park in two years. More than anything that bullpen is just a mess. I mean not only is Peter Moylan back -- a guy who's taken up alternate careers twice already before coming back to baseball -- but they had him closing today!! And just to put it all in perspective: on the 4th of July they were 1/2 game behind the Mets. Now they're 26.5

Zvon wrote: Can the Mets approach MLB about the scoring in this game? Or do they just let that slide. They can and teams sometimes do just that although scorers are not required to change their original calls. And of course pleasing one player by changing a call might piss off another. How many errors were called hits? 4? Home team scoring can have an edge, but you can't outright cheat and call those things hits. There were only two called errors: Murphy's & Uribe's. But it's tough, or at best a toss-up, to argue that the Niese to Duda play* was an 'E', or Granderson's missed slide in RF, or Tejada's bobble since they got an out anyway, or Murph's jump throw combined with Duda's failed scoop, or Tejada in the hole where he's probably not throwing the guy out anyway, or Duda's missed pop in the sun and the wind as he was never really under it. Sometimes it's just one of those days. But the good thing is that these days, even when it is one of those days, we win anyway. * and, Geez, how many cheesy hits did Markakis get today? The whole Braves team really but him especially. 13 Atlanta hits in all but all were singles: about 3 or 4 of them were in the infield plus several more bloops

It wasn't quite a classic game in that it lacked both top-shelf play and that sense of 'must have' urgency given our recently assumed big division lead - but the back and forth tug-o-war and the pulling of their collective ass out of the fire aspects of it were certainly entertaining. And, hey, when the Braves were sucking wind vs the Nats two weeks back a lot of us here moaned that they better do the same for us. Well folks, they did. Now my only question remains, if they were unable to lose this game, what kind of game is it going to take for them to lose?

OK, this is just frickin' insane at this point!!

Worst. Defensive. Game. Ever. And I think there may only have been one error charged.

So today's Un-lineup is: C - d'Arnaud 1B - Johnson 2B - Herrera SS - Flores 3B - Wright LF - Cespedes CF - Lagares RF - Cuddyer and I KNOW we fielded worse than that earlier this season

Cardinals are losers of 8 of their last 10 including 3 straight to the lowly Reds and are getting blown out in many of these (4 of their recent losses were by 6 or more runs). Probably TLTL for us to catch them for best NL record (7 games behind) but they're suddenly only 2.5 games up on the Pirates and 5.5 on the Cubs. Would love to see them dropped into the WC mix. Houston also in the midst of a losing September (3-7) and are down to a 1.5 game lead over Texas and 3.5 over LAA in what's looking like the best division race coming down the stretch. But the most fun in the AL is that the Yanx dropped a pair Saturday to fall 4.5 in back of the Jays and now the security of the WC suddenly doesn't look as secure as it did a week ago. Still have a 4 or more game cushion from being dropped out of the PS entirely but there are numerous teams just waiting to do so: Minn, LAA, Cleve, Tampa And maybe the best thing about our series with them next weekend is that while they have almost no chance of ruining our season, we could have a big say in trashing theirs. After today's game with Toronto they get TB, then us, then Toronto again at which point things could be getting ugly in the Bronx.

Centerfield wrote: What do we call a day like today? I was thinking of 'Fucking Awesome' but I'm willing to listen to other suggestions. oe: Ooooh, Dodgers were up 7-0, now 8-5 in the 8th. Also, Madison Bumgarner just had his perfect game vs SD broken up with two outs in the 8th.

It's never pointless until it's pointless. Follow it through. The difference between this year and 2007 (well, one of several actually) is that the infamous 7 game lead was followed by an off-day (in which the Phils won) and then a three-game series with the Phils where we got swept, so the 7 game lead was cut in half in less than 4 days (and was dropped to 1.5 two days later). This year is not only already bigger but it grows by the day and with no head to head until the final series it has so much less of a chance to follow the same pattern. 9.5 w/20 to go. And, btw, happy non-losing season for the first time in seven years as tonight was our 81st win.

33Kv5D2zwyc Just had time to slip this one in under the wire.

Nearly nine hours, 19 innings played, 19 runs allowed, and one rain delay into their rescheduled double-header, there appear to be more people on the field at YSIII than in the stands at this point (and it's not like you can blame the fans on this one). 10-4 Toronto in the 8th Game 1 was 9-5 Jays in 11 innings.

Nats lose. Shut-out 2-0

That HR wasn't in the copy of the script I was reading for this game.

Cespedes HRs as a Tiger -- 18 in 403 ABs Cespedes HRs as a Met -- 16 in 170 ABs

Edgy MD wrote: Left out Dilson Herrera and John Mayberry, Jr. Wanted to limit the shadow lineup to those who have actually started on at least a semi-regular basis at some point and are currently on the roster to act as the backup squad in the event that Terry decides to change all eight at once. So Mayberry doesn't make the cut and Dilson loses out to Campbell on the basis of fewer starts.

The non-lineup tonight. C - Kevin Plawecki 1B - Lucas Duda 2B - Eric Campbell SS - Ruben Tejada 3B - Juan Uribe LF - Michael Cuddyer CF - Juan Lagares RF - Kirk Nieuwenhuis We saw worse starting eights than that maybe four days a week over the front half of the season.

Didn't have much of an effect on the pennant races (other than to keep Baltimore's slim WC hopes alive - 6 out with 4 teams in the way) but the Orioles hit 2 Grand Slams in the 8th inning last night making them the first team to hit 2 Grannies in one inning since .... ? Why since the 2006 Mets of course - July 16, 2006 in Wrigley. Cliff Floyd off of Sean Marshall, then later Carlos Beltran off of Roberto Novoa (no memory of him) in what turned out to be an 11-run 6th inning. Wright also had a 2R HR. Chris Woodward led off the inning and made the 1st and later the 2nd outs in the inning and was two batters away from coming up again when Ramon Castro ended things with a fly out w/2 on. Mets were trailing 5-2 as the inning started. Went on to win 13-7 Pedro Feliciano 'vultured' the win. Other than that, the Cubs won twice & the Pirates once closing in on the Cardinals who will have two game results today as they finish up yesterday's suspended game (tied 2-2 in the 8th) and then play their regular game vs Cincy. Pitt & the Cubbies are 4 & 6 games out. Would love to see one or both of them drop StL into the WC mess. Astros lose, Rangers win (now just 1.5 games out) and the whole AL WC race tightened up a bit.

Cespedes per 600 PAs as a NYM: .313/.360/.681 // 1041 OPS; 34 2Bs, 10 3Bs, 51 HRs. Or, if you want to get real geeky about it, 8.48 RC/27 (a projected all-Cespedes lineup would average about 8.5 runs per game) Cepedes's career pre-trade/600 PAs: .269/.317/.473 // 790 OPS; 30 2Bs, 5 3Bs, 24 HRs. 5.01 RC/27

Two Words: Tee Aitch