Edgy MD

Even if it only lasts one pitch.

Not looking forward to this Conforto plate appearance here.

I am going to get this reference at about 2 AM.

Ron Darling at Wrigley: 3-6 with a 5.38 ERA in 17 career starts. (And yeah, send out Weavie Wonder for the ninth.)

With Pham presumably heading out to right to replace Benge, our bench is down to Senger.

Whew. In the parallel version of this ballgame taking place in my head, I've got Clay Holmes and Nolan McLean up in the pen.

Ray Burris can't sing any better than most of the "TMOttBG" singers the Cubs employ, but he has some good power for a 75-year-old.

Interesting what they do with the bullpen here. They are going to have to either use somebody on consecutive days (gasp!) or turn this slender lead over to Austin Warren.

<snort>

Great comeback by Brazoban, and I'm not making accusations, but his eyes looked like he was still shaking off last night.

Dave Kingman '83 abides.

They're doing some winning things today — even that unlikeable Francisco Lindor. Hanging on to a 1-0 lead is barely winning, but they're doing more winning things than I've seen in any game recently.

No, I mean, was the drilling of Crow-Armstrong a response to the mound violation. If so, that's a seeming over-reaction by Peterson, but he really put it right down the middle of PCA's back there.

Luis Torrens pulling a ball is, like, a bi-monthly treat.

Was that a response to the mound violation?

MJ FEVER.

Let's hear it for the old 4-5 double-play!

That is all true, but I'm sure Carlos would tell you something about giving him a different look, see more fastballs, a chance to utilize his speed, etc. When there are no good answers that are working we get bad answers and hope. And if you aren't going to win, you might as well try to give a rookie's development priority. It's all bad, but these are the calls managers make when the lineup is doing what it is doing, and multiple threads are speculating about their job security.

You can't bump everybody down in the lineup. When a lineup where nobody is doing well gets shaken up, somebody ends up with the lucky draw.

Hey, we have baseball! And we have a four-pitch walk to begin Tobias Myers first start!

We'll also be up against it if and when Soto and Polanco return and neither are healthy enough to play anywhere but DH. I guess my hope for Soto is that people start walking again when he gets back.

Well, almost every firing is inevitable. You are hired to be fired. Few managers retire out of the job. Dying in the job is probably as just as common. But I guess Terry and Casey Stengel both go down as guys who retired out of the gig, so maybe it's a 2-to-1 ratio. It's just an exercise in how long you can keep the wolves away from the door. And in Carlos' case, the wolves are in the house. Should the "Names Here" thread be merged with this 'un?

Yeah, it's weird the things one remembers.

As the Mets' losing streak approached (and has now reached) 10 games, displaying an offensive downturn with no answers, Mets Roster Central regrets to report that the transactions the Mets are making do not even suggest management is pretending to offer a way forward. Transactions, 4/18/2026 GOING COMING Placed on 10-Day Injured List with Right Wrist Contusion Promoted from Syracuse Infielders Catchers Jorge Polanco Hayden Senger S/R DoB: 1999-11-13 High Level: MLB (2026) R/R DoB: 1997-04-03 High Level: MLB (2025) While Jorge Polanco has surprised few by being a suboptimal solution at first (and, more frequently, DH), his right wrist contusion (hadn't we been made to understand he had a calf strain or the like?) leading to an IL assignment can hardly be framed as good news. But hey, finding opportunity in crisis is what GMs and PoBOs are supposed to do. Maybe they press the right button, and maybe they call up the right replacement from the hundreds of aspiring ballplayers in the Mets system, and maybe they take a small step in the right direction. It's been known to happen. Hey, look at MJ Melendez. But in a great surprise to Mets Roster Central, the Mets decided to call up third-string catcher Hayden Senger. Hayden has of course shown himself to be a capable receiver, but one who hits like ... well, like a third-string catcher (.415 career OPS). And when a team scraping the bottom of the league-wide barrel in most every offensive category needs to replace a starting firstbaseman/DH type, chooses such a character, you can't be blamed if you ask, "Are we actually trying to win?" There is a logic to the move. At least, Gary Cohen bent over backwards trying to lay out some logic to it in the booth today, noting that the Cubs have a bullpen loaded the eyeballs with lefties, and so the presence of Senger would allow the team to more safely deploy Luis Torrens as a righthanded pinch-hitter, and more safely deploy Francisco Alvarez (who Gary described as "red hot," but can more accurately be observed as not as Arctic-ly cold as some others in the Mets lineup. The obvious retort to this is, if you want better options for a righthanded pinch-hitter, and righthanded DH, add a righthanded pinch-hitter/DH to roster and let the catchers do what they do from where they do it. Gary might well have said, "Calling up Hayden Senger gives the Mets a great chance to rob Peter in order to pay off that nasty debt to Paul." I mean, who are we kidding here, right? What Gary didn't mention — at least, not while Mets Roster Central was listening — is that Senger, despite his unseemly track record as an MLB batter, is leading 11-9 Syracuse in almost every offensive category, sporting a .257 / .316 / .714 // 1.030 slash line boosted up by five homeruns, more than anybody with the big club. You cannot be blamed for being dubious that he is the answer, but if you insist that the Mets shouldn't be messing with the catchers and instead call up the best offensive option ... the answer is still Senger. So maybe they keep him around for one more day as this lefty-heavy bullpen looms, and then call Ronny Mauricio back, but the message is the same — the Mets are going to have to find a way to bop, as the answer isn't coming in the form of a callup any time soon.

Hey, I don't wanna dislike him. It just happened, OK?