Edgy MD

Big news for all them Arizona Fall League Fans: The Mets will be represented by the best of the best. Yes, this year's Scottsdale Scorpions (featuring Mets prospects as well as peers from the Phillies, Giants, Astros, and Reds) will include the likes of Andres Gimenez and Peter Alonso. Heading to the desert? Check out the action! And don't get bitten by an actual scorpion. That shit happens and it sucks! Gimenez, likely to be one of the league's youngest players, has gone .286 / .349 / .418 // .767 for St. Lucie and Binghamton. With over 70% of that action coming at the A+ level, this shows the Mets pushing the young'n hard. Alonso, as youse all know, has blossomed into a minor league slugging dynamo this season, going .279 / .394 / .564 // .957 between AA and AAA. Alonso is coming down the home stretch having slugged 33 homers, second in all the minors to only to Reds prospect Ibandel Isabel, who hit 36 at high A between the Dodgers and Reds organization. His 112 RBI were second to nobody. NOBODY!! Gerson Bautista, who we briefly saw in the Mets bullpen merry-go-round this year, will be joining them. Gers struck out a LOT of people in 2018 — 64 in 46 minor league innings. He leapfrogged AAA to join the Mets, and promptly had his head handed to him, yielding a 12.46 ERA at the big-league level. I can't say he looked all bad doing it, but double digits is double digits. Clearly the Mets would still very like to establish GB and his 100-MPH heater as a big league threat. Also getting the call will be centerfielder Desmond Lindsay. Athletic and nerdy, Lindsay has missed a lot of time since the Mets took him in round 2 in 2015. He was able to get 88 games or so in this summer, but he still hasn't caught up to his peers, still looking like the player the Mets drafted, but just not turning a corner in any particular aspect of his offensive game, going .220 / .316 / .325 // .641, mostly for St. Lucie. Holding his hand will be Eric Hanhold. Handsy, who came over to the Mets last season in the Neil Walker trade, missed about 40% of the season, but enjoyed a lot of effectiveness (lots o' K's, few walks or homers) at Bingo, not so much in Vegas. Maybe his hand jive will play better in the Arizona desert than the Nevada desert. You know who might have an opinion about that? Catcher Ali Sanchez might. Ali has produced some decent batting averages for a minor league catcher, but that's about 75% of his offensive value, as the power and walks still haven't quite made an appearance. Still, the Mets have enough faith to push him to the AFL after spending 2018 in Columbia and St. Lucie, so they clearly think there's some value that can still emerge. And since he's caught 46.9% of would-be base-stealers over his career, any offensive value makes him a legit prospect. Also throwing to Ali will be Matt Blackham. Black Celebration has been around since 2014, but he missed half a short season in 2015 and all of 2016 with surgery. Since then, you can call him Peter Wolf, because he's been LIGHTS OUT! In Columbia in 2017, he put up a 1.43 ERA, yielding a .185 batting average and striking out (sit down for this one) 13 batters per nine innings. If that doesn't make things dance around in your pants, he went to St. Lucie this year and his ERA ballooned to 1.90, but his batting average against fell to 1.45. Well, the Mets knew they couldn't keep Mulleted Matt down, and after 17 appearances promoted him to Bingo. His strikeouts stayed high there, but his walks were up, and his ERA returned to something like sea level at 3.86. So what? It happens when you get pushed. He'll catch up in the desert. Our last pitcher is Stephen Nogosek, who you may remember from such trades as REED TO THE RED SOX FOR CALLAHAN, BAUTISTA, AND NOGOSEK. No-Go is the only asset from the deal who hasn't appeared in the big leagues yet, but the righthander had an effective year for St. Lucie (3.06 ERA) before going WALK CRAZY following his promotion to Binghamton (20 in 18 innings). Will he find his center again? Only the desert knows. But one guy that aims to help the Scorps, if not Nogosek in particular, is Mets minor league batting coordinator Ryan Ellis. Catch the Scorpions! They'll rock you like a hurricane!!

Yeah, I think it's easy to over-think this. If he's ready to play, he might get a chance to play. As of now, nobody thinks he is.

Billy Oxford is a Bubba-lookin' 27th-rounder from 2017 out of Azusa Pacific who has lit it up in 2018. He don't look like much at first glance, and he's been given a chance to neither start nor close in Brooklyn, but the chances he's been given, he's made the most of. With another 1 1/3 scorless innings tossed yesterday, including stranding two inherited runners, he picked up the win and ran his record to 7-1, and lowered his ERA to a blink-and-you'll-miss-it 1.43 for the Cyclone bullpen. He even took a brief trip to St. Lucie where he threw another 3 1/3 scoreless, bringing his overall ERA down to 1.32. The Arizonan does it by keeping the ball down and inside the park. He even had a successful appearance in the New York-Penn League All-Star Game. The win over the Hudson Valley Renegades featured a key double and triple from Wagner LaGrange and a homer from centerfielder Anthony Dirocie and was nothing short of HEWJ. It pulled the Clones within three games for the first-place Renegades, with their tragic number holding at 3.0. The same two teams meet tonight in Brooklyn with (I think) the red-hot Christian James (4-1 / 1.76) on the mound. [fimg=450]https://brooklynsportsworld.files.wordpress.com/2018/08/img_20180815_214104.jpg[/fimg]

Whoah. That's fuck't up.

I'm hesitant to dismiss his strikeouts as average. Average in baseball isn't really representative of the average guy, if you get what I mean. I think he's probably pretty bad when not healthy, and between getting healthy and getting the Yankee cooties off of him, this is the first bit of something close to peak Frazier we've seen.

Man, 8-1. Sheesh guys, it's like you want to make it particularly hard on deGrom.

It's been a while since we've seen a good Nymr drunk post.

Their bullpen usage is one big exciting adventure! Is Gsellie available?

More importantly, it's a bullshit quote.

How many pairs of spikes does Ezequiel Carrera need?

Benjamin Grimm wrote: My main memory of Daniel Murphy in 2008 is a tie game against the Cubs at Shea where he led off one of the late innings with a triple, only to get stranded at third. The failure to bring him home stuck with me as the Mets just missed the playoffs for the second straight season. How strange that you should invoke this play yesterday, and then last night, the New Murphy, Jeff McNeil, pulled off the same dubious accomplishment against the same team.

And ... he's gone. I may be nodding off. What a show, though.

Ya gotta and then ya gotta some more. But what a performance.

It's a pleasure to watch this guy work. A greater pleasure be watching him win.

Man, a lot of generous strikes tonight.

Wow, the Mets are hitting it too hard.

Right? And now McNeil gets a triple running like his limbs are going to fall off.

Well, if a clubhouse full of professional hitters can't get it done, slap some shit your own damn self.

C'mon, Nimmz.

Ron Darling on Joe Maddon's pitching change: "I just think he doesn't want to watch Kintzler pitch anymore."

Please guys. You've got the leadoff hitter on. Just manufacture a run and let the guy know what a lead tastes like.

Hamels struck him out with three different pitches, but none of them were strikes.

Man, Conforto chases inside every time.

Lousy second strike call on Jackson.