Edgy MD

The Mets' long period of transactionlessness ends, albeit with a transaction that is far from affecting the roster. Williams becomes easily the youngest player under contract with the Mets, a full seven months younger than Christofer Dominguez. Should he advance someday to play for the big league team, he would be the first Met (and only the second big leaguer) born in Honduras. (Twenty cranebucks to whoever can name the first.) TransactionSigned As Amateur Free Agent To Minor League ContractPosition Group=#FF0000]Starting Pitcher[fimg=90]http://info.thebaseballzone.ca/hs-fs/hub/18567/file-2182580067-jpg/question-mark-baseball-2.jpg?width=100&height=100&name=question-mark-baseball-2.jpg[/fimg]NameWilliams ValenciaDoB7/21/00B/TR/R A player from Honduras is about the only guy who can sign to play in Venezuelan Winter League and be able to say, "Man, I'm gonna feel much safer."

In 1951, a wickid stawm off the coast of Cape Cahd has somehow split an oil tanker in half. As the crew on the half of the boat that is still afloat bickers about how best to survive, a socially awkward Coast Guardsman, who is too upright to refuse an order, no matter how crazy, takes a 36-foot lifeboat (looked more like 25 in the film) on a suicide mission to find and rescue the stranded sailors. Now streaming on Netflix. [fimg=500:16jgnjgi]http://www.farewaymovies.com/media/movie/poster/4EljSOaIcGHaiuCy06EAS4AB0Np.jpg[/fimg:16jgnjgi]

baseball-reference says Rawja Clemens got $17,400,000 at 44 in 2007, but I don't know. That might have just a full-season-equivelancy figure to establish his rate from, and was then pro-rated down for his partial season. Even pro-rated, it might have exceeded the Colón figure.

The book on which it was based only came out in September. The rights were clearly acquired long before the book was completed and the two were developed was almost in parallel, which makes it something of a mercy that it was as factually accurate as it was.

Yeah, we noted the glaring cigarettelessness too.

Bartolo has made fools out of us all, but I'm not ready to buy the Teheran-Dickey-Colón-Foltynewicz-Garcia rotation. Plus, they're breaking in a new pitching coach.

Quick! Call Kansas City!

Hard to speak about Pete Rose's gambling problem as a thing of the past.

I liked it a lot despite myself. It has a lot of Disney wash on it. The three protagonists are represented by three off-the-rack archetypes: the bookish virtuous one, the sexy irrepressible one, the matronly authoritative one. The racism they confront is sometimes cartoonishly overt, and the poise they exhibit in the face of it is almost too too. The music (largely by Pharrell Williams) imitates the modern jazz and soul of the era, but feels more ... -ish. Pretty much all of the white characters are based on composites or pure fiction, which is something of a copout. If you want to indict racists who roadblocked talented women and risked holding back history, well, you oughta name some names. You couldn't get them to sign a release? Well, too bad. You think Bob Dylan got William Zanzinger to sign a release? But the protagonists' stories are real. And they feel real up there despite the writers playing fast and loose with the timeline and some of the particulars (as noted). I tell you, I saw this with an audience of folks who had a stake in this story. And it was a great experience of communal filmgoing I hadn't sat in on in years. There's a sweet proposal scene, and I heard and felt a hunnert folks of all ages squee at the same time. I can harangue about details but you get to sit in on a super-squee like that, well, that's money well spent.

Mel is back home with his family, who have reported that his recent health scare was due to a bad reaction to his chemo treatments, and not so much his cancer itself. Suck it, 2016. And 2017 too.

Pedro Beato, against whom batters at one time couldn't do squatto, attempts to return to the NL East, signing a minor league cataract with the Phils.

It's the early sixties. Three female African-American mathematicians are employed at NASA as "colored computers." They push back against the racism and sexism that marginalizes their skills and the Mercury astronauts benefit. The nation benefits. [fimg=450:2sndkg2o]http://cdn.collider.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/hidden-figures-poster.jpg[/fimg:2sndkg2o]

Sure it's a swing. And it's a video (not a picture) of a guy semi-immobilized and largely inactive over the last year who has been given clearance to swing and is doing so. And that's not nothing.

Don't be voting for the Givuplicans.

The Orioles send Yovani Gallardo to Seattle and get Seth Smith back in return to be their new rightfielder, which, I guess, takes them out of the GranderBruce market. Maybe it adds them to the pitching market, however.

One problem is that, if you accept the commonly accepted timelines with regard to usage for the two guys, Bonds was already more or less the best hitter in baseball when he began using in the 1998-1999 offseason in response to the breathless coverage of the McGwire-Sosa race. Clemens, on the other hand, was sliding toward Palookaville when he began using before joining the Blue Jays and reviving his career. The ten most similar players to Clemens at that juncture (Hall of Famers noted with an *) were: [*:2rotin22]Dwight Gooden[/*:m:2rotin22] [*:2rotin22]Bob Welch[/*:m:2rotin22] [*:2rotin22]CC Sabathia[/*:m:2rotin22] [*:2rotin22]Tom Glavine*[/*:m:2rotin22] [*:2rotin22]Bob Gibson*[/*:m:2rotin22] [*:2rotin22]Tom Seaver*[/*:m:2rotin22] [*:2rotin22]Lon Warneke[/*:m:2rotin22] [*:2rotin22]Greg Maddux*[/*:m:2rotin22] [*:2rotin22]Justin Verlander[/*:m:2rotin22] [*:2rotin22]Jack Morris[/*:m:2rotin22][/list:o:2rotin22] If you think of his most likely career track without the dope being something like an average of these players, it's still an open question what kind of career he'd've ended up with. Four Hall of Famers are on that list and two guys still active. And I'm not saying some of those latter-day players didn't use. Now, Barry Bonds thru 33 gives us a more starlit, albeit messier, set: [*:2rotin22]Frank Robinson*[/*:m:2rotin22] [*:2rotin22]Ken Griffey*[/*:m:2rotin22] [*:2rotin22]Duke Snider*[/*:m:2rotin22] [*:2rotin22]Vladimir Guerrero[/*:m:2rotin22] [*:2rotin22]Juan Gonzalez[/*:m:2rotin22] [*:2rotin22]Jeff Bagwell[/*:m:2rotin22] [*:2rotin22]Jim Thome[/*:m:2rotin22] [*:2rotin22]Mickey Mantle*[/*:m:2rotin22] [*:2rotin22]Willie Mays*[/*:m:2rotin22] [*:2rotin22]Manny Ramirez*[/*:m:2rotin22][/list:o:2rotin22] Five Hall-of Famers, plus a couple of guys who should skate in. A lot of other drug-clouded guys, but this could be eight or nine guys in a few years, maybe 10 eventually. Anyhow, that's one way to distinguish them, if you're of a mind to distinguish them.

Benjamin Grimm wrote: I voted for SIGH OF RELIEF. It's a rather ordinary cover, but SULTAN OF SWAAT is too cluttered. I don't like when the headline obscures the player as it does in this cover. Yeah, there's not as much to work with on SIGH OF RELIEF, but the layout artist stays within him- or herself and totally outcomposes SULTAN OF SWAAT. Give me 10 minutes, and I can think of a half dozen cleverer headlines, half of them shorter, of Noah Syndergaard hitting two homers. You can take the Thor's hammer angle, you can talk about Thor's thunder striking twice, something about Noah taking two of everything ... OK, those all suck, but still.

Doug Mientkiewicz, a pretty damn solid analog for Rico Brogna if I do say so myself, has been named manager of the FSL Fort Myers Miracle. He's a Miracle Met!

Amazin' to be near a month past the launch date of this thread and no. new. Mets. It's hard to remember, but I think this thread title was a misquoted reference to The Partridge Family song "Doesn't Somebody Want to Be Wanted," which is relevant because David Cassidy hated that song, and refused to record it. Production of both the album and the series had to be halted, while executives from both Bell Records and Screen Gems tried to reason with Cassidy. I think that's what's going on. Somebody in the Mets hierarchy is having a snit fit, and the whole production is being held up while everybody tries to smooth his feathers. I think, by law, we would have to assume it's Jeff.

Also notable is that the case against Rodriguez with regard to being a user is stronger than the case against Bagwell, and possibly stronger than the case against Piazza, but he's looking like a first-ballot guy. Attitudes are changing.

"Ya Gotta Relieve" is winning if you discount the millions of people who voted illegally.

Edgardo Alfonzo has been promoted from coach to manager of the Brooklyn Cyclones, a position formerly held by his brother Edgar. Joining him will be fellow ex-Met Royce Ring, moving up from the Appalachian League's Kingsport Mets, as pitching coach, and former Edgy MD minor-league adoptee Sean Ratliff, returning for his second year in Brooklyn, as hitting coach. Also joining the staff from Kingsport will be trainer Giovanni D’Onza, which sounds like a Chico Marx character.

I like what you're thinking, but the only account we share is the Community Chest. Somebody would have step up with a credit card and bid on the group's behalf. I totally would, but I don't know where I'd sleep once my wife got done changing the locks.

Maybe they're all postcard-sized.

That cover also features a child-like Colón beaming like a sunflower sprung from those very seeds.