Edgy MD

deGrom gives the defense a siesta. Holy schmidt.

The Phillies' diminutive Johnny Callison joins Ted Williams and Stan Musial with the third walk-off homer in All Star history, slugged while wearing the host team's head gear, 1964.

Hey, NL, support your local deGrom.

That's fair, as long as we're just counting offensive WAR, to include combos in which father or son was a pitcher. That also gives us the Tonys Armas, Vernon and Vance Law, and Joe and Lance Niekro, among others.

I went for Trout. But while he's a terrific athlete, he seems to have a heavy guy's frame. I suspect he won't retain his speed skills as he ages. But I'm calling that a wash with Harper's propensity for injuries.

National League in home whiteys in 1976. Stop bothering Kingman � he is sitting down. [fimg=780]http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1113/921026865_815e1dc62a_o.jpg[/fimg] Kingman also looks like he hates Jon Matlack viciously. He shares none of the warmth that Danny Ozark clearly feels for Steve Garvey. Seaver too looks like he's about to set Puerto Rican Larry Bowa's pants on fire.

d'Kong76 wrote: Santo with those Popeye guns. Wow, he almost looks like he has giant arm disease or something.

You have a ticket to grab either of these two players right now, with whatever financial obligations their futures merit coming with them. Which do you go for?

[fimg=750:2mwf8cwc]https://metsinpeace.files.wordpress.com/2015/07/177153363.jpg[/fimg:2mwf8cwc] I told you punks that I batted in front of Johnny Bench. Why don't these kids ever believe me? That's Cardinals manager Red Schoendeist with his squadron: [*:2mwf8cwc]Matty Alou, cf, SF[/*:m:2mwf8cwc] [*:2mwf8cwc]Don Kessinger, ss, CHC[/*:m:2mwf8cwc] [*:2mwf8cwc]Hank Aaron, rf, ATL[/*:m:2mwf8cwc] [*:2mwf8cwc]Willie McCovey, 1b, SF[/*:m:2mwf8cwc] [*:2mwf8cwc]Ron Santo, 3b, CHC[/*:m:2mwf8cwc] [*:2mwf8cwc]Cleon Jones, lf, NYM[/*:m:2mwf8cwc] [*:2mwf8cwc]Johnny Bench, CIN[/*:m:2mwf8cwc] [*:2mwf8cwc]Felix Millan, 2b ATL[/*:m:2mwf8cwc][/list:o:2mwf8cwc] Five Hall of Famers in that shot, with Steve Carlton warming up to join them in the starting lineup.

[fimg=750:3f9zil6f]https://metsinpeace.files.wordpress.com/2015/07/11699052_843702095678760_8177436876030285381_o.jpg[/fimg:3f9zil6f] Ron Cey gets a little bit of '79 Mazzilli touching in while the touching is good. Joey Amalfitano would join the fray but he's got a few ounces of tobacco spittle to unload.

Frayed Knot wrote: The biggest snag, as mentioned, would be the time it would add to the season. Three days. Either players, giddy from the prospect of all or a big chunk of a week off mid-season, happily approve adding two days to the start of the season and one to the end, or they add three double-headers. If the gobs of revenue I anticipate coming from a week-long showcase comes to pass, then it'll more than make up for three single-admission double-headers. And the good will that those three glorious Sundays will garner from the fans? All I can say is $$.

I withdrew in 1987. I had my championship. It was satisfying. Why invest so much time? And then I realized it was really fun. And gave me a wonderful prism through which to see the world. Why would anybody want to withdraw from Mookie Wilson and his Jim Morrison shades? The Mets were hope and sex and justice and comedy and rock 'n' roll and redemption and fire and ice and all the forces moving through the world. All of our avocations are. Theater, knitting, chess... . We just all have different disciplines through which we frame the madness of the universe and try and get at it. Mine was pretty awesome and I wasn't going to let it go.

Well, I ain't asking about anything that goes much beyond next weekend. The team's best bet for anything approaching a lasting solution that's in hand remains in Binghamton.

Cool-assed Brandon Crawford fact: In 1992 (aka the last time Ben Grimm cared about the All-Star Game), the Giants were looking for new digs and threatening to abandon San Francisco in order to find them. This, naturally, did not sit well with the the five-year-old, baseball-and-Transformers-and-juiceboxes set, and The San Francisco Chronicle published a compelling photo featuring this adorable, heartbroken little moppet. Staying in town has paid off, as that moppet is now the World Champion Giants' All-Star starting shortstop, Brandon Crawford.

C'mon, we've played the shit out of the Giants the last few weeks. Surely you got a taste of Brandon Crawford. Only shortstop I was hoping the Mets would target this offseason. Now he's a top asset and little more than a slice of pie-in-the-sky. Probably was this offseason too.

I'll either get hired or killed.

Don't lock it up yet! Reports coming out that Rafael Montero is making his first rehab appearance in the Gulf Coast League! OK, lock it now.

I've said so before, but I'm a proponent of taking the whole week off from league play (with exceptions below). Switch the All-Star Game to a three-game series. That way everybody can get in without farcical baseball being played. Starting pitchers can go at least five, if their performance warrants it, and managers can make moves that don't shame them as baseball strategists. Fans won't have to wait 30 years for the game to come to their town. That week could also contain the Hall of Fame Game, the Civil Rights Game (both of which would be games that count in the standings), the Futures Game, the Hall of Fame induction ceremonies, the Cracker Jack Oldtimers Classic. Call it Baseball Week. Revel in the irony that Baseball Week would have more symbolic baseball than competitive league play. There would be primetime national baseball programming every night. Some baseball fans would build pilgrimages around it. Others would ignore it entirely. But news outlets would cover the shit out of it and baseball would expand its cultural footprint. We'd all get plenty of distractions, while yearning for the Mets to return to their schedule, but some would say, "Hey, great time to schedule my vacation and actually pay attention to my family for a week in the middle of the summer." And all of our teams would return fresh and healthier with a second (modestly ceremonious) opening day. Anyhow, this is part of my broader marketing plan, which also includes all post-season awards to be presented in a November primetime awards ceremony, possibly broadcast from the hometown of the previous year's champion.

No, but I'd certainly be OK with giving Nieuwenhuis some of Lagares playing time, as well as some of Cuddyer's playing time, and seeing what comes of it. Mixing and matching is hard. So you try and position guys to assert themselves and demonstrate that they unquestionably belong in the lineup every day. One less headache for the manager. But the main guy who has seemingly pulled of that trick is d'Arnaud, and he's been hurt twice.

I thought Smithtown was named for farmer/preacher Mordecai "The Rock" Smith.

Centerfield wrote: Hey, I'm happy for Kirk and all, but let's not pretend that he has demonstrated anything. I think he's demonstrated plenty. Good and bad. But .690, I imagine, ain't so bad for a center fielder in this era in this ballpark. It was gutsy as hell for the team to promote Nieuwenhuis, as fans were ripping them to shreds for even re-claiming him and parking him in Vegas. Not a lot of those folks are eating the shit they should be eating.

seawolf17 wrote: Centerfield wrote: I think this should be an overall theme for the second half. Replace people who suck with people who might not suck. "I'm sorry, son. That's not the Mets Way." /trades Noah Syndergaard for a third-string catcher Nitz on that. Sandy endured an offseason with Met fans demanding Syndergaard be traded for a (now gloriously failing) shortstop in his walk year. If there's anything that characterizes Sandy's tenure, it's not being bullied and frightened into reckless trades.

I didn't say I was just counting the WARs. Edgy MD wrote: I scored the the way Bill James once did when he was trying to figure out the top baseball clans, combining the WARs, but doubling the WAR for the lesser-achieving player.

Maybe, but the history of folks who've made that jump successfully is unsettlingly small. It's not something satisfying to think about, but if that game by Nieuwenhuis demonstrates anything, the list of guys who suck now and the list of guys who might not suck going forward are not as mutually exclusive as all that. We'll see Conforto soon, I imagine.