Edgy MD

The greater New York market can support six teams, but that's not how the league operates.

So, I can't find the old KTE thread, but last time out, I totally underestimated the Marlins skouting skillz in making a lineup with a retread firstbaseman (Garret Jones, who has been solid), a total retread thirdbaseman (Casey McGehee, solid-plus), and giving out a three year deal to Jarrod Saltalamachia (solid as well). They've been mostly solid top to bottom, with excellence coming from the now returned Giancarlo Stanton. The only exception has been glovey shortstop Adeiny Hechavarria, who has a respectable average but sub-Tejada peripherals. Mets tend to contain (though certainly not shut down) Stanton, but lose anyway. Stanton vs. Mets Season: .286 / .423 / .476 //.899 Career: .249 / .338 / .487 // .825 Big shot prospect Andrew Heaney going tonight was a #9 overall pick who has whipped through the minors, going 17-7 in something like the equivelant of a big league season (38 starts, 199 IP), with a 2.31 ERA. He has walked 47 and struck out 198. He's a lefty so expect some sexy Eric Campbell action and maybe the rare Wilmer Flores sighting at second for Daniel Murphy.

Gotta make room for all those draft-picks, recent foreign signees, extended ST promotions, and the like too. Well, I would imagine 95-ish% of the recently signed amateurs will end up with short-season teams just starting their seasons, but yeah. As far as recent signees, I saw where Alderson pulled another Montero move, jumping all over a 20-year-old Dominican shortstop, who had previously been declared ineligible at 18 for pretending to be his 16-year-old little brother. OE: Here he is. Cecelio Aybar.

A lot of minor league teams have a big roster turnover at mid-season. If guys are clicking on their game and their age or prospect status has them on the fast track, they can expect to get bumped after a half season. Sometimes that means releases, sometimes it means demotions, sometimes it means more liberal use of the DL to clear room for the newbies. It's pretty much the reason why a lot of minor league teams have a first-half champion and a second-half champion. They know the two teams are going to be very different.

2012 second round pick, middle infielder Matt Reynolds has made little impact on this thread, appearing only as the #31 prospect on a list either belonging to Baseball America or ESPN (I'm not sure) back in early February. And his track record certainly didn't make of an argument for him, as he went from .259 / .335 / .367 // .702 for Savannah in 2012 to .225 / .300 / .335 // .635 in 2013, mostly with St. Lucie. Bleh. But, well, he's been something of a man playing with boys this year at Bingo, hitting .355 / .430 / 422 // .852, playing more shortstop than second, and earning a surprising callup to Las Vegas. This pretty much means he's leapfrogged Wilfredo Tovar, which is no small thing, considering Tovar's done everything you can ask of him alsos, going .313 / .377 / .373 // .751, is younger than Reynolds, and is spending the better part of his third season in upstate New York.

Man, too bad the 1962 Mets missed out on three-division play.

It's fun that, when you see a tubby, middle-aged, under-six-foot guy like myself wearing the jersey of a superstar superathlete, it has a comic tone to it. You see one of us from behind wearing a Tony Gwynn shirt, and you think, "Hey, that could be Tony Gwynn!"

There is also a wide gap between smg saying it and Johan saying it. But this is pretty much an insult to all of our intelligences and a desperate play for attention. magadan, please stop playing the troll.

This speaks for itself. So, I'm guessing those plaques mean 19 seasons 15 All-Star games 5 Gold Gloves 8 Silver Sluggers 3141 hits 338 stolen bases 2007 um....

And, uhhh, Clayton Kershaw. He's good.

Lets not go the late innings trailing against Oakland.

It's one game at a time, to be sure. It's just that, if a definitive statement one way or the other has been made by the fourth, management perhaps will have to use that date as a decision point. There is, of course, a good chance that those 13 games will demonstrate very little.

I think there might have been one cell phone in the entire movie --- held, but not used. But that might have been, like, a staff radio that Maya Rudolph's character was using at the park. There were no laptops, and no cups of Starbucks. And Steve Carell's character drove a mint-condition Carter-era Buick family station wagon. It was the first time out for these writer-directors, but they seem to share Wes Anderson's sense of anachronistic shamelessness, coming up with a universe where the world of their youth has never ended.

Next 13 games: Four @ Miami (who have been embarrassing the Mets the last season and a half) Two vs. Oakland (AL�s best record) Four @ Pittsburgh (suddenly playing like last year's Buccos) Three @ Atlanta (longtime division leaders, recently fallen to second) Nothing about the standings suggests the team is beyond making a run, but you look at the bottom of those same standings and realize the Mets are a lot closer. This stretch takes them up to Independence Day, and ends with a battle against a first-place club, and the chance to climb or fall definitively that such match-ups represent. By the birthdate of the Republic, we should have a pretty good idea whether the team is going to change their posture, and focus on next Independence Day, and all the July 4's to follow. Oh, and Gee might be activated by that Braves series.

"Were he promoted" he says. "Were he promoted"! There's no conditional! Son of Dil, YOU are a Binghamton Met!

Yeah, I'm hot. I'm thinking hard about... ...Matt Harvey developing some self-awareness. ...Travis d'Arnaud returning like the insane and uncontrollable YY-chromosome offspring of Johnny Bench and Josh Gibson. ...complete games; glorious complete games. ...a complete recovery and a return to public life for Tom Seaver. ...a juggernaut of a second half by Brandon Nimmo. ...Ruben Tejada slugging like Uncle Miguel. ...a sock drawer full of Matt den Dekker's castoff hose. ...Met victories slathered one on top of the other like condiments and toppings on a Dagwood sandwich, impossibly innumerable and unwieldy, yet somehow consumable to a hungry populace.

I would also compare it to Adventureland, as the narrative turned when the kid entered into the employ of an indifferently operated potential deathtrap of an amusement park. There was also a very evocative sense of the bittersweet amber-preserved timelessness of some beachfront communities. In the beginning, the kid is shown putting earbuds in his ears to listen to music, and later, somebody counts down past years at the beach to suggest that the setting is contemporary, but in most ways it could have been 1985 --- the music, the swimsuit styles, the businesses... . The kid goes to a pizza place and finds a guy playing a coin-op video game, for Pete's sake, and it turns out to be Pac-Man. My main complaint was that the exposition was overdrawn. The dickiness of the boyfriend was so over-the-top hateful, while we seemingly were expected to accept that he was delivering his shit stealthily and was able to fool everybody and himself that he wasn't such a bad guy. And the mean-girls nastiness at the beach, as they all vie for pecking order in the flock at the top of the summer, was real enough in theme, but just un-necessarily heavy handed. Teenage girls are like that, sure, but generally at least try and dance back and forth in pretending they are not. I liked it once the exposition melted away, though. Good turn by Sam Rockwell in a part that's got 31% more depth than the over-broad peripheral characters he usually gets.

You can call him "B-Matz," cause he B heading to B-Town.

B I N G O N I M M O

Headline aside, there's a ton of ambiguity and caveats and codicils in that article.

Don't worry. It happens once every dozen or so years.

That follows a disastrous Dominican winter at .200 / .252 / .261 // .513.

.156 / .224 / .200 // .424 in 17 games. Even with the defense, this adds up to "not an asset." At least, not an asset to a major league roster. I'm thinking hard about Nieuwenhuis.

Mejia: 7 Farnsworth: 3 Torres: 2 Valverde: 2 Familia: 1 Matsuzaka: 1 Eveland: 1 Plenty of season left!

Eveland. It comes down to this.