Edgy MD

The report is that this is a Met making an appearance for the Merrick-Bellmore Little League in the early 70s. That's too early for Cornejo or Orosco, but the Mets had the number vacant from 1964-1978 otherwise. He seems too fit to be a coach, though. And if he's visiting a camp on Long Island, then this wouldn't be a Spring training camp. Two theories: 1) The Mets sent minor leaguer losers to a one-day instructional camp in Merrick-Bellmore, because... Merrick-Bellmore. 2) Big league guy, but the equipment manager gave him a loaner uniform for the public appearance so his actual uniform could be waiting clean for him that night.

Too stocky to be young Jesse. And it looks like he's signing righthanded, but it also looks more early seventies than late. Was there a 47-wearing coach then? Or could this be a spring training prospect that was never a big league Met at all?

Have a nice trip. What a delightful sounding burg "Linthicum Heights" is. Sounds like sanctuary for the dangerously insane and heavily drugged.

Where outside of Baltimore? Maybe I can buy you a mass-produced prefabricated adult beverage.

Can't get over how much fun it must be for Backman to fill out the lineup card right now. Oh, you took Flores? Well, he's like my seventh best hitter, even if I did have him batting third. Five hits for Allen, Five RBI for Lutz. Four, um, strikeouts for Nieuwenhuis.

Frayed Knot wrote: I'm not even sure that Canseco pitched in college. Jose Canseco went to college?

Regarding Canseco... there's a big jump between letting a hitter pitch and letting an MVP pitch. Just like there are pitchers whose arms you'd more willingly abuse than others. It starts with throwing a few innings to Kirk Nieuwenhuis, not Mike Trout Though who wouldn't have spooged if David Wright got somebody out in the All Star Game, as generally doomed as that appearance likely would have been? It's unlikely to evolve this way, though. Recent talks suggest that teams may soon have a 26th spot on the roster. That's how things evolve --- toward the specialist. That's probably not a good thing, but it's the way the world is evolveing. I think it makes players more interesting when they are used outside of their field of specialty. (Who didn't love William Perry?) And you'd get that if you sent teams out there with 16-17 men on the roster. That's how it is in high school. That's how it was in the Negro Leagues. And these are/were places where hitters pitched and pitchers hit. Scouts would beg Darryl Strawberry's high school coach to stop calling him in from centerfield to pitch in relief, but he had games to win, and Darryl's teammates needed him.

So, on a scale of 1 to 20 (as they rate 'em in OotP) how do you frame the relative defensive value? I think it looks something like this. Current Defensive Value (1-20)Potential Defensive Value (1-20)Tejada912Quintanilla1010Flores48 One can easily quibble with that. (We're all guessing with Flores at this point anyhow.) But it gives a good notion of what Flores will have to make up with his bat.

It's a little more slapstick at times than most of them. As I said, it has more in common with Rushmore than most others, but it obviously stands apart from the lot, with the expansive cast, and set in a time that isn't really analogous to or representative of Anderson's childhood. Although latter day depictions of the hotel show it in a state of neglect decades after a sixties/seventies renovation, so his favorite design period does get in there. It's confusing to start, because it's told within a triple-frame-story narration, but that turns out to be a cool thing, as do the fun exterior models and exterior sets that come right out of mid-20th century filmmaking. There's a sequence that takes place on gondolas suspended over the Alps, and it could have easily been done on an old set left over from Night Train to Munich. I must note that, for the second straight Anderson film, a pet is cavalierly killed to advance a little dark comedy. What's up with that? Sometimes, I think, he can get so self-conscious in his stylizing, that an Anderson film can become an Anderson-y film, as if he's coming up with ideas and going, "That's so ME!" I think that's part of what may or may not go wrong in Royal Tannebaums, and there's a little of that here, I think. But you'll probably find that Fiennes, new to the Anderson company, works here as a good, flawed Anderson protagonist. Depending on the perspective, one may think of the "Lobby Boy" character as the protagonist, but Fiennes' character is certainly the central one.

It seems to me that if a player is draftable both as a hitter and a pitcher, and you decide that he's better as a one, rather than abandon the secondary craft, pay him a few extra dollars to do the other thing in winter ball, and so keep his secondary skills sharp. But the whole bloody culture is moving toward specialization --- with youth coaches selling hard to parents the notionthat their 12-year-old shouldn't be allowed to play both baseball and soccer, or lacrosse and basketball. He or she has to pick one sport and play it year round, or be an utter failure in everything ever. It's madness.

To finish the game, Clinton had to turn to their second baseman, who turned in a 1-2-3 inning for the save. Here's a Yahoo game report.

Oh, and the name of the rightfielder for the Klinton Komeback Kings? Burt Reynolds.

The Clinton Lumberkings, made famous in the book Class A Baseball in the Middle of Everywhere, pulled off a 20-17 victory last night over their hosts, the Burlington Bees. Even better, though, they did it after spotting the home team a 17-1 lead after five innings. [fimg=450]http://media.npr.org/assets/bakertaylor/covers/c/class-a/9780307907547_custom-019194d8f8daf887bc99d0f0b7b1723bd2784a9c-s6-c30.jpg[/fimg]

A grand hotel on hard times recalls it's glory years, stewarded by a charismatic but despotic fancy-pants concierge in a fictional Alpine country roughly fixed in central Europe, somewhere in the Austro-Hungarian Empire surely, in a time roughly analogous to between the wars. Large ensemble cast features Ralph Fiennes as the scheming concierge, demanding the highest standards of deportment and sophistication that he's all too willing to model for the hotel's staff, but comically descending into crass and vulgar tirades when things don't go his way. He takes a new lobby boy on as his protege, and they develop the sort of movingly-loyal-but-dysfunctional relationship Max Fischer had with his underclassman protege in Rushmore, and the boy stands by him as he gets knocked from his perch, along with the hotel and the country, as war (could be WWI or WWII or neither) approaches. [fimg=500]http://apnatimepass.com/the-grand-budapest-hotel-movie-poster-1.jpg[/fimg]

The Mets aren't getting a lot of points for "trying something" these days. I think the sweepstakes letter shows that. As for the understanding that they'll get if they try and plug a bat-first player regularly in at short and it fails, I think Melvin Mora might have liked a little of that understanding. It took weeks of drama to get Jerry to bat Jose Reyes third. It was done for a few days (and strangely, with Reyes returning from injury and not having his timing down at all) and abandoned swiftly amid mass derision. Fans are fickle folks, and they don't tend to reward you for daring failures. But GO METS!! That's what I say.

How oft do you think he's going to start? I'm thinking he'll initially get one game in four at short and one in six at second, clocking him in at 42.5%. Maybe if he hits, he'll get the odd start at first and/or third, getting him up to 50%. It'd be really interesting if they went all-in. Fans would roast them to no end, of course, if it failed.

So did I mean it. And I think they did prioritize it. As I wrote in the first post in this thread, I don't know whether they did (if they indeed did) (1) because the outfield defense was much worse last year, or (2) because they have come to the general conclusion that outfield defense is more important than generally thought and infield defense is less important than generally thought, or (3) they built their defensive values around their ballpark and/or pitching staff. But I think it's very interesting that they seemingly deliberately sought a defensive upgrade in one department, but they are showing a willingness to bite the bullet (on defense) in another. I don't know what to conclude, but it's interesting to see it unfold. And if Sandy Alderson was here, perhaps the first question I'd ask him is how he reconciles these two directions.

smg58 wrote: From the Fielding Bible, the Mets have +21 runs saved in the outfield so far this year and -10 every place else. I'm not entirely sure if there is necessarily a strategy in prioritizing the outfield, or if it was simply a case of taking what was available at a reasonable price. It may have just been speculation, but it was certainly reported that defense factored meaningfully into the teams pursuit of Granderson and Young and the concomitant push of Duda out of the outfield.

batmagadanleadoff wrote: Maybe this thread'll inspire our custom card-makers to thrown down their own Wolves in Sheep's Clothing creations. Something like an Ike Davis in a '72 Pirate template in a Met home pinstriped uni cropped around the jersey wordmark with a cap/helmet painted yellow and an ugly Pittsburgh "P" drawn on. [fimg=500]http://www.sitcomsonline.com/boards/attachment.php?attachmentid=161621&stc=1&d=1283824012[/fimg] But I don't wanna be a Pirate!

Goes to the breaking ball and STRIKE THREE! Black fans the side to close out the big win! Two in the ninth to tie and two in the tenth to steal the victory. The 51s move to an '86-Mets-ish 23-10!

Down goes Roberto Lopez. Two away. Up comes DH Matt Long as the last hope for Salt Lake.

Strikes out Efren Navarro. One away.

Vic Blac on for the save.

Dykstra singles home Soupy. AD whiffed his first three trips to the plate, but has driven in three since then, on two hits and a sac fly.

Vegas, down 5-2 in the early going, just went up 6-5 in the 10th on an Eric Campbell double. Flores follows that by singling him to third, Wilmer's third hit of the night.