Edgy MD

batmagadanleadoff wrote: Why don't you just ask us who we think will be the Mets best player? Or you could.

Well that makes two entries by you in the "Who can hijack the fastest?" contest. Listen, I wrote at tedious length --- so tedious that I wanted to beat myself up --- because there are always one two when confronted with a simple question like "Who is the key Met of 2014?" who climb all over themselves trying to prove how empirical and semantic and tautological they are. Congratulations. You win.

My second choice.

I like Wheeler. It's highly unlikely that he can give the team what Harvey did last year, but if he can give 80-85%, it can take the heat off of so many other players. On the other hand, he may end up walking the entire league, placing an increased demand on a succession of pitchers, triggering a cascade of failure.

Which Mets player do you see as most definitively the key to the 2014 season's potential success or failure? That is, who seemingly offers the team the broadest range of possible outcomes that could deeply impact the team's win total? Anybody has a broad range of outcomes. Bartolo Colon could win 20 games or he could win two. But then there is a guy like Daniel Murphy, who, it has been noted, tends to gravitate closer to his mean. And other guys with broader range of high-possibility outcomes aren't as likely to be rewarded with a big enough role to make or break a season. If everything otherwise goes well but Wilfredo Tovar stinks it up, it's unlikely to break the season. If everything otherwise goes poorly but Wilfredo Tovar breaks through as a game-impacting big league shortstop, it's unlikely to redeem the season. Given all that un-necessary explication, who is your KMo14?

Higher on the contact skillz than the powa. .277 / .336 / .399 // .735. 11 homers. Power will come, but probably not in year one. I invented this exercise, but I hate it. Any time I post sober thoughts, I want to beat myself up. Fman has the right spirit with this. .364, 39 homers, 134 RBI, adopts a dog off of death row, hits the gossip pages with Jennifer Lawrence, writes a bestselling book of poetry, solves the D.B. Cooper case, and publishes an unimpeachable exposé of Derek Jeter's PED use. Travis d'Arnaud will bring industry back to AMERICA. (This will be in year two, however.)

Your first sentence in that thread, if'n' I recall correct, tagged him as Mejia lite. Damned if he hasn't stayed on that track.

The only problem with the theory that the Mets will try and get him through waivers is that this scenario would suggest a confidence in their alternative left-handed bullpen options. How much confidence do you have in Korarek, Rice, and Leathersich? (Hint: their current numbers add up to 210.)

Beast. 100 innings of setup glory. Seemingly throwing two innings every other day with Wendellian tirelessness. A grass roots movement grows demanding he be installed as closer, blaming Jeff Wilpon for their lack of satisfaction.

You're both wrong. It's the Malins who will claim him, as they likely get dibs before Cleveland or Arizona anyhow.

Funny that you list all those names and leave out Bono. He was demonstrating good sense and taste. Because, really now, someone else says "the Muscle Shoals sound", and the first thing I think of is Bono. What a fucking attention whore he turned out to be. Hasn't the world had enough of Bono pontificating? And what the hell does Bono have to do with Muscle Shoals anyway? Less Bono. More of Duane Allman wailing on the the back end of Wilson Pickett's Hey Jude. But how do you really feel? The quick zip through the seventies left one thing unclear to me: Were all those monsters recorded at the Swampers' studio while Fame faded? Or were they both churning out hits?

I tell you though, as much of a humanitarian as Terry is, if there's anything he and Warthen have shown no patience with, it's folks (particularly pitchers) saying they are healthy when they are not. If he's showing impingement and/or a decline in velocity, he'll be out of there faster than you can say "John Maine." There are just too many enticing options and too little cultural patience going around right now.

If he walks more, it'd be hard not give him a contract extension. He's otherwise pretty predictable from year to year, injuries aside, and it's only the lack of walks that is the difference between him being an asset and him being an asset for a good team.

I like him. That is... I just love the narrative, finding myself hard pressed to think of anybody so fully deserving of an unconditional release, somehow dodging it, reclaiming his season, and turning what was left of the season around to give the impression of a defensible campaign. I guess even better is Jose Valentin back in 2006, but even then, I didn't get the idea the sword was hanging over the guy's neck like it was over Matsuzaka's. Definitely the best Daisuke in Mets history. Hard to guess what he's going to do, but wouldn't it be something if he and Warthen found that key?

I saw it in the first post of the thread. He's a fair-skinned infielder under six feet with fringey talent. Sure, but aren't they all compared to Eckstein? But, you know, part of the punishment for your first PED offense is that you forfeit any and all rights to the label "scrappy."

11-8, 3.69. He'll lose a few decisions as Terry will tend to pull him early.

Funny that you list all those names and leave out Bono. He's so omnipresent that he's the forest you miss for the trees. I mostly liked. They really seemed to stay away from the race questions, and suddenly they dove right in. But I'm not sure they tackled the race angle as deeply as they might've. Fascinating thing to realize that a trip through Fame Studios was a step toward sophistication for the likes of Percy Sledge. But for Wilson Pickett, it seemed, it was the exact opposite. You got the idea that going down south to a studio amid the cotton fields was for him frightening --- something akin to getting sold down the river by Atlantic. To hear him and Rick Hall tell it, it was like he was afraid from the time he landed that he wouldn't be getting out. They may have played the spiritual/animism side of the story too much. On the other hand, it mostly worked. I would have liked a little more about the technical side of what made those records work. How did Hall place his mics? What sort of reverb was his signature? I really liked learning that Pickett's "Hey Jude" recording was Duane Allman's idea, and the Swampers' notion that that session with Allman on slide was the birth of southern rock. I was very surprised to hear that Aretha only got one side ("I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You)") out of her sessions at Fame and then the Swampers followed her up to New York and played a bunch of her other Atlantic classicks. Gun to my head, I'd've sworn that the bulk of her hits were cut in Alabama. But really, even when they left Fame, this was the story of Rick Hall. That guy had enough tragedy in his life to make Roy Orbison blush, but he built his little kingdom down there despite it all, and it's a chapter in the rock 'n' roll story that stands side by side with Phil Spector's or Berry Gordy's or Ahmet Ertugen's or the Chess Brothers or anybody's. So yeah, most of my quibbles were... more! More technical information. More wrestling with the racial dynamic. More recounts from the seventies period, when Muscle Shoals stopped producing soul that rocked, and started producing rock with soul. There are seven musical Osmonds and they couldn't talk to one of them?! Nice ending with Alicia Keyes and Swampers cutting the Dylan song.

Perhaps the injury initially occurred during the throw to first, and he came to know the extent of it when he delivered a subsequent pitch. I certainly believe your account. The throw-to-first account was supposedly with Jim Bouton running, but that may just be Bouton talking.

Zvon wrote: MFS62 wrote: d'Kong76 wrote: Medlen walks off mound after two uncomfortable pitches ... not a good sign. I remember seeing that happen to fireballer Steve Dalkowsi in a spring training game against the MFYs. (IIRC the batter was Elston Howard). Dalkowski never pitched again. Later Damn. He got most of that right. Dalkowski did get hurt in Spring against the Yankees, but accounts --- including his own --- disagree on whether it was pitching or making a throw to first. He did pitch again, through 1965, but his legendary heater was gone. Read High Heat for wealth of Dalkowski material.

Given a dose of mostly lefty pitching, I expect his stats to be distinctly higher than those I noted above. I'm very curious to see what a LaDekker can do in the Mets lineup, either in 2014 when trade/injury/failure opens up a spot, or in 2015 when Young (and maybe others have moved on.

LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr wrote: Unless you're talking bare-competence-level capability, Edge, "capable" is debatable. "Enchanting?" Come on, man. When you're starting Johnnie LeMaster, and you can get Dickie Thon for a price below Ripken, you'll take Dickie Thon. Actually, I meant Dick Schofield, and subsequently changed it. But sure, I'll take either, but I ain't giving up no three major-league-starter level talents for a year of either, whether or not you're feeling the enchantment.

Which is why I think it's safe-ish to pencil in 2.0 defensive WAR instead of the 3.5 of 2013. And that's also why I imagine it'll take more bat than he's shown to give him job security.

metirish wrote: Can't see him starting anywhere but Flushing, he is one of the best CF in the game, I mean, that is a fair thing to say yes? .280 - 15HR - 48 RBI It's hard to glean what the Mets' plan for him is. As far as him being one of the best centerfielders in the game, I'd agree that he certainly was that last year, but the Mets perhaps don't (or perhaps shouldn't) necessarily think of that performance as repeatable. Maybe they see him as the Mike Jacobs of defenders. A handful of wacky throws --- some against runners who shouldn't have run anyway --- contain a lot of his defensive (and overall) value from 2013. Maybe they look at his technique and don't see how his defense can consistently bring three and a half wins of value. If that's their attitude, I wouldn't blame them. But if you see him as good enough to bring home two wins with the glove and arm, I imagine they'd like to see him as capable of adding two more with the bat before they give him a job. Right now, I think some sort of shared job between him and den Dekker is the backup plan for Young, but until they settle the Duda/Davis situation, there are four outfielders in front of them. .244 / .289 / .391 // .690.

Whoah! Mets reading the Pool, fulfill Zvon's wish.