Edgy MD

"Yogi, how'd you get a girl like Carmen to marry you?" "I said yes before she changed her mind."

Yes. Equating balls in play with "soft grounders to short" deliberately queers the whole question into a one-man push poll, but yes.

I think a lot of weird culprits gets thrown into "The games are too long" arguments. If games are good, then there largely is no such thing as too long. If they are filled with empty calories like walking around and adjusting equipment, then yeah. But I think fewer and fewer balls in play is an issue. It leads to lots of empty calories.

Say what you want about having the Mets on your resume, but it's not scaring off the Mariners.

Frayed Knot wrote: Deford is a great writer and has been for a long time - and doesn't normally come across as the old fogey clinging to the past. I just don't think he's thought this one through very well. Yes. I think the delight in piling on the guy has led to missing the obvious point that there is an issue here that does deserve attention. My friend Martin was a great early believer in The National. The idea for it first leaked while he was just getting out of school (he was a later graduate) and he he got his resume in early and nailed a job on their editorial staff. It didn't work out as an enterprise and his career moved on. Sometimes, I thought, you get on board a big idea early, and you score big. Sometimes, you walk away with nothing. Or so I thought. Years later, I reconnect with him on Facebook, and I see he's married. And his wife's name is DeFord.

I think batting order makes more difference that the computer models suggest, as the behavior and approach (and therefore outcome) of batters change somewhat based on their situation.

Don't have time to read his obit, and maybe it's in there, but I wonder who his last patient was. Wouldn't it be something if it was like Captain America, and all knowledge of the procedure died with Jobe? A dozen years from now, pitchers would be dropping like flies like they used to, and some mook like Jeremy Hefner would still be bringing it, and announcers would be reverently speaking of the last active Jobe-repaired elbow.

dD didn't fail last year. He spent the better part of it hurt, but when he got on the field, he did quite well (even cutting his strikey rate) I wouldn't expect his marginalization so much. 68 games. .276 / .322 / .433 // .755. Becomes something of a popular item with teenaged girls.

In the National League of 1968, pitchers averaged 5.8 strikeouts per nine innings. In the National League of 2013, pitchers averaged 7.5 strikeouts per nine innings. TransMonk wrote: Also, I wasn't aware that basketball had a "three-point area", Grandpa Munster. He actually wrote "three-second area" --- what we tend to call the key. Did you invoke Grandpa Al Lewis on purpose? Because that guy was actually something of a basketball savant, traveling around, scouting high school players, and tipping off confidante college coaches where to find a player who would work well in their systems.

LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr, with regards to John Buck wrote: I have a weird feeling he goes on a Throbby early-season run, keeping d'Arnaud down for a little longer than the Mets may have planned... then, y'know, he starts feeling gravity's pull. 305 PAs, .235/.280/.429, 13 HR, 37 RBI, 30 R, 27 XBH

When dudes are getting stronger at 20, it's pretty consistent with their peer group. Asides, minor leaguers have a lot tougher time evading testing scrutiny.

Worth noting, the columnist's device of using the column as a dialogue between his allegedly radical self and his notion of the reader stunned to his conservative core by the radical thoughts from the columnist's daring, super-charged mind is a really tired, cheap, self-flattering technique. Very Tony Kornheiser.

The guy is hitting .600, Ash. It's March 6. Enough with the rush to surrender.

Strikeouts in big situations are certainly exciting, but them being over-common diminishes that excitement. On this, I agree. A Matt Harvey strikeout is less compelling when Kyle Farnsworth is doing it left and right. (Though mostly right.) Just like Mark McGwire hitting 70 homers meant far less when Vinny Castilla was hitting 46. Homers and strikeouts and walks are extreme plays. You can't do better (or, alternatively, worse) than these. It think the game is best when it's not filled with these. They fill the game with more walking and less running. I agree with old man there. I disagree with his corrective. I can think of ten better answers without trying.

Or variants like Sean, Pablo, Jorge, or Dick. That could give us a healthy pool.

Yeah, I think we should be able to write about any players or subjects named John, Paul, George, or Richard. Possible wrinkle: if we write about George Altman (for instance), it has to be a song originally sung by George. (That may not work.)

He's right about there being too many strikeouts. He's wrong about the appropriate response. Way wrong.

A conversation between Howard Stern and Chelsea Handler on appropriate self-conduct. America, in a nutshell.

"When being the best fans in baseball be not like the hypocrites, blowing a trumpet before them, proclaiming themselves 'the best fans in baseball.' I say to you that even the Yankee fans do the same. When celebrating success, do not congratulate yourselves for restraint in celebrating. Rather, in celebrating, never let the lefthander know what the righthander is doing. When you lose, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites. They neglect their appearance, so that they may appear to others to be noble. Amen, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you lose, cheer your team and drink your beer, so that you may not appear to be losing, except to Northeastern elites Who always thought you were losers anyway." [list:2li5ifur]--- Jesus (Alou, I think)[/list:u:2li5ifur]

This is really interesting. Particularly interesting to hear that the Mets actually had some choices and leverage through this all and weren't just fired and sent crawling to the only partner that would employ them. I would hope that this is a chance to see a new broadcast entity built around the the team like WFAN was. Hard to believe that something like two baseball generations never heard the team on any other carrier.

What LaRussa had successfully come to realize is that the traditional practice of keeping the pitcher as far as possible away from the start of the game to diminish his at-bats was established and affirmed in a time when pitchers were more likely than not to finish what they started. In latter days, pitchers rarely take that extra at-bat, so a rising concern is to keep his at-bats --- and the likely out that they represent, further away from good hitters and the potential rallies that follow them around. Presumably more than David Wright, but the first and second hitters are also good hitters that you don't want to hurt with the pitcher's automatic out. At least, they're presumably good hitters relative to the the seventh hitter. (Doesn't always work out that way, of course.) The hidden downside is this makes that much more likely to occur that point of fateful and painful decision in the seventh --- when you have to choose whether to let your flailing pitcher bat in a close game or leave him in. That decision doesn't occur in the ninth anymore --- LaRussa is right about that --- but it still occurs. I batted the pitcher eighth for about two months in one of my fake baseball seasons, trying to get an extra table setter in there. The lineup didn't seem to click any better and I abandoned it. It seemed as likely that I'd get two of the guys in middle of the lineup on with two outs and the pitcher would come up then. Ugh.

Yeah, that Sri Lankan Dutch kid was a trip. He seems to place his whole self worth on winning the Worlds, or at least elevating his finish significantly from last year. He's convinced it's all he has, while he in fact has this wonderful skill, a great family who perhaps saved him from a far tougher life in an orphanage, and every girl in his dance studio is breathless when he walks by.

Yeah. When a guy's main problem is that he's almost too selective, I can work with that. What's that? An athletic Nick Johnson with two healthy legs? I can certainly work with that.

I ain't doin' no three-for-one for no Strudel or Astrodoodle or whatever his name is. Any one of those three guys can easily end up giving his team plenty more WARPs and VORPS and totAVGs than this guy in his one guaranteed year. One of those guys for Asperger. Two of those guys for Asperger-plus-a-contract-extension. Even then, it's almost too painful to contemplate. Seriously, when you start putting out three players for one, and all three are capable and enchanting major league-starter level talents, then I want it to be a guy who makes you stand right up and say, "Hey, we really are the favorite in this division now and everybody knows it." Let's not get so hungry for other team's players that we start kidding ousrelves that Dick Schofield is Cal Ripken. Columnists love to sow that grass-is-greener bullshit. If it doesn't solve the problem (and it doesn't), don't go bending over backwards for a non-solution.

Time to break out my old WLIR bumper stickers. Hopefully, Ike will dare to be different and hit a couple of screamers of the week.