Edgy MD

It would be a curious move. Whatever the upside, he would almost certainly be another guy they wouldn't ask 32 starts from. Maybe you bring him along slowly --- start his season in mid-May, so he's (hopefully) fresh at the end when they're shutting Mejia/Montero/Syndergaard down.

metirish wrote: The mets never fail to get the last shitty word in with a player on the way out. Hey, wait... They still owe a slam to Hairy! Most of that "Mets hope not to hire such dicky players' article was more the reporter inferring that some of the mentioned guys were dicks. It didn't seem an official was throwing anybody to the wolves. And Ronny Paulino was like Valdy --- had a leaguewide rep as a jerk before ever joining the Mets.

But since that gun isn't pointed at me now... Actually, no. Turn around slowly. Even more slowly than that. This gun is, in fact pointed at your head. You must answer now and live.

Yeah, and maybe it would be nice to have Sandy step out and make a statement along the lines of "Love him and wish him well."

John Cougar Lunchbucket wrote: I wouldn't have observed this as a chronic thing, but Turner did get fat. And wasn't he injured on a play that most often strikes middle-age softball players? Nothing more worthless than a backup who can't be around to back up. Also didn't hit until the last five weeks of the season or so. I'm not sure what he brought at all the last two years. I got the idea that he loved his job way too much, and seemed way too secure in it.

Ventura completes our quiz of Mets effective in the vague skill of collecting dWAR. Thankyou for playing.

Fixed. I knew I couldn't make it through that post without dropping a few easy ones of my own.

Ashie62 wrote: So Marlin McPhail is the bastard responsible for Reese Havens.... That's one surprsingly narrow way to look at it.

Tsk, tsk, Chad. Checking your work! But Juan is right! And he didn't even get a GG nomination! 1. Harrelson, 13.6 (10,786 inn) 2. Grote, 11.2 (10,584.67 inn.) 3. Ord��ez, 10.0 (7,570 inn.) 4. Stearns, 7.9, &6,471 inn.) 5. Edgardo Alfonzo, 6.1 (8,739.67) 6. Reyes, 4.9 (9,869 inn.) 7. Beltran, 4.3 (7,468.33 inn.) 8. 9. Elster, 4.0 (4,225 inn.) 10. Lagares, 3.5 (904 measly innings) Gary Carter, 3.3 (5067.33 inn.) Doug Flynn, 1.9 (5388.33 inn.) Len Dykstra, 2.6 (4,710.33 inn.) David Wright (0.9 (12,083.33 inn.) Keith Hernandez, 0.4 (6,469.33 inn.) Todd Hundley, 1.7 (6,017 inn.)

Researching for my dWAR quiz, I was led into the dark corner of defensive history that is Todd Hundley's tenure as the Mets' leftfielder. Interesting facts: [list:fu6g7sy2][*:fu6g7sy2]He started 34 games out there. If you asked me this time yesterday, I'd say that he started seven or eight. It's amazing the experiment went on for so long, as he wasn't hitting a lick either. How bad the alternatives must've been! How quickly the Bernard Gilkey contract went bad! [/*:m:fu6g7sy2] [*:fu6g7sy2]Of 34 appearances in left, all were starts. (Because who gets a notion mid-game, "Man, what this game needs is some hot, sexy, Hundley-in-left action."?) But onlty four were complete games. I'd have to say that completing 11.8% of your starts as a leftfielder has to be some sort of all-time number. [/*:m:fu6g7sy2] [*:fu6g7sy2]You get bad fielders out if you have a lead in the ninth. You get terrible fielders out if you have a lead in the eighth. Hundley? He left in the seventh. AND WHO NEEDED A LEAD?! In his 34 appearances (again, all starts), he managed 216.67 innings, an average 6.37 innings per game/start. [/*:m:fu6g7sy2] [*:fu6g7sy2]Thirty-four games isn't a season, but neither is it a meaningless sample size. And yet, Hundley threw up (almost literally) an .898 fielding percentage. Butch Hobson in 1978, the year he was crippled by his bone chips but still able to hit some, posted an .899 fielding percentage, the only post-1900 player, I believe, to field below .900 over the standard for a full season. And that's at third, where fielding percentages are lowest. Keep in mind that you don't get credited with an error in left if a ball eludes you, only if it passes through you. If you break in and it goes over your head, your error isn't scored an error at all, but a double for the batter. This means that Hundley was historically bad. [/*:m:fu6g7sy2] [*:fu6g7sy2]And finally, this all represents a failure to... catch the ball. You might figure that, putting a catcher in left, you'd be hurt by (a) his lack of speed, and ( his inexperience in judging fly balls. You might figure that, if he's in position as a ball arrives, his hands would be the one thing you could count on. I mean, catchers... catch. They catch balls coming in at 95 +miles-per-hour, they catch balls with un-natural breaks, and they catch balls fouled off by hitters. Sometimes all at once. You'd figure... but you would wrong. Todd Hundley was a catcher who was historically bad at catching. At least catching any ball recently struck by wood. [/*:m:fu6g7sy2] [*:fu6g7sy2]He did, nonethless, despite coming off the DL with an elbow still recovering, manage two outfield assists. On July 21, he nailed Tony Womack at third trying to stretch a double into a triple, ending the fifth inning. Bobby Valentine rewarded him by sending Bernard Gilkey out to protect the 4-0 lead in left to start the sixth, making Todd baseball's first five-and-fly leftfielder. Later, on August 4, in a rather exciting game, he nailed Rich Aurilia trying to stretch an RBI single into a double, erasing a runner in the sixth in a game the Mets would take 7-6 in the 10th, on a bases-loaded walk to Lenny F. Harris.[/*:m:fu6g7sy2][/list:u:fu6g7sy2] It's just that... it was a disaster. I knew it and you knew it. But that it was perhaps a disaster of historic dimensions, I hadn't really pondered.

Oh, now you're running dry. 1. Harrelson, 13.6 (10,786 inn) 2. Grote, 11.2 (10,584.67 inn.) 3. Ord��ez, 10.0 (7,570 inn.) 4. Stearns, 7.9, &6,471 inn.) 5. Edgardo Alfonzo, 6.1 (8,739.67) 6. Reyes, 4.9 (9,869 inn.) 7. Beltran, 4.3 (7,468.33 inn.) 8. 9. Elster, 4.0 (4,225 inn.) 10. Gary Carter, 3.3 (5067.33 inn.) Doug Flynn, 1.9 (5388.33 inn.) Len Dykstra, 2.6 (4,710.33 inn.) Hernandez, 0.4 (6,469.33 inn.) Todd Hundley, 1.7 (6,017 inn.)

You gents with your posable plastic are nailing this stupid quiz. 1. Harrelson, 13.6 (10,786 inn) 2. Grote, 11.2 (10,584.67 inn.) 3. Ord��ez, 10.0 (7,570 inn.) 4. Stearns, 7.9, &6,471 inn.) 5. Edgardo Alfonzo, 6.1 (8,739.67) 6. Reyes, 4.9 (9,869 inn.) 7. Beltran, 4.3 (7,468.33 inn.) 8. 9. Elster, 4.0 (4,225 inn.) 10. Hernandez, 0.4 (6,469.33 inn)

I'll take the poster of that hoodlum as a guess even though it didn't come in the form of a collectible action figure. 1. Harrelson, 13.6 (10,786 inn) 2. Grote, 11.2 (10,584.67 inn.) 3. Ord��ez, 10.0 (7,570 inn.) 4. Stearns, 7.9, &6,471 inn.) 5. Edgardo Alfonzo, 6.1 (8,739.67) 6. Reyes, 4.9 (9,869 inn.) 7. Beltran, 4.3 (7,468.33 inn.) 8. 9. 10. Hernandez, 0.4 (6,469.33 inn)

There you go. I ran the comps on Jefferson at age 33. 1. Jean-Jacques Rousseau 2. John Locke 3. Edmund Burke 4. Curtis Granderson 5. JFK 6. Immanuel Kant 7. James Monroe 8. Lord Coke 9. John Adams 10. Thomas Hobbes I'm stoked!

1. Harrelson, 13.6 (10,786 inn) 2. Grote, 11.2 (10,584.67 inn.) 3. Ord��ez, 10.0 (7,570 inn.) 4. 5. 6. Reyes, 4.9 (9,869 inn.) 7. Beltran, 4.3 (7,468.33 inn.) 8. 9. 10. Hernandez, 0.4 (6,469.33 inn)

Well, they're not giving it to him. A lot of great things have been done by 33-year-olds.

1. Harrelson, 13.6 (10,786 inn) 2. 3. Ord��ez, 10.0 (7,570 inn.) 4. 5. 6. Reyes, 4.9 (9,869 inn.) 7. Beltran, 4.3 (7,468.33 inn.) 8. 9. 10. Hernandez, 0.4 (6,469.33 inn)

Yeah, if Keith doesn't destroy all faith a living being can have in defensive WAR, than nothing will. 1. 2. 3. Ord��ez, 10.0 (7,570 inn.) 4. 5. 6. 7. Beltran, 4.3 (7,468.33 inn.) 8. 9. 10. Hernandez, 0.4 (6,469.33 inn)

Beltran gave you 4.3 WAR in 7468.33 innings. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. Beltran, 4.3 (7468.33 inn.) 8. 9. 10.

I went for Kemp, but I switched to Ethier. All that munny on the table, I had to think conservatively, and so went with health/buyout/shorter contract/lower salary.

This is easier. Just asking for the top ten Mets with regard to career defensive WAR. No per-600 mysteries. For the purposes of this thread I'm (A) using baseball-reference's measure of dWAR, and ( stipulating that I while I consider the pursuit of defensive WAR to be a noble purpose, I believe our and baseball-reference's efforts to have approached meaningful accuracy, but probably not arrived anywhere within spitting distance. One guess per post: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

Chris "Kringle" Cannizzaro.

You've got Ned Colletti on the phone and he's offered you Kemp or Ethier. You hammer out a package... say, den Dekker, Murphy, and Montero. That sounds doable from your end, but which of these guys do you want? Kemp Kwalities: better (when at the top of their respective games) younger (by two and a half years) more athletic righthanded nicknamed "The Bison" signed through 2019 2014: $21,000,000 2015: $21,000,000 2016: $21,500,000 2017: $21,500,000 2018: $21,500,000 2019: $21,500,000 Ethier Extras healthier less expensive available buyout on the butt end of the contract lefthanded nicknamed "Captain Clutch" (ugh) signed through 2018 2014 : $15,500,000 2015: $18,000,000 2016 : $18,000,000 2017: $17,500,000 2018: $17,500,000, with a $2.5 million buyout.

Don't play the martyr, please. Try harder.

Being sarcastic and snotty is obnoxious. Cut it out.