Edgy MD

No huh-way.

Consensus reports have Laughey ahead of McHugh at this point.

There you go. Turns out, Turkish prisons don't compare so poorly on the world prison scale, and the Turks were pretty pissed about how Oliver Stone turned them into a stereotype.

You'd think the being the Jewish one of the trio of contemporary brown-haired method actors (along with Pacino and DeNiro) would get him typecast. But instead, with those two being Italian-American, the typecasting played in his favor. They got to be mobsters and cops and he got to be everything else. And if Hollywood wanted a more caricatured Jewish performance, they could go with Richard Dreyfuss. (Thanks, Spielberg!) The field was wide open for him in a way.

I think there are certain movies from the seventies that provoked such a visceral reaction so as to permanently insinuate a new phrase into our national lexicon of metaphors. Midnight Express gave us "Turkish prison" and this movie gave us "Nazi dentist" --- two phrases used regularly today even by folks who have never seen or perhaps heard of either film.

Met connections on WBC-winning Dominican team: [list:1u5bhb4n]Moises Alou, GM Junior Noboa, coach Juan Samuel, coach Octavio Dotel, RP Francisco Pena, C Jose Reyes, SS[/list:u:1u5bhb4n]

If Brown's name doesn't come up, I expect that will be because the season is going surprisingly well. He's our best bet for righthanded thump in the outfield. That said, he's currently lunching with Mike Baxter on the terrace of the I'm Having a Mortifyingly Bad Spring Club. .233 / .304 / .429 // .733 in 188 plate apps. Poor spring leads to him spending more time in Las Vegas where he terrorizes opponents like the giant toddler in Honey, I Blew Up the Kid.

It seems hard to hit .297 and smash 27 homers and not slug .500, so I'll go a little more generous in that column. .303 / .415 / .522 //.937

They did remove and lose him.

Well, yes, there's no question so illustrative as "How does that compare?" --- which you're hinting at, but not coming right out and asking. It plucks data right out of the ether and places it in historical context. Annum 2012 was actually a pretty claimy year for the Metropolitan Baseball Club of New York. They lost Fartinez to the Astros in January, Josh Stinson to the Brewers near opening day, and Vinny Rottino to Cleveland in June. In July, they sold Omar Quintanilla to Baltimore, but really, that transaction was only about getting something for him instead of losing him through waivers.

My general attitude about waiver losses is that they're often over-rated, described as losing somebody for nothing, but obviously the something you want is a roster spot, and the something you lose is a marginal, utterly replaceable figure. And sometimes you're claiming talent just as readily. Sometimes. Omar-era losses via waivers I was able to find: April 1, 2005: Seattle Mariners claimed Wilson Valdez of the New York Mets on waivers. This hap'd right at the roster crunch at the start of Omar's first season. Valdez had himself been claimed by the Mets from Chicago the two days before. He would eventually ricochet back to the Mets in 2009, acquired via a cash transaction. March 28, 2008: Atlanta Braves claimed Ruben Gotay of the New York Mets on waivers. This also came at spring training's end. Veterans Damion Easley and Marlon Anderson were kept as the infield backups. Ruben would put up a reserve-infielderly, but decent .665 OPS (77 OPS+) in 88 games that year for Atlanta. Working far above replacement level, he found himself replaced, and was done in the big leagues. (Easley did well for the Mets that year, but Anderson was a disaster --- one of the small disasters that gets overlooked in the post-mortem on the that year's Mets team.) July 3, 2008: Cincinnati Reds claimed Andy Phillips of the New York Mets on waivers. We also signed Andy Green about the same time, so who knew who was who? Phillips had played only a few games for the Mets that year, and was waived to make room for Tony Armas. They replaced him a few days later with the only briefly able Argenis Reyes. Phillips would do modestly well for Cincy down the stretch, but as an infielder with a defensible bat for the position (hello, Justin Turner) but no range, he found no major league home after that season. April 22, 2009: Texas Rangers claimed Darren O'Day of the New York Mets on waivers. This one wasn't painless. The Mets needed a starter and added Nelson Figueroa. Figgy had a mediocre start and was himself outrighted before the game. Pissed off, he exercised his right of refusal and became a free agent, only to re-sign with the Mets three days later. O'Day, of course, rocked the Casbah out of the pen for the Rangers the next two years. The ENTIRE CASBAH. March 17, 2010: Cleveland Indians claimed Anderson Hernandez of the New York Mets on waivers. Mets try and get sneaky and push him through 10 days before the roster crunch. NO WAY! sez the Indians. Hernandez would play 54 games that year for Cleveland and Houston, and hit at sub-Ordonezian levels for both, but, well, Chris Woodward and Luis Castillo weren't exactly providing the punch for the the 2010 Mets. The vacuum did open the door for a 20-year-old Ruben Tejada, however. April 7, 2010: Philadelphia Phillies claimed Nelson Figueroa of the New York Mets on waivers. This was totally uncool, but certainly gave Figgie a little of the respect he craved (and deserved, to an extent). He rode the same shuttle for Philadelphia and Houston the next two years, though. Figgie hit the waiver wire at the end of spring to make room for... Jenrry Mejia. (Omar was perhaps starting to look a little desperate at this point.) August 22, 2010: Los Angeles Dodgers claimed Rod Barajas of the New York Mets on waivers. Barajas wasn't waived in a roster crunch, but rather as the result of a desperate slump that had lasted the whole summer (after a pulsating spring), and the Mets were more-or-less happy to shed his considerable weight and modest salary. Throb found a big chunk of his stroke upon joining his hometown team, however. Jesus Feliciano took Throb's roster spot, but it coulda been anybody.

Which waiver claims are we talking about?

This may deserve a differmint thread.

Yeah, if he's going to do something individualist, it's going to be something that's already desperately tired/played out/kinda douchey. I'll bet on a controversy on the team flight when he shows up in jeans hanging halfway down his ass.

If he was prescient, he would have worked Jeter in there.

Even worked in Chrome. Nice.

It's good that he's the poor man's Alfonso Soriano, because the rich man's Alfonso Soriano has ripped that rich man off.

Headley scratched from series.

Except for those of us in the Chromium Army!

Parnell locks it down. Baxter having a pretty dreadful spring, on the other hand.

Why do all Card announcers ever sound like they better not get behind the wheel?

Mets lead 3-2 in a webcast game. Lucas has hit his third Doody Bomb (take that, John Sterling!) of the spring.

That he doesn't like elevators?

I'm happy to see, but I'm getting broken image links at UMDB.