Edgy MD

Push polling --- could you get any more desperate? Here's hoping Gary is up to mentioning it on the broadcast tomorrow.

To his credit, he corrected himself --- several awkward seconds later. (You can practically hear a director screaming into his headphones.) To his detriment, he didn't have the grace to laugh at how profoundly stupid it came out, all the while pontificating (is there any other word?) about how nobody knows anything about Valley Fever. Wouldn't it be great if it was Jungle Fever?

Seoie has been out of circulation. You better light the Seo signal or something.

The Mets last two homestands were four games and three games, so it kind of feels like they've been on the road forever. they now come home for 11 games --- their longest homestand of the year. Facing the Pads will be Jeremy Hefner, who I've been advocating for for about five weeks, so no pressure, but he better not make me look stupid. Hef was twice drafted by the Mets, in 2004 (46th round) and 2005 (48), before finally signing with these very same Padres after they picked him in the sixth round in 2007. Considering the personnel the Mets have who I imagine had scouted him for both teams, they probably didn't have to pore over the paperwork before grabbing him, but he had an eventful little winter, getting put on waivers and grabbed by Pittsburgh in November, and then waived by the Bucs and grabbd by the Mets in December. Had he debuted earlier this week, he could have faced both his waiverers and made them both pay. As long as somebody pays, I'm happy. Show 'em what you're made of Jeremy! Terry Collins has dropped hints that Andres Torres will perhaps sit a third straight day in observance of Operation Get Your Shit Together. Hopefully his shit is assembling itself. Ike Davis will be the centerpiece of Elephant in the Living Room Night at the ballpark Thursday. The first 20,000 people entering will get one free opinion about what the Hell to do about Ike Freakin' Davis. The Mets guarantee that all 20,000 of those opinions will retain their resale value longer than Mike Francesa's notion that maybe Ike is suffering from Jungle Fever but nobody knows.

Benjamin Grimm wrote: They won because we didn't call it a "Gay Dame" or a "Condom Game". You're welcome.

Francesa just speculated that it might be the "Jungle Fever."

There's nothing crazy about any of it. This team is firing on half our cylanders and we're two Ike Davis errors and maybe a Frank Francisco meatball from first place. It'd sure be sweet to be the team that brings reality crashing in on the Nats.

Like I said up top, they sprung off of the Pirates to a few weeks of hard-hitting baseball last year. I just would that they sprung a little harder here --- broke out the power sticks or found Ike Davis or something. Know who we faced that I thought was really good? The Tigers about a dozen times in spring training. The Tiggos now sit at 20-22 in third place in the AL Central. So yeah, it looks like a year of mushy quality distributed rather evenly throughout the league. (Wasn't as impressed by the Giants as you.) I hope it's not one of those years when a second-rate Cardinal team gets all its parts lined up at the end and steals the damn thing. Wondering how much of this parity is by design.

Shouldn't complain about taking two of three from anybody on the road, but I feel like the Bucs weren't just a not-particularly good team, but a not-particularly good team not playing particularly well, and the Mets could have swept this pretty decisively. McDonald gave the Bucs their best start by far and they beat him.

Torres in also. Bobby disrespected.

Frayed Knot wrote: Again no double-switch w/Duda even though he made the last out ... and again a fly-ball single falls in despite seeming to be in the air a long time. Mabye Torres in CF moving Nieuey to RF makes a difference but maybe not. Still ... Is it a character-building thing? Terry doesn't want to get Duda down on himself by switching him out like gimpy veteran? Because these seem like obvious moves. And if Torres has lost his job --- at least for now --- as starting centerfielder, there isn't much of a role for him if you don't use him as a defensive sub.

Byrdie is going to be our RPotY, one batter at a time.

batmagadanleadoff wrote: Curious: What are Staub I's WPA's? I vaguely recall that he had some WPA seasons that were way over what you'd expect based on his regular season stats? I happened to just look at him. Staub through most of his career is an outlier. He leads the league with a 5.7 WPA in 1976, while his WAR of 2.5 doesn't even put him on the map.

Sorry, Carlos. Sorry HoJo and Olie. 1) John Olerud 1998: 5.99 (173rd, all time) 2) Darryl Strawberry 1987: 5.91 (188) 3) Carlos Beltran 2006: 5.34 (301) 4) Mike Piazza 2000: 5.25 (313) 5) Keith Hernandez 1984: 5.23 (316) 6) Carlos Beltran 2008: 5.00 (372) 7) Darryl Strawberry 1988: 4.98 (375) 7) Bernard Gilkey 1996: 4.91 (390) 9) Mike Piazza 2001: 4.76 (432) 10) Howard Johnson 1989: 4.72 (444) Pitchers 1) Dwight Gooden 1985: 9.93 (1st all time! By a lot!) 2) Tom Seaver 1969: 6.69 (26) 3) Tug McGraw 1972: 6.52 (35) 4) Jerry Koosman 1969: 6.41 (41) 5) Tom Seaver 1973: 6.40 (42) 6) Tom Seaver 1971: 6.03 (59) 7) Tom Seaver 1975: 5.74 (85) 8) Tug McGraw 1969: 5.63 (98) 9) Tom Seaver 1968: 5.08 (150) 10) Tom Seaver 1977: 4.86 (181)

Three-zip lead. Wright with the big hit. World = all right.

Rusty Staub in 1983 had a WAR of 0.4, but a WPA of 0.9. I would contend that the latter is a more accurate assessment of his contributions.

Win Probability Added. It measures the increased likelihood of your team winning the game, based on your performance, so a three-run homer when down by two in the ninth is worth far more than the same homer in a 14-2 blowout. It's developing, and the further back we go, the more unavailable (or corrupted) play-by-pay data is, so latter-day players will dominate. They also don't do much of a job measuring defensive contributions, so these may even out as they find a manner to extract fielders' defensive performances from pitching and add it to the the offensive WPAs of batters. batmags, among others, doesn't like it (and please correct me if I'm wrong) because it measures clutch performance, which he contends is giving players credit for random variation, as clutch performers don't really exist (even if clutch performances do). I rather like it, because if clutch performance is merely random variation, it should be corrected for in a large data set, and if it isn't, well, here we have a measurement for it. I further like it because whether or not you hold that some guys are awesome because of their particular ability in the pinch, we have to find a way better than WAR to weight the performances of guys whose entire job is designed to perform in high leverage situations --- relief aces and pinch-hitters. So I appreciate seeing Tug McGraw appearing twice on the above list.

Wright down to .400. Is a dream a lie when it don't come true?

i support that only if the idea is to get the runner home.

Batters 1) John Olerud 1998: 5.99 (173rd, all time) 2) Darryl Strawberry 1987: 5.91 (188) 3) Mike Piazza 2000: 5.25 (313) 4) Keith Hernandez 1984: 5.23 (316) 5) Darryl Strawberry 1988: 4.98 (375) 6) Bernard Gilkey 1996: 4.91 (390) 7) Mike Piazza 2001: 4.76 (432) 8) Howard Johnson 1989: 4.72 (444) 9) John Olerud 1997: 4.65 (462) 10) Howard Johnson 1987:4.59 (490) Pitchers 1) Dwight Gooden 1985: 9.93 (1st all time! By a lot!) 2) Tom Seaver 1969: 6.69 (26) 3) Tug McGraw 1972: 6.52 (35) 4) Jerry Koosman 1969: 6.41 (41) 5) Tom Seaver 1973: 6.40 (42) 6) Tom Seaver 1971: 6.03 (59) 7) Tom Seaver 1975: 5.74 (85) 8) Tug McGraw 1969: 5.63 (98) 9) Tom Seaver 1968: 5.08 (150) 10) Tom Seaver 1977: 4.86 (181) I certainly may be overlooking somebody.

Nope.

I was just checking out some of that WPA stuff, and I could be wrong, but I think the top WPA season for the Mets was Hernandez 1984.

btw, it's a 12:35 game, not noon ... He doesn't really go by Niesie, either. PNC does indeed become Gorkys park this afternoon. The Family Harrison, rf Hernandez, lf McCutchen, cf Walker, 2b McGehee, 1b Barajas, c Navarro, 3b Barmes, ss Morton Neil Walker: not your protypical cleanup hitter.

I could go with a parcel of Pascucci. He could maybe stick around for a bit, too. Man, as noted in the Wright thread, we have a brutal 40 games coming, and it would sure be nice to have the real Ike with us for 3/4 of that, so let him sit out this homestand, spare him the boos, and hopefully ten days in the bushes can help. If it doesn't, well, we have some ballgames to win with or without him.

To a greater or lesser extent, we're all prospects, my friend.