Edgy MD

Sad news in the passing of baseball analyst and Baseball Prospectus contibutor Greg Spira. He won me when I realized that he outlined the "relative age effect" six months before super celebrity big-brain Malcolm Gladwell documented it in Outliers. He didn't discover it or anything, but still, he identified it as a thing before it became a thing.

The news today is that bonds on CitiField have been downgraded by S&P. I'm openly quite ignorant on these matters, and am not sure what this means to the Wilpons, but I guess it could mean that their 4% shares are looking less attractive this morning, and also that it may be harder for them to leverage what they own of the ballpark to pump money into the team, if that's what they hope to do.

Two years ago, the Mets sorta kinda inked Jason Bay. Strangely, our reactions --- perhaps tempered by Omar-era disappointments --- were as much about the way the news broke as the news itself. A lot of waiting for the other shoe to fall. Seems like a lot of shoes have come and still more may follow. "mets news at 2pm: Fatcessa" http://archives.cranepoolforum.net/13000/f1_t13018.shtml "Olney on Bay and Mets" http://archives.cranepoolforum.net/13000/f1_t13025.shtml "Bay Reactions": http://archives.cranepoolforum.net/13000/f1_t13031.shtml "Bay physical today": http://archives.cranepoolforum.net/13000/f1_t13049.shtml "Jason Bay, Laff Riot": http://archives.cranepoolforum.net/13000/f1_t13050.shtml

Uni Watch broke this earlier: http://www.uni-watch.com/2011/12/29/yankees-logo-shows-up-at-kim-jong-il-funeral/

I'll also throw out the notion that the utility of an allegedly hopeless season has frequently been believed to be the opportunity to throw some barely ripe talent into the breach, get them a taste of the competitive standards of the bigs, and if they get their heads handed to them, chalk it off to experience. Now I don't necessarily believe that, but i'm still not seeing with the self-evident clarity that others have that the plan to use Mejia in relief for half a year in Queens before returning him to Buffalo to start was foolish on the face of it. (I am certainly willing to brandish, however, the notion that his usage pattern under Jerry Manuel could have been conceived more wisely, as I have long since developed a broad disdain for Jerry Manuel's bullpen strategies.)

smg58 wrote: By jerking him around, I meant sending him to the pen and then changing course midseason, which I'll argue is worse for a young arm than doing one or the other, and also worse than starting the season with him in the AAA rotation and then shortening him up in August if the Mets needed pen help. I don't think that's jerking him around at all if that's the established and explicit plan all along and he knows that. And I'd sure like to see some data or case studies demonstrating that this is worse than spending the year in the pen or the rotation. It seems highly speculative to me. smg58 wrote: I think the complaints had to do with the timing of it. It's not the idea of starting his major league career in the bullpen; there is indeed lots of precedent for that and the Rangers have lately turned it into a science. It's that he was very young and lacking in seasoning, he hadn't fully developed his arsenal of pitches, and he had given the Mets no reason to think that he was already a better relief pitcher than Parnell, who was demoted in his stead despite pitching decently out of the pen in 2009. Bobby Parnell had a 5.30 ERA in 2009. He openly admitted he pitched his way off the team with a terrible second half in 2009 and a lackluster spring training in 2010. Farming him out there is not only utterly defensible, but it paid off, as he came back to the team a stronger pitcher.

Has anybody since Reyes and Wright come through the Mets system and had a better career to date than Pelfrey? Maybe Kazmir, but I don't know if he's really had any more good seasons than Pelfrey and his career might already be over. hardly already over. I dunno, Pagan? Probably up there with Pelfrey in terms of contribution. Guys like Humber and Bell and even Mike Carp have had some spots of success. Fangraph WAR scores: Pelfrey: 8.3 Kazmir: 16.6 Pagan: 10.3 Murphy: 5.4 A few of these guys are still getting their traction and have a perfectly good shot to pass Pefrey in the next two or three years. Bay debuted between Reyes and Wright, I think, and obviously is in a different category altogether, though very little of that, unfortunately, due to his performance with the Mets.

LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr wrote: Introducing a guy like Mejia-- who is working not only on his pitching, but his actual pitches-- to the majors seemed and seems pretty counterproductive on its face. Why? Again. There are plenty of precedents, starting with Nolan Ryan. And Mejia was hardly a disaster. He was a mediocrity with some ups and some downs. LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr wrote: and when the tradeoff potential is 30-40 good innings from the 'pen... I think the idea is that the tradeoff is also big league experience. That has a value. LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr wrote: ...for THIS particular team (and when I say "obvious non-contender," I mean "in all likelihood, heading into the season, they weren't a Mejia away from a division title"), it's outright dumb. I disagree. Virtually all teams are more than one piece away. Virtually all teams need a lot of things to break right. I don't think it's true that the 2010 Mets were such a hopeless case going into the season, even with Jeff Francoeur being a disaster waiting to reveal itself. I wouldn't imagine reviews of 2010 season previews would reveal the Giants and Rangers to be in such a better position than the Mets. Which isn't to say I didn't and don't disagree with a lot of things that went into the team (starting with the manager). But if they were a team I was running, I sure wouldn't have washed my hands of them.

See, I don't see why putting him in the pen should be considered to be jerking him around nor the worst thing you could do. I think it was done as part of an intentional and specific plan that they were clear about and he understood. It allowed them to limit his innings and expose him to the top competition of the big leagues on a limited basis, which he was more-or-less ready for, but not take him off the starter track. There's certainly a case against all of that, but not such an open-and-shut one that would suggest it's the worst thing you could do. Introducing young starters to the big leagues as relievers is a model with plenty of precedent. Sure, plenty were against it then. And I'm not asking for a retraction. I'm asking them now what I hoped to hear then and didn't. Why? And why so absolutely?

LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr wrote: The main issue most seemed to take with Mejia's treatment-- and I agree, to an extent-- was that he wasn't just kept from regular starting work for the marginal benefit-- third or fourth man out of the pen-- of a far-from-contending major-league team, but that he was apparently actively encouraged to "focus on what 'worked,'" rather than trying to develop/control his offspeed stuff. My impression was that (1) he was to work more on his offspeed stuff when he was shifted back to the starting role at the minor league level, and that (2) there was no reason to think that the 2010 Mets broke camp as a "far-from-contending" team. It's just the way it broke. It's the way it almost always breaks, but there are arguments to quit (and enter into a full-scale development-only focus) with every season. Especially in retrospect. We had a poster here furious that the Mets didn't spend the 2000 season rebuilding --- replacing Olerud with Zeile instead of just cashing everything in after Olerud walked. The reality of the 2000 pennant would not dissuade him. I think it's arguable that the Mets hurt Mejia (sure, why not?) but I think it'd be just as arguable if he started the season in the Buffalo pen and got hurt after switching to the rotation, or if he got hurt after attempting to spend the full season at Buffalo in one role or the other. He got hurt. You look for reasons. But the cause and effect isn't at all clear and it helps no one to pretend it is. Was his ability dampened by his allegedly focusing too much on his hard stuff? He hasn't thrown one pitch since the injury so that's going to take some time to judge. It's certainly valid speculation, but the certainty of the like of Sickels seems a little bit like silly chest-thumping.

Frayed Knot wrote: It's not so much that they think his use caused the injury and subsequent TJ surgery but rather the idea that his early call up and sudden conversion to a reliever stunted his overall development as a pitcher seems to be an article of faith among those who opine on this sort of thing. It's impossible to prove of course (one way or the other) but it's a more or less accepted 'fact' at this point. It may be impossible to prove, but it's not impossible to persuasively argue. The lack of wisdom in their propensity to force guys is, to my thinking, more reinforceable. How many homegrown major-league players-- regulars/"regular contributors"-- did the Mets system produce during the Minaya/Bernazard years? This is tough to circle around. Do you count guys whose development began during the previous regime and came to fruition under M/B? Do you count guys whose development began under M/B and blossomed this year or will yet blossom? Why discount a guy who spent much or most of his development time in the Mets organization, but became a big-leaguer on another team? Are we discounting bullpenners? Murphy, Thole, Pagan, Gomez, Maine, Niese, Gee? All that said, I agree that any fair slicing of the data would likely reflect poorly on the regime, particularly on Bernazard.

Good day to get sick.

Not to my understanding, no.

With two assertions that Mejia was badly handled, I'd like to see that argument fleshed out.

He's dropped from being broadly labeled the team's top prospect to (according to Sickles) ninth, and Sickles has no reason to offer pretense.

Of course, they absorbed something like the exact opposite criticism, letting (having?) Thole play in Venezuela.

I agree with much of that. But I don't think it's selfishness that got them into the current hole. Though it can certainly be argued that it's selfish of the Wilpons to not sell at this point.

batmagadanleadoff wrote: A few months ago, the Mets sent a letter to Dickey's agent warning him that they reserve the right to void the remaining year on his contract if he is injured on the mountain. They can't stop him from going, but they clearly would prefer he did not. It's gotta be at least 50/50 that this year's Mets are rooting for a contract voiding injury. Andrew Marchand made more or less the same crack in what was ostensibly a news story.

Yorvit Torrealba crosses the line. [youtube:1m2f83hm]dEUUJiSu3V4[/youtube:1m2f83hm]

Chad Ochoseis wrote: If I were by myself, I would probably try to push through headache and push through nausea and maybe get some kind of altitude pulmonary enema and croak As unpleasant as a pulmonary enema would be, it's the edema that kills you. I've got friends who've hiked Kilimanjaro who are fifteen years older than R.A. and who aren't professional athletes (OK, knuckleball pitchers aren't exactly athletes, either). According to them, it's really no big deal. I have friends who are smokers who have done it. It's a harsh wakeup call, but they made it and they came back in one piece. Sudden snowstorms can happen, but I'm pretty confident he'll make it back, also.

Well, then, I recommend.

I'm on the road tomorrow. Likely won't be ready 'til Wednesday.

Well, he put a deadline on "soon" --- marking the new year as a line of proof. He declined to say what, besides an actual trade, would serve as proof that a trade was imminent. John Heyman says no way. (Not unless the Mets include Armando Benitez.)

Dude offers to shut down his site if his rumor is untrue. Facebook WWW.FACEBOOK.COM

Wright looks like he's been lynched.