Lefty Specialist

I love Jacob deGrom and his balls of steel.

So, I'm thinking that 14 runs is not in the cards tonight.

bmfc1 wrote: Dammit Jose, those 2 runs are on you, dinosaur. He really has to go. He's just unwatchable right now.

Edgy MD wrote: We're in a very tanky era. Unfortunately the Mets have had the misfortune of playing 4 to 6 games a year against the team that never, ever tanks. It'd be interesting to do a post-mortem on this stretch, to see how well they did or didn't do.

Ummmmm, no. The fork in his back inhibits his hitting.

Well, that was long overdue. Problem is they've got five-alarm Vargas going tomorrow.

I laughed my ass off. But then my ass regenerated and I promptly laughed it off again.

I expect that he will continue to look like a young Rodney Dangerfield.

Fman99 wrote: This was the best that Familia has looked in 2018, if you ask me. He had lots of rest.

Callaway sending deGrom out for the 7th is a head-scratcher. But damned if Jake doesn't make it work.

Ashie62 wrote: Aren't using Gsellman and/or Lugo as SP's the obvious answer? Well, that's why the Mets won't do it.

LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr wrote: batmagadanleadoff wrote: It wasn't necessary to foresee Wright's terrible injuries to come. The Mets were dreadful when Wright was re-signed. So bad that if Wright had a Ruthian MVP season in 2013, the Mets wouldve still lost more than half their games. Of course you could justify the signing on Wright's outstanding citizenship, but after letting the batting champ and then the Cy Young award winner walk away, the Mets had no balls to trade Wright --- and that's the difference between an ordinary organization and a thoughtful cutting-edge franchise. It would have been bold. The Cards more or less did it with Pujols. The Wilpons also would have been crucified had they not made the offer. I suspect that, deep down, "risk avoidance"-- PR-wise, rather than actual, onfield risk avoidance-- probably had a decent amount to do with the decision. This. They'd let Reyes walk after 2011 and a batting title. To let Wright walk, the Golden Boy face of the franchise who'd been a Met fan since he was a little kid watching Tides games in Norfolk, would have been a public relations disaster. It would have been akin to trading Tom Seaver in his prime, and we all know how that worked out. This was risk avoidance, pure and simple.

Well, the problem is 2009-2014 and 2017 with an end date to be determined.

The Mets half-ass it. They can't commit to a full teardown like Philly or Houston or Atlanta have done because they're in New York. I full teardown would have required 4-5 years of losing, and losing badly. They can't do that in New York. They don't have the money or roster-building skill to create a sustainable winner, so you get the Half-ass. Where you hope that David Wright will come back or the 5 guys who were supposed to be good actually pitch good at the same time, which never, ever happened. Where you pick an Adrian Gonzalez or a Jose Reyes off the scrap heap. Where an Eric Campbell or Ty Kelly get far more playing time than they ever deserved on a major league team. Problem with the Half-ass is that occasionally things go right, like in 2015. You then think that justifies continuing on the way you have because maybe this year we'll catch lightning in a bottle again. That usually engenders lots of blah seasons with a team going nowhere.

Chance to dip below .500 in this series.

Centerfield wrote: I would start Guillorme and Lagares. Let Cespedes heal that quad. We are just asking him to blow it out. 1. Nimmo LF 2. Guillorme SS 3. Cabrera 3B 4. Flores 3B 5. Conforto RF 6. Lagares CF 7. Bruce 1B 8. Desoraco C Forgot about BatMan Guillorme. Cespedes is going to play until the season starts slipping away, though. Callaway is desperate for offense. Flores, I love him, but he's no third baseman. A-Gon saves him a lot of errors that Bruce wouldn't.

Nymr83 wrote: Ashie62 wrote: Time to assess shortstop. I don't see anything from him that seems special, nothing Wasn't Plawecki supposed to be out 2 weeks, 6 weeks ago??? A little early to give up on a 22 year old that the org has held in high regard for years, but I am all for sending him down. Yes, the problem being that there's no true shortstop to bring up. If you look at the 51's roster, there's no shortstop listed. Cecchini is more of a 2B (and he's hurt anyway}. And you can't run Reyes out there. He needs to be released instead.

My son, born in 1995, had a similar path. He could barely comprehend baseball when the Yankees beat the Mets in 2000. He was crushed by a frozen Carlos Beltran when he was 11, then doubly crushed when he was 12 and 13 by Mets collapses. Yankee fans made his life miserable. But it also taught him to appreciate the good times when they were so fleeting. We Skyped game 3 of the World Series in 2015 with him, as we were having a party and he wanted to be a part of it even though he was 200 miles away at college. It was awesome. This year, at 11-1, he said he was leery of the start. He knows the pain. But he could never be a Yankee fan. Living in Washington now, he says that one of the best things about the city is the lack of YLDB's.

It is amazing to think back to 2013, when there was nothing ahead but bright skies for Matt Harvey. I remember him pitching with the bloody nose and saying to myself, "Wow, this guy's a monster." Now it's all dust and ashes. Just a reminder of how fast it can all turn, I guess. Also kind of sad that he went to a party in LA and nobody knew who he was. Like a washed up Marlon Brando in On the Waterfront. He coulda been a contender........

At this rate they’ll give the Marlins a run for their money.

This game now available for Hindenburg voting.

Well, screwing up the batting order and losing two of three to the worst team in the NL certainly isn't helping.

Fumft. Time for the bullpen to give up a cheap run.

Benjamin Grimm wrote: Not a good sign that the Mets have to struggle so much to beat a team like the Reds, who have an adjective of "lowly". Conversely, the Reds were probably happy to play somebody who's as bad as they are right now.

Or the shorter version, lolMets.