metsmarathon

i'll put my top three of lee, jiminez, nolasco up against any other in the league. my relief is weak sauce, though, and my philliephul roster will be my undoing. and, hopefully, theirs.

i'm in two leagues this year - cpf and a league with some friends from work. i had been in the mofo keeper league for the past 6 years or so, and won it twice, but decided this year to drop out. i left behind a fantastic team with pujols, votto, pedroia, lester, and a couple candidates for the 5th keeper. i dropped out because i don't participate there at all anymore, i've not been paying enough attention to any of my fantasy leagues lately, and i feel kinda bad holding a perfectly good roster spot in a league i might not play much in. it kills me to leave that team behind, especially since i never received any of my yahoo league swag.

well, unless they start fabricating concussions in practice, or some such, the game-action where a guy's noggin gets clobbered should be indication as to whether or not a player is eligible for the 7-day trip

i don't hate my team, but i think it'll probably suck anyways. i expected much worse from autodraft.

ugh. i may miss all or most of the draft tonight. i'm in the paciifc time zone, and will be working past 6... i hope my autodraft does nice things for me.

it was still a good trade at the time, i think. the re-signing, on the other hand...

that's just stupid. at best, castillo is a 1.5 WAR player at this point. murphy easily tops that no matter how murderous his glove.

at least we now know that their financial situation won't keep them from doing smart things like dumping bad contracts.

i still hate beltran because a bunch of years ago he tried to take less money for a better chance of winning.

i remember him being much better in 2009 than anyone was willing to give him credit for.

Benjamin Grimm wrote: According to Ed Coleman from WFAN, Luis Castillo has asked for and just received his release from the Mets. Scheduled to be in today's starting lineup, Coleman reported this morning that Castillo is currently packing up his locker in Port St. Lucie. Hmmm... asked for his release, huh? Probably a smart move. He'll get his $6 million anyway, and he becomes a free agent, who anyone can sign for the major league minimum. He'll be a Phillie before Monday. he'll probably get ripped for asking to be cut so that he can get his lazy ass his money.

racism is everywhere and it is pervasive. but not everybody is a racist. it's just the blithering idiots. i actually think the nativism is a greater factor than racism. far greater. it's just buried a little deeper. oe: classism, too.

i'm certain that a small part of it is a communication barrier, where between a native speaker and a non-native speaker, nuance and connotation may be misapplied and misinterpreted. i'm also certain that racism will never ever disappear, because stupid people are everywhere, and those stupid people are often loud enough that they can be heard above the din of intelligent banter. then the drunks hear something stupid and, well, it gets even louder. its not about race for most met fans, of that i'm certain. unfortunately, for too many others, it is about imagined moral and character flaws realizing themselves as degraded performance on the field. we want our athletes to play as well as they care, and care as well as they play, and imagine that the two are inexorably tied. we want our athletes to play hard, but not get hurt, because injury is weakness, of strength and spirit. we want our athletes to recover immediately, and with no setbacks or lingering effects, because recovery is solely about how much you care, and how good a person you are, and how hard you try. we feel this way, because... well... i dunno... i guess we feel that if only we cared more, we could be in the majors. if only we were strong of body and soul, we would never get hurt, and if only we tried hard enough, all our injuries would fade away. but we're not playing pro ball on hte highest level, we do ourselves get hurt, and healing takes time. and so we ourselves are uncaring, weak, morally corrupt, and unwilling to fix it. we suck, so we need our stars not to... and lets not get into potential unfulfilled. jeez, lets not even begin to touch that one.

he was the winningest active pitcher, and all the winningier inactive guys were dead. that was kindof a fun exercise. i wish bbref had a tab available to show living leaders in stats. that would be a nice addition to career | single season | active | yearly

as near as i can tell... the list, per bref's WAR: [table:1258a8ho][tr:1258a8ho][td:1258a8ho]year[/td:1258a8ho][td:1258a8ho]player[/td:1258a8ho][td:1258a8ho]WAR[/td:1258a8ho][/tr:1258a8ho][tr:1258a8ho][td:1258a8ho]1876[/td:1258a8ho][td:1258a8ho]jim devlin[/td:1258a8ho][td:1258a8ho]12.3[/td:1258a8ho][/tr:1258a8ho][tr:1258a8ho][td:1258a8ho]1877[/td:1258a8ho][td:1258a8ho]jim devlin[/td:1258a8ho][td:1258a8ho]22.9[/td:1258a8ho][/tr:1258a8ho][tr:1258a8ho][td:1258a8ho]1878[/td:1258a8ho][td:1258a8ho]tommy bond[/td:1258a8ho][td:1258a8ho]29.1[/td:1258a8ho][/tr:1258a8ho][tr:1258a8ho][td:1258a8ho]1883[/td:1258a8ho][td:1258a8ho]tommy bond[/td:1258a8ho][td:1258a8ho]40.9[/td:1258a8ho][/tr:1258a8ho][tr:1258a8ho][td:1258a8ho]1884[/td:1258a8ho][td:1258a8ho]jim mccormick[/td:1258a8ho][td:1258a8ho]51.7[/td:1258a8ho][/tr:1258a8ho][tr:1258a8ho][td:1258a8ho]1887[/td:1258a8ho][td:1258a8ho]jim mccormick[/td:1258a8ho][td:1258a8ho]64.7[/td:1258a8ho][/tr:1258a8ho][tr:1258a8ho][td:1258a8ho]1888[/td:1258a8ho][td:1258a8ho]tim keefe[/td:1258a8ho][td:1258a8ho]67.7[/td:1258a8ho][/tr:1258a8ho][tr:1258a8ho][td:1258a8ho]1893[/td:1258a8ho][td:1258a8ho]tim keefe[/td:1258a8ho][td:1258a8ho]82.5[/td:1258a8ho][/tr:1258a8ho][tr:1258a8ho][td:1258a8ho]1898[/td:1258a8ho][td:1258a8ho]tim keefe[/td:1258a8ho][td:1258a8ho]82.5[/td:1258a8ho][/tr:1258a8ho][tr:1258a8ho][td:1258a8ho]1899[/td:1258a8ho][td:1258a8ho]kid nichols[/td:1258a8ho][td:1258a8ho]87.2[/td:1258a8ho][/tr:1258a8ho][tr:1258a8ho][td:1258a8ho]1901[/td:1258a8ho][td:1258a8ho]kid nichols[/td:1258a8ho][td:1258a8ho]96.2[/td:1258a8ho][/tr:1258a8ho][tr:1258a8ho][td:1258a8ho]1902[/td:1258a8ho][td:1258a8ho]cy young[/td:1258a8ho][td:1258a8ho]105.1[/td:1258a8ho][/tr:1258a8ho][tr:1258a8ho][td:1258a8ho]1911[/td:1258a8ho][td:1258a8ho]cy young[/td:1258a8ho][td:1258a8ho]146[/td:1258a8ho][/tr:1258a8ho][tr:1258a8ho][td:1258a8ho]1955[/td:1258a8ho][td:1258a8ho]cy young[/td:1258a8ho][td:1258a8ho]146[/td:1258a8ho][/tr:1258a8ho][tr:1258a8ho][td:1258a8ho]1956[/td:1258a8ho][td:1258a8ho]lefty grove[/td:1258a8ho][td:1258a8ho]98.3[/td:1258a8ho][/tr:1258a8ho][tr:1258a8ho][td:1258a8ho]1975[/td:1258a8ho][td:1258a8ho]spahn[/td:1258a8ho][td:1258a8ho]93.4[/td:1258a8ho][/tr:1258a8ho][tr:1258a8ho][td:1258a8ho]1982[/td:1258a8ho][td:1258a8ho]perry[/td:1258a8ho][td:1258a8ho]95.1[/td:1258a8ho][/tr:1258a8ho][tr:1258a8ho][td:1258a8ho]1984[/td:1258a8ho][td:1258a8ho]seaver[/td:1258a8ho][td:1258a8ho]98.1[/td:1258a8ho][/tr:1258a8ho][tr:1258a8ho][td:1258a8ho]1986[/td:1258a8ho][td:1258a8ho]seaver[/td:1258a8ho][td:1258a8ho]105.3[/td:1258a8ho][/tr:1258a8ho][tr:1258a8ho][td:1258a8ho]2001[/td:1258a8ho][td:1258a8ho]clemens[/td:1258a8ho][td:1258a8ho]105.6[/td:1258a8ho][/tr:1258a8ho][tr:1258a8ho][td:1258a8ho]2007[/td:1258a8ho][td:1258a8ho]clemens[/td:1258a8ho][td:1258a8ho]128.4[/td:1258a8ho][/tr:1258a8ho][/table:1258a8ho]

prolly clemens unless you discount his ped usage.

per baseballreference, gary carter's offense in '85 was better than any seasonal effort piazza put up as a met. carter had 5.9 offensive WAR, 6.7 total piazza in 98 had 5.7 offensive WAR, 5.5 total note that this would exclude the florida and la portions of piazza's '98. for the whole of 1998, piazza was a better offensive player than gary carter. but he wasn't here the whole year. and using bbref's WAR formula, carter was still better for the whole year, per their catching defense methodology. fangraphs roughly concurs, with carter at 6.7 WAR and piazza98 at 5.9 WAR. fangraphs would tell you that piazza00 was better by 0.1 WAR, but that still doesn't approach carter. ... i'd like to nominate strawberry90 as a possible alternative to strawberry 87. fangraphs seems to have a higher opinion of his 1990 season than does bbref. they value him as a 6.7 WAR player in 90, which far eclipses his 5.6 WAR effort in 87. bbref calls the 1987 season at 6.7 WAR, 1990 at 6.5. 87 was his best offensive season, for sure, but his defense was not great, costing 9 runs. in 90, however, in addition to smacking 37 homers and driving in 108 runs, with an A/O/S of .277/.361/.518, he also saved 18 runs defensively. both baseball reference and fangraphs use total zone to evaluate defense prior to 2002, so they're on teh same defensive footing, however shaky. the difference, then, comes down to offense. bbref has strawberry at 74 offensive runs above replacement in 87, 44 in 90. fangraphs has him at 66.3 in 87 and 46.2 in 90. 27 defensive runs is a huge swing, and would seem to call into question the validity of the total zone metric. the edge would seem, then, to belong to strawberry 87, but 90 may still belong in the conversation.

they used to be a quarter mile closer, in the izod center. they're currently both now in newark's prudential center.

since i am that much of a geek, i decided to look. the new jersey devils and new jersey nets currently play closer to the city limits (5.99 miles) than the ny red bulls (6.25 miles), not that they really count as a major sports team. the islanders are closer still (5.83) while the jets and giants are the closest not really new york team (4.5 miles). i think the angular shape of the izod center must have been part of some stealth feature, hiding it's new jersey based residents from the big bad city despite their cozy 4.25 mile separation.

bobby jones and franco

so... mets, kincks, rangers, mfy... who am i missing?

well, golf could fuck up your back, no? not that i know if he ever played basketball, but heyman is probably a big fan of paul o'neill, right?

april 11-14. the second home series of the season. it's a monday thru thursday series. i don't think the mets will average 20k in attendance for those games.

i'm willing to bet that 25% of the reported attendence were no-shows from full or partial season-ticket holders, who i'm guessing aren't going to be shelling out for another year of the same. especially if the mets are seen as shedding good players to save a buck. the same people who stopped coming last year, are, i'm guessing, unlikely to pay to stay home again. they're just not going to buy in to the team until they see some tangible progress. it's just the way things (seem to) work. look, don't get me wrong. i'm not saying that you can't have a good team for $70M, or that you can't draw fans without spending $70M on payroll. what i am saying is that if the mets were to shed sufficient payroll to get down to $70M, and if they were to do it over the course of the next year, met fans would be highly displeased, regardless of whatever prospects were brought back in return, and would not come out to the games, and certainly would not sign on to many season ticket packages.

it not just the ticket purchases. its merchandising, advertising, all that shit. as it is, with teh fan sentiment out there and all that other shit, even without a firesale, i'm unsure that they'll bring in enough revenue to cover a $70M payroll, before they even whisper the thought of a firesale. they'd be bringing in that much less money after one. and if they are able to make a profit at a $70M pay point, wouldn't their revenues increase with a higher payroll, presuming, of course, that teh higher payroll would have a somewhat commensurate increase in talent and winningness? how much are we really talking about in terms of impact to the bottom line? if they're losing $30M at $140M, they're not going to be making money at $70M. if they're losing $5M, then the backlash will cost them those same $5M if they're just seen as dumping salary and not improving the team, forget about what would happen in a firesale. their debt pile is so huge, that if they kept the same revenue, and dropped payroll to zero, they'd still have a huge fucking hole to crawl out of, right? it seems to me, that if the wilpons want to make money with the mets, they need to spend money on the mets. well, spend it wisely, unlike what all they did with omar. hmm... unless they want to get down to the marlins/pirates realm where tehy're getting fat off the revenue-sharing. i suppose i'm not accounting for that...