metsmarathon

"broadway"???

maybe the assumption that the best baseball players in the owrld play in the major leagues, is not really such a valid assumption after all. or, more likely, the rest of the worlds' non-MLB baseball players were better prepared and perhaps better adapted to the style of play necessary for tourney play...? either way, this should really be a bigger story, just for the fun of it, than i suspect it will be.

Johnny Dickshot wrote: By 2009, Jason Bay will still be a Canadian. he will after the invasion...

i'm a little bummed that i hafta wait till '09 for the next go around of this wbc thingy. it was way cooler than i expected, and i was for it from the get go. otoh, i no longer have to root for arod, jeter, larry, and rocket all on teh same team (even tho i don't technically hate arod). so maybe it is better this way.

5 hits between the two teams in the bottom of the sixth, no score, and we can't see a damned thing of it. sigh. bed time.

oops... missed this thread... "anybody else think its absolutely ridiculous that with all the zillions of channels espn has out there, teh most important game for team usa - that being japan v korea - is, like seemingly all other team usa-relevant games that ive wanted to see, only available for viewing on tape delay, at 1:00 am? i mean, yeah, i want to be able to see all the latin teams and all, but if they want teh games to do well in this country, why the hell dont they show games i want to see? and instead have womens' college softball and tennis..." yeah, i guess y'all also think its ridiculous. edit: i've also gotta ask why mlb.com doesn't have any glaringly obvious link to TV schedules whereupon i could find when and where the games were being aired in my local market. i mean, maybe they have it on the site, and its really reaally well hidden, cos i've been unable to find the darned thing. its prolly hidden so i cough up the dough for the MLBtv thingy... bastards!

edit... avi stopped by. post contents moved to be more appropriate thread bitching about the lack of availability of WBC televisings. carry on.

when can we stop pretending that business decisions have nothing to do with a baseball team's player/personnel decisions?

sorry, i was hoping somebody else had had the pleasure of listening to teh mike n mad dog interview of one of the authors of the book. i was trying to lead in to a discussion of what was said, even tho it was basically so ridiculous so as to not warrant any real discsussion, i guess. but i'll give it a try anyways. basically, chris started the following approximate train(wreck) of logic: bonds began taking steroids in 1998 bonds appeared in post season in 2000 bonds performed terribly in post season (and did the authors "run a statistical analysis on" bonds' performance in that postseason! HA!) how, therefore, can you say that steroids made him a better ballplayer? shouldn't tehy have made him a better player in that postseason? also, bonds' 1993 was better than his 2000, so how much did the steroids really help him become a better player in the regular season? also that the authors are putting the book out there to make money, and to his mind, that's a bad thing that severely tarnishes teh authors' credibility (essentially that if all they were out to do was to tell a true story, then presumably they should have simply made the info available to the public for free. i guess they should've just donated all the books straight into public libraries and eaten the cost. or, i dunno, provided all teh information in their columns in the SF chronicle like they did the past two years) ... the brilliant duo also had preceded this interview with a discussion of how steroids are more likely a problem in baseball than football, and that maybe the linemen are doing roids, but the skill positions sure wouldn't. and i guess maybe its conceivable that the recievers could. and i guess in a rare case a basketball player might be tempted to take roids, but had a hard time figuring out why. as if the only reason you would take steroids as an athlete anymore would be to hit a baseball farther. and that, y'know, a quarterback would have no need for a steroid. and almost certainly not a basketball player. which is an essentially ridiculous proposition. any athlete could "benefit" from the use of steroids. otherwise, why would any of them strength train? or even agility train? as if only hitters have muscles. nope - not quarterbacks! not centers or power forwards! nor point guards or running backs! not hockey players or pitchers! not golfers or tennis players! track guys might also use them, but surely not pitchers! it was ludicrous. simply ludicrous. that a 17-game slump or post season jitters could disprove that steroids made bonds a more powerful, and better, hitter, despite the preponderance of evidence from 1998-now. yeah, bonds' '93 was better than his '00, i'll give ya that. but he was also about 29, and he slugged better in '00, with more homers in about 70 fewer at bats. and yeah, at a time when his production should have dropped, at a time when he was using, his production soared. but those 17 at bats call into question the fact that steroids (or, by analogy, strength in general) benefit a hitter. idiot. the rest of teh interview was laughable as well. i hope its online soon. i was priceless. really.

chris russo is an idiot.

willie mays mike glavine

="metirish"]Boone chokes up.... what is it about his face that makes me want to smack him? is it just me...?

oh. i was just hoping to make you happy that somebody was willing to participate in the thread, in an on topic fashion. rickey was prolly dumb too. or maybe just selfish. can you be selfish if you refer to yourself in third person? maybe rickey was really just selfless... bobby bonilla was stupid. i'm comfortable making that claim. that dynamic duo of doc gooden and darryl strawberry. they were both stupid and selfish. everyone else, i'm writing every day to the vatican and stockholm to get them canonized and laureated, respectively. they're all just so saintly and smartly, all because of that pretty blue and orange and mostly black uniform. why, we should distribute mets uniforms to troubled kids in impoverished inner city school districts! they'd all just behave better and be smarter just from wearing the baseball patch with the city skyline on their sleeve! it'll work, i'm telling ya!

rickey henderson was a flippin' idiot. happy, sal? edit: rickey henderson? the hell? i meant to type vince coleman, but it came out as rickey...

its a moo point. its like a cow's opinion - its moo

i started out strong with 6 of the first 7, and then got only one more right on my way to an absolutely pitiful 47% and a trip back to the minors. i'm sticking with geography!

wait...; where's this offending natalie portman pic? or do i need to rmpl?

hell's gate bridge - cool. that's an excellent architectural reference.

="metirish"] i say this with all the heterosexuality in the world: petey's adorable.

am i alone in thinking that reads as "mnets"?

while i very much like h2h better than roto, at which i suck, i would like our league to have similar settings to those vickie just posted. i hate autodrafts, too. hey, lets make a poll!

wouldnt it be easy enough to change the name to "Sting Rays"? or perhaps the Tampa Bay Manatee. those things are oddly loveable. but do they live in the gulf? hmm... is the Tampa Bay Citrus Grove not manly enough? Tampa Bay Orange(s)? would the Tampa Bay Jesus Freaks be a tad bit offensive, maybe...?

Bret Sabermetric wrote: The average club needs at least three rookies per year to establish themselves on the MLB level (Three would give each club 30 new players over a ten year period, which is probably a little below the actual figures since there are many more players with shorter careers than 10 years than there are players with longer careers.) i'd argue the number is actually closer to two, for discussions' sake. it looks like about 55 or so players "stick" each year, if i use farily light criteria: one year 100 ab or 10 gs or 30 g (debut in 05) 55 players two year 300 ab or 20 gs or 60 g (debut in 04, career to date) 56 players three year 400 ab or 30 gs or 90 g (debut in 03, career to date) 54 players but this is likely an investigation for an entirely different thread. i just felt like sharing. oh, about 200 or so rookie debuts a year - 7 per team.

i think its my anti-sal agenda that reads that last sentence "I promise you, I'm not just oversimplifying for agenda-advancement pu®poses" as "i'm oversimplifying for agenda-advancement purposes, but also for some other reasons too"

see, elster. i disagree. but not entirely. we should have been able to get more for benson, but i dont believe julio to be shitty. well, maybe i'm hoping that he's not shitty. i'm certainly rooting for him not to be shitty. i'm hoping that '05 was an aberration for him, and you should too. i'm having a hard time getting any good info on his 05 season to tell me anything otherwise (granted, i can't find corroborating evidence either), so all i have is hope. as far as trading a starter for a reliever, im certain that if we were to trade zambrano, who, for whatever strange reasons seems destined to start for us in 06, for a reliever, there would be a chorus of cheers. much as if pedro were traded for julio, there'd be a chorus of boos. yes, even from me. as to the question of "are we a better team with benson in the rotation and heilman in the pen, or with heilman in the rotation and julio in the pen?" i think we may be better in the latter than the former. and i think it is better for the long term prospects of the team that heilman be a starter than a middle reliever. i like heilmen in the rotation better than in the pen. i don't think trachsel would be a good option out of the pen. and for whatever reason, i think the mets are making a big mistake by not having considered zambrano for the pen. so if you asked me if i would have done the benson/julio trade, i'd probably say "yes, i would, but only if i can take back the seo trade" see, the benson trade is made bad by the seo trade, which is made bad by the benson trade. me, i would have traded benson for julio, kept seo in the rotation with heilman, and given zambrano the bump to the pen, where he'd have to prove himself worthy of anything more important than the 7th inning. i think right now, we have a weaker rotation than we started with, but not by much, and a stronger bullpen than we started with, but by a greater margin, and by one that makes the team perhaps better as a whole. wether or not we'll wish we had those discarded starters is something that remains to be seen. wether or not we'll need the relievers we gained is a given. also, when you factor in such things as money, potential upside, and anna benson, i think the benson/julio trade comes a bit closer in value, tho i agree we end up on the shorter end of the stick. but that in itself does not a terrible hateful trade make.