metsmarathon

i've probably over-invested in relievers in the past few years. though, it hasn't hurt me too much. yet...

ah. sorry, then. i did that the first year of hte league. i forget which player. maybe johnny venters, though i struggle to think of why i would have wanted to keep him at $20. anyways, he blew up his elbow in spring training the follwing season, and has yet to pitch again so it all worked out, ofr me at least. hopefully o'day does not see the same thing happen to his own career.

hmm... there have been some interesting cuts already in the league. players i would definitely (or likely) have kept at their going salaries are being shed left and right. a $3 darren o'day, an $8 drew stubbs, a bargain-priced $17 adrian gonzalez, and even a reasonably priced $26 matt kemp with a fair amount of upside... obviously, difficult decisions are being made, and i'm myself not yet ready to make my own massive mistakes. thanks to all your arbitration efforts, i've got some hard work to do. jerks.

min actually had a number of features that made it into citi field. expansive field, big bouncy wall in left, room for rattling around in right. yes. i'm to blame.

cj nitkowski

i [u:1te3x9vy]knew [/u:1te3x9vy]it!

Brettanomyces Tart-ans (this is a beer joke) - Ceetar Greenpoint Lunchladies - mbtn01 Alpine Albatrosses - Mets Marathon smg58 - Not sure who this is. Stony Brook Devil Toads - seawolf Mohawk Red Flyers - mgmlax85 Muddy Chickens - ryanflc Hungrypup - j1mbo15 Giant Gay Liberal Media Deathship - LWFS Easton Assassins - bootlucky Snukes - SaltyGary Miracle Monks - transmonk real-world friends of mine in bold. as opposed to you virtual-world friends of mine, who i still all assume to be axe-murderers, despite having met a fine number of you. its the internet, afterall. how can i be sure those people i met were really you, hmmm?

i'm happily surprised that the voters got the nl mvp right. all too often i hear that t pitcher can't be the mvp, because he has his own award. i'm glad enough people disagreed.

the answer, as always, is to have a lineup without glaring holes. ensure that every position contributes. if you fill hte holes and have depth, you'll likely be more resillient against slumps or sucking.

toy story 4: mommy, where do toys come from?

tick. tock. tick. tock. time is rapidly running out to punish my roster. i mean, i'm okay with not having my guys escalate in cost too rapidly. i just figured some of you might not be feeling the same way...

so do hitters. and fielders.

is now a good time to ask why the world series mvp can be a pitcher, but for some reason, pitchers can't be the season mvp?

Ceetar wrote: Centerfield wrote: You know, I've had some time to think about it, and I realize that my dislike of that uniform is not really based on the uniform itself. It's ugly. Big deal. I don't have to wear it. But it bothers me because it's symbolic of how this Wilpon regime runs things. They are always ones to follow. Other teams have black uniforms? Let's do that too! Wow, Boston loves Sweet Caroline. Let's try that here. Wow, look at those Padres uniforms. Let's get one of those. They are the irritating rich kid that lives on your block that doesn't know what he wants, but goes and gets whatever you get a week after you get it. Meanwhile, a fantastic Mets-only tradition unfolded right before their eyes when the players wore first responder hats. They fucked it up and actually made them stop it. Fucking idiots. I realize now there is only one way the Mets will ever wear first responder hats on 9/11. If some other team does it first. Fuck the first responder hats, put a patch if you want. stop messing with the uniform for non-baseball stuff. period. ceetar presents a possible solution here, actually. since it does appear as if the first responder hats are never going to happen, how about lets roll out first-responder patches. mix-n-match sleeve patches from the different first responder organizations on 9-11. as far as the military uniforms, i'd much rather see the mets bedecked in red white and blue instead of the digital camo. we're patriotic towards the symbol of our nation, not towards the garb of our soldiers. it's good to recognize them and all, of course, but recognize them for what they serve for, not for what they wore while doing it.

would hte digital camo work better if it used the team colors as the background color? like if it were a blue camo, with orange lettering? it would still be camo, and therefore representative of the military, but without playing soldier. also, it would look a hell of a lot less awful to the eyes with the mismatched colors. i'm basically pictuing the alternate home jersey, but with a pixellated blue. the other way to go would be to go all-camo, with appropriately muted gray/green logos and lettering on the uni. you could even have velcro patches and the like. anything would be better than blue and orange on a sand camo.

so, thinking about cleanup hitters, i was listening to mlb radio this morning. steve phillips and todd hollandsworth were discussing hte dodgers' ff season plans, and good ol' steve phillips suggested that if he were the gm of the dodgers, he'd be looking to trade away puig, big time. he's got "self destruction" written all over him, to paraphrase, and he's the only really marketable player they have in their outfield rotation, short of prospecty joc pedersen of course. and so it occurred to me, that the mets could conceivably be a fit there, if we wanted him of course. and so my question to you all is, what would you be willing to give up in return for yasiel puig, assuming you even want him and his exuberant, childish, and seemingly self-destructive baggage?

yeesh. if you're in hte mood for some red flags frantically waving to and fro, go check out yoenis cespedes' list of comparable players, as of their age-28 season, and check out the "rest of career" option. basically, the ten players who've put up the most similar stats to cespedes at the same age, averages 0.8 more WAR through the [u:35t5p8q9]end of their respective careers[/u:35t5p8q9]. the total is held aloft mostly by cody ross' 5.9 WAR. yes, a possible best-case scenario for cespedes, is cody ross. now, i'll be the first to tell you that these similarity scores mean a giant pile of squat in terms of predicting hte future for a given player, as they're not normalized for era, ballpark, and many many other factors, and certainly don't account for player skills and abilities and talents and health. but still, for whatever validity is present in this data, it is darkly foreboding. i don't like cespedes, especially at the cost of what it would take to get him, and his career arc does not look at all promising. craig is a bit more interesting, and likely more gettable. his best case scenario, fwiw, is hal mcrae (12 years, 22.5 WAR) or jeff conine (12 years 13.3 WAR), with washouts harry anderson and johnny rizzo providing counterarguments.

John Cougar Lunchbucket wrote: Ceetar wrote: Lefty Specialist wrote: I don't think there's a third base coach with balls big enough to take the chance that he gets a runner thrown out at home to end a World Series. A halfway decent throw and he's out by 30 feet. That's fair, on the other hand you've got 2 outs and MadBum dealing plus the Giants were fielding nervous, who says the LF doesn't spike it in a panic to get it in? I was rooting for him to make the attempt just so we'd have a World Series that turned (or ended) on a Little League fielding and/or running play. I imagine if he did we'd subsequently have the first WS to end or turn on a Little League running/fielding play that was also decided on video review and interpretation of the block-the-plate edict. and, quite deliciously, it would've featured none other than buster posey at the dish.

without looking too deeply into it, as a converted infielder, he was likely never really looked into as a starting centerfielder all that much until the end of his minor league career, have more "established" centerfielders ahead of him on the depth charts as he moved along. as players moved around, he got his chances to show what he could do, and his skills and abilities translate perfectly to the position.

"let it go" is still minimm's favorite song. i'm a little surprised that he doesn't want to e anything frozen-themed for halloween, nor for his birthday.

alrighty, i've got us a player!

instead of a tribal tattoo, you could get the blue and orange tiles around your biceps. or, if you really wanted to piss people off, you could get an orange dot tatted to the top of your dome.

don't forget! arbitration season opens today! (be gentle!) should we look into getting a replacement for the cornballers? if so, should we have it in place before we conclude arbitration? i may have a friend who would be interested.

more outsized a nickname than "edgy's mancrush" anthony recker?

projected 2015 WAR for available shortstops, per steamer, as shown by fangraphs... fwiw... hanley ramirez 2.9 WAR in 532 PA asdrubal cabrera 1.9 WAR in 639 PA steven drew 1.3 WAR in 558 PA jj hardy 2.7 WAR in 620 PA jimmy rollins 2.2 WAR in 629 PA predicted to not really play shortstop anymore in 2015 mike aviles 0 WAR in 1 PA alex gonzalez 0 WAR in 1 PA jed lowrie 0 WAR in 1 PA <---- regardless, he might be a decent buy low pick...? hiroyuki nakajima 0 WAR in 1 PA for comparison, wilmer flores 2.1 WAR in 551 PA