metsmarathon

from high above the world of cars, without the folks from pixar, comes disney's planes. it was originally set to be a d2v flick, but they saw a moneymaking opportunity, and to the big screen it goes. the movie is getting killed on rotten tomatoes, but i think that's mostly because its not a pixar flick. actually, i think the reason its getting slammed is because it feels like a pixar knockoff. and while it might be a valid criticism if some other studio, it does feature john lasseter on the credits. the movie is a bit thin on plotting and the story is fairly basic, but it's a kids move that isn't overtly and aggressively dumb, and is almost entirely devoid of fart jokes. dusty crop hopper wants to be a racer, not a crop duster. predictability ensues. along the way he encounters a bunch of planes from all over the world. naturally, they represent overwrought stereotypical caricatures of those worldly origins - none moreso than el chupacabra, dusty's new friend. el chu is voiced by the taco bell chihuahua, an american of argentinian descent. i think this guy is responsible for most of the negative reviews, actually. he's played with a very heavy hand, though the lesson he teaches is to play is to play it smoothly. i'm not sure if the criticism is warranted or not, but surely the big-ears company should've seen it coming. there was a wwii flashback in there that minimm didn't really understand at all, though i don't think he was too scared by it. the climax wasn't terribly climactic, as there was really no sense of peril at all in the movie. but it moved along well enough. the animation was a notch or two below what pixar would have turned out, but the target audience wouldn't really notice. also, we did see it in 3d, and that added nothing, and may also have detracted from minimm's experience. he didn't really want to wear the glasses too much, and really, there was nothing in the movie that warranted it, other than making some scenery seem better. if you need to take a munchkin to a movie, take your munchkin to this movie. it's no toy story 3, but its also no air buddies 17. relative to kiddie movies, i tend to give it a 6. relative to movies as a whole, i'd give it more of a low 5.

G-Fafif wrote: I'm in the early '90s in my Happiest Recap research and writing right now and have been reminded just how badly 1991 went down, both literally and conceptually. 53-38 on July 21, 77-84 at season's end. It wasn't received as "oh, bad year after a string of good ones, buck up, let's go get 'em." It was all-out panic, thus the firing/spending/trading binge pre-'92 and the fallout (even worse fallout, that is) of '93. The overall 2001 fizzle after 1997-2000 (the uplifting sudden late-season surge into contention notwithstanding) was greeted in eerily similar fashion. When '02 replicated '92, I wasn't surprised. Difference in '03 as opposed to '93 was the impatient doubling down on more big names, whereas Tony Fernandez was the only significant addition after '92 (and, it seemed at the time, a wise one) and there was a sense that no way could the Bonilla-Murray-Saberhagen Mets be that bad again. Ha. interestingly, bonilla and saberhagen both were much better in 93...

Gee 4.5 Byrd 1.6 Aardsma 1.5 Hawkins 1.3 Recker 0.9 Lagares 0.1 Murphy 0.1

Harvey 6.0 Flores 2.3 Davis 0.7 Buck 0.4 Quintanilla 0.4 Young 0.2

Lagares 3.2 Torres 2.3 Hawkins 1.2 Davis 1.2 Atchison 1.2 Young 0.9

the 1992/3 mets were a disaster primarily because of the chemistry of the bunch. i think that if those same players had gone, separately, to different teams, they would likely have performed far better. but the combination of that group in a new york clubhouse under jeff torborg led to a very very toxic atmosphere which prevented almost all of them from performing at an expected level. the 2002/3 mets were not a disaster because of the chemistry of the bunch. they were a disaster because of the mismatch between the reasonable expectations to be made of tehir expected performance, an inability to adequately measure the expected performance of those players, and the level of pay given to those players. also, because robbie alomar.

were the 1992/3 and 2002/3 teams really all that similar in terms of philosophy of construction? sure, both teams featured players wh o were brought in and who massively underperformed, but the story of the 1993 mets is really of a bad, bad mix of personalities, and an inability of management to manage them. sure, the players tehmselves were bad guys, but were the contracts for murray and bonilla and (ok coleman was bad, but that's really more true when looking at it with a sabermetric eye) really out of line? were the trades for saberhagen and fernandez really so ill-conceived? the moves simply didn't, didn't work, and the younguns faltered mightily. the 2002/3 mets were underscored by the mistake of mo vaughn, who himself was preceded by the mistake of kevin appier. the mistake of the 2002/3 mets was a mistake of thinking that money and money alone could build a winner, and that simply by spending money on players, results would follow. the 1993 mets were not built around aging former stars making far too much money, like the 2002/3 mets were. the common thread is surely spending money on the wrong players, but the reasons those players were wrong is, i think, very different. i guess hte other common thread was not reacting properly to the red flags thrown up in the first of the two disastrous seasons (1992 and 2002, respectively), but in teh latter case, there was little that really could be done, short of eating the awful awful contracts already given out. though, signing tom glavine sure as hell wasn't the answer, either.

Ceetar wrote: Centerfield wrote: As an editor, you must see stuff like this all the time no? "For all intensive purposes..." "He is a real pre-Madonna." My favorite one was a young associate years back who wrote that our adversary had been guilty of a "premature evacuation". I suggested that he find different wording. I'm sure we're all guilty of one or two here and there. You hear a phrase (and who speaks clearly? I know I mumble with the best of them) and you like it and you reuse it. Suddenly you have to write it (And you write more in the Internet age) and I find myself a lot of times googling words and phrases for things like this, but some probably sneak through. Wrote 'for granted' yesterday and couldn't decide if it should've been one word or not. as a grammar jerk, i try to always get those things right. typographical accuracy and capitalization can all go straight to hell, however.

it could be that they don't want to upset the mix while they try to work out a trade for one of their surplus corner outfielders or first basemen.

Torres 2.0 Hawkins 1.8 Young 1.5 Davis 1.0 Rice 0.9 Quintanilla 0.5

Atchison 3.0 Murphy 2.2 Hefner 2.1 Rice 1.3 Germen 0.8 Feliciano 0.6

Gee 3.3 Young 2.0 Torres 2.0 Wright 1.1 Quintanilla 0.9 Feliciano 0.7

yeah, the smaller the suspension, the better, imo. i'd be really surprised if he ends up with more than 50 days. i get that the mlb seems to have evidence that he used for multiple years. well, so fucking what. you don;t get banned for each time you use, you get banned for each time you get caught. he got caught this once. otherwise, if any of hte other 12 50-gamers received more than one round of treatment, well, they should get the 50+100+whatever also. he probably brought in other guys to biogenesis. so? was he getting kickbacks, a finder's fee? no? well, so fucking what. did he try to hide and frustrate mlb's investigation? yep. well, so did melky cabrera. so, so fucking what. the suspension of arod appears very much to be malicious and arbitrary. he should be suspended 50 games. but because of hte maliciousness and arbitrariness of hte suspension, i wonder if the arbitrator has any way to push back against the mlb, to punish them, and to waive the entire suspension, absent any other recompense. if not, that's cool. i just want the dude to be in pinstripes next year. well, really, all i care about is that he's on their payroll next year.

is it at all possible for the arbitrator to come to the conclusion that the commissioners office has so egregiously overpunished alex rodriguez that, in the form of a rebuke, the entrity of alex's suspension is revoked? because that would be somewhat delicious.

if the mets had arod, then the awful absurdity of '02-'04 likely never happens, and maybe the mets, boosted by the increased fan attendance and arod's performance, sail past the yankees and dominate the city for the early first half of the decade, and beyond. or, the mets are anchored down by his heavy contract, are unable to free up enough other payroll to buy any good players, and finally jettison him to the yankees for alfonso soriano. and end up right back where we are now. or maybe we end up worse. who really knows.

i lost peralta, but i do have mr. had-been-playing-over-his-head jose iglesias taking his spot, both on my team and on the tiggers. i picked up peralta for $1 this year, and he'd been happily productive. still, i think i can weather the storm...

Germen 3.3 Atchison 2.7 Lagares 0.9 Turner 0.9 Byrd 0.5 Wright 0.4

Rice 3.1 Young 1.9 Murphy 1.5 Torres 1.3 Byrd 1.1 Davis 1.1

not that the 'bot and i are the definitive metric against all else should be judged, but i've got byrd as my #3 schaeferrific player, behind both wright and murphy. player (marathon|m.e.t.b.o.t.) wright (67.4|80.92) murphy(65.7|74.99) byrd(55.5|65.47) note that this includes the totals for some games which we may have missed out on voting for. why such a big difference between marathon votes and 'bot votes? well, the little guy is brutally hard on starting pitchers. but, then, so is WPA. partly because they suck at hitting. wright is at +2.24 WPA for the season. harvey is at +2.80 as a pitcher, but -0.77 as a hitter.

david wright would porbably disagree with you, if he weren't busy being so gosh darned swell.

i imagine that to an extent he thrives upon it.

yabbut, do you think he can still hit?

maybe slightly better than league average, as our home park seems to tamp down on offense a tad bit.

well, maybe he means productive relative to what it's getting paid...? uh.. yeah.. i got nothing.

well, of course the 99-00 outfield had higher OPSes. that was a vastly different run environment. juan lagares has an OPS+ of 100 this year. in 2000, jay payton had an OPS+ of 98. juan lagares has an OPS of 0.712 this year. in 2000, jay payton had an OPS of 0.778. but if we use OPS+ as the measuring stick, then we see that the 2013 outfield isn't all that bad, relatively speaking. the 2013 outifled of duda / lagares / byrd / young has OPS+es of 123 / 100 / 134 / 106 (valdespin 56 retch!) the 2000 outfield of agbayani / payton / bell / hamilton had OPS+es of 122 / 98 / 98 / 86 (nunnally 81 trammel 91 perez 104) the 1999 outfield of henderson / mcrae / cedeno / agbayani had OPS+es of 128 / 72 / 107 / 125 (hamilton 130) looking at the top 4 outfielders from each team, we compare favorably. in fact, the average OPS+ from our current top four is higher than 99 or 2000. only in adding in jordanny valdespin's poison pill do we start to fall behind '99. still ahead of 2000 though. i'm not about to claim that our outfield is great shakes. and certainly this offers no estimation of the defensive value put forth by this group, but it ain't all bad, especially if you limit your focus to the current group that's playing nearly every day out there. improbable as it may seem.