metsmarathon

what a difference a year makes! as of today, i have hte top spot in all four offensive categories, as well as pitchers' strikeouts. i don't know if this torrid pace can hold up, but, damn, it feels good.

he's a WAR=0 kinda guy this season, his last season on his current contract, and he's making $16M this year. that's about the kind of thing i'd expect hughes/chamberlain to bring back in return. i don't think philly would do that kind of trade, necessarily, but maybe there's another team out there with a similar combination of price/performance in a position of redundancy that could use a pair of underperforming but supposedly talented arms with no commitment whatsoever attached, and also assuming they've tried to turn their own overpriced player around into useful prospects but have given up due to lack of trading interest out there. my point is, hughes/joba ain't getting you much back. certainly no mauer.

morneau would actually be a very sensible get for hte mfy, depending of course on what it costs them. but why on earth would minnesota want anything other than young sorta-ready good prospects for anything they give up? five years ago, maybe phil hughes/joba chambelain plus some depth gets you a qualified star with an oversized contract. but jeez, the baseball world has seen what these guys are and have become, and right now, well, maybe they could get michael young from the phils.

i can't quite say that this latest pixar installment will be one of their most enduring masterpieces, but it sure was a fun romp. we were a little worried because this was minimm's first time in a movie theater, and we weren't quite sure how he'd handle the dark, the noise, the being quiet, the whole experience. but he was great, and it sure helped to have a good, well-paced movie on screen. he didn't get bored or distracted for a second. and neither did we. they did a really fine job getting an entirely different story line out of the monsters universe in a very different kind of movie than monster's inc. the movie was all about mike and sully growing and learning together, and overcoming obstacles, moreso than it was about scaring. which was good, because we learned in the first movie that scaring is actually mean. but when it comes time to actually lay the scare down, mike and sully do a truly epic job. for the grownups, they managed to capture the college experience fairly well. they did yeoman's work sanitizing the whole experience for the kiddies and leaving it still entirely relateable for the parents. i was too busy watching and enjoying the movie to pick up on hte typical pixar easter eggs. clearly, i'll need to see it again.

and you thought your roommate freshman year was a monster! little mike wazowski wants to be a scarer, but is he scary enough? and how did he get to be friends with sully? and why is randall such a jerk? all these answers and more.

in other words, yankee fans are simpering frontrunners who don't give a shit about their team unless the big stars are there to make them feel safe and secure bathed in their reflected greatness, assured of present and future victory. these fans lack the moral courage and inner strength to expose themselves to a situation where their team - the team whose success tehy require in order to feel themselves like successes - might not win. they simply cannot risk it. for if the yankees should lose, then what are they, the yankee fans? clearly they would be worthless. no, it is better for the fragile yankee fan to avoid the issue of yankee mortality altogether. for in denial there is safety. and if you can plausibly deny the frailty of the yankees, then you may still claim their inulnerability unto yourself.

buck is clearly more of a threat to the mets on the basepaths tonight, and the dbacks know it. ...or not...

what the buck was that?

Hefner 3.3 Byrd 2.6 Rice 1.3 Parnell 1.3 Hawkins 0.9 Murphy 0.6

DAMNIT! i just had a good response and it got clicked away to the ether by me closing a tab i wanted to switch to. razzafrazzafriggafragga. anyways... dWAR is flawed, imo. to get dWAR, you take Rfield (the sum of all defensive runs above average for a player) and add to it the positional adjustment (Rpos) and then do some runs-to-wins conversion that's approximately the same as dividing by 9.5. for an exactly average defensive firstbaseman, in an average year, he'll have a Rfield of exactly zero runs. the positional adjustment for a first baseman for a full season is about -9 runs. so this exactly average defensive first baseman will have a dWAR of (0-9)/9.5 or about -0.9. it does not make a whit of sense for an average player to be sub-replacement level. for an offensive player, it makes sense. the exactly average 1b has 0 offensive runs above average. his positional adjustment is -9 runs. but his replacement value is 23 runs. so overall, this firstbaseman with exactly average offense is worth 14 runs above replacement, or about 1.5 oWAR. for comparing defensive players at a given position, Rtot and Rtot/yr are probably better. keith has the highest Rtot, at 120. helton is at 106 and pujols is at 105. olerud is fourth at 97. mattingly is way down at 33. keith's Rtot/yr is at 8, compared to 7 for helton but 10 for pujols. olerud is also at 7, while mattingly is at a paltry 3. pujols has the highest single season Rtot for a first baseman, at 25 in 2007. he shared second place, with 18 Rtot in 2008, with rod carew ('82), todd helton ('00), and vic power ('60). olerud is tied with some other guys with 17. mex topped out at 16. in 2000, john olerud has a Rtot of 10. in 2000, todd zeile had a Rtot of 10, but dipped down to 1 in '01. in 446 games at first base, mostly late in his career, todd ziele had a Rtot of 12, with an Rtot/yr of 4. why, yes, that does compare favorably to donnie baseball. ike davis also sits at 4 Rtot/yr. in 70 games as a first baseman, mike piazza had an Rtot/yr of -22. yikes!

Marcum 6.0 Parnell 1.2 Young 1.2 Lagares 0.9 Satin 0.4 Brown 0.3

Torres 3.7 Young 2.2 Wright 1.8 Edgin 0.9 Byrd 0.9 Satin 0.5

i'm rooting for arod to have a thoroughly bonkers-good 2nd half, and for the mfys to fail to make the playoffs for other reasons. maybe they'll even offer him an extension! the result of this will be that the mfy will be convinced that he will be a part of hte solution moving forward, and also this will thoroughly confuse the soulless mfy-faithful.

does it not get any bigger than the governor of new jersey? he's a mets fan. even admits it to schoolchildren.

Harvey 4.4 Parnell 1.9 Byrd 1.4 Buck 1.3 Murphy 0.6 Quintanilla 0.4

Wheeler 4.9 Recker 1.4 Quintanilla 1.3 Edgin 0.9 Satin 0.9 Byrd 0.6

wow. m.e.t.b.o.t. is a harsh grader.

Gee 6.0 Buck 1.6 Murphy 1.3 Duda 1.0 Quintanilla 0.1

damn work getting in the way of my schaefering. i should get my votes in by tomorrow's deadline...

Nieuwenhuis 3.7 Hefner 2.9 Torres 1.3 Aardsma 0.8 Duda 0.7 Parnell 0.6

Lagares 2.6 Hawkins 1.5 Burke 1.0 Murphy 0.9 Nieuwenhuis 0.5 Wright 0.4

Aardsma 3.4 Murphy 2.0 Wright 1.4 Burke 1.3 Cowgill 1.0 Edgin 0.9

brilliant!

in fairness, the prince fielder choreographed walk-off celebration was genius. pure genius.

twice this year we've gone to citi. twice we left early to get in line for the mr. met dash. twice this year the mets won those games on a walkoff homer. clearly there need to be more mr met dash games that i can go to.