metsmarathon

it would be one thing if the tree were a fast-growing species which has grown into the view over time. or, you know, if the oleruds had made sure their architect considered all the sightlines when he drew up their house. its bullshit. viva tree.

so, we're doing this again next year, right? i just need to know so i can start agonizing over whether or not to retain my rights to the alpine albatrosses, or perhaps to go all-in with the bot. i [heart] my albatross pitching staff, but golly-gee-willikers, clockwork has some tremendous values on that roster. i think with an undivided attention span during hte draft, he'd be in good shape for next year. my team, well, there's some work my offense needs to do. i've got a lot of dollars tied up in not a lot of production.

my money is on a negative atmosphere pervading the fanbase and the whole damned building. its possible that there's a hangover effect from the old walls, i suppose, where they still seem formidable to the players who had played there before, but i think its more likely to be a big ol negativity cloud thing.

clearly, citi field needs bluer walls. or maybe a more positive vibe. dunno.

Benjamin Grimm wrote: Thank you, everyone! I'm almost out of available 1970s cards for R.A. Dickey. I've now done 1970, 1971, 1972, 1974, 1975, 1976, 1977, and 1978. All that's left is 1973, 1979, and 1972 in action. If he keeps winning I may have to expand to 1970s football, basketball, or hockey cards. work your way up into the 80s. i long to see a woodgrain ra dickey.

they have a hit tracker on their scoreboard? [swoon]

how about 20 is your backup catcher, 30 your backup 1b, 40 your backup 2b, so on and so forth. starters are in the teens, relievers end with 9 (19, 29, 39, 49, etc.) and then start filling in with -8's.

i don't have the split for the exact day he was sent down, but at the end of hte first half, duda had 12 homers and 44 rbi, davis 12 and 49. at the end of the first half, duda had a higher SLG and OPS than davis. how was duda hurting hte team and davis helping? they were both hitting some homers and not much of anything else. when all your hitters are slumping, all you can do is hit the ball over hte fence, and get one run. when your hitters are good hitters, and tehy get on base and get hits, there are more of them on base to get driven in to score, be it via a home run or another lesser hit. if, htis year, the mets had been able to magically wave a wand and turn jason bay into a 5 WAR hitter, and he was able to attain those 5 WAR solely by hitting singles, the mets would likely gain 5 wins in teh standings. if hte mets were able to wave their magic wand a different way and turn jason bay into a hitter who was able to generate those 5 WAR by only hitting home runs, the mets would likely gain 5 wins in teh standings. it would take a lot more singles than home runs to total 5 wins, sure, but for a guy to net 5 WAR solely through home runs, he's going to have to set some records. my thesis remains, production, no matter how it comes, is good. one home run here and there is every bit as good as a few more singles here and there. some games the home run makes the difference. some games, the extra singles and doubles make the difference. and some games, teh run saved on defense makes teh difference. the mets need to improve. and if michael bourn is indeed a 5 WAR player, like he' is this year, then i hope hte mets do not turn a blind eye to him simply because they think they need to hit more home runs. over the course of a season, a 5 war player is going to make a difference of about 5 wins. it may not be as easy to pin down as a walk-off homer in a game where he was the only offensive production, but ove rhte course of a long season, the difference will be made, in the form of bases gained and outs avoided and runs prevented.

the chief offensive problem for the mets this year has been that there were too many offensive black holes, and not that too much offensive production came in the form of singles vice home runs. while, yes, you need to score runs to win games, you also have to prevent the other team from scoring runs, and defense does that. we've had more than enough games where our defense lost the game for us. taken in hte context of a single at bat in the last frame of a tied game, with no runners on base, yes, a home run is preferable to any other outcome. taken over the course of a full season, a whole lot of singles and doubles is preferable to a whole lot of nothing, with a bunch of home runs mixed in. the mets have had some power this season. the problem is that hte hitters who should be able to provide it have not stepped up the rest of their game, and weren't able to then hit enough to hit enough homers. lucas duda had a HR/FB% of 9.8%. that's pretty good - dan uggla, miguel montero, ryan zimmerman range. power hitter! captain kirk, despite his struggles, is at 8.2%, better than league average, and a shade behind wright's 8.8%. the problem with those guys was that they weren't hitting enough fly balls, nor enough in general, for their power to amount to much of anything. 18% of valdespin's fly balls go out of hte yard. but he's hitting 0.242. by the way. michael bourn gets a 2run positional adjustment. murphy, 1 run. the difference is not position, but production. at 26, bourn had 3.5 oWAR, at 27 he had 2.1, and followed that with 3.2 and this year's 3.4 at 26, murphy had 1.9 (injury shortened sure, but it still prorates up to maybe 3.0) at 27, he may well match bourn's 2.1 - he's on track. at this point, i'm more confident that bourn will notch another 3.3ish oWAR season than i am that murphy will. but i hope to be surprised. last year, bourn was replacement level defenisvely, on teh whole. it was the only season his defense was not a plus. you could probably count on him to be worth 1-1.5 wins on defense, conservatively. murphy was a positive defensive contributor late year as well, but thata was on teh strength of his firtbase game. at second, he is not a positive contributer, defenisvely. i think he can still improve, but i don't think he will get up to even close to the level that bourn is at. by every way i can look at it, bourn is more productive than murphy. the giants have no power, with 78 homers on the year. 30 fewer than the mets. they've scored 15 more runs. how? higher batting average, higher on base percentage. oh, and they lead tehir league (for now) there's more thaan one way to produce offensive value. a team does not need to hit a lot of hime runs to be successful, though it rarely hurts. though if you listen to the local media, and i'm not saying you should, one of hte biggest knocks agains the mfy's is that they hit too many home runs. and that's ridiculous, too.

again, if hte mets are to add a 5WAR player next year to the outfield, i really don't give a rats ass if those 5 WAR come entirely from hitting home runs, or singles, or stealing bases, or defense, or if the only time he ever gets a hit is when he hits a ground rule double that bounces off the third base bag and into the visiting dugout but he does it often enough that it tallies 5 fucking WAR. i care about those 5 WAR. give me 5 WAR. i don't care where tehy come from, or how thye are tallied. give me 5 WAR. and get rid of (or just don't play) a guy who isn't going to give me anything. like jason bay. power hitters tally WAR with fewer hits than singles hitters or speedsters. so its easier to find a 5-WAR power hitter than another type of hitter. but those WAR are worth just the same. and those WAR will probably come cheaper if they are not tied to power numbers (market inefficiency, yay!). again, i don't care how hte player accumulates 5 WAR, i want 5 WAR. i'll take more, mind you. but i don't care how i take it. power. speed. defense. a mix of all three. i don't care. i want the production.

Ceetar wrote: I'm not saying Bourn isn't productive, i'm saying he isn't more productive than Murphy. i think either you don't know what productive means, or you don't know what more means. 3.4 > 1.8. in fact, 3.4 is nearly double 1.8. michael bourn is nearly twice as productive as murphy. and that's only looking at the offensive component of their production. Ceetar wrote: I think they do need power. They're still actually up there in OBP and even in runs scored. But they need to raise their slugging to better utilize that OBP. It was the same problem last year, and i thought Duda/Davis and maybe Torres and Murphy actually hitting a couple would help. (or Bay? naah) didn't work out that way. the average NL team has scored 543 runs to date. the mets have scored 534. the average NL team has a 0.318 OBP, the mets have a 0.321 OBP. the average NL team has a 0.401 SLG, the mets have a 0.389 SLG. it's not that the mets need more power this year, tehy need more production, be it in the form of homers or doubles, or hits or walks or stolen bases. when they were getting non-power production this year, tehy were doing fine. then the non-power production dropped off, and they did as well. lucas duda had more home runs this year than last year, in nearly the same number of plate appearances. but his overall production was shit. ike davis, again, lots of power. overall production, shit. the mets need more production. be it in the form of getting on base, or knocking hte ball over hte fence, tehy need more offensive production. this isn't fantasy, where you need home runs to balance out your stolen bases. if you can build a productive offense just by hitting a shit-ton of singles, walking a lot, and stealing a ton of bases, you do it. whatever works. hitting home runs helps you score runs. but so does getting on base and taking extra bases. the mets need to do either or both better next year. and michael bourn would help in that regard. jose reyes was a rather productive player without hitting too many home runs, ya know.

the mets don't need power, they need production. and michael bourn produces. if you only look at offensive production, he's at 3.4 oWAR (offensive WAR). it puts his at 13th in the NL. wright sits at 5th in the NL with 4.4 oWAR. (hey, look, a fair chunk of david's value is defense. but who needs defense, right?) interstingly, and rather maddeningly, sitting tied with michael bourn at 3.4 oWAR is his near-analogue, angel pagan. ugh, what a fucking stinker of a trade that was. daniel murphy sits at 48th in the NL with 1.8 oWAR. he's tied actually with scott hairston and ruben tejada. ike davis leads the mets with 22 homers. he has plenty of power. but his production, this year, is horrible, at 0.3 oWAR (offensive component of WAR).

[crossout:381z5ofp]roger cedeno...?[/crossout:381z5ofp]

Edgy DC wrote: I have to say, a timeline of Melky getting released by the Braves, to Melky working out with Alex Rodriguez and Robinson Cano, to Alex getting caught in a web of lies, to Melky getting similarly disgraced... It looks bad for Cano. not at all suspicious one bit. nope.

if you consider murphy's season last year to be more indicative of his ability than this season, then he's not all that far off, once you account for hte difference in offensive environments. his obp relative to the league average was 40 points higher, jeters was 50 points higher. his slg relative to teh league average is 50 points higher, jeters was 40. is the difference between their performances attributable to the league environment? maybe. but that's a real useful obp advantage that jeter has. but jeter also had a ton of speed over murphy. also health. and his speed helps take advantage of that edge in obp. defensively, well, shortstop is a tougher position, but in terms of devensive value, its actually a wash right now, murphy at 2b versus jeter at ss at about hte same age. unfortunately, this current season represents a heeyooj step back for murphy, calling into question where his true level of talent is. i'd like to see him develop into something even close, offensively, to what jeter has provided through his career. i'm not terribly confident we'll see it, but it would sure be nice.

Ceetar wrote: metsmarathon wrote: happily, minimm has yet to become a battery hog. there's very few of his toys that actually require them, particularly those that he actually plays with. regardless, if you happen to need an antenna hookup, head on down to your local radio shack. sure, some of the stores are total losers, but you're much more likely to walk out of there with what you need than you are if you go to a big box store or a generic electronics retailer. I haven't been to a Radio Shack in ages. I always find them confusing and slow. And they're not overly helpful. I had a hell of time trying to find the attachment I needed to hook up the Atari to the flat screen. Ended up ordering it online, just like i will the micro USB->HDMI cable I want. really. that's disappointing. i suppose radio shack has refocused some since i worked there. but like i said, some stores are losers, some are good. some exist only to hook you up with phones and other services. what kind of connection do you have on the tv? if you have a coax input, it's stupid-easy. you need a rca-coax converter. and if you have more than one thing that you want to runinto that coax input, you would want a coax input selector box. total cost, should be about $10. you could also have gotten one of those old-school game/tv input selecter boxes that i'm sure we all had. *full disclosure, i did have to look on the internet to find the correct output type on the atari. however, had you brought hte unit into the store, i would have known in an instant what it was and what to get. if you don't have a coax input, and wanted insteada to run it into something fancier, then you've got more work, and more expense, as you 've gotta convert those coax signals into composite signals - separate out the video from the audio. easiest way to do that is to run it through an old vcr. a quick scour of radio shack's website did not yield the correct type of box, but i wasn't really looking all that hard or all that long. it didn't really make sense to do, since you already have the solution in hand. i suppose the most important thing is, how freaking awesome is it to have a working atari running on a flat screen!? i wish i still had my broiken atari. i should give a long hard thought to finding one on the interwebs, and sucking up the awful cost, and then hoping that my old games were never tossed. i think we've diverged from the roiginal thread topic. but back in the day, about hte only thing i did with the tv other than watching mets games on channel 9, was play atari. specifically defender. i once racked up over a million freaking points in that game, and had so many lives, that i just turned the damned thing off instead of dying enough for the game to end of its own accord.

happily, minimm has yet to become a battery hog. there's very few of his toys that actually require them, particularly those that he actually plays with. regardless, if you happen to need an antenna hookup, head on down to your local radio shack. sure, some of the stores are total losers, but you're much more likely to walk out of there with what you need than you are if you go to a big box store or a generic electronics retailer.

a trip to your local radio shack would solve all your ills. hey, while you're there, do you need any AA batteries?

that assumes one still has either an indoor or an outdoor antenna

batmagadanleadoff wrote: metsmarathon wrote: Ceetar wrote: If you have a run of heads, the more likely you'll have a run of tails no. If you flip a coin and get 10 heads in a row, the most probable result for 100 flips is 55 heads. yup. So? That doesn't contradict Vic's post. It's still trending towards a reversion to the mean. After 10 flips you had a 100% outcome for heads. After 100 flips, it's down to 55%. Keep on projecting and you'll get closer and closer to 50% with every single projected marginal flip. well a possible point, other than striving for accurate information regarding probability and chance, is that the mets weren't exactly due for a string of ten tails after the first half of their season came out mostly heads. they were due for a sting of 50/50 splits. now, they're getting all tails. hell, they flip a coin into the air, and two coins land, both tails. so maybe they're due for this bad spell to regress to the mean as well. sure, they weren't as good as they played in the first half, but they sure as hell can't be as bad as they are now. can they...? well... i hope not.

Ceetar wrote: If you have a run of heads, the more likely you'll have a run of tails no. If you flip a coin and get 10 heads in a row, the most probable result for 100 flips is 55 heads. yup.

if i ever learn to play an instrument, or sing, i'm going to cobble together a band and use this thread title as the name.

he decided to go for the more subtle minotaur portrait. you can't tell by looking at the bull's head, but that's his naked body above the living room sofa.

oh yeah, there was a mets game on tonight. let me see how they did. oh.... i guess there was no game tonight afterall. [turns off internet]

Ceetar wrote: metsmarathon wrote: i think it's quite clear that if i were not a mets fan, and if i were a fan of osome other team somewhere outside the nl east, i would be rooting hard for hte nats. heck, i still am. i wish them well. not well enough to beat hte mets and finish ahead of them consistently, but well enough to give their own fans hope, and to provide a worth y foil for my own team. i'm sick of philly and atlanta. and miami? fuck those charlatans. Nah, the media hype Strasburg and Harper get (although thankfully Trout tempers some of that) makes them never underdogs, not that I particularly want to root for an underdog, but the flapping over those two is enough to make me dislike the team. don't be a hater. also, don't let hte media control you. and not liking somehting because the media likes it is not at all the same thing as not letting hte media control you.