metsmarathon

some of these races are easy to pick a rooting interest. in the AL east, the o's are the obvious choice, unless hte sole goal is unseating and/or defeating hte mfy's in the playoffs, in which case the rays are a decent choice. it's not like there's anything necessarily unlikeable about them, only that the o's are so much more underdoggey that they beg the rooting. in the al west, is there a more underdoggy team than the a's? the a's, for whom it was questioned why they should even be allowed an all star representative? the a's whose two most expensive players are yoenis cespedis and coco freaking crisp? the a's who need to move but can't because of a shitty stadium and a shitty imaginary line? the a's whose top pitcher is bartolo freaking colon? the a's who, well, are the lowly a's. i suppose you could root for texas to finally get over the hump, or for young mike trout and his angels, forlorn and forgotten with prince albert's rough start. but really, how can you not root for the a's? in the nl central, again, the choice is obvious. it's the pirates. bonus points to the saint louis beltrans, and the dogged little cincinnati reds, plugging along just fine without masher joey votto. but it's the pirates. they've been such sad sacks for so damned long that you almost have to root for them, irrespective of past transgressions. like building up a young bobby bonilla into the kind of free agent a hungry dumb team would leap for. in the nl west and the al central, teh choices are less clear. detroit is your favorite if you want to knock off the yankees, i think, but the white sox have ventura, a fact i keep on forgetting as i'm not paying nearly enough attention to baseball lately. also, do you really want to root for an infield whose corners comprise prince fielder and miguel cabrera? you're just going to feel awful when it all goes pear shaped, to match their pear shapes. in the nl west, the dodgers are shaping up to be a left coast yankees, and is that the kind of hting you can support? i say no. sorry vin scully. though the success of hanley ramirez would reflect poorly on the miami charlatans. so thre's that. and the giants have melky cabrera as tehir top offensive threat. there's something both honorable about that, and disgraceful. i think its the yankees/braves cooties. sorry melky. in my mind, you shall always suck. and your current success feels only a fantasm. i just don't believe it's real. and so that leaves arizona, a team wfor whom i have such a lack of resonance, that i just checked tehir bb-ref page and still don't know anything abou tthem. except they gave up 3 homers to ike, and let harvey slap them silly. so for thata, i root for thee. 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.

well fine then. i actually think a decent way for it to work would be to open it up to minor leaguers, for whom stricter drug policies could be emplaced and without which the major league teams could carry on for two weeks at a time. carry over hte same 40-man protections as i mentioned earlier, and also maybe throw in the limitation on the number of players allowed off of any given team, to give hte major league clubs some level of protection, and i think you might have the start of something. it would more closely mirror the under-23 thing soccer is doing, and which basketball may be moving towards as well.

hit a home run against the mets before pitching for the mets...?

so here's my crazy crazy way of inserting baseball into the olympics, and making it interesting for everyone. one: baseball forgoes the all star game for the year of the olympics. you can still pick and choose your honorary all stars, but there's no game. two: players are "drafted" by the various nations, to fill out a full roster, plus a significant level of alternates; no more than X (maybe 3, maybe 5) number of players may be taken from a given major league team, worldwide (i assume it will be somewhat unlikely for the best player from X different nations to be all on the same team). this plays into three & four. three: the game shuts down for a week. one week, not two. (i assume the olympic baseball tournaments will last the full two weeks of the olympics.) four: the first week of the olympics is the round-robin phase of the tournament. four(a): players on teams who are eliminated from teh tournament are free to return to their major league teams after elimination. four(: mlb teams whose players continue to play in the olympics may replace those players with any player from any level of their organization. those players may be added to the 40-man roster if needed, and if sent down upon the return of the olympian, may be removed from teh 40-man roster without consequence, and the team will not have used up an option year to do so. four©: unless it wasn't obvious, major league baseball starts up after the first week. all players return to their teams by the end of the second week. five: surely, there will be protections against the overuse of pitchers. i expect the slate of games will be less demanding than the regular season schedule, so while hte top players will be in heated compettion, they will likely be getting more days off than they would otherwise, and might return better rested. six: if major league teams are willing to sacrifice their best sluggers for the spectacle that is the home run contest, then surely playing actual baseball games should be not quite so anathema. seven: figure out a way for the USOC to throw a chunk of money at MLB to make it happen. make it part of a campaign to legitimize hte WBC. something. whatever. am i crazy? yes. will anyone go for it? no, probably not. i expect to be roundly derided on these here pages. but i think it would wor, and be interesting. and convoluted and quirky enough to generate self-sustaining interest.

all were dodgers once. well, four of them, right? or am i thinking of the wrong mike marshall

is there a way to make it work? is it worth trying? does anybody else care that it's not in there? and that if it was in there we wouldn't see hte best players playing? i have my own thoughts, but i'll open it up for discussion first. i will however state my position: i would love to see baseball in the olympics, and i would love to see major leaguers playing in it. i think it could be done, and all it would take is some imagination and maybe some willingness to take a risk to expand its worldwide appeal and marketability (to whatever extent such an expansion would benefit major league baseball of course). your thoughts?

i've got no problem with that. i don't it had anything to do with wainwright wanting to protect the public image of carlo sbeltran, but him being a good dude to the new guy on his team. he'd be a fucking asshole if, in spring training, all he threw to beltran were massive curves to the inside corner, yelling after each pitch, "remember that one, fuckface? how bout again? bam! another curve! keep watching! hey look, it's yadier molina - bam, another curve! wait, let me take off my world series ring... never mind. bam! another curve! welcome to the cardinals! bam! another curve! had enough? bam! another one!"

of course, it's stupid that you have to stay foul there when running to the base. if you stay within the lane the whole time, you never touch first.

newey looks llike hte leader in the clubhouse, provided he gets back on track after some more AAA. i don't think torres will necessarily be back, and valdespin is only a centerfielder in the absence of a centerfielder.

sugar.

i don't think alderson is talking to us, the fan, when he says he wants to change and build and maintain a perception. he's talking about the perception among his own players and across the league. well, he also needs to change the mindset of the fans, so that they too view the mets as a winning franchise heading in the right direction. and selling off any piece that someone will pay you for runs strongly counter to that motive.

Davis 5.5 RRamirez 1.3 Acosta 1.3 Edgin 0.8 Tejada 0.7 Torres 0.4

Davis 3.7 Wright 2.4 Acosta 1.3 Torres 1.1 Murphy 0.9 Tejada 0.6

Harvey 3.6 Edgin 1.8 Parnell 1.4 Hairston 1.3 Byrdak 1.1 Torres 0.8 no fair. you said wednesday.

Swan Swan H wrote: A rising shot..... from the rising sun..... Sayonara! close enough for government work...

i see a 1.77% chance of no losing a game across a 7-team deep organization. assuming edgy's probabilities, i have: Pgame_on = 0.90 Pno_rain = 0.95 therefore Pgame = 0.90 * 0.95 = 0.155 and Pno_game = 1 - Pgame = 0.145 with a Pdouble_header = 0.05, Ptwo_games = Pgame * Pdouble_header = 0.04275 and Pone_game = Pgame * (1 - Pdouble_header) = 0.81225 assuming agian a 50% shot at winning a game, and a 25% shot at sweeping a doubleheader, we have the following: Pno_loss_one_game = Pone_game * 0.5 = 0.406125 and Pno_loss_two_games = Ptwo_games * 0.25 = 0.010688 our total Pavoid_loss then = Pno_game + Pno_loss_one_game + Pno_loss_two_games = 0.145 + 0.406125 + 0.010688 = 0.561813 so each team has a 56% chance of not lsing on any given night. and with 7 teams, you have (Pavoid_loss)^7 = 0.017666 yay math. back to work.

the red roof in at aberdeen was a supreme shithole when last i was there, but that was half a dozen years ago. also, it was a red roof inn. what was i to expect?

nice shot

wheeeeeeeeeeeeee

I can see from the lower and lower vote counts that, understandably, the Mets miserable performance since the All-Star break has most of us weary of Schaefer voting, but I'm going to continue this through the end of the season anyway. The three games played against the Dodgers over the weekend will close on Wednesday morning. Schaefer POTG 7/20/12 - Dodgers 7, Mets 6 Schaefer POTG, 7/21/2012: Dodgers 8 Mets 5 Schaefer POTG 7/22/12 - Dodgers 8, Mets 3 (12 Innings) sorry, i try to vote win or lose, but i got stupid busy this month. i'm hoping it winds down a touch. everybody else out there, vote you bitches!

sweet jeebus! he's got a 0.00 era and an 18.00 k/9ip, what the hell are we waiting for? bring him up now! i don't care if it's only two innings, those are two better innings than anybody else has thrown in our pen!

Edgy DC wrote: Way to ruin a perfectly good legacy, Ichiro. my thoughts exactly. that and, "damn, i used to like ichiro"

it looks to me like it's someone trying to replicate tom seaver, only they didn't really know what they were replicating, so they botched it. the S is in so many pieces. not that ol' terriffic's S is particularly clear, but this one is a disaster.

i wish you would stop going to games there.

dear mets, we need a new safe word. thanks.