seawolf17

I don't see the point of this, with Clifford needing the ABs in Syracuse and Young "playing the lion's share" at first base in the bigs. But hey, sure. He was a prospect once.

That's not the first time I've thought that, actually. Hi, Gare!

Yeah, but in Mets Manager Torre's defense, he took over a terrible team built around one guy who could mash and then a bunch of guys around him who couldn't hit their way out of a paper bag, as opposed to this team. (Oh, wait.)

Huh. Can he still play some first base too?

Green, at least, has been in the org for a while and theoretically knows these kids as well as anyone. Hopefully that leads to something.

(Ooh, Beltran on the manager list. I mean, I guess, technically, yeah.)

I'd read somewhere (here? reddit?) that he wasn't ready to play back to back games yet.

I understand, and I know he has played some second base in the minors. And it's not like we're undefeated with him as a center fielder. But it's also not like he's blocking Rickey Henderson out there, either. Let him cook, Mendy.

Yeah, let's yeet another guy out of position for no reason, especially one of the three guys in our lineup who doesn't actively suck right now. What's the worst that could happen?

Left hip flexor strain, apparently. I mean, that's gonna happen when you let the second oldest middle infielder in MLB play 99.9% of your innings.

He's going to come out of the bullpen and throw a scoreless inning tonight, isn't he? Oy.

I think you *have* to trade or release anything that's not nailed down. Senga, Manaea, Baty, Vientos, Semien, Bichette, Young, all the decent bullpen arms except Myers. I know Clifford is hitting .180 or whatever in AAA with 150 Ks in 300 AB. Dude can mash. Call him up. I know Tong has been meh at best. Call him up. Where does Ronny Mauricio play? I don't know, but it shouldn't be in Syracuse. Call him up. Jack Wenninger is more or less ready. Call him up. Did you know we have a reliever named Guillo Zuñiga in AAA? Great name. Call him up. Jefry Yan is a 29-year-old LHP who has faced 19 batters in AAA and struck out *13* of them. Call him up.

Every time you think they've hit the bottom, they somehow get worse.

This team is the 1927 Yankees of the "baserunner-baserunner-GIDP-strikeout" sequence.

As Casey used to say, "You can't ground into double plays if you don't have someone on base first."

I do like how the Mets were so mad at my post about how worthless they are in the ninth inning by being productive, though. HEY METS YOU SUCK IN THE FIRST INNING TOO

Told you they'd lose by 114.

The Mets have four innings where their OPS is over .700, or as we call it, the Joe Torre Line. Their offense without Soto: Inning BA OBP SLG OPS 1st .228 .276 .409 .685 2nd .234 .274 .373 .647 3rd .213 .287 .325 .612 4th .237 .300 .361 .661 5th .256 .310 .390 .700 6th .212 .294 .384 .678 7th .224 .303 .352 .655 8th .217 .279 .295 .574 9th .156 .205 .209 .414 Overall, that's a .630 OPS, which means without him, they're collectively Jeff McKnight.

Then yeah, I'll take the Cubs laying 114 runs.

ChatGPT is effing with me now. If someone ran every team-season since 1901, I'd be surprised if .388 wasn't in the bottom handful of inning splits ever recorded for a team with 200+ plate appearances. It may not be the absolute worst, but it's in the neighborhood where you're competing with some truly infamous clubs. This is actually a fun Stathead project. If you have access (or if you want me to help build the query), we could answer questions like: Lowest team OPS in the 9th inning since 1901. Lowest team OPS in any single inning (1st through 9th). Lowest team OPS in a split with at least 200 PA. I'm genuinely curious whether your ".388 without that one inning" would end up as the all-time low. It has a real chance.

Crikey. Removing that one inning brings their splits down to .149 / .197 / .191 in the 9th inning for an OPS of .388. (edit - my math was wrong)

They already called tonight too?!?

I was going to put this in the Devin thread, but it makes more sense here. It can't be good when you're down 4-0 before you even turn over the lineup every night. It's demoralizing at minimum, and it leads to things like Soto, ordinarily a smart baserunner, getting thrown out by 30 feet trying to stretch a single. It's hard to get excited when you're getting your asses handed to you every night. This is jarring. Look at the eighth and ninth innings! SOPS+ is "split relative to league split OPS." Split BA OBP SLG OPS sOPS+ 1st inning .235 .281 .435 .716 88 2nd inning .233 .275 .370 .645 88 3rd inning .225 .302 .364 .667 87 4th inning .236 .310 .363 .673 87 5th inning .266 .325 .394 .719 93 6th inning .229 .314 .421 .736 105 7th inning .233 .308 .394 .702 99 8th inning .223 .288 .312 .601 68 9th inning .158 .209 .213 .421 22

You know? This kind of makes sense. I say go for it. I mean, LITERALLY NOTHING ELSE HAS WORKED. You might as well. Then we can sign a new closer.