Vic Sage

]# Randolph =}#%^! < pretty nearly any other #@*($& potential replacement Joelmon! Welcome back!

what he said. ditto.

who, exactly, could they trade for prospects? Your not trading young vets in their prime like Wright and Reyes, or Maine. Not Santana. Church? you just traded a prospect to get him, and he's produced, when healthy. Your not getting any prospects for Schneider, Delgado, Alou or Castillo. Beltran? He's still one of our most productive players, even if he's not having an MVP year. What's the point of having Santana if you don't have support like Beltran? The bench? please. The rest of the rotation? Pelfrey IS a prospect. Ollie and Pedro are FAs. Maybe we can get something for them as rentals, but probably nothing worth losing their upside for the balance of the season. The bullpen? Have you seen it lately? Maybe somebody wants Wags' $10M contract, but its not like we have somebody to step in any time soon. I don't see any moves. There'll be some off-season moves, certainly, but more like tweaking. They are not going to tear down the middle of the team after they just traded for and signed Santana. they're not going to move into their new stadium with a team of prospects and suspects.

come by and say "hi".

i wonder how out of place Jacob Goldberg must have felt, pitching in Charleston. sounds like an Alfred Uhry play to me.

i just voted for Beltran. what do i win?

show me the plan!

3 blown save in a row, in under a week. wow. When Billy is good, he's very very good, but when he is bad... he is horrid.

I looked up Pascucci's numbers, and it showed a player that made progress at every level until 2004, when, at age 25, Montreal gave him a cup of coffee. He didn't do mucn for the `Spos, and was then released after the season, and disappeared for 2 years (05-06), before popping up again in the Marlins system at AAA Albequerque with another solid year. Then he started this year slowly for the Phillies' AAA Int'l league time before hooking on with the Zephyrs, where he has been tearing it up. I wonder where he was in 2005-06, when he was in his prime? Was he hurt? Selling insurance? what? Anyway, as a RH-ed corner OFer/1bman, he seems a more likely help for this team than Abraham freakin' Nunez.

Alec Baldwin - he has made an awful lot of awful movies, with 45 features in 20 years (some just voice overs), but not even including all of his TV stuff, too. Alec likes the paycheck. Brooklyn Rules (2007) .... Caesar Manganaro Suburban Girl (2007) .... Archie Knox The Good Shepherd (2006) .... Sam Murach Running with Scissors (2006) .... Norman Burroughs The Departed (2006) .... Ellerby Mini's First Time (2006) .... Martin Fun with Dick and Jane (2005) .... Jack McCallister Elizabethtown (2005) .... Phil DeVoss The Aviator (2004) .... Juan Trippe The Last Shot (2004) .... Joe Devine The Devil and Daniel Webster (2004) .... Jabez Stone Along Came Polly (2004) .... Stan Indursky The Cat in the Hat (2003) .... Quinn The Cooler (2003) .... Shelly Kaplow The Royal Tenenbaums (2001) (voice) .... Narrator Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (2001) (voice) .... Capt. Gray Edwards Cats & Dogs (2001) (voice) .... Butch Pearl Harbor (2001) .... Lt. Col. James Doolittle State and Main (2000) .... Bob Barrenger Thomas and the Magic Railroad (2000) .... Mr. Conductor Outside Providence (1999) .... Old Man Dunphy Scout's Honor (1999) .... Todd Fitter The Confession (1999) .... Roy Bleakie Mercury Rising (1998) .... Nicholas Kudrow Thick as Thieves (1998) .... Mackin, 'The Thief' The Edge (1997) .... Robert Green Ghosts of Mississippi (1996) .... Bobby DeLaughter Heaven's Prisoners (1996) .... Dave Robicheaux The Juror (1996) .... Teacher The Shadow (1994) .... Lamont Cranston / The Shadow The Getaway (1994) .... Carter 'Doc' McCoy Malice (1993) .... Dr. Jed Hill Glengarry Glen Ross (1992) .... Blake Prelude to a Kiss (1992) .... Peter Hoskins The Marrying Man (1991) .... Charley Pearl Alice (1990) .... Ed Miami Blues (1990) .... Frederick J. Frenger Jr. The Hunt for Red October (1990) .... Jack Ryan Great Balls of Fire! (1989) .... Jimmy Swaggart Talk Radio (1988) .... Dan Working Girl (1988) .... Mick Dugan Married to the Mob (1988) .... 'Cucumber' Frank de Marco Beetle Juice (1988) .... Adam She's Having a Baby (1988) .... Davis McDonald Forever Lulu (1987) .... Buck

l love the matter-of-factness with which the "cooler' notion is accepted. It's like a kind of literary magical realism, a universe where such things happen and are acceptable. It works best as character study than as pure narrative. And Macy and Baldwin make compellinng, complex characters worth studying.

AG/DC wrote: You referred, specifically, to Pedro, Castro and Alou. Not to Church and Schneider, as Vic switched the subject to. It's a little late in the game for Vic or most of us to claim to have supported that trade under any banner. I don't think there's any real disagreement here. now wait a second. I didn't bring up TiTTS. YOU did. I didn't switch the subject, which was Lunchbucket's objections (as i understand it) to filling the roster with broken down players. I was commenting on the inappropriateness of YOU switching the subject, which you did by obliquely referring to the objects of Johnny's scorn (you just specified Pedro, Castro and Alou) as TiTTS-type players. And they are not. You were taking an opportunity to slam TiTTS, in a situation that was not relevant to the discussion. So I attempted to point that out. But I'M the one accused of changing the subject? I was just correcting a misimpression that you put out there. None of the players Johnny was talking about were TiTTS-type players, and i gave current examples of TiTTS type acquisitions so as to distinguish them. While I was certainly not happy about the Church/Milledge deal,and have said so publicly and repeatedly, it was CLEARLY an example of a TiTTS-type move, and so far it seems to be working out. Between that and the Santana deal, it seems hard to make the case that a TiTTS philosophy is to blame for our current situation.

to which sour TiTT fruits are you referring -- the trade of young talent for Santana? the trade of young talent for Church & Schneider? I don't think either of those is the problem so far. The Delgado trade? Even this least successful TiTTsian deal helped the Mets. Unless your still holding out hope for Petit (since traded to Az) and Grant Psalmas (?), Delgado (even as a diminished player) has been more productive than Mike Jacobs (albeit at a much higher $$ cost) during the first 2 years after the deal. This third year, Jacobs has been hurt, but is finally outproducing Delgado, as Carlos fades into the sunset. But the trade did what it was originally supposed to do... push us into the post-season in 06. If by TiTTS fruit you referring to the signing of old, broken down ballplayers in general, that's not really representative of the TiTTS philosophy... but you knew that already.

i'm with Mr. Lunchbucket. I'm not even sure what the hell he's talkin about... but i'm with bucketman.

can he play 1b? or 2b? or LF?

I don't know anything about any of these guys, but, in looking at the various prospect rankings and mock drafts available on the internet, it looks like we "reached" on all our top picks, taking them well ahead of their projected rankings. Holt wasn't even listed on many prospect lists. That being said, picking prospects is more art than science, and more luck than art. So picking these guys well above their rankings may not mean anything, of course, but it doesn't fill me with excitement either. It's especially annoying to see the Yanks get Gerrit Cole, who fell to them way lower than his projections would've indicated, and seems to be viewed as a "bargain" at #28. But his agent is Boras, so we'll see what kind of "bargain" he ends up being. And i've got to admit a certain thrill at being able to root for a catcher named Dock Doyle. Sounds like a superhero's sidekick.

It appears that, so far, we've missed out on a Buster, a Shooter and a Casey. Heck, i'd take any of those guys over an Ike or a Reese, much less a Brad... a BRAD, for chrissakes!

as a ballplayer or a general. as a president, not so much.

Ike and Reese. Good baseball names. I LIKE IT!

We're pretty much covered at SS and 3B for the forseeable future. How about moving him to 2b? Jeff Kent didn't have any footspeed either.

its not necessarily about whether "money is involved". In our society, almost all newsgathering is done by for-profit corporations, but profit does not exclude the press from using their first amendment rights and they can report and make comment on public events (including use of footage, and other 3rd party material), based on the first amendment and the "newsworthy" exception in the fair use doctrine of copyright. So, too, can websites report and make comment, on blogs and elsewhere. But fantasy gaming's primary purpose is not "newsgathering" and so is not protected under that exception. They are a for-profit enterprise offering a game service, using the property of others as their primary material... property they don't pay for. As i said, its not the player stats or the outcomes of games that MLB can reasonably argue that they own (though they have unreasonably argued that they do). It's not a copyright or property issue at all, really. Its the individual players who have "rights of publicity" (as established under state law), and MLB which acts as their collective agent for brokering those rights, under the collective bargaining agreement (as far as I understand).

]The biggest fantasy in this case was Major League Baseball�s claim that its fans should pay to talk about the game. wow. there's some fair and balanced reporting. I don't think MLB is claiming fans should pay to talk about the game. I do think they are claiming that unlicensed 3rd parties are using the names of MLB players to make a buck, and therefore MLB (to the extent they are authorized to license such uses of MLB player names, images, etc) wants their cut. of course facts are not copyrightable. Just like phone books are collections of data and are not copyrightable, so too with baseball statistics. But I do think there is a different issue of using athletes' names in conjunction with those stats, to the extent they are celebrities with "rights of publicity" arising from various state laws, who have a financial interest in their names, likenesses and personas, especially when they are used by an unlicensed 3rd party for commercial purposes. Fantasy baseball websites are not news reporting; there is no fair use, first amendment or public policy exemption for these companies to make a buck off the names of ballplayers (either through subscriptions or ads) without permission.

that was his big power year. Mostly, though he was a 15-20 hr guy. So, his power wasn't really eye popping. But the fact that he had a career .400 OB% was probably not given its proper respect amongst pre-Moneyball era scouts. line drives and BBs can make you a "professional hitter", but HRs and SBs get you to the show.

The gray monolithic monument-type design of the new Yankee Stadium recalls the Nuremburg rallies. A sort of art deco-fascist motif. Its the sort of place you could imagine hosting a great big book burning. Whatever one may think of the faux nostalgia of the new CitiField, at least it doesn't make one feel like goose stepping.

]But assesments are educated guesses at what a guy will be at the end of it all, if given half a chance, so it is used that way. The idea that Pascucci and Petagine and Brazell get held out on those assessments and their suggestion that they won't hit at the MLB level, and the Mets are instead promoting a guy they know won't hit there... well that feeds frustration, and insurrection against old-school assessments. I agree with you. By "after-the-fact assessment", i mean an assessment made at the end of a career, in retrospect. Not an assessment you make going forward. But you're right; they do make those judgements, and it can be quite damaging. Petegine is perfect example of a AAAA player. Here's a guy who absolutely tore up the minors, with a career OPS close to 1.000 in over 2,500 ABs. But he was a guy without obvious talents... drafted by Houston as a free agent; then, after a cup of coffee with the `Stros, he's traded to SD, where he got a decent shot at age 24. He didn't do much, and got traded to the Mets. Over 2 seasons, he wasn't given that much of a shot, but he didn't do anyting with the opportunities he did get. Then off to the Reds, where he got another look with only mediocre results. At age 27, he went off to Japan and played well for a number of years. He came back in 2005, for a brief appearance with Boston, and then with Seattle in 06. And that was it. I think you can look at that career and say "AAAA" player. He was not a top draft pick with prodigious talents... no speed, no glove, no arm. He was a LHed 1b with limited power who hit line drives and took walks. Maybe, if the Mets in `96-`97 had given him more of a chance, he might have developed into a productive regular, but they went with the more obvious talent of Huskey at 1b in 96, with Brogna still there, then they got Olerud in 97. As a backup, Matt Franco, a similar player, outhit Petegine as the LHed 1b backup bat off the bench that year, and, as result, carved a little niche for himself. So, maybe Roberto got squeezed for his subtler skills, but he never made the most of his limited opportunities and so was a co-conspirator in his career's limitations. But a guy like Brazell, a 5th round pick with prodigious power, who has had 38 major league ABs since 2004, who is still only 27 and coming off a 2007 season where he pounded the PCL, is not somebody who should be branded "AAAA" at this point. If, 10 years from now, Brazell has accumulated at least a season's worth of ABs and didn't do much with them, then that's an assessment you could fairly make, looking back at his career.