Vic Sage

I agree, better luck would probably have us closer to .500, but i don't think we'd be a good, winning team if our luck was better. All these numbers really suggests to me is that we have really good pitching that is keeping us close in most games, but that our impotent offense is not doing enough for us to actually win. I don't see why a change of luck (i.e., random occurrences working in our favor a bit more frequently) would have a big impact on that fact (some, of course, but not a lot). Power is power, and we have the least in all of baseball, so even when we get our occasional hits, we need to string together too many to score runs. Which is why we don't score enough of them to win. I don't really see that changing much with our current lineup. And its not like its just been bad luck causing us to suffer from... well, bad luck. When runs are scarce (i.e., you've got good pitching and punchless hitting), then small mistakes and the random bounce of the ball have a much bigger impact. (e.g., if you're scoring bunches of runs, then bad luck that results in gives up a few more runs or scoring a few less will have lesser impact; each run is worth less when they are more plentiful). We constructed a team with good pitching and shitty hitting; the lineup is a consequence of our team's actions and intent. And so this is what happens. We are more vulnerable to random chance.

You have to wonder what the editorial staff was smoking to OK this title.

i loved Danny Kaye movies and didn't even care for his version of this, so a Stiller version has no appeal for me. Danny Kaye movies... hmm.... I'll get on that. on edit: And here's the Kaye filmography: viewtopic.php?f=11&t=21384

John Sickels sez: 10) Mets: Michael Conforto, OF, Oregon State University: Regarded as the top hitter in college baseball this year by many experts... he�s ranked as one of the safest, most advanced hitters in the draft. Conforto ranks as the best present hitter in the 2014 draft Thank you, Sandy.

i hate Stiller and this looked awful.

I hope they'd go for college position players. Zimmer sounds alot like Nimmo, so i'd prefer a power bat like Conforto or a true leadoff SS like Turner, over pitchers like Newcombe or HS prospects like Wall. That being said, TTBPA*... always. *take the best player available

funny how they sell THE TRAIN as an action film in that trailer; i guess it is, but i never thought of it like that. And they never say (or even imply) what's on "the train", unlike the promos for MONUMENTS MEN, which directly took on the philosophical questions related to the value of art and its cost in human lives.

You can't just hand him the every day job based on minor league projections. It is not a "minor league projection"; it is actual minor league PRODUCTION... production far in excess of anything Tejada ever did down there. And if the only thing between finding out if Flores' .500 slg in 800 PAs in AAA is translatable to the majors is TEJADA's current .286 slg %, then yeah, you do give him the job (like Terry was about to do before Flores went on the DL and then Tejada had a good week), and then see what happens. Tejada's upside is nowhere near that of Flores and his awful production for the last 2 years shouldn't be sufficient to take playing time away from Flores, at least until we've given him a few months of regular ABs to see where he is. Maybe he needs to go down to AAA with d'Arnaud for a while, but i'd like to see him get another 100-150 ABs before making that determination. You are free to keep sucking Tejada's cock of course... NTTAWWT, but your love is distinctly unrequited.

I'd like to see someone actually drive the ball at short. Flores has 2 XBH. He had quite a game two days ago. But that's it. Tejada is outslugging him in the last 7, last 14, and last 28 day samples. Flores could possibly be the better hitter going forward, but he needs to hit more than he has to actually deserve to play every day. you just won't give up will you? In what universe is Tejada even POTENTIALLY as good a power hitter as Flores? You lament the use of small sample sizes, and then talk about the last 7,14, and 28 days. Tejada has a career slg in the minors (over 2200 PAs) of .355, and in the majors (1500 PAs) of .316 (including his .286! so far this season). Flores has, over last 3 years in AA-AAA (over 800 PAs), around a .500 slg. but you want to talk about their last 7, 14, and 28 days? For a team so desperately in need of power, the choice is clear.

It's symptomatic of this team's lack of power (they are dead last in all of baseball in SLG%). It takes them too many hits to score too few runs. If they hit with even middling power, they could have still hit poorly with RISP and score and win alot more than they are. Granderson's slg%=.350 (130 pts off his career .480); Wright is at 400% (100 pts below his career .500); and Chris Young is about 90 pts off (.338/.428 career). Murphy and Tejada are poor but about what you'd expect; Duda is OK, and near expectations, too. d'Arnaud is terrible and Lagares is OK, but both are too young to know what to expect from them going forward. Our best slugger this year is probably deGrom. And this isn't necessarily a CitiField issue, since the team's home/road splits aren't significant in terms of slg% (333home/365road - which both sucks). We brought in 2 FAs to add power and they haven't. Add that to Wright's mystifying power loss and d'Arnaud's continued inability to hit at all, plus our anticipated lack of slg from 2b and SS, and the decent (but not great) SLG production from Duda and Lagares has been wholly insufficient to carry this team's offense. We need to send d'Arnaud down to work on his game; he continues to be as overmatched against major-league pitching as he was last year. Teagarden is hitting with pop; he can share time with Recker for a while and we're bound to get more production from those 2. And Flores has shown he can catch and throw the ball. He will undoubtedly give us more power than Tejada, who is a black hole of slg. Flores should be playing every day. And i've seen enough of CY, actually i've seen entirely too much. We've got no long-term investment in Young, so lets see more of Campbell, or Andrew Brown who is tearing it up in Vegas. Then we just have to hope that Granderson and Wright start hitting for power. Otherwise, we'll keep leaving 12 men in scoring position every game, and wondering why we can't get a "clutch hit".

yeah, right? Youth isn't a virtue of a ballclub in and of itself. Its a byproduct of a roster construction that seeks to buy out the best parts of a player's career before they become too costly and start to decline (usually at about the same time). But the only thing we know about a young player is that, given time and luck, he has the chance to one day be older.

batmagadanleadoff wrote: "Hey Ruben! Be less like Ruben and more like Ted Williams ferchrissakes. How many times Igottatellyou?" I mean, half the hitters in the Major Leagues suck at hitting. That's just the way it is. And when you're carrying an $80M payroll, you're probably gonna have more crappy hitters than the other teams. The idea that the Mets are gonna suddenly transform mediocre 24 olds into good hitters is just nutso. And desperate. They're fucking broke so they've deluded themselves into believing that they're gonna mold dumpster bin bargains into all-stars. Get 'em while they're young. I think "get em while they're young" is the entire point of the team's approach. Having a system-wide philosophy is a good thing, not a bad thing. It's one of those things that Sandy has brought to this franchise that i so appreciate, that there is somebody in charge who has a clue about what wins ballgames, and then finding (and teaching) players who can do that. No, i don't think they'll change Murphy or Tejada (at least not significantly), but a system takes time to have an impact. We'll say what the current A and AA ball players do over time. In the meantime, the idea of waiting for your pitch and then hitting the crap out of it is pretty much what my little league manager told me, too, so i don't know why it's suddenly controversial. And i'm particularly suspicious of those in the media who fawned over Jeter's Yankees dynasty teams that were so lauded for this exact approach.

First of all, stating "59 PAs is not evidence" is just factually incorrect. Of course it's evidence; it just may not be sufficiently reliable evidence (because of its sample size) to project his production going forward. But setting up a "straw man" argument claiming i'm judging Abreu on 59 PAs is just bullshit. Even discounting the 12 years when he averaged over a .400 OB%, Abreu has had over 1300 ABs over his last 3 major league seasons, consistently hitting .250-.255/80-90 BB, .350-.355 OB%. That's enough of a sample size to see that, as of today, he's a viable option in the lineup. Do i think he's likely to maintain his current .390 OB% pace? No. But another season of .250/80 BB/.350 OB% seems totally possible, which, under our current roster and injury circumstances, makes him a viable option to discuss as a leadoff guy until the troops return. As for your pet agenda, Tejada, talk about small sample sizes. As of May 20, 7 games ago, he was hitting .183/.299 OB. Over the last 7 games he's gone 10/24, 5bb, to bring his numbers all the way up to .226/.334 OB over the season to date (133 ABs). And those 24 ABs are the sample size you want to use to say he should lead off? But, when you add this season to last year's .202/.259 OB% over 200+ ABs and the last 2 months of the year before (2012), when he hit .260 with just over a .305-.310 OB% over 200+ ABs, then I think you have a pretty significant sample size of total awfulness. That being said, and as i mentioned above, i wouldn't be averse to playing the hot hand and letting Tejada lead off until he tanks again. If he maintains it, then great. But if not, we shouldn't be married to him because he's 24 and he had a decent (not great) season a few years ago. And i think this is alot more likely than Terry batting Abreu/Campbell leadoff for a few weeks. I just don't know that it's more likely to be more productive. on edit: None of those AAA OFers have showed even at that level that they are ready to hit major league pitching.

Ceetar wrote: Well, the only non-pitchers with OBP higher than Tejada are Abreu (likely baBIP/luck driven and small sample size)... Abreu has nearly a .400 CAREER OB%. Even as he's faded over the last few years, he's never been at less than .350. So are you really going to say that his current success in that category is a statistical anomaly? Yes, he may not end up at his current .390 by the end of the season, but even a .350 OB% would make him about the same as Murphy, and better than either Lagares or Tejada, both this year and over their careers to date. So, until Lagares and/or EY comes back, I'd platoon Abreu with Campbell and let either one lead off (Campbell has a .380 lifetime OB% in the minors). Or you could go with the hot hand in Tejada, and let him hit there until he cools off. Perhaps one or both of the other guys will be back by then. But over the long term, I don't trust Tejada as far as i can throw him, and Murphy is solid in the 2 slot, so you'd just be creating a hole there if you moved him up. Ditto with Duda, whose power is desperately needed in the middle of the order. And i don't see anybody else on the roster who is suitable in the short or long term. Looking at AAA, Puello has some skills and a lot of upside, but he'd need to improve greatly his BB/K ratio to make that work, as would both denDekker and Nieuenheis (neither of whom have Puello's speed or bat), and Danny Muno seems like a utility IFer to me. The other guys down there with good minor-league OB% numbers (Brown, Seratelli, Lutz, Satin, Dykstra, Allen) are either career minor-leaguers or project out as (lower) middle-of-the-order guys who i don't think would be usable in the leadoff slot at the major league level. Maybe Seratelli, if he could hit up here like he does down there. And if Terry has given Tejada back his job, then we may as well send Flores down so he can play everyday and give Seratelli another shot at the backup MI slot. With regard to the lower minors, as was rightly said, projecting out from AA or lower levels is just too speculative to consider.

eh. see Frankenheimer's THE TRAIN with Burt Lancaster for a MUCH more compelling version of a similar story.

seawolf17 wrote: They made McReynolds retro jerseys? I NEED ONE. I hear they make good kindling for a BBQ. And useful if you run out of toilet paper.

RealityChuck wrote: [*]Shaun of the Dead -- A horror film that's actually fun to watch. I considered adding SHAUN to my list, but i've arbitrarily classified it as comedy/horror rather than SF. Comparing it to the 2 other Zombie movies on my list, SHAUN never says why the dead are rising, using instead the Romero zombie approach (which is a horror approach) that "it may have been this or that, but it doesn't matter... run!" But both 28 DAYS LATER and ZOMBIELAND give specific scientific explanations for the spread of a zombifying virus and are also much more about the post-apocalyptic world created by the cataclysm (a common theme of SF) than it is about surviving the cataclysm itself (NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD). Like i said, its an arbitrary distinction, but lists are all about drawing lines and making distinctions; that process is always going to be somewhat subjective and, therefore, seem arbitrary.

I really liked Cloverfield, and District 9 was cool. I thought Wall-E was awful. This is literally the first time I have ever seen or heard that sentiment expressed. Vic: you found LOOPER convoluted... but you ranked INCEPTION? If anything, I'd say the first gives you more meat for the chew required. You don't agree? First, I liked WALL-E very much, but it wasn't the greatest thing since sliced bread. Still, its deserving of its place on the RS list. The culture has spoken on this film and has moved on [e.g., metacritic = 94-critics / 8.9-users; Rotten Tomatoes = 96%-critics / 89%-users] (these are unusually high numbers). And, politics aside, it's a moving love story. I'm a sucker for a good robot love story. Secondly, I didn't rank INCEPTION; Rolling Stone did, and i didn't reject it (this was more a matter of "tie goes to the runner" deference than an expression of my own preference). As for LOOPER, i disagreed with them about it, so i didn't keep it on my list. I found both stories convoluted, and wasn't crazy about either of them at the time i saw them, but INCEPTION had other qualities i appreciated more on subsequent viewing (original imagery, excellent performances, more profound philosophical questions), and it has had a greater overall impact on filmmaking and the popular culture. Other storytellers are still referencing it (either visually, conceptually, or literally), whereas LOOPER, while perfectly entertaining (perhaps more than INCEPTION, since it has a more traditionally satisfying conclusion), has been largely forgotten. It was not memorable or impactful to the same degree, and so doesn't warrant inclusion on my list, where the similarly flawed INCEPTION does. I do think LOOPER is a good film and a legitimate case to be made for it, and I would put it on a list of honorable mentions. But I would also understand if some of the films on the RS list that i didn't see (THE HOST, MOON, PRIMER, SUNSHINE) knocked either or both off the list entirely, since I'd put both of them nearer the bottom than the top. As a side note, 12 MONKEYS kicks LOOPER's ass all over the playground and takes its lunch money.

Thanks for the ADELE recommendation. I've liked some Luc Besson films; i'll give this one a shot. And i just saw SHAUN OF THE DEAD this weekend; it was excellent. I really like Simon Pegg's films.

he's more anti-Sabermetric than any of them -- not that this is a pure stats-vs-not argument, Yes, but it's definitely being cast in that light, setting up the stat-heads as a convenient strawman for them to tear down. I just don't understand why smart baseball players think "work the count and get a good pitch to hit" is some newfangled kind of Sabrmetric boondoggle. And then they misstate the Sabrmetric understanding of strikeouts as "they're not any worse than any kind of outs", so they can sneer at each stranded baserunner and blame OB% for the hitter's inability to move a runner along, or get a guy home from 3rd with less than 2 out.

Of course he could be wrong. I certainly don't say otherwise. And i'm not saying you did, or even that you implied otherwise, so let's please not go there. As for Synderfella, he can not only be wrong, he could be lying. Players apparently lie about their physical condition all the time so as not lose playing time, and to avoid the DL, and to avoid any perception of them as fragile by their team and teammates (or in this case, perhaps the general public). So self-immolation (for those considering it) is still very much on the table until we hear further.

DAYS OF FUTURE PAST was an excellent way to retrofit X3 out of the existing X-MEN continuity. Overall, though, the movie is a little slow and talky (the sentinel action is dull and repetitive) but there's a lot of good character stuff and Quicksilver steals the show. 3.5 ****

i just saw THE ISLAND (2005) on cable over the weekend, and it deserves an honorable mention at least. Ewen McGregor and ScarJo are clones on the run from the evil corp that grew them for their spare parts. Good action, good perfs, thought-provoking.

Syndergaard tweets that he's synderfine. He could also be Synderfull of shit. Players are the last people to trust about stuff like this. I'll believe it when a doctor says he's fine. And even then, i'd want a 2nd opinion.

Cost of living is different in different regions, so i don't know what this tells you. Things cost more in the northeast than in the south, regardless of franchises. It is interesting, though, to compare teams in the same city or in proximity to each other and look at comparable values. Big markets: In NY, the Yanks will give you an extra 12oz beer and costs a quarter less ($18) than the Mets. Funny, I would've guessed that Nurembergian edifice in the Bronx would've been more expensive. The BoSox version costs the same as the Mets (1 x 12oz + 2 HD = $18.25). In Chicago, 16oz beer and 2 hot dogs costs $17.50 at Wrigley, but the same meal is only $14 on the south side. In LA, that same meal costs $16.25 at Chavez Ravine and $15.75 in SD, but in Anaheim, you can get 2 14oz beers and 3 hot dogs for $18. The Angels give you the best bang for your buck of all the big market teams, so i guess those outrageous contracts to Pujols, Hamilton, etal, aren't being paid for by the concessions. Northwest: Oakland gives you 10oz more beer with your hot dogs for a quarter more (2 x 12oz) [$17] than SF (1 x 14oz) [$16.75]. The Rockies give you more beer (2 x 16oz) and extra HD for $18.75 (they know you'll have cotton mouth and the munchies). In seattle, you get the same miserly Citifield meal (1 x 12oz + 2HD), but its cheaper ($15). South: Tampa will give you 4 more ounces of beer (2 x 12oz) for the same price ($20) as the same meal in Miami (1 x 20oz). In Baltimore, you pay $16.25 for the identical meal (16oz beer + 2 HDs) that in D.C. costs $18. That meal is $16.75 in Atlanta. In Philly, you get a bigger beer (21oz) and the meal is cheaper, at $14.75. Houston gives you 2 x 14oz + 2HD = $19.50, and in Arlington you get more beer (2 x 16oz) for an extra 50 cents. In the mid-west: St.L and Detroit offer the same meal as the Yankees {2 x 12oz / 2HD) for 50 cents more ($18.50). But the other midwestern teams give you much more bang for your buck. In Cinncy, $20 gets you more beer (3 x 14oz) + more HDs (5) than almost anybody else in MLB. The only other meal to equal it actually costs 50 cents less in Arizona. In Cleveland, the same $20 only gets you 2 x 12oz + 4HDs. In Pittsburgh = 2 x 16oz + 2 HDs is a bargain at $17.50, because KC gives you the same meal for $20 and in Milwaukee it's $19. In Minny, you get the Miami meal (1 20oz + 2 HDs) for considerably less ($15.50). Overall, the best deal is in Arizona, where you get the equivalent of 3 meals and get change back from your $20. The worst bang for you buck is in Citifield and Fenway [1 x 12oz + 2 HDs = $18.25]. Toronto is nearly as bad [1 x 14oz + 2 HDs = $18.53] but they give you an extra 2oz of beer for 30 cents. And they are in a different currency, so i'm not sure how the exchange rate works. So, its not just parochial pride to say we have just about the worst value in concession prices in all of MLB (tied with Boston). Even the MFYs offer a slightly better value.