dinosaur jesus

I was a great supporter of the Colts when Adrian "Cap" Anson was their manager, since "Cap" came from the same little town in Iowa, Marshalltown, that my wife was born in. (As was that lovely young actress Jean Seberg.) But when the new owners of the team treated "Cap" so shabbily, I'm afraid they lost my support. I'd be very happy to see the Pittsburgers and that big German, Wagner, prevail in this series.

I'm not casting any stones. It's something I could have done. I always allow for how long a trip should take. How long it actually takes is for the fates to decide.

Kershaw's going to eat up the lefthanded power hitters. He eats up everybody, but especially those guys. You have to platoon. The only Mets with more than one career hit against Kershaw: Flores (3 for 6, all singles) Tejada (5 for 14, all singles) Daniel Murphy (3 for 10, all singles) Juan Uribe (3 for 11, double, home run) Eric Young (!) (4 for 16, five walks) Michael Cuddyer (4 for 16, all singles) David Wright (3 for 14, double, four walks) Kelly Johnson (3 for 15, home run) Small sample sizes, of course. But that's six righthanders out of eight (with Young batting right against Kershaw), with all the walks and extra base hits by righthanders. No lefthanded batter on the Mets roster has ever had an extra base hit off of Kershaw.

And he led the league hands-down. The Mets have a very controlly staff. Walks/9 by 2015 NL Starters 1) Colon (NYM): 1.110 =#FF0000]2) Scherzer (WSN): 1.338 =#FF8000]3) Bumgarner (SFG): 1.608 =#0080FF]4) Greinke (LAD): 1.617 5) Kershaw (LAD): 1.625 =#FF0000]6) Zimmermann (WSN): 1.741 7) Harvey (NYM): 1.759 8) deGrom (NYM): 1.791 =#0040FF]9) Haren =#00FF40](MIA, =#0040FF]CHI)=#00FF40]: 1.826 =#0040FF]10) Arrieta (CHC): 1.886 That's a very surprising list. Except for Colon and Haren, those are all power pitchers. But walks per 9 is a traditionally a finesse pitcher category. This year in the NL, five of the top ten in walks per 9 were also in the top 10 in K's per 9. Ten years ago, there was only one pitcher on both lists (Pedro!). That used to be typical. Something's happened to the way this game is played.

The divine De Fratus comes in to retire Wilmer.

Curtis could have had three if he'd hustled. Addison Reed needs to strangle him.

Gotta be Arrieta. Wins still trump ERA if the ERA is close. Greinke has that great winning percentage going for him, but Arrieta's is pretty damn good. Plus getting the Cubs to the postseason is the kind of good story that voters like.

dgwphotography wrote: ABNS has it perfect: LOLOLOLL With the exception of the MFY's, I have a hard time feeling any schadenfreude when a rival has issues like this. We don't need that kind of karma. My schadenfreude is directed mostly against Harper and Papelbon. Actually Harper; Papelbon is a bigger asshole than Harper will ever be, but he's never really been on my asshole radar before. Harper aside, I actually kind of like the Nationals. I like that there's a team in DC (no offense, Montreal), I like their uniforms, I like that Davey Johnson who managed them when they first got good. I'm delighted, of course, that they fell apart so spectacularly this year, but it's nothing personal.

I just think it's hilarious that when dickheads fight, everybody has to pick a side. It's like King Kong vs. Godzilla. They're both huge ugly monsters that want to destroy your city. But when they're fighting each other, you have to root for one of them. Papelbon makes it easy, I admit. His mother probably wanted Harper to smack his stupid face. I also think it's hilarious that Nats fans think Harper always hustles. When you're a star, the home town folks attribute all kinds of imaginary virtues to you. Unless you play in Philly, of course.

It's funny, isn't it? Someone finally dares to suggest to Bryce Harper that a professional should always do his very best, no matter what the situation. Just a gentle admonishment from someone who knows what it takes to be a winner. But somehow, who's the bad guy here? Papelbon! That's the culture in DC in a nutshell. It's not about winning, it's about keeping the superstar happy. Don't criticize him. Don't put your hands around his throat and slam his head against a wall. Back in the day, if a young slugger had dogged it on a popup, do you know what Walter Johnson would have done? No one knows, because they knew not to try it.

Dodgers lose on a Carlos Gonzalez walk-off home run in the ninth. Mets up by half a game in the race for home field advantage.

Whaddya know. Michael Taylor just misplayed a single into a Little League grand slam.

I'd say that if umpires are consistently making the same wrong calls with the same catchers, year after year, then you have to say it's due to something the catchers are doing. Framing is an obvious guess, and I don't know a better one. As for how many runs a catcher saves or costs a team with those calls, that's really not that difficult to calculate. The data is out there on run-scoring probabilities with a given count in a given situation. So if an umpire's call makes the count 3-1 instead of 2-2 with a runner on second and one out, there's a real, measurable difference in the number of runs that are likely to score. And those things add up. Obviously there's a lot of randomness involved, and we're talking about probabilities, not actual results. But it seems very plausible to me that a catcher could save his team a lot of runs over a year just by how he catches the ball. Fifty? Sure, why not? And I don't know what umpires are supposed to do about it. They make their calls based on whether a pitch looks like a ball or a strike, and they get fooled sometimes. There's no way around that. They know that catchers are working a kind of sleight of hand with them, but they can't just make a mental correction and say to themselves, "That looked like a strike, but Grandal's really good at framing, so it probably wasn't." They have to go on what they actually see, whether or not it's what actually happened.

Today (meaning Thursday) was going to be an off day. So they used it for the makeup game. I miss doubleheaders.

Benjamin Grimm wrote: I remember when Yogi was the only manager in baseball history who had won a pennant in both leagues. (1964 Yankees and 1973 Mets.) Since then, Dick Williams has done it. (Athletics and Padres.) Anyone else? Or is it still just those two? Joe McCarthy, Yogi's first manager, did it too: 1929 Cubs and multiple Yankee teams. And Tony La Russa. Joe Maddon has a shot at it this year.

Mets � Willets Point wrote: His name sounds like a kid who went to an exclusive prep school. He was a couple of classes behind Blake DeWitt. They were up for the same role in a school production of All About Eve.

Benjamin Grimm wrote: I think I prefer her at focal length 70mm, by the way. That will be my favorite focal length. Beer goggles are usually at 70 mm. It's not a coincidence.

That explains this, then.

It's the third inning Terry ought to be worried about, not the seventh. Once Niese got out of his usual third-inning jam last night, he was fine. Strategically, I'm okay with bringing in Reed, but psychologically I don't know. Niese can't be happy, and Terry's looking a little panicky. It's a little weird how consistently Niese has been blowing up in the third. That's usually when he faces the top of the order again, which is probably a big part of it. But it hasn't been a pattern for him before this year. Maybe Terry could stash him out in right field and have Carlos Torres or somebody pitch just that inning.

Ceetar wrote: dinosaur jesus wrote: Edgy MD wrote: Kingman 76 was certainly one I was thinking of. Not so much. He did have a 41-game stretch in 1976 (April 27-June 10) where he hit 15 home runs. His line was .244 / .275 / .549, with 25 runs scored and 33 rbi. But Strawberry had a stretch in 1990 that beats Cespedes. From June 8 to July 25 (41 games), his line was .336 / .421 / .718 // 1.139, with 17 home runs, 34 runs scored, and 42 rbi. The Mets went 30-11, and went from 9 1/2 games behind the Pirates to 1/2 game back. That doesn't have the neat storyline of what Cespedes has done, but it's pretty stunning. Where'd you pull that from? I looked at player game logs on Baseball Reference, and selected stretches of games where there seemed to be a lot of home runs. For Strawberry, I looked at his big years of 1987, 1988, and 1990, and 1984, since I know he got really hot after a slow start.

Edgy MD wrote: Kingman 76 was certainly one I was thinking of. Not so much. He did have a 41-game stretch in 1976 (April 27-June 10) where he hit 15 home runs. His line was .244 / .275 / .549, with 25 runs scored and 33 rbi. But Strawberry had a stretch in 1990 that beats Cespedes. From June 8 to July 25 (41 games), his line was .336 / .421 / .718 // 1.139, with 17 home runs, 34 runs scored, and 42 rbi. The Mets went 30-11, and went from 9 1/2 games behind the Pirates to 1/2 game back. That doesn't have the neat storyline of what Cespedes has done, but it's pretty stunning.

Coming in to the Washington series, the Nats swept four from the Braves while the Mets lost two of three to Miami. After that series, vice versa. I like the symmetry of that.

Blazes Moylan in for the save.

Niese's meltdown inning?

Terry could have sneaked another lefty in there if he'd put Murphy at third and Johnson at second. But I guess it's Uribe's turn after Johnson's start yesterday.