Ceetar

Edgy MD wrote: Tim Rohan owes his career to a Horatio Alger-esque break. He came to work for the Times as an intern fresh out of school. He got menial copy editor stuff, and wire rewrites, but he begged the sports editor Jay Schrieber for an assignment. It's summer, so you can't just send the kid off to cover high school sports. So, one Friday night, the Mets beat was uncovered, and Schrieber threw the kid a bone. I mean... the Mets. Who cares, right? What's the big deal? Give it to the kid. That Friday night was June 1, 2012, with the Cardinals in town and Johan Santana on the hill. As Johan ground out the last two innings, there was as much pressure on the Rohan as there was on Santana. The Times could have dispatched a seasoned guy after the seventh inning or asked one of the wire writers to do their write-up, but Rohan brought the story home. Nice first assignment, kid. I like Rohan. He wrote up a nice story the other day about all the filming the Mets do for the Citi Field scoreboard and what not. more than the snarky tweets by others "haha, Harvey can't tie a tie!" at least.

when they eventually retire 17 (if they do I guess) for Keith they should try to get as many of these players that worse it together to parade up to him in a 17 jersey, and ceremonially remove it and throw it in a pile.

Jack against lefties in 2014 101 batters, .235/.307/.376 against righties 140 batters .217/.307/.292

Edgy MD wrote: If he pulls off that 2.10 ERA, he'll be likely to get a lot more than 25 saves, unless the Mets really do kick him aside for eight weeks in favor of Bobby Parnell, which I agree seems awful wishful. or the Mets bludgeon everyone 18-4.

not counting on Parnell to solve anything, I don't think there's even a problem to solve, I just think he does come back and does pitch and that creates some friction.

he was also hurt for a lot of the second half. Personally I wouldn't have removed him from the rotation but given the amount of starters the Mets seemingly have healthy I don't see him getting back in there even in an emergency basis. With so many good relievers and Parnell coming back and seemingly likely to be grumpy if he doesn't get to close I can see this being a mess, though personally I'd use Mejia (and Familia) for 3-inning saves or 2+ inning saves. It always feels tough projecting relievers. Let's say 75 IP, 2.1 ERA, 85 Ks, 28 BB, 25 Saves.

But the "Can't hit his number" jokes will become so much more interesting if someone's wearing .210 vs .410..

metsmarathon wrote: i'd like to look at one of the kids in the 2-hole, but otherwise, i'm pretty OK with vic's lineup. especially the double-leadoff thingy that it presents. especially helpful if we swap out the P for a DH.

wOBA of the guys still here, in order, from last year Carlyle, Familia, Duda, Nieuwenhuis, Murphy, Granderson, Herrera, d'Arnaud, Lagares, Wright, den Dekker, Campbell, Tejada, Flores, Recker

I know they're not easy to calculate, but you don't really need to. we have computers now, and understanding what it's based on and the concept of correlated statistics is not a hard one. i.e. OBP contributes more WAR than AVG.

Terry uses you against lefties and you give up a whole lot of bombs.

131 games .279/.329/.401 wRC+105 10 HR 20 SB sporadic injury was a concern last year. hopefully he stays a little healthier. I liked that he walked more and struck out less in the second half, and I'm banking on him using that patience to get better pitches to hit and driving the ball more than he did in the second half last year. Not a ton better, but clearly well above average particularly for a CF. Continues to play great defense. Gold Glove. I'm fine with him as leadoff. I'm not really concerned about lineup positioning much. Just don't play guys there that OBP .300.

is it me or does that article not even have a by-line? (nevermind that that site is trash)

Zvon wrote: When does the first spring training game air? I had a dream last night I was watching baseball. I can't wait til April 6th! march the 6th. radio on the 4th Ibelieve.

In a way I kinda am fine with Colon. means more starts for him which showcases him better, and he's the arm you care about least so cold weather and all that.

190.1 IP, 204K, ERA 2.49, All-Star. 47 different mainstream columns written complaining about his bravado. 3 separate incidents where someone takes offense to a comment and it becomes 'a thing'. At least one of these will be Stephen A. Smith. One of these people will complain that he should shut up because he's not their best pitcher despite having an ERA a full point lower than Niese who just happens to have won 4 more games at the time. Will have 6 doubles on the season, including one that hits just below the top of the wall. Will have three wins in the playoffs. Will shoot off fireworks from the parade float. Will appear on no less than 10 different prime-time/late-night talk shows after the season, including Stephen Colbert's. Will reference The Jetes (maybe not like that) at least 14 times in referring to the Mets and New York and 'taking back the town' during the season, but will pitch a CG shutout at Yankee Stadium.

Hamilton, according to Jon Heyman, had a "at least" cocaine relapse a couple of months ago and confessed.

I mean, it's hard to pull conclusions out of the noise sometimes. Is the BABIP at say Citi Field lower because the Mets offense was bad? Is it the way the field plays? I'm not going to write a whole statistics paper for you, but since batters have very little control over where the ball goes, a lot of it comes down to luck. The ball is going to be aimed at a spot on the grass somewhere, and there are a finite amount of those spots. If you take some of the ones away that frequently go for hits (the part that's now home runs) it only stands to logic that a lower percentage of balls per AB will land on the grass without being caught. Sure, every single one of Curtis Granderson's fly balls could land in that tiny section of Citi Field that's newly a home run territory. It's highly unlikely though. You're welcome to predict his HR totals or his average will go up because of this, but I'm just trying to point out that I don't think there's a good reason to do so. https://twitter.com/charmingaxelotl/status/464518734334291968 "Curtis Granderson sucks" yeah well, no he didn't. Here's one example of someone that thinks Curtis sucked. I'm speaking directly to him. Hey axelotl. Curtis was actually okay last year.

Edgy MD wrote: No, it is. I shouldn't have to walk you through this, but when you are directly addressing my contention on the issue of Granderson's OBP, and then build on that this nebulous third person of "people seem to forget" you are deliberately implying that I am part of this group, when I in fact am not. I tell you this every time, but you don't listen. I'm not including you, or anyone specifically. There exists a perception that I thought was worth making light of. Would it make you feel better if I'm simply said "Granderson was ok last year, and I think he can be better."? And the outfield definitely works that way, but the fence differences are so negligible that I don't even think it's worth mentioning as a factor. But in theory a CF plays one step more towards left because he doesn't need that step to right to cover that extra 40 sq ft of grass that's now behind the wall. He now gets to, in general, a larger percentage of the outfield grass, meaning BABIP should drop.

It's not a straw man when it's true..

Edgy MD wrote: It's not that drastic. I mean, he reached at .326 last year. If you replay last season plate appearance for plate appearance, he'll get an OBP bump just from the new wall. Will he? like what? .002? It's such a tiny change and the maybe 1-2 home runs that might land there will be negated by the one or two balls that don't fall in because the outfielders now covers a larger percentage of the grass. People seem to forget Granderson had a wRC+ of 108 last season, so he was 8% better than average. It's not great, but he had a few valleys and not enough peaks. Level it out some and it'll be very helpful. .240/.340/.433 should get him closer to a 117 wRC+ (career average) 23 HR, 14 SB. Will spend some time at leadoff early but he'll have a good power week and Collins will move him to 6th except against the rare game he gets against lefties that Duda doesn't when he'll be leading off again. Moves to left and his arm doesn't hurt his defense as much. Puts up a solid 3.9 fWAR.

I mean the resolution isn't going to be great anyway so you can probably run it with a screen capture program and capture it that way.

Edgy MD wrote: He's going to get a knock on the door any minute now. Can you download youtube videos? maybe someone should contact him and get some copies of these files out there.

d'Kong76 wrote: Edgy MD wrote: Try a different browser, man. I couldn't read it either, until I logged on. I don't think i have a WSJ account. free, or are they gonna start bothering me? I recently cut out the New Yorker from my feed reader for paywall reasons but Jared Diamond is one of the few beat guys I actually want to read.

Edgy MD wrote: Try a different browser, man. You want me to like..open IE? and copy and paste? that's so..2005. Diamond wrote an interesting thing about jury duty too.