Ceetar

Can I have an 86 instead of an 84? maybe an 06? maybe and 88?

d'Arnaud said he's aware of the deep spots but tries to put it out of his mind at the plate "just hit it hard" and also that he's happy the park is deep because he's part of the battery and it helps the pitchers.

Great colors/shot! https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=vStudio.Android.Camera360 MagicSky feature. It's fun. Lots of weird camera apps out there that do different things and silly filters and all that. Also has the MagicColor feature:

All those cardboard boxes in that room? Sunflower seeds. All of them.

Nymr83 wrote: Edgy MD wrote: Hey, Ceetar is a winner. Would really be nice if the team gets Flores going. The kerfuffle on the doubleplay stunk, but I like to think that's the sort of thing that will sort itself out. the team needs a bat in the lineup and if he can provide that they may need to suffer a little with defense, i can think of another team very close by that played a good bat at SS for a very long time despite his inferior fielding skills... I'm younger than that bum. Hit left-handed too. Played 2B-1B-P-OF in little league. I would need to build up arm strength for SS I think, but . I'll be there again Saturday, so we'll see how it goes. Bringing the wife this time. She says I can drag her to a ballgame, and I can drink, I just can't do both at once. This might be the first soda I've bought at Citi Field. I'm now 2-1 against the Dodgers at Citi Field during MLB At-Bat's record keeping era.

Was on the Bridge for that catch which was a great perspective because the ball was hit right at me and I could see both outfielders. As it was arcing down I definitely thought "yes! he's too far away!" and then suddenly he had it.

yeah Valverde sounds like a good pick. I d'Arnaud if dunno is making the cash to splurge on something like that yet, but it's certainly possible it's another exec or something. I presume they can park in there too.

Also, not sure what this is about.

Can we play "Guess who's car?" (I don't know the answer) It has Florida plates.

d'Kong76 wrote: Haha... good luck and enjoy. This rain may put a damper on things. I want to watch batting practice!

d'Kong76 wrote: Have you attended a win yet? I think it was you that was on a bad roll? oh shush you. yeah, I'm 0-3 this season. lost the last two of the season last year. Last one I saw as a win was 7/20 5-4 over Philly (unless I missed an At-Bat check-in)

I shall be in attendance.

Centerfield wrote: Wright went from being an MVP caliber player, to a good (but not great, right Fred?) player. There is Bay and Granderson, and Ike Davis completely falling apart. I have a hard time convincing myself that this is all coincidental. If the park is fair (or conducive to HR's as the PF suggests), shouldn't there have been at least 1 guy in the last five years that busts out and surprises us by having a power surge? Marlon Byrd. Well, Bay was a different story and concussions likely helped him to his downfall. David Wright has been great the last two years, if not quite as home-happy. But excepting 2009 he's been on a (pro-rated) 20-25 pace most years. (though 29 in 2010. 12 home, 17 away) Granderson had a bad start, but he's fine. Has 5 home runs over the last 28 days which is a 30ish pace for a season. Ike Davis might just not be that good, but after his bad start in 2011 bounced back to hit 32. Hit only 9 in limited time last year but again he bounced back well in the second half the HR just were doubles but he also admits to a lat injury. It's also April/May And it's been a chilly one and Citi Field is always exceptionally windy early on. So it's premature to worry about power this year imo. Premature to worry about home field advantage in general I think. The data doesn't seem to support it and it feels like a lot of the theories are trying to force a hypothesis. These guys are human, so data will never 100%, or even close to that, report what's going on. Data ignores nagging injuries, hangovers, crappy sleep, headaches, gusts of wind, mental changes in approach to fit a stadium, and all that. Ultimately the data should override that noise, but probability suggests it's less and less likely to do so the smaller a sample you have. Coors Field is the more blatant example of the existence of park factors, but most of the rest of them are more subtle. Take Dodger stadium for example. Pitchers are always (or did always?) rave about the mound there and how it's somehow better. I don't know if anyone's done any real analysis of it, but you wonder if the effect is real, if it's only mental, and if that mental confidence translates like a placebo effect.

Centerfield wrote: smg58 wrote: Is now a good time to point out that the other team has to hit in the same park that the Mets do when they come here? Or that FanGraphs (you know, the most number-crunchy of the number-cruncher sites) rates CitiField as 103 for favoring home runs since the fences were moved in (100 being average, and above 100 increasing the likelihood of home runs)? Or that the park in Flushing is less of an extreme than the park in the Bronx? Do you have a link to this? How is that number calculated? http://www.fangraphs.com/guts.aspx?type=pf&season=2013&teamid=25 oddly enough, it suppresses singles doubles and triples a wee bit. It's more neutral for home runs for lefties and 105 for righties. Lest we get too worked up about this, remember it's a work in progress. We know that park factors are real, but it's hard to measure precisely how real because the variables are so vast. (Citi Field's new dimensions for example, are only two years which isn't a huge sample) The first step is to measure them. This is more problematic than one might think, mainly because you have to tease out what�s being caused by the park from what�s caused by the talents of the home nine, and the latter typically dominates. So we take multi-year samples, do some recursive analysis to strip away some of the bias, and regress heavily, and we�re typically left with a blanket park factor which we�re fairly confident with. We then apply this equally to all players, which works in one way, but not really so well in another. http://www.fangraphs.com/library/principles/park-factors/ more on the theory behind it's calculation http://gosu02.tripod.com/id103.html

needs more Duda.

smg58 wrote: Is now a good time to point out that the other team has to hit in the same park that the Mets do when they come here? Or that FanGraphs (you know, the most number-crunchy of the number-cruncher sites) rates CitiField as 103 for favoring home runs since the fences were moved in (100 being average, and above 100 increasing the likelihood of home runs)? Or that the park in Flushing is less of an extreme than the park in the Bronx? no. This thread isn't about facts or research. It's not even apparently a thread about an article about facts and research, even though said article drops a 'number crunchers' to try to add weight to it's flimsy argument.

Listening to them, one would think they were playing at the old, old Yankee Stadium, where a fly ball could take a 460-foot trip to left center and still be caught against the wall. Come to think of it, those old Yanks never had any trouble knocking down the walls. Not all those homers that Babe Ruth, Joe DiMaggio, Lou Gehrig and all the other greats that graced that ancient and now-gone cathedral hit flew over the short porch in right. A brief google couldn't confirm this, but I'm reasonably certain that Babe Ruth NEVER hit a home run to dead center field at Yankee Stadium. I think it was in the "The Year Babe Ruth hit 104 Home Runs"

Edgy MD wrote: We also need the exy-cution. Clean, effective defense and baserunning. Murph's throw to the plate with the infield in was something of a horror show. And I hope he isn't already un-hot. He seems more selective this year. I'm too lazy to see if that means fewer walks, but he isn't even cocking when the fastballs come in off the plate inside and outside. As to whether he's laying off the breaking pitches at the ankles, I am agnostic. Murphy? He's got a 7.7 BB% this season, up from his career 6.2%. His K% is about the same, .6 lower than career which given the growing K climate might actually be a significant amount. BABIP is roughly the same. Fangraphs has him as positive value defensively, offensively, and baserunningly. (though I don't really put much/any stock in defensive numbers in May) 28.4% LD rate over his 22.7% career. A few more balls on the ground as compared to fly balls. He's seeing a few more 2-seam fastballs and a few less changeups. Most of Murphy's hit-value has come on a variety of baseballs in his career. This year is much the same except he's gotten no value off of sliders like he has occasionally in the past. This is probably because he's swinging at 6% less pitches out of the zone compared to career. He's actually swinging less in general which means he's getting fewer swinging strikes while making contact with about the same amount of pitches. So yeah, I guess he's being more selective.

Frayed Knot wrote: G-Fafif wrote: Juan Lagares still attending to family business in the DR. Suuure, that's what They want you to think. Bereavement is minimum 3 games but if you knew this over the weekend why not Saturday-Tuesday and get Kirk up here in the meantime rather than play short?

That a vendor's tray of..coke? on the bench?

Edgy MD wrote: I don't think the goal is to win a National Book Award, ceets. Fill up 200 pages, make sure at least 50% of that is slime, and cash checks. Dennis Rodman's As Bad as I Wanna Be could have been called As Bad as I Wanna Write. It was terrible. They had to change the font size regularly to keep people moving and to fill enough space to justify calling it a book. But ka-ching! It's not about literary merit. It's about literary merit to me though. That's all I'm saying. I didn't read Rodman's book. If it's 50%, and 50% seems low, slime I'm not reading it. And that's what I was getting at, the goal is to cash checks and I don't find what he's selling particularly interesting. But I do think there is an interesting story to be told about the clubhouse during Samuels time that doesn't have to be just filler between "Guess who this guy banged!" and "Guess what substances these guys had me pick up for them!" Edgy MD wrote: Clotheslines air clean laundry. What airs dirty laundry? Adam Rubin-line?

Edgy MD wrote: The world has a lot of "actual writers' who would love to get actually paid. If Samuels has a book contract, it'll take him about 10 seconds to find a collaborator. yes, I assume that's part of his pitch. I just don't see it as being a current baseball writer, and I wonder if it loses some perspective there by being a book about the inside of the clubhouse written by an outsider. Basically, I don't have much faith that's it's going to be a good story. It might be a good clothsline (to air dirty laundry) and contain plenty of talking points. That one might even sell better too, but I'm probably not going to read it myself.

John Cougar Lunchbucket wrote: Ceetar wrote: sounds like a guy with an axe to grind and looking to make a couple of bucks on any info he thinks might have any value. Since it says it's a book proposal being pitched he's probably just got an interesting couple of nuggets that he wants to get paid for, otherwise why not just actually write the book? or start writing the book? or self-publish the book. I'm sure there are plenty of interesting things to say and spin into a 'behind the scenes' story if you want. Athlete culture and all that. And that can mostly be done without naming names too. But yeah, I'm sure he has dirt on a bunch of those guys, particularly the 90s guys, when people just did it out in the open because no one cared. I'm convinced half of them were doing amphetamines at the very least so no name would shock me. Or maybe it's just about the DVD/VHS movies he purchased for the porn room. I don't understand what you could possibly have against a writer wanting to get paid for their work. And I think you probably are underestimating the sheer volume of shit accumulated by a guy who essentially was the concierge of drugs, porno and gambling for 27 years, about as inside as you can get in that he was more permanent than any manager or player. He assuredly has dirt on the writers and Wilpons, who obviously looked the other way until he got sloppy, then they ditched him. Of course he'll have an axe to grind. This is potentially explosive. I don't have anything against a writer (wake me when he actually writes something though) getting paid for his work. What has me skeptical is that he comes off as bitter and broke and is looking to sell off any last scrap of worthwhile anything he has for a buck. I don't know how he pitched it (Rubin and 'the sources' are the ones that mention it'll have dirty laundry) but a behind the scenes look at the Mets clubhouse would be interesting, whereas an angry ex-employee looking to air dirty laundry is less so. To me at least. I'd love to read about the clubhouse interactions and how players traveled and caroused. I don't need to read the "Hehe, this guy always got in early so he could pop pills and work out." I know they all did that. It's not particularly interesting to me and I wish the PED storyline would go away. I don't care. They all did it (Get me those Yankee Clubhouse confidentials too while you're there) , it doesn't matter one bit to me. Sure, it'll be 'explosive' the same way all these stupid "hey, I injected this guy back in the 90s!" stories are and the LolMets narrative is strong. He better hurry though, because if he hasn't written this thing yet he'll want to get it out before the Mets are good or it won't have the same effect. Also I wonder if he's shopping for a writer as well, but if he's out to leak clubhouse stuff I'm not sure any active writer is gonna want to step on those toes. Samuels has nothing to lose, but baseball can get a little pissy about some of that stuff.

sounds like a guy with an axe to grind and looking to make a couple of bucks on any info he thinks might have any value. Since it says it's a book proposal being pitched he's probably just got an interesting couple of nuggets that he wants to get paid for, otherwise why not just actually write the book? or start writing the book? or self-publish the book. I'm sure there are plenty of interesting things to say and spin into a 'behind the scenes' story if you want. But yeah, I'm sure he has dirt on a bunch of those guys, particularly the 90s guys, when people just did it out in the open because no one cared. I'm convinced half of them were doing amphetamines at the very least so no name would shock me. Or maybe it's just about the DVD/VHS movies he purchased for the porn room.