Ceetar

3.51 ERA. 14-8 record. 170 innings pitched. 98 Ks.

There's roughly zero reason he shouldn't be the 5th starter, but seems it's leaning away from that. 120 IP, 20 starts, 3.8 ERA, 103 Ks 7-4 record.

.290/.330/.434 14 home runs. solid enough defense. Did you know Murphy stole 23! bases last season? I think he'll hold that at 16 in 2014.

Gets a "Dice-K was on the 2014 Mets?!" from most fans by the end of the year.

3.8 ERA over 180 IP. (12-9) 142 Ks. hits .201/.260/.270 and runs into that rare pitcher home-run.

I heard Adam Dunn was in this.

my bet with my boss was .261 31 HR 111 RBI .261/.345/.488 (nearly his career line) 18 SB. 3 triples. 163 Ks

Gets some long relief time and 1 spot start in a double header in which the Mets lose 18-4. 27 IP 4.64 ERA, 15 Ks

Shares some time early but ultimately starts hitting just enough that he's penciled in every day. .255/.303/.404 Maintains great defense though not quite as spectacular as last year and as such this gets him to about 5.1 bWAR

Benjamin Grimm wrote: It was moderately popular last year, so we'll try it again this year. IPP stands for Individual Player Predictions. These will be threads where we share our expectations of how a player will perform in the current year. Feel free to make your predictions as specific or as vague as you like. (You can find a listing of the 2013 IPPs here.) I'm kind of tempted to skip creating threads for middle relievers. Maybe next year. Gonzalez Germen? Ummm... he'll make the team. 4.50 ERA. Back and forth to Las Vegas for a while. Total of 25 innings for the Mets. Particularly the fringy ones? Gonzalez German Germen will pitch 17 not very good innings for the Mets. 4.2 ERA. 14 Ks.

Benjamin Grimm wrote: Ceetar wrote: Why does the ball in play make it interesting? Is swinging and missing, or fouling it back, really less interesting than a soft grounder to short? Sure it is. A soft grounder to short can advance a runner, can lead to an infield single, can lead to an error. A swing and a miss leads to a guy shaking his head and walking slowly back to the dugout. Yeah, but most of the time that doesn't. Especially the second two. How is that any different than 'any swing can lead to a home run' that the three true outcomes approach lends itself to? Put another way, 40 years ago you had more balls in play and less home runs and strikeouts. This means that you could miss the start of the inning and more often not miss any scoring relevance. you might miss some running around, but you can infer 'oh, Agee hit a double'. Even just take how announcers discuss said plays. Strikeouts get more attention sometimes whereas a soft grounder or other 99.9% out play is often described without breaking stride in conversation.

Why does the ball in play make it interesting? Is swinging and missing, or fouling it back, really less interesting than a soft grounder to short?

G-Fafif wrote: If I tune in at 12:45 or 6:45 and I hear a half-dozen commercials that aren't the midday or afternoon drive-time hosts, that will be sufficient. The original Mets Extra was, as the WHN promos put it, "a Mets fan's dream come true". Howie really threw himself into it and produced what we would today called premium content. The Mets Extra of the Coleman years was less vital, particularly in the context of the current information age. But nice to have that prologue and epilogue nonetheless. I suspect you'll hear at least a half dozen commercials that ARE for the midday drive-time hosts, but I guess we'll see. My goal when I'm radio bound is to aim to turn it on just before the 30 second highlight clips in the inbetween point of Mets Extra and 'pregame'. That 10 minutes or so post/pre game with the hosts still are usually all I need given the current information age, but i admit I'm probably not a representative sample. If you don't follow Mets news from 4-7 it's probably nice to get an update on the lineups, who's hurt, what Terry said, etc.

G-Fafif wrote: Just glad there'll be a buffer between that fine 'OR syndicated programming and the game. He follows in the footsteps of Howard Cosell, Marv Albert, Bob Brown, Bill Mazer, Al Albert, Howie Rose, Todd Kalas and Ed Coleman to name a few full-timers on the pre-/postgame beat. Directly before Howie invented Mets Extra, it was just Bob Murphy coming on maybe 15 minutes before first-pitch and interviewing somebody. That worked, too. Mets Extra is mostly commercials though, or at least it was. "Here's today's starting lineup" commercial. "Here's the pitching matchup!" commercial.. so we might not be as buffered as you think.

Zvon wrote: vtmet wrote: Wright's has the best OBP on the team, and has decent speed...Terry could get real creative and bat Wright leadoff, with the pitcher 6th, EYjr 7th, Daniel Murphy 8th and Chris Young 9th... that way, TC has the guy most likely to get on base and also most likely to score leading off the game...and Wright still gets to act like TC's pseudo-cleanup hitter... Wright leading off is an interesting thought. The rest, I dunno. I'd have EYjr 9th for the turnover. I was like whatever when I first heard of this pitcher batting 8th stuff but after reading Larussa's comments I find it does make some sense. Batting order makes such a minor difference in run scoring anyway, particularly 8th/9th. Wright's not a power guy exactly but I think he's too valuable to constantly have the crap of the lineup in front of him, though it's not a horrible idea. pitcher 6th though is pushing it. That gives him the 3th AB a game even if the Mets haven't scored a lot of runs. And you're more often than not taking away an AB from a guy like Murphy or Young who are presumably going to be above average hitters and giving it to the pitcher. That's probably worse than bunting and wasting an out. No lineup should have EYjr in it unless this is a getaway day B lineup.

G-Fafif wrote: Not Casey Stern. Not Andy Masur. But Seth Everett, the third world-exclusive double-secret probation WOR pregame/postgame host reported on good authority to have the job. Everett was a "baseball insider" on SNY several years ago and brought no particular inside information to bear while avoiding having any kind of appeal. So keep up the good work, 710. He should fit right into the "here's what Terry Collins just said, here's what just happened in the game you just listened to, and hey, these are the names of the guys playing the next game" role then.

I think Lagares eclipsed him as the mostly-glove outfielder and there is no real room for him. If Lagares struggles, which is possible, you might see him more, or if he completely figures out AAA pitching you might see him steal a 5th spot if a trade/injury openings up, but I'm figuring.. 75 PA, mostly in September. 2 HR, 2 spectacular catches, 20 Ks, 3 doubles, a stolen base and one 12th inning pitch running appearance.

Not sure how to predict Duda since I think Davis ends up with the first base job, but he's still an above average hitter so you gotta get him in there too, or trade him. So I'll just go all rate stats with no counting ones. .249/.361/.435 12.5% BB rate, 22.2% K rate. 126 wRC+

Benjamin Grimm wrote: Have we back at the point where a guy can report to spring training bigger and stronger than before without us having to wonder what might be in his urine? No. I just hope he's not picking the clinics that A-Rod picks.

G-Fafif wrote: Whereas Rubin reports Nimmo added weight. Or something. Don't tell Chass. Definitely stronger. Spent winter at IMG Academy in FL So he's now an HTML tag?

change "you'll always be the captain to me" to "I enjoyed my time with the little captain"

The obvious and simple answer is, and has always been, to enforce the high strike. More pitches in the zone means it's hard to work a walk. If you're really concerned with ball in play stuff anyway, which it doesn't appear that baseball is. We're moving more towards 3 true outcomes. But fine, you want the game to lean more towards defense and ball in play stuff? Clearly that's a push towards more well-rounded players that can field and throw and all that. And that means getting rid of the DH.

Benjamin Grimm wrote: Me, I wouldn't bother. Unless I had a pitcher who could really hit. Jon Niese has added 0.9 WAR in his career with the bat. .167/.246/.195 Dice K (who shouldn't start) is next with 0, and a .192/.192/.192 Colon is -0.7 .093/.102/.093. Neither him nor Dice K have ever walked. Jon Niese has 22 walks.

500 PA .280/.333/.407 12 HR, 29 2B. Third place in rookie of the year voting.

too volatile to predict with any confidence. .248/.345/.449 28 HR, 170 Ks, 90 BB, 1 3B, 4 SB over 515 PA Think Satin gets a fair amount of the time against lefties but that he mostly holds down the job all year. He'll have a dead period of a couple of weeks in both May and August but will also have a 8 HR/.450 OBP month.