Ceetar

Now 15, if you don't want to reissue that, fine. Of course, they already have. But it's gonna look odd when either A. they don't retire their third Hall of Famer's number, or B. he wasn't the last to wear it.

I think there's something to the team with the best record in the league having to sit around and figure out where they're playing instead of sitting cozy at home saying "We're the best, who's going to come take us on?"

I'd say anybody anybody. Same for number 8. Works for me. I hate this partially retired stuff. I'm not much for pitches should wear numbers in "this range" either. get crazy! Anyway, Kelly Shoppach wants us to know the Mets haven't given up. They're going for it:

Benjamin Grimm wrote: Frayed Knot wrote: That's another uni that should be taken out of mothballs and given to some guy as soon as possible ... but that's a whole 'nother argument. Absolutely. Nimmo? Or are we talking like anybody anybody and have Baxter put it on next year.

Frayed Knot wrote: OK, why? supposedly scheduling. since the schedule was determined before the second wild card was decided, there wasn't enough off days so it's a 2-3 schedule instead of 2-2-1. At least, that's what they're saying. I'm not sure it actually holds up. It means the Rangers* don't know where they have to travel for the game the next day until the game is over, despite best record. And if the second wild card team wins, they're going to have to travel anyway. Unless I'm missing something. So say Oakland plays as the second wild card against Baltimore. if Oakland wins, both teams have to fly to oakland. and if the O's win, one team still has to fly, but it's the best record team instead of the WC team.

Frayed Knot wrote: Frayed Knot wrote: Correct, the winner of the WC one-game death-match will face the division winner with the best record regardless of what division each came from -- as opposed to the old system where the sole WC team could not face its division rival in the opening round. and this year only, at HOME if it's the AL. Say what? AL Wild Card team opens the ALDS at home this yaer.

Frayed Knot wrote: Correct, the winner of the WC one-game death-match will face the division winner with the best record regardless of what division each came from -- as opposed to the old system where the sole WC team could not face its division rival in the opening round. and this year only, at HOME if it's the AL.

Benjamin Grimm wrote: I'm not sure, but I seem to remember a rule change that would allow Atlanta to play Washington, or St. Louis to play Cincinnati, in the NLDS. Is that correct? yup.

When Duda made his catch and hit the wall he ripped the Budweiser ad. I couldn't be happier.

I was gonna post this in the "things people on facebook" bit, but I figured it was apropos. My cousin goes to Temple. Judging by her pictures, she spends _a lot_ of time drinking in this dingy basement.

Yankees drop another series. Bullpen makes a 1 run deficit a 3 run one. they Go quietly 1-2-3 10pitches in the 9th.

Benjamin Grimm wrote: Wasn't there a season somewhere around 1980 where the Mets had very very few homers by a catcher? Alex Trevino, John Stearns, Ron Hodges and Butch Benton caught in 1980. no home runs. Stearns and Hodges both got 1 a piece in '81. Then they really turned it on. 5 and 4 in '82 with 2 by Bruce Bochy. dropped to one by Mike Fitzgerald in '83 Fitz hit two in '84 and Hodges had 1. I presume I can stop there. 9 by Stearns in '79 (and 15 in '78) That means Mets catchers (well, just the one) hit more home runs (32) in '85 than in the entire period from '79-'84

Cole Hamels was sick to the stomach at the prospect of facing the Mets, begs out with stomach illness.

Frayed Knot wrote: I'm assuming that this means the ESPN feed would be available in addition to the SNY feed for Met games, not instead of. IOW, their Monday & Wednesday games are NOT going to become like their Sunday game where they DO have the exclusive right to have no local competition. well right, but previously that wasn't an option. I guess the logic was ESPN doesn't want to be blacked out and local fans probably prefer their local broadcast, but I don't know if that's true or not. Will people prefer to watch on ESPN?

He's right over here <---- batting against Tom Seaver.

Frayed Knot wrote: Other than that it seems like mostly just an extension to the package they've had all along. They'll also get an additional couple a regular season games, will no longer have to observe black-out rules for their Monday & Wednesday games, and a few other assorted details. I wasn't sure of that, so that means I can watch the ESPN feed when it's the Mets? (not that I would) That's the only thing that I don't like. I'm all for the desire to push MLB to be more national, but not at the expense of the local. Although I guess this means if I want to flip to watch the Yankees on a monday off day I don't have to watch YES..

The Second Spitter wrote: Does anybody in the US actually care about this tournament? sure. It's baseball, it sorta counts more than Spring Training. Stadium was more into the WBC game I went to in 2009 than any Met game that season.

Swan Swan H wrote: Josh Harrison of the Pirates, trying to score from second on a single to right, hits Yadier Molina so hard that you could see the cartoon birdies. Molina holds on, but apparently blood is boiling in both dugouts. Unfortunately, MLB Network is showing ChiSox/O's. Blame Beltran. (for a great throw)

Frayed Knot wrote: Ceetar wrote: Compare this to how they've struggled since losing A-Rod, even though he wasn't having a good year. They're 16-15 since ARod went out, although the only really good month they've had all year was their 20-7 June. The other months have been at or just above .500 with or without the Centaur wannabe. Plus this may have something to do with them not really missing him ARod for the season (400 PA) - .276/.358/.449 Chavez for season (250 PA) - .295/.353/.511 Chavez since the ARod injury - .352/.410/.592 True. But they're playing Chavez in a platoon mostly right? They've seemingly done a good job at maximizing that stuff, but with Texiera out they're in an iffy spot. their June should've been what our June was. Actually, if you look at their pitching splits by month, they're woefully average to bad, except June. Specifically the starters.

Gwreck wrote: MFS62 wrote: Now that Shane Victorino has been traded, it will be interesting to see who jumps to the top of our "I'd like to give that annoying Phillie punk a cup check with a sledgehammer" list. Utley is still employed by the Phillies, no? yeah, but you don't need a sledgehammer for that one. Toss him a bag of flour and his knees will crumble like dust.

the chief offensive problem for the mets this year has been that there were too many offensive black holes, and not that too much offensive production came in the form of singles vice home runs. The Mets have not been no-hit this year. But they've been shut out plenty. What if some of those 3-singles games were 2 singles and a home run? Hell, what if it were two singles and a roaring double off the wall, one of those that you have no doubt isn't going to be caught and allows you to score from first even if you're slow? Especially on a young team that's constantly adjusting and learning, as the Mets were and will be next year too, there is value in having that sudden run-scoring ability. When various members of the team go into offensive black holes, they can still occasionally score runs. Doing more with less. When guys are slumping the chances of stringing together hits for multiple runs is tough, but if all it takes is the one swing you might be able to steal 2 or 3 runs. Look at how the Mets performed with Davis being a disaster, compared to how they did with Duda being a disaster. Davis was occasionally putting one over the fence. Obviously it's not the only difference, but it's a factor. There were games Davis won 'by himself' when he was slumping. Duda did not, leaving runners on and if he did occasionally get a walk or a single that fell in, he didn't score because he's slow and he had singles hitters behind him. You could see it early on the season as well, when the Mets were being outscored because they'd score a lot and win games, or they'd score only a few and lose. Randomness suggests that if you've got more well rounded production spread out like that, sometimes it'll fall together and you'll get runs, and sometimes you'll strand a runner an inning. Whereas if you have bigger strikes of production, it puts runs up on the board and strands less. Every non-home run strands a runner. It dictates bullpen usage as well, which played into the run differential early. The Mets didn't score runs, so despite the game being close, lesser pitchers were brought in, putting the game out of reach. Many games where the pitching faltered put the Mets far enough behind that a run or two here and there wasn't catching them up, and Collins would use the back end of the bullpen instead of the front end. He'd take out starters early for offense. This is all without mentioning the ancillary affects of a pitcher's approach to you, even when you're slumping, if they know if they screw up you'll still crush it. Or allowing the opposing manager to keep in a righty reliever and squeak past Thole or Murphy and save the bullpen because even if they singled, they'd get the next guy. Valdespin sucks, but the value of power late in the game can't be more evident. Sometimes these quality relievers only give you one or two hittable pitches an inning. Again, I'm not advocating a one-dimensional Ryan Howard or Adam Dunn, but I think it's important to get a guy that can put up a better than average slugging percentage, and Bourn doesn't impress me. I wouldn't hesitate to predict Murphy to have a better OPS next year over Bourn either. I really, really doubt Bourn will be worth a double digit per year 4+ year deal, and I don't want the Mets to pay him that if it's going to be a tight budget.

well, 20*15 is 300 and a season is what.. 180 days or so? So yeah, most days will have 2 interleague games. and that seems about right to me.

yes, but WAR is a figurative stat. And I question it's precise value defensively anyway, and suspect that it's overrating good defense, and also overexaggerating Bourn's defense this year and it doesn't seem to have any predictive value on his defensive value next year. Plus Bourn gets a (.5 I think) weight for being a center fielder. That, in general, equates in wins in that sense that the replacement level for center fielders is lower and you'd probably be stuck with someone much less valuable than you would if you were to subtract out a RFer, but it's not actually production per-say. Yes, ultimately Alderson's quote of "we need an influx of productive players" is simple and to the point. What i'm suggesting though, is that adding a 5 WAR slugger to the Mets is going to create more runs than a 5 WAR all around player. 5 oWAR anyway, because the Mets need some offense in the outfield, and defense is definitely important, but as we've seen this past week, preventing runs doesn't help you win if you don't score any. WAR is about league average, but I think the Mets generally have more guys on base than league average, so whereas a home run is equated to ~1.95 runs scored, on the Mets maybe it eclipses 2. Obviously, singles will increase in value too, but you need to bunch them up more. If you take a seasons worth of singles and toss them on the board, you are going to end up with a lot of 2 singles in a row, first and third, no one scores. mix in some home runs to clear the bases. I think that's important here. The Mets this year played a lot of games where they did things like get a couple of hits and walk and only scored one or none. When one guy slumped because the hits weren't falling they didn't score. The Mets had so many games recently, and all season, where slumps and bad luck ran together and they only managed a couple of baserunners. if you traded a couple of those singles for home runs, they win a couple more games. Look at what Ike Davis has done for the Mets this past two weeks. (granted he has a 1.143 OPS over the last two weeks. that's productive no matter how you slice it) He was able to take advantage of a pitchers mistake, but instead of it being a hard single or double, and needing the other productive players on the team to line up hits next to his to score, it left the yard and won the game. That's how you beat good pitchers when they're pitching good, which is sort of required to be successful in this league. I don't think Bourn is a good fit, in part for this reason. But it's easy to over compensate too. Davis might hit thirty home runs this year anyway. If the Mets believe Duda is going to take a step forward, and Nieuwenhuis can contribute, they probably do get enough power there. Maybe Tejada does grow into a little power. Maybe the Mets keep Shoppach around, or get Doumit or someone else with a little back up/platoon pop.

They're finally letting Domonic Brown play, 100PA, and he's doing okay. (.270/.343/.382) I don't know why he has 2 o's in his name. That's a pretty low slugging for CBP, but small sample still. His middle name is Larun.

Frayed Knot wrote: But what this does show is that removing even 'the best closer of all time' hasn't really affected the team at all, and maybe that says as much about closers in general than about these specific ones or about the expectations of spoiled fans in particular. Compare this to how they've struggled since losing A-Rod, even though he wasn't having a good year. Soriano, and David Robertson, were good relievers already though. Imagine the praise they'd be heaping on the old guy if they'd had to replace him with Frank Francisco or something.