Elster88

]Do you really thnk a columnist can write erroneous speculation as fact day after day and still retain the minimal redibiltiy he needs to do his job? Yes. We discussed this with Healey.

Yancy Street Gang wrote: As I've said before, I don't care if they spin. I don't care if they lie. If denying an impending deal makes it, or a different deal, more likely to happen, then more power to them. The Mets don't owe me anything at all. There are hundreds of organizations and companies that get more of my money than the Mets do. Paying attention to the Mets is an entertainment. A diversion. I'm not going to get outraged about what they say, who they trade, or who they put at any one position. I'm not 12 years old anymore. Well said.

No need to apologize. It was a stupid post in the first place.

Yeah that reminds me, thanks for reposting what I deleted. Helpful as always.

Please don't call me Ellie.

MadDog wrote: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA, COME ON, JD! You CAN'T be the Mad Dog because I AM The Mad Dog! You can't give up on a guy like Lastedge Millings! Unless you're trading him for Barry Bonds. You gotta make that deal. Mad Dog, don't you know that you start your shows with the word "And" drawn out? AAAAAAAAAAAAAANNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNND

Johnny Dickshot wrote: OTOH they still think Milledge for Zito is a good deal, so I haven't become a complete maniac. Mad Dog, at least didn't think this was a good deal. He said he wouldn't even trade Milledge for Willis because "I don't like trading an everyday player for a pitcher." Among the reasons he didn't like trading an everyday player for a pitcher when the players are so close in relative skill level, age, and upside is because a pitcher's arm can sponataneously combust at any time.

Not guilty.

In what other sports forum would you come across the word curmudgeon? What happened to the Scrabble thread?

Yancy is keeping a count of the magic number and WP wants to remove the Braves from Triple Happiness in May. I'm surprised the SBS Princess hasn't been driven to baseball therapy yet.

It can't take that much to get him if he's owed all that much. I'd rather wait and see what else pops up as the trade deadline draws near.

That's a great thread.

People like Angel Hernandez and one of the math professors at my alma matter are the problem with tenure.

Yup. I understand the way that one big hit can make people forget the rest of the game, but almost triple is too much of a difference for me.

old original jb wrote: ="Elster88"]old original jb wrote: To me, it seems that the presence of not one but three excellent setup men (Sanchez, Heilman, and Julio) is having a huge impact on games. A little early to call Julio excellent. He's been better of late, but that doesn't mean the first few appearances never happened. Maybe it's wishful thinking, but he's been good in the past as well. Although your point underscores my point that it is not a good idea to weaken the bullpen. I hope he's better too, but his good year that you refer to was in 2001, so I'm not holding my breath. But you're right, to put it in context of the original discussion, it does underscore your point that maybe we shouldn't pull out Heilman while the pen is doing so well....and while we're not sure what Julio is going to give us. But, as someone else noted, we're at the point where we're looking at using our eighth-best organizational starter, not even counting Heilman. And personally, I'd rather Pelfrey and Soler get some more work in the minors. It's a tough call and there are arguments both ways. I'd lean toward leaving the bullpen alone for now, myself.

I understand that Nady's home run blew the game open, but 1-4 with a HR should never be worth almost triple 4 hits.

old original jb wrote: To me, it seems that the presence of not one but three excellent setup men (Sanchez, Heilman, and Julio) is having a huge impact on games. A little early to call Julio excellent. He's been better of late, but that doesn't mean the first few appearances never happened.

Johnny Dickshot wrote: A more lucid take from Rubin's Blog: ]By the way, Peterson has long felt betrayed by the "10 minutes" comment being leaked. But I have it on good authority that he also felt it was purposely misrepresented to shift the blame to him after the ill-fated trade. The pitching coach was asked if he could correct a specific mechanical issue with Zambrano's delivery, and he answered on an internal conference call with that comment. Just a CYA paragraph written for Peterson by a blue-and-orange-Piazza-footie-jammies-wearing-Met-fan sycophant. That fucking bum should never have said anything in jest because every word you ever speak should be taken completely literally and referenced every day for the rest of your life. (SC = very high)

Comedy gold was the picture used in the TEN!!!! thread.

]And I tend to think this is one of the dumbest and more outrageous traditions in baseball -- the idea that a strike zone is an expression of the umpire's personal taste. Me too! That's why I like Questec....or any tool designed to make the strike zone match the rule book. Shouldn't a strike be an objective call and not a subjective one? And that's why I loathe when a pitcher like Schilling (or Glavine) talks/talked trash about Questec. Behind the crying was this basic idea: "I've been getting balls called strikes by incompetent umpires my whole career. Why should the rules be enforced now?"

How could any movie that is not a porno about the Mile High Club have this title?

Done. 21 Grams, too.

]For those knocking the lack of forsight of the Benson trade: 1) hindsight is 50/50 For me, at least, this is not hindsight. ;-) I don't know why everyone didn't realize that someone in the rotation was going to get hurt at some point. ]2) If Julio continues in his current form, a very mediocre and expensive starter looks a lot more replaceable to me than the third anchor of the best middle bullpen in the league I disagree completely, for the following reasons: A rotation is not going to go injury-free the entire year. It'd be nice to have a mediocre starter to replace the hurt guy instead of a John Maine, Jose Lima, Jeremi Gonzalez, or two guys with a combined 3 starts at a level above A ball. Benson is really not that expensive. "Very mediocre starters" go for a lot these day, and are actually quite hard to find. See: Benson Bunch archived thread and, http://cybermessageboard.ehost.com/getalife/viewtopic.php?t=3262&start=36 ]On the free agent market 8 - 12 million per year has been getting you AJ Burnett Kevin Millwood Jarrod Washburn Matt Morris Jeff Weaver Kenny Rogers Anyway you slice it, we have two big question marks out of 5 starters. (I include Bannister.) Out of Bannister, Maine, Lima, Gonzalez, Heilman, Pelfrey and Soler, there are exactly zero proven major league starters (Lima stopped being a proven ML starter two years ago). Whatver you want to call Benson, you have to admit he is a proven major league starter. Would you rather have four starters be proven major leaguers or have a (for the sake of argument, we'll use "very good") a third very good setup man? On top of that, our other three guys are older fellows, with one being a very average pitcher. You don't think one of them is going to go down at some point this year? Pedro misses three weeks every year. At that point we've got a question mark filling in for our stud, instead of the current situation (a question mark filling in for a question mark).

]- Maine is, of course, shot until at least 2 weeks from yesterday (Sunday the 21st vs MFY) Can't they retro-DL him back to his start? That's only buying a couple of days, but it could help.