roger_that

One of the names I was trying to remember re: Baty was that of Hank Sauer, who was not regarded by the Reds as a MLB hitter though they kept on giving him brief chances to show his stuff. Sauer became a regular at age 31, was swapped out to the Cubs, and hit a ton of HRs in his 30s, winning an MVP Award at age 35. Sometimes you've got to give a guy opportunities to hit when he's demonstrated an ability to hit in the minor leagues: Sauer had a .975 OPS at AAA (Syracuse, as it happens) at ages 28 and 29 before he cracked the MLB lineup.

Now, all-time Seaver killers include Rick Monday (11 HR, 1.247 OPS in 86 PA), Stargell (8 HR, .855 OPS in 140 PA), and Willie Davis (.998 OPS in 108 PA). Not to mention Art Shamsky: 2-for-2, 1 HR, 4 RBIs, and 3.500 OPS. Beat that with a stick.

Frayed Knot wrote: - Chicago slugger Billy Williams, who Seaver often had trouble getting out, Not particularly: .247 BA, 1 HR in 95 plate appearances.

I lost an extensive post due to being logged out after I'd been logged in (how else could I have composed my post?) so I'll summarize myself: all five starters have now started 7 games, and they're remarkably close in IP but not in results. The two furthest apart in results, Canning (5-1, 2.50) and Peterson (2-2, 3.52) are almost identical in many stats including WHIP, 1.389 and 1.383. Oh yeah, just remembered this: Canning's W-L is on pace to end up 23-4 or 22-5, halfway between the two.

In other words You're delusional.

Frayed Knot wrote: =roger_that post_id=191916 time=1746632828 user_id=128]Pete's ratio has returned to its historic norm, more Ks than BBs. The more Ks than BBs is accurate (and was probably inevitable), but his ratio so far this season is still markedly different than any other in his career. His 'historic norm' is about 2.3 Ks for every one BB and only the 2022 season saw his ratio inch below 2:1 [128 K / 67 BB = 1.91]

With 3 Ks and only 1 BB last night, Pete's ratio has returned to its historic norm, more Ks than BBs. He's also slipped below 150 RBI on the year.

.292/.391 over 2,500 PA over six+ seasons as a Met I've always numbered the Mets' disappointment with Magadan among their many errors of judgment. Yeah, he didn't field as well as Keith (like anybody has?) and his hitting wasn't absolute top-rank, but he was a decent first baseman and they should have hung on to him and repaired some positions where they had terrible players instead. They have a history of making this mistake, failing to recognize some good home-grown players who fell short of star status, and getting rid of them because of their frustration.

That is too bad. Winker's spirit (to say nothing of his hitting) gave a certain energy to this club. I do hope that something good comes out of this, though, maybe something beneficial to the team in the long run--that is, Baty responding to this opportunity to become the Mets' regular lefthanded DH (and extra middle infielder) with some solid hitting. Call me a cockeyed optimist, but that's exactly what I think will happen.

With 36 games played, Pete's new total of 9 HRs makes projecting his season's final total fairly easy, just over 40 HRs in 162 games. Similarly easy eyeball-ready stats are Soto's 27 BBs and Runs, which work out to a hair over 120 of each, and Vientos' hits, also 27. Luisangel Acuna has struck out 18 times in 36 games, despite which he's off to a very good start. With last night's victory, Canning has risen to the team lead in wins. His 5-1 record works out to 22-5 or 23-4 (halfway between the two). Aside from the W-L, he and Megill share a number of stats at this point: starts (7), IP (36) ER (10) E.R.A (naturally) (2.50), BB (15). Surprisingly, Canning has a 1.0 WAR at this point while Megill has exactly half of that WAR figure.

By that measure, they should be calling up Jon Singleton who has a .923 OPS this year in Syracuse. Maybe. But Singleton's an old, slow 1B-man, which they really have no use for, who has a significantly worse record than Baty in MLB. Baty has some upside--if he hits (which I'm very hopeful he will) you've got a very useful infielder going forward. If Singleton hits, you've got an old, slow guy who can play 1B and corner OF on the downside of his career. What measure do you think the Mets should be using?

Despite our stellar record to date, we're actually doing worse by the Pythagorean method, which puts us about two games better (24-11) than our record of 22-13, mainly because we've won several blowouts but very rarely lost a game by more than a run or two, which is an earmark of very strong teams. Close losses are mostly due to bad luck, though some people like to point to poor managerial decisions or a weak bullpen, neither of which seems to apply at all to the Mets so far this year. If you get the bases loaded with the heart of a strong lineup due at the plate in the late innings of a close ballgame, as happened yesterday, the odds are that you're going to score a lot of runs, but sometimes you don't, merely by the odds. Unless you're a subscriber to the "character" issue in baseball, which I'm not, sometimes you just have to walk away from a close loss with a shrug and "We'll get 'em next time" because the odds are that you will. I just read Rob Neyer's substack last month where he discussed Gil Hodges' boost into the Hall of Fame based on his managerial skills (he's against Gil in the Hall, but not vehemently). One of the things he cited was Gil's teams' performance in one-run games, which he shows was very strong in 1969, but not in other seasons, suggesting the Mets were lucky in 1969 rather than, say, being managed especially skillfully. Here's his nut-quote: after going 26-37 in one-run games in 1968, in ‘69 they went 41-23. Of course their run differential was also better in ‘69: +91. Still, how do you win 101 games with a +91 run differential? Well, again: You go 41-23 in one-run games. That's most of it. He then shows how, in later seasons, the Mets did NOT do well in one-run games under Hodges, so he concludes that we were a very lucky team in 1969, which we were. Of course, Gil's supporters maintain that 1969 is just icing on the cake of his career.

According to Mendoza, https://www.mlb.com/mets/video/carlos-mendoza-on-jesse-winker-s-injury-5-4-loss Winker looks like an IL situation. Fortunately, the Mets have a left-handed hitter down at Syracuse who's batting .300 with an .864 OPS who has https://www.baseball-reference.com/register/player.fcgi?id=baty--000bre major league experience.

Makes all the sense in the world.

Despite our stellar record to date, we're actually doing worse by the Pythagorean method, which puts us about two games better (24-11) than our record of 22-13, mainly because we've won several blowouts but very rarely lost a game by more than a run or two, which is an earmark of very strong teams. Close losses are mostly due to bad luck, though some people like to point to poor managerial decisions or a weak bullpen, neither of which seems to apply at all to the Mets so far this year. If you get the bases loaded with the heart of a strong lineup due at the plate in the late innings of a close ballgame, as happened yesterday, the odds are that you're going to score a lot of runs, but sometimes you don't, merely by the odds. Unless you're a subscriber to the "character" issue in baseball, which I'm not, sometimes you just have to walk away from a close loss with a shrug and "We'll get 'em next time" because the odds are that you will.

The good news is the Mets are still on track to win 100 games. 101.8, to be precise. We're now playing .628 ball. But getting back over .700 will be tough. If we start a 9-game winning streak now, we will inch back over .700 again (.704). Even short plateaus have a way of bringing a team down to earth quickly.

Pete has now inched over the 60 doubles in a season pace, at 60.2. Theoretically, he's within striking distance of Earl Webb's mark of 67. He currently leads the major leagues in doubles. His previous high-water mark was 31, set last year, and he looks pretty solid to break that personal record.

That's his job, to be out there and get hammered. MLB.tv is advertising this one as their free game of the day, but when I go there, it looks like I need to sign up and all I can find is various pricing on their different packages. Anyone know how to watch it (out of market) for free, or is this just some sort of scam? It certainly isn't very clear how to do it, if I can do it. We got it on MeTV. We won't see tonight's obviously Is that like MLB.TV? I just noticed that out of market MLB.TV claims to have one free "game of the day" but I'm baffled how to use that feature. Has anyone here ever used that? As with many "free" things, there doesn't appear to be an easy way to use the "free" thing without signing up to some site that makes you pay to register.

Starting to get exciting here, bases loaded, one out in the 8th

Looks like some AAA lefties are going to get their shots sooner than we'd thought. Of course, this is why you want to have superfluous players sitting on your bench, in case a team develops a need for one of them as soon as a sudden need of yours (like lefty relievers) presents itself. The question now is which teams have enough good lefty relievers to be able to afford losing one of them in exchange for McNeil, Marte, Baty, etc.? A more radical approach, assuming none of the AAA lefties are acceptable and no meaningful trades present themselves, would be just to go without lefty relievers. Felipe Alou tried an all-righty bullpen one year when he was managing the Expos, as I recall, and did remarkably well with that gamble.

That's his job, to be out there and get hammered. MLB.tv is advertising this one as their free game of the day, but when I go there, it looks like I need to sign up and all I can find is various pricing on their different packages. Anyone know how to watch it (out of market) for free, or is this just some sort of scam? It certainly isn't very clear how to do it, if I can do it.

Well, there's Bob and then there's Bob.

OK, I'll bite: what are the limits on both?

One thing that stands out to me is the anomaly of Alonso's year so far. It's not only his best season by far, but his numbers are wacky given the type of hitter he's been to this point. For example, he had a K/BB ratio of better than 2 to 1 thru his first six years, but this season he has more BBs than Ks. On a scale but not quite an order of change, Nimmo is also, like Alonso, giving strong indications so far (stress on "so far," of course--we're still in small sample-size territory here) of changing his basic game from that of a fabulous OBP guy with sporadic power into a terrible OBP guy with very good power, beginning at age 30. For Nimmo that's last season, for Alonso, that's this one. The conventional wisdom is that Nimmo is deliberately changing his approach because he batted at the top of the order until recently and now is batting in the second third of the order consistently, but I don't know how any batter changes his approach to the game so easily. The vast majority of hitters are what they are, and can only tweak but not change their game quite so radically. We'll need to see if this is really a change or just a sample size anomaly.

One thing that stands out to me is the anomaly of Alonso's year so far. It's not only his best season by far, but his numbers are wacky given the type of hitter he's been to this point. For example, he had a K/BB ratio of better than 2 to 1 thru his first six years, but this season he has more BBs than Ks.