roger_that

And Yankee fans and Dodger fans are giddy that he's not going to be a Met.

Pete will always have suitors. He can always choose to accept a longer-term, more-money contract from any of them than he will ever get from the Mets. If we didn't offer him the six- or eight- or whatever-year deal Boras sought last year, we're certainly not going to offer it to him this year or any year, no matter how well his 2025 turns out. To stay with the Mets, he's going to be on a lucrative but very short term lease from here on in. Or lower his sights on the money he's seeking. But there are always going to be better offers out there.

I think these mostly get erased from memory but some are traumatic, or for some personal reason stick with you forever. Keith had a terrible slump in 1985 or so that I remember because he used a phrase like "lost in a dark forest" to describe it and that image stuck with me. I imagine Keith in full uni with a bat hacking his way through heavy undergrowth. Then Don Zimmer, before my time, had an awful April 0-for-two or three dozen before he got traded to the Reds. And Lindor last year. Any other big or extended slumps that come to your mind?

I'd wait until much later in the season, for two reasons: we aren't sure about our starting rotation yet (so far it looks purty good, don't it?) and we're not sure how far back Alcantara has come from TJ surgery yet. He ain't gonna cost much more in August than he costs in April.

Edgy MD wrote: Being impressed by some aspects of somebody's work does not make them your mentor. It's quite true that Earl wasn't a warm and cuddly mentoring type, nor was Davey your typical eager-beaver "Please, Master, show me how it's done" type, but Earl was his manager for the majority of his MLB career, and he obviously learned a great deal from him (including a lot of what NOT to do, what DOESN'T work). DJ tried to communicate better with his players--it's hard to see how he could have tried to communicate worse or less. But I feel comfortable with the term "mentor." Sort of like Willie Randolph and Billy Martin, another pair of second basemen who had a weird symbiotic relationship. Anyway, to bail from this tedious boat we're on, I'd like to point out how Davey clung to Doug Sisk in 1985--there are numerous passages where he worries about Sisk's effectiveness and lack of effectiveness, offers possible solutions that never work, has frequent and circular conversations with Sisk, puts him in games in critical situations and regrets it, sits him down (and sends him down to Tidewater) in other crucial spots, and regrets it, while DJ's all-knowing readers silently scream at him "Forget Sisk! He's toast! You've got two of the greatest relievers in Mets history! Use them! Bullpen problems solved!" Meanwhile, he's worried that McDowell might be better as a starter, and is concerned about Orosco's reliability. It's an ongoing marriage on the brink of divorce with Sisk--DJ's looking for ways to get the old reliable Sisk back to 1983-84 form, and cursing him out when he walks the world to start inning after inning, but he can't accept that it's over. Similar to Sisk, he's surprisingly dubious about Lenny Dykstra's abilities, as a defensive replacement for Mookie when Mookie gets injured, as anything more than a spray hitter--is he too young, too immature, to be on the MLB roster? Is he an improvement over his other CF options, like Terry Blocker and John Christensen? Again, I felt like shaking the book and screaming "This is fucking NAILS, you dumbass. Just bring him up permanently, and play him in center until he drops dead!" But of course I know all sorts of stuff now that the 1985 DJ had no way to know.

Edgy MD wrote: Weaver would best be described as something less than a mentor to Davey. Not according to Davey. He says his first manager, Hank Bauer, was a nincompoop (who won in 1966 due to dumb luck), and then he praises at length Weaver's attitude in managing players and confronting umpires and manipulating lineups and rotations, and then (after a stay with the Braves which he glosses over, other than noting his freaky HR mark a few times) he was gone from MLB, so I don't know who you'd pick as his mentor. Maybe no one?

[media=youtube]dRj9fRnRMVA[/media]

I wonder how long someone with Siri or Acuna speed could keep them chasing him down. A minute? Four minutes? Here's another perspective. Gets the well-deserved "Ass-HOLE!" chant at the end. 26K views · 649 reactions | We’ve got a streaker on the field for the... WWW.FACEBOOK.COM We’ve got a streaker on the field for the Mets game 💀 (Via MetTheMemes / X) #nym #mets #nymets #mlb #baseball #newyorkmets #lgm #juansoto #queens #lfgm #streaker #fyp 26K views · 649 reactions | We’ve got a streaker on the field for the... WWW.FACEBOOK.COM We’ve got a streaker on the field for the Mets game 💀 (Via MetTheMemes / X) #nym #mets #nymets #mlb #baseball #newyorkmets #lgm #juansoto #queens #lfgm #streaker #fyp

Seriously, much of this book seems quaint, both in strategies and tactics. Well, it was forty years ago. Davey's first PC probably didn't have a hard drive but rather just two floppy drives. A:\ and B:\. If it did have a hard drive it was probably no bigger than 20 MB or so. Yes that's an 'M.' Well, yeah. You might suppose that what got me started was the 40th anniversary thing, but it was just the 0th anniversary of me spotting the book in a used book store. His take on tech was very critical of his mentor, Earl Weaver, who made some weird decisions on the basis of some notecards he kept on pitcher/batter matchups. Correctly, he mocks Weaver for relying on what came to be called "small sample size"--he would sit Don Baylor down, Davey claims, based on going 2-for-10 against someone, which drove Baylor crazy. And rightly so. But Earl thought he was way ahead of every other manager because of those little index cards.

And one of the most (unintentionally?) funny blurbs I've ever read on a book jacket: "He's a great manager. But a very tough man to read"--Keith Hernandez I'd give Keith high marks for a witty put-down, but I doubt he was being witty.

He was a very forward-thinking manager in his day, but his day now seems impossibly distant. Seriously, much of this book seems quaint, both in strategies and tactics. And Davey's use of his young players and his musings about them is at times hilariously off the mark.

=Fman99 post_id=188848 time=1743934744 user_id=86] clutch work by Lindor to drive that ball deep enough to plate the winner.

Glad Lindor and Soto are not running the team. I would go for a package of young arms, any 3 pitching prospects in the system, plus one position player--Acuna maybe (though I think he has a tremendous upside) or Mauricio or someone of that sort--but not a package of several position players.

My number one principle is don't trade prospects for pitchers. Very tempting, I know, but a bad enough idea to reject across the board (unless you can get a really ace pitcher for prospects you no longer believe in or who are redundant in your system, and even then I'm only lukewarm on the idea.) The Mets under Stearns seem to have embraced this principle, which is the reason I like the way they think. Pitchers are too dependent on one part of their body to build your club around them--better to strengthen your offense through trades and long-term contracts, and build a staff by signing FA pitchers to short-term deals, plus promoting young pitchers from within your system and/or swapping them out for FA pitchers whose team want to unload the remainder of their contracts. I don't mind swapping young pitchers on the same principle that pitchers always get hurt anyway.

Benjamin Grimm wrote: Kranepool to be referred to as an Original Met. Complete bulllshit. He was playing high school ball when the 1962 Mets started MLB, for chrissakes.

As you can see from the "How will he thrive" thread, I'm probably the most hopeful one here about Baty's upside. I look at the two spring trainings and the good numbers at AAA, and safely conclude that he's a big-time big-league hitter running into persistently tough luck and some adjustment issues. I'm concerned that they'll impatiently swap him out for a #4 starter who'll give you maybe 10 good games per year for two or three years.

I tried finding a picture that I could use as an avatar, but every one I chose from my hard drive was WAY too big. Finally though I sorted them by size and she was the only pic that I was allowed to post as my avatar. Unfortunately though I have no idea who she is. I found her in my "ancestry.com" file, so she is probably related to me somehow, a fourth cousin nine times removed or something, but at least she's not Mr. Met with that big stupid grin I had up there before. KC said if I sent him a photo, he'd see if he could get it posted, so I sent him a shot of Baty fielding a ball with his face, but he must have been busy because so far my great-great Aunt Tootsie or whoever she is is still up there. >

=batmagadanleadoff post_id=188702 time=1743710345 user_id=68] Keith is a baseball god who's bad with numbers.

Oh my god. If I told youse that Baty would go hitless in yesterday's game, could youse ever have imagined that the Mets would win? Just shoot me. It ain't just Baty, and it ain't just yesterday. Lindor looks more helpless than he did last year, which is barely possible. Did you hear what Keith said when he thought the mic was cold?https://www.audacy.com/wfan/sports/mets/hot-mic-catches-keith-hernandez-lamenting-mets-bats?utm_campaign=www.audacy.com%252Fwfan&utm_content=1743687545&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter&utm_term=WFAN-AM&fbclid=IwY2xjawJbw0BleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHe5rmtZsRHE2xDX2LrKgM4ImwOmfn6zksZmyW4-2xwL7pBEIEqlhHmq42w_aem_wiQJ-AFLY3liRXeTYh3HaQhttps://www.audacy.com/wfan/sports/mets/hot-mic-catches-keith-hernandez-lamenting-mets-bats?utm_campaign=www.audacy.com%252Fwfan&utm_content=1743687545&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter&utm_term=WFAN-AM&fbclid=IwY2xjawJbw0BleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHe5rmtZsRHE2xDX2LrKgM4ImwOmfn6zksZmyW4-2xwL7pBEIEqlhHmq42w_aem_wiQJ-AFLY3liRXeTYh3HaQ

Edgy MD wrote: Somebody is always slumping. I am certain that few expected Baty to open the season on fire, and it took several injuries to get Baty to the starting line at all. Well, there's "slumping" and there's "absolute suckitude"--another few games of this, and we will be approaching "absolute suckitude." Should we start a contest for who will break out first? I fully expected Baty to open the season on fire, and still expect him to, eventually. But when? Baty was on fire all spring, remember? It wasn't just injuries that got him to the roster--he was far and away the best hitter in Port St. Lucie. That has to count for something. It's a little bit funny: either you believe that Baty's last two spring trainings are an illusion, a fluke of small samples and lousy sub-MLB pitching, or you think they're significant and and you pray that the Mets don't give in to that thinking and swap him out for a bag of rancid bologna. I'm in the latter camp.

...that we'd open the season with Lindor, Vientos, and Baty deep into terrible slumps, how many games would you guess we'd have won by now? I'm stuck between "0" and "maybe 1."

Thanks for the weird history lesson. This is some kind of three card monte scam. They have no plausible rationale for keeping it at this point just some general notion of 'popularity' that runs contrary to every fan I know. I record games and fast forward through commercials so I had to rewind when I saw Soto standing on second-- WTF he just made the last out!!

ghost runner bullshit. Wasn't this peddled originally as temporary? And now they've made it permanent? Or was it introduced as "Now and forevermore you're stuck with this insultingly dumb shit"? I forget.

Flipflopping Winker and Vientos? What's up with that? Also, batting your DH 8th? I thought your DH was supposed to be a good hitter.

Benjamin Grimm wrote: I think it was more about McNeil than about Lindor. McNeil's wife was pregnant, too? They had plenty of options if they were thinking Lindor's good for 162 but we need a 2b man. Baty's a lefty like McNeil, so he could fulfill his role just fine. Acuna's the only one, I think, who could step in at short (as he did in the fall). I'm just wondering if knowing that Lindor would miss a start or three, depending, in early April made their decision for them.