roger_that

Aren't they just dicking around with job titles at this point? We could discuss the hierarchy of who's responsible for making certain decisions, who's above whom on the hiring/firing ladder, etc. Coaches are subordinate to manager, manager is subordinate to someone who was formerly known as a GM, that person is subordinate to chief of baseball operations , the CBO is subordinate to the President of the franchise, who is subordinate to the team's owner, with various "assistants" and "associates" interspersed between various levels, with the responsibility for certain areas of decision to be determined. All this "titles" stuff is just to make unclear who's responsible for what. The old manager-GM-owner hierarchy was clear enough, and it was clear enough when someone was overstepping his job description. Now it's not.

Edgy MD wrote: Edgy MD wrote: I don't care about the Yankees. Nor do I think the Mets "relied" on the Yankees in any meaningful way when they hired Buck Showalter, for instance. It's a factual question, and not particularly concerned with how much you care or don't care about it. No, the premise that the Mets "relied" on the Yankees is not a fact at all, but very much an opinion. That wasn't the factual part of the question I was referring to, as you probably understand. The factual part is the number of former Yankee managers, coaches, and players whom the Mets have selected to be their managers. You could hardly get more factual than that simple task of counting Mets managers who have worn pinstripes. That's the part that is unconcerned with your caring or not-caring. Whether you accept the characterization of the Mets "relying" on the Yankees for their managers, or would prefer to call it the Mets "drawing upon" or "hiring" or "extending managerial employment to" former Yankees, is a matter of personal style, but one thing I would balk at calling it is "a sheer coincidence." You, of course, may choose to characterize this factual phenomenon in any way that pleases you.

Edgy MD wrote: I don't care about the Yankees. Nor do I think the Mets "relied" on the Yankees in any meaningful way when they hired Buck Showalter, for instance. It's a factual question, and not particularly concerned with how much you care or don't care about it. I find it very odd, damned peculiar in fact, that the Mets have hired so many former Yankees managers, coaches, players to manage their team over the decades, especially considering the animosity that has consistently existed between the teams' fans. It's almost an admission of the Mets' inferiority to the Yankees, a confession that they would, to paraphrase Willie Randolph, like to export the Yankees' winning ways to their sad losing franchise. Just as a matter of policy, I'd rather they had far fewer ex-Yankees managing the Mets rather than far more than you might expect. Have the Yankees ever hired a former Mets' manager, coach, or player to manage their team? Probably once or twice, which would merely be what the odds would dictate, given the number of major league teams. I'd prefer a policy that promotes former Mets, and former ex-other MLB teams, before hiring so extensively managers with a Yankee pedigree. Maybe that's just me.

Has any franchise in history relied as heavily on one team to supply their managers as the Mets have relied on the Yankees? Jerry Blevins is excited:

Awful funny way to spell "Beltran," if you ask me.

=RealityChuck post_id=140535 time=1699226599 user_id=82] The fans stuck with Andrew Young...

You are a more evolved human being than I am. I'm not sure I'd abandon my rationality at 22 games but there is a point somewhere that I'd want to pull the plug, especially if we had potentially good starters in the bullpen or in AAA, crazy as that is. Which may be why it's a good thing I don't have to make such decisions. Strangely, I just read a remarkably apposite quotation from John Berger, who said that as many times as we watch the sun set, we never really stop believing that it's standing relatively still while the earth moves, even the astronomically-trained among us.

How far does your rationality extend? We all (I think) accept that Jake deGrom in 2018 performed phenomenally well and that his Cy Young Award that year was well earned. We cite his bad luck and lousy run support as the primary, if not the sole, reason that he took a loss or a no-decision in 22 of his 32 starts, and could cite his (approximately) 0.960 WHIP and (approximately) 2.10 ERA in those (precisely) 146.1 IP in those 22 starts as evidence of his excellence. But what if he'd been a rookie with no track record behind him, and those 22 starts were his first 22 starts of that season? Would you begin to think of him as a loser, a guy who "didn't know how to win games," a guy who "always found a way to lose"? Forget everything you know about the real Jake deGrom (and the real laws of probability) for the moment. Would you suspend your rational side at that point? (Early August. This https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/NYN/NYN201808030.shtmlhttps://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/NYN/NYN201808030.shtml was his 22nd start of 2018, a 2-1 loss to the Braves in which deGrom drove in the Mets' only run.) If not then, how long would you allow him to emerge from game after game without a W before you'd throw your hand up and cry "I don't care what makes sense, or follows reason, or is logical. The guy needs to be out of the rotation! He's killing us!!" Or are you so wedded to rationality that you'd allow this to go on indefinitely before you'd reach that conclusion?

And the fact that he threw four more pitches than Santana did doesn't give you pause? I just googled this https://www.northjersey.com/story/sports/mlb/mets/2022/05/31/johan-santana-no-hitter-terry-collins-mets-pitch-count/7453024001/https://www.northjersey.com/story/sports/mlb/mets/2022/05/31/johan-santana-no-hitter-terry-collins-mets-pitch-count/7453024001/ to look up Santana's number and it's a little scary. I wonder if that game began the now-widespread practice of prioritizing pitch-counts over no-hitters? Santana went directly from pitching heaven to pitching hell from that point on, and while it may have been a coincidence, and Collins and Santana each insists he wouldn't have done a thing differently, you gotta wonder. The really fascinating part to me, though, is the fact that he threw so many pitches immediately before entering free-agency. IOW, there's no way to get the slightest shred of assurance, like a decent game pitched in his next outing, that it did him no harm. I suppose a medical checkup is something, but Santana probably could have passed a medical checkup immediately after his no-hitter.

Frayed Knot wrote: With the Japanese WS still yet to wrap up, Y^2 pitched the Orix Buffaloes into a Game 7 (presumably tonight) with a 14 K, 0 BB, 138 pitch CG 5-1 win over the Hanshin Tigers last night. Nice way to hit his expected FA period running. Be a pisser if he blew his arm out with that performance, wouldn't it? Kinda reminds me of Santana pitching his no-hitter.

"I'd wonder at times if he could actually tie his own" Well, he could at least complete his own posts. I actually own a hardback book of his, 100 Dumbass Sports Arguments, or something close to that, in which he puts forth a large sample of his style of arguing. You can practically see the spittle flying off the page. Pretty sure I picked it up for free somewhere. I'd be appalled if I paid more than a nickel for it.

By "pays attention," I mean merely that he watches a lot of sports, remembers the names of players, can recite many events from the past, and so on, because that's what he's paid to do. Certainly in some senses he's more "knowledgable" about sports than you or I, though not necessarily about baseball and certainly not about the Mets, but his brain is filled with all sorts of data about football, basketball, tennis, golf that I am very grateful not to have cluttering up my head.

hard to tell exactly how intelligent he is about baseball, mind you, because he espouses so much nonsense that it's hard to pick through it all. Not that hard. He pays a lot of attention, because that's his job, but while I haven't listened to him in years, since he was on FAN with Franscesa, who can make anyone seem smart and sophisticated by comparison, he spouts so much gibberish that he really can't be much more perceptive than he seems. And he seems to be a stupid idiot.

I enjoyed him on the 1962 Dodgers, who could field not one, but two outstanding outfields: RF: Howard, Fairly CF: W. Davis, Snider LF: T Davis, Moon And they were all pretty good in 1962. Each of the six made multiple All-Star teams. Gotta be a record of some sort.

=stevejrogers post_id=140228 time=1698692396 user_id=57] =roger_that post_id=140215 time=1698673067 user_id=128]Bobby Jones

Bobby Jones

Randy Myers. And in a reversal of initials, Mike Remlinger. I thought sure, Kevin Elster made an All-Star team after leaving the Mets, but no. He did have one gigantic year where he hit 24 HRs and drove in 99 runs for Texas (and fielded like Kevin Elster) but, no, that was worth just a Comeback Player of the Year award. Looking up his record, he had a weird career, batting about 100 times in four seasons in his late twenties, which should have been his peak years, with a messed up shoulder, and ending his career with 14 HRs in 80 games for the Dodgers. He has to hold the record for being released by most MLB teams without playing a game for them.

Like Fernandez, David Cone, who pitched a bit for the Royals first.

Jeff Reardon and Hubie Brooks, both multiple All-Stars post-Mets careers.

Joel Youngblood in 1981. Sid Fernandez, another bare qualifier by dint of a brief pre-NY stay on the Dodgers.

Jim Hickman. And here's a weird one I'd forgotten about--Buzz Capra, whom the Mets sold to the Braves, and who made the All-Star team and led the NL in ERA the next season.

To accompany the other thread. Keeping the apples with the apples, the players whom the Mets acquired must have played at least one game for a MLB team previously, and must have made their first All-Star appearance as a Met (not necessarily played in the All-Star game, just made the team, even as a substitute for an injured All-Star, etc.) Ron Hunt, for example, does not qualify, since he played his first MLB game for the Mets. The earliest one I can think of is Jerry Grote. Close-but-no-cigar would be Jim Bibby, who was actually called up to the 1969 Worlds Championship team from Tidewater but did not get into a game. Next qualifier would be Kingman, who never made an All-Star team as a Giant but did when the Mets got him. (Somewhat strangely, Bibby has a SABR-bio, where I learned that bit of trivia, but Kingman has none. Any David Arthur Kingman freaks here are invited to start composing a 4000-word Kong bio.) John Stearns qualifies, barely, by his one game in a Phillies uniform. Pat Zachry was the next.

Keep reading. We should probably establish some parameters, like "no one who became an All-Star after leaving the Mets is eligible if he hadn't played at least one game in a Mets uniform before leaving." This means that Paul Blair for example wouldn't count, since he was only a Mets farmhand when the Orioles picked him up.

=DocTee post_id=140150 time=1698514551 user_id=85] I took the question to mean guys who played for the Mets and were never All Stars for them, but who left and then became one...so Kingman and Seaver wouldn't count?

=MFS62 post_id=140148 time=1698511097 user_id=60] A.J.Burnett