roger_that

Frayed Knot wrote: Problem is that HF advantage matters little in baseball and the whole 'rested pitching staff' edge isn't exactly working out as planned. If you're right--and I don't believe you are--then we must question some longstanding principles of baseball, and indeed of sports if not of life, to wit: rest matters little to athletes (so we might as well play our best players until they drop, or close to it, give our closers 140 or 180 IP per year, our veterans 160+ games started, etc. because their clear superiority to lesser players must outweigh the negligible advantage of resting them), teams lose as much as they gain from days off (so why not play 162 games in, oh, about 140 days counting doubleheaders, and eliminate the misery of chilly early April games and frigid early October games?), the whole five-man rotation fallacy, etc. Or you could accept the much more likely possibility that THIS YEAR, in a small sample size, HF field advantage isn't yielding its usual result so far.

I think I'm going to put myself on a posting moratorium for a few days, maybe a few weeks. I don't want to be repeating myself, or getting into arguments I can never make any progress on, until you folks learn how to process your grief, or even to acknowledge it, so I'll take my leave for a while now. Thanks for everything. You're a good bunch of guys and gals, with rare exceptions, and you don't seem to be getting much benefit from my unusual perspective.

Edgy MD wrote: That's a lot of sarcastic misrepresentation and utter nonsense directed at your fellow posters. Deal. Some losses are more acceptable than others. This was one of the more disgraceful. If you want to pretend that it wasn't, and all is good in your never-failing appreciation of the Mets' consistent excellence, then I'm probably going to hand you some shit from time to time. And you're probably going to call that shit "sarcastic misrepresentation and utter nonsense." Doesn't begin to make your characterization true, though you will get a lot of "That's telling him, Edgy! You go, girl!" on this site.

Can we vote?

I've never in my life heard so many people expressing their pride in getting one-hit at home in a do-or-die playoff game that the Mets never once threatened to take a lead in before. I can only imagine how proud and pleased you would be if the Mets had gotten no-hit and the Padres had set an all-time record for runs scored. ....................................R H E SD. 12 3 3 5 2 1 0 3 6....35 31 0 NY .. 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0......0 0 4 Hey, we really held them to a fun competitive game there in that classic 7th inning, didn't we? LGM!!!

A Boy Named Seo wrote: These brief playoffs were nerve-wracking, ultimately disappointing, but absolutely fun. I would take these playoffs over no playoffs 100 times out of 100 because baseball is fucking FUN. Nah, they weren't even good games. Well, Game 2 was a good game, NOT because the Mets won it but because it got nice and tense there in the 9th as the Padres loaded the bases down by four and with Diaz out of the game. THAT was good baseball and even though it was not a good spot for the Mets, I can see where you could describe it as fun. They didn't JUST lose. They got lit up, humiliated, totally outhit, outpitched, outfielded by a team that is, frankly, mediocre itself and missing a major player in its lineup besides. The Mets clearly showed their bona fide credentials as just another so-so team that let its opponents walk all over them in their home stadium. If these had been exciting, interesting nuanced games to watch but they happened to come out on the wrong end, I'd grant you room to spout this silly stuff about "fun" baseball.

On one level, a binary decision to acquire serious DH and/or C upgrades at the trading deadline can now be evaluated. They decided No, we've got this in hand with what we have, approximately, and we can now see that as a decision to take aim your own foot and fire away. Second guessing? No, I think there were a lot of voices crying out at the time that were all shouted down by the "We've got this in this bag" crowd. You can file that under "bad luck" if you want to badly enough, but I don't think that's even close to a correct analysis. You could also file it under "shit happens" or "baseball is supposed to be fun" or "get a life," too, but I prefer to take hard looks at what went wrong when things go wrong. Things went horribly wrong.

The Mets were tremendous this year. They won 101 games -- and with deGrom and Scherzer combined, missing close to an entire season -- and getting the kid glove hothouse flower treatment for a good chunk of their active stretches. That's how you measure a team -- by the 162 game regular season. Playoffs are just a spectacle. The regular season is William Shakespeare and the playoffs are Archie comics. It's a gimmick. The Mets were favored to win this year. that's in part because projections systems underrate the Braves, particularly their rookies, because there's no major league data on them. So when they preform better than even reasonable hope, it makes the Braves better than projected. But that's a nod to the Braves system and a knock to the Mets one, who couldn't get Vientos, Baty or Álvarez up here to contribute even when they needed offense at those positions. This is a failure both of the dev system, and of the leadership that makes these decisions. They also didn't truly address their holes at the deadline, making marginal bet around the edges, which mostly felt like shoring up a deep playoff roster...except the Mets didn't have a deep playoff roster, so their "this is a really good platoon guy, and gives us flexibility!" additions get overused, and they struggled. So favored, again, and they lost the division, again. The goal of the regular season is to win the division. They failed, miserably. Having multiple chances to do it, even going back to May 4th, when they got drummed in the final of 4 with Atlanta to split that series. They were 6 back instead of 8 after that win. Those early wins matter too. If they'd won the regular season and lost in 3 to the Dodgers, you'd be pissed, but it would've been a successful season. This year? this was a failure. And now there are a lot of moving parts for next year, and there's been no indication that this team has the personnel or willingness to expand the budget to piece this together. Not only do you need to spend a ton of money, you need to spend it in the right places. You can't just give Aaron Judge a billion dollars and pretend that fixes the offense. Spot-on analysis.

Yes, the point is that the Mets are celebrating such a fun performance at the crucial part of their season, and how we're all having such a jolly time today, celebrating their magnificent job of rising to the occasion when the season was on the line. I understand.

=ashie62 post_id=110832 time=1665361119 user_id=90] Why put a mike in his face there?

You'd be singing --well, warbling off-key and forgetting most of the lyrics--a different song if the Mets had won the World Series this year. Then it would be all "It's the playoff system that really tests your mettle," and blah blah blah. It never ceases to amaze me how you can rationalize any weak bullshit and come to the conclusion "We actually did very well this year" whatever the facts tell you. The fact is the 101-win season didn't mean a damned thing--it didn't mean the Mets were dominant, it didn't mean their pitching was their secret advantage over the rest of the league, it didn't mean they were a well-run organization, and it certainly didn't mean that Cohen's wallet would get them the players they needed when they needed them. If character meant anything, they would have found a way to eke out a single win during the nail-in-the-coffin Atlanta series, one win that would have made all the difference now, and if they had pulled out a single win when they needed one so desparately, i'm sure you would be citing that win as a sure sign of the character of this fabulous team. What does that one win's absence tell you? Not a lack of character, that's for sure, which tells me that your way of evaluating character is deeply, deeply flawed. If you object to the term "character," fine. I'm probably with you on that, but this team lacked something in the end. And whatever else you want to call that lack, you can't just call it "luck" and skip off on your merry way. We're going to see a whole new version of the Mets next year, but I will guarantee you two things: 1) they will have the highest payroll in all of baseball (again) and 2) you will do anything to ignore fundamental ways in which that team is mis-run.

Probably a coincidence, but I haven't had a drink in 63 days, and I just cracked the seal on a fifth of Jack Daniels. Gonna be a long winter.

Never close.

What are they saving Alvarez for, do you suppose?

You're right, it's not embarrassing. "Humiliating" is more precise. "Disgraceful" also comes to mind.

Naw, this is fun baseball. It's all good.

=bmfc1 post_id=110936 time=1665366171 user_id=73] Diaz should have started the inning.

The last time this year for the heart of the order? The Mets don't score this inning, and it's up to the bottom of the order guys.

=bmfc1 post_id=110780 time=1665358318 user_id=73] He's trying to politely respond without saying anything that could make headlines.

scoreless, hitless, fruitless...

Edgy MD wrote: I don't want to make too much of this, but aren't you off the bandwagon anyhow? no, rooting for the Padres yesterday seems to have worked out for everyone, so I'm back on.

Edgy MD wrote: Guillorme, McCann, and Alvarez all get through the series without seeing a start. Signifying what? That Buck hasn't lost his mind?

Lefty Specialist wrote: He and Buck really need to have a heart-to-heart if they make it to the next round. And say what? If I'm Buck, I go, "If you're hurting, I'm going to take you out at the first sign of the Dodgers getting to you, and I'm going to have another starter warming up just in case before that point. Season's on the line here, and I can't take a risk if you're getting banged around. But if you're good to go, and there aren't physical issues to be concerned about, I'm going to keep you out there as long as possible. Which is it?"

I'm objecting very specifically to the wording "This is fun baseball." I don't think I'd have nearly as much problem with Pete Alonso saying "This was a great game," although it wasn't, not in the sense that Rose meant. BTW, I doubt very much, without checking, that Rose was playing 1b on the 1975 Series. I remember that anecdote as Rose reaching first, though that could be wrong as well.

The fuck. The one thing you tell any player going into a pressure situation is, go out there and have fun. Do you really, truly want him to say, ”holy shit were all worried. Literally shitting literal bricks. I'm going to go to the plat tomorrow with such a tight grip on my bat that I'll squeeze it into diamonds. We're fucked we know it and we're gonna play like it. Lfgm” Is that the sound bite you'd prefer? My personal preference? Something like you'd imagine Michael Jordan saying with his team facing elimination following a brutal loss. Or Bob Gibson. Or Lawrence Taylor. The word "fun" is nowhere near their ultra-competitive, angry mouths. In fact, no word or person is near their mouths in that situation because it would get bitten off and chewed up and spat out. There is a HUGE difference btw between a manager saying to his team in private "Go out and there and have fun" and a player telling a reporter "This is fun baseball." It's so huge I can't conclude we understand the same language if you really think they're the same. P.S. After I posted the above, Howie Rose tweeted that tonight is John Lennon's birthday and Jerry Grote's--two of my alltime favorites. I was trying to think of the Met whose competitiveness was on a near-toxic level of Jordan or Gibson or Taylor, and I forgot about Grote, the most pissed-off, angriest, most competitive Met ever.