roger_that

Almost the same spot as Pete's

And this is a must-win game, too, with Alacantara going tomorrow.

Barely fair, but it counts.

Edgy MD wrote: I don't think we know as much about stolen bases as we think we do. And I don't think 75% is the real break-even point. Indeed, I think that point shifts a lot over the course of a game. No stat measures absolute constants through all games, but when you steal less than 75%, your gains are minuscule (or non-existent)and below 65% you are hurting your team. I wrote 75% as the point at which you're definitely helping your team. Stolen base attempts, per team, are down significantly over the past few decades, and SB percentages are up, marginally, over that time. Teams are looking for small edges, and here they've identified one thanks to sabrmetrics. Before 1980 or so, you'd get people who couldn't steal bases trying 10 or 20 times a year, and getting thrown out over half the time. Now, not so much. Probably amounts to a gain of less than a win per team per year but every edge counts.

It flicked the very edge of his bat. Imperceptibly, but I guess it's the ump's job to perceive things like that.

Frayed Knot wrote: What the hell happened there?!? First guess would be that Mrs. Lofton got a little too friendly with Richie Sexson (6'7", 230) when Mr. Lofton was his teammate on the 1999 Indians.

What Moneyball (sabrmetrics, actually) did was quantify small things that no one considered important before because measuring them was difficult and it was unknowable how much each one affected winning, if it did at all. So we let managers, in particular, play hunches and do all sorts of wacky shit because we couldn't say for sure that it was wacky or that it was shit. But now we can--so SB attempts are way down (because we now KNOW that if someone can't steal bases at close to 75% success, you don't send him), small ball strategies are much reduced, the complete game has died, etc., which were all (plus fifty more) resisted at first because we've always played hunches and done weird shit. Now, not so much. A few holdouts remain, but very few. Moneyball popularized sabrmetrics, dumbed it down for the masses, but exploiting market inequities is winning baseball, and ignoring it is for losers. Where I think the lightbulb went on over people's heads was that each of these market inequities is tiny, a percentage point or two of winning percentage at most, but there were so many of them that they did add up to the difference between making the playoffs and not.

The Marlins announcers are always putting Nimmo's power down. "That was only his eighth HR this year," as if 8 is very few for a leadoff hitter halfway through the schedule.

I like the regularity of Buck's lineups. He's found slots for players and players for slots.

Great grab by Nimmo in dead center, warning track. Catch of the day. He's been at a Gold Glove level all year.

Castano's a low-K pitcher, Nimmo a low-K batter, he got him struck out twice tonight.

Miami announcers ripping Rojas for trying to nail Lindor at 1B, but a throw on target would have nabbed him. Single, E-6, no RBi but a run scores

Good Nimmo at bat. Works him for a hustle double, RBI

Edgy MD wrote: Also, nice pick by Lindor, but his lack of urgency almost let Berti beat that out. Damned close. Thought Berti beat it out at first glance.

Rojas stretches a single into a double, sprinting out of the box. Kept his eyes on Marte the whole time, too.

Not sure how the count of threads in the Baseball Forum has shrunk itself back to 1935 but I'm not starting a new 1969 thread when that number approaches again. In the Seaver chapter, the story of June 15, 1977 is well summarized and well-told, from specific dollar amounts down to the Ruth Ryan fakeout that Dick Young perpetuated on The Franchise: After Seaver won in Houston on June 12, the Mets offered to extend his contract so that it would be comparable to a free- agent offering elsewhere. He would receive a three- year extension which included a pay raise to $300,000 in 1979 and then to $400,000 in 1980 and 1981. On June 14, one day before the trading deadline, Seaver contacted McDonald to halt trade negotiations with the Reds. He planned to remain a Met. Conventional wisdom suggests that if something sounds too good to be true, it often is. After he agreed in principle to a three- year contract extension with the Mets, the ordeal appeared over for Seaver. However, as he read the Daily News on the road in Atlanta, he became appalled by the latest offensive launched from Dick Young's typewriter: “Nolan Ryan is getting more now than Seaver, and that galls Tom because Nancy Seaver and Ruth Ryan are very friendly and Tom Seaver long has treated Nolan Ryan like a little brother.” As Seaver told Bruce Markusen years later, his welcome mat with M. Donald Grant had finally run out. Incensed that Young would pull a false punch aimed at his family, Seaver bolted in search of public- relations director Arthur Richman. “Get me out of here!” he ordered Richman, “and tell Joe McDonald everything I said last night is forgotten.” One thing was going on here, looking at those contract figures, is that while Seaver was justified in seeking a huge contract and multi-year deals, baseball salaries were accelerating so fast at the time, that the Mets would have been smart to meet his "demands" at every step of the way. They did just that, as I recall, which is what got them and Seaver into this predicament. I believe Seaver had asked for a gigantic salary. and got it, before 1977, but the problem from his perspective was that the top salary in baseball got left in the dust, and so he asked for the "three-year extension which included a pay raise to $300,000 in 1979 and then to $400,000 in 1980 and 1981." The sticking point here, as I recall, is that by 1981, 400K was peanuts and Seaver would have again been badly underpaid, yet he would have been getting what he was asking for in the winter of 1976-7. I guess the answer was to keep extending his deal, one year at a time, at top dollar. M.Donald Grant was an idiot, of course, not to jump at Seaver's demands and sign him instantly for what he was asking, but he played it wrong, dragging negotiations out, and making nasty remarks in the press to the effect of "He's under contract now, and we don't sign multi-year deals because we could lose money if Seaver's arm falls off, so ha ha ha on him." But it really wouldn't have taken very much, in terms of either money or of smarts, to lock Seaver up for life. And this chapter sums a complicated situation up very neatly.

The Hot Corner wrote: Horrible loss! A great return by Max Scherzer, but the Mets noffense squandered what should have been a great night for the Mets. In the cool light of day, it's not that horrible. Horrible game, of course, but in the long run our offense is good, and the great showing by Schezrer means there will be many more games like that from him, and more than a couple of runs on the board.

Makes you wonder....

Boy, did that suck!

=Fman99 post_id=98448 time=1657074379 user_id=86] Lugo on back to back nights. Ugh. And pitch #1 goes up and out into the void

Last one!! (someone else can start future years when their thread numbers crop up) but I wanted to start threads for the Mets' two championship years, in the hope that people other than me will contribute to them. I assume, logic being what it is, that CPFers have fresher memories of the 1986 squad than the 1969 one, and that that team is closer to your hearts as well. So be it, but for me they're both special years, the 1969 Championship a little more special because it came so completely out of the blue-- I'm a little awestruck by Davey Johnson's crew as well. Of course, we may have talked that squad to death already, with not much to be said, in which case this thread will stand as a numerical placeholder on the CPF--I just didn't want any other threads to stand as the 1969th or 1986th thread.

It's been a while, that's true.

Well, I left NYC because I was tired of sitting in traffic. When I think of all the hours I spent on the Cross-Bronx alone, or waiting in the toll lines at the Whitestone Bridge....

I mainly enjoy books about Mets history for nostalgic reasons. I don't often learn new things from them, mostly I get reminded of things I once knew but have forgotten (Shamsky's memoir provided some welcome exceptions--there were at least four stories I'd never heard before) but there was a detail in the MIRACLE HAS LANDED book that totally caught me by surprise, that of Ed Kranepool's first appearance on a Mets roster, in a Mets uni, ready to play in a major league game. I had thought for sixty years that Kranepool first appeared as a late September callup, and this is verified by bbref.com which lists his MLB debut as September 22, 1962 but I just found out that he had been put on the active roster the week he signed with the Mets, and flew out to Los Angeles—his first plane ride—to join the Mets, who were facing the Dodgers on June 30. This was a big day in Mets history, actually, or MLB history anyway since Kranepool's first day in a Mets uniform was only a harbinger of what his experiences would be in those early years with the team, as he watched Sandy Koufax no- hit his new teammates And he nearly got into that game, too, as manager Casey Stengel went to the bench late in the game, but passed over the rookie in favor of Gene Woodling. As with my mystification about Jack DiLauro's spot on the 1969 Series roster when, because he appeared in no games, he doesn't show up on official records, I wonder where I could get documentation. There are other "ghost" Mets, who appear on the official roster but never played a game as a Met, but they're all, as far as I can recall, spring training guys, or guys who were acquired in November and traded in December, or maybe they were acquired but chose not to report or something of the sort (?) but Kranepool is the only player I know of who sat on the bench for a week or so in full uniform prepared to get into a game but did not. (In June or July--he later did make a few appearances in a Met uniform.) I'm satisfied that Kranepool's ghostly incarnation is accurate (he apparently has been describing it in print for decades) but where are things like this documented? I suppose I could look in old newspaper files or the like, if I were really curious. I think Kranepool is the only signee this happened to, but I could be wrong. Anyone know if other players signed a contract out of high school and reported to the Mets as members of the 25-man team other than Kranepool? It seems kind of nutty, in retrospect, a nineteenth-century sort of thing, one step above hauling guys out of the grandstand to play a MLB game. I wonder who vacated a spot on the roster to allow Kranepool onto it.

Not much traffic between them, though. And no bridges or other impediments, either. Straight shot on I-95. I've made both trips many times, and it's longer but it seems shorter, I guess. I've never driven from Yankee Stadium to Citi in less than 40 minutes.