Thursday Applesauce

by Eric Simon on Aug 28, 2008 2:33 PM EDT in Applesauce Comment 22 comments

Billy Wagner threw on flat ground yesterday, though his timetable for return is still "week-to-week" per Omar Minaya. If the Mets can stick it out and make it to the postseason without Wagner, it's conceivable that they could have their best reliever back in time for the playoffs. That may be a big "if", but it's hard to be terribly optimistic about Wagner's outlook at this point.

Newsday's Wallace Matthews attributes Carlos Delagdo's resurgence to Willie Randolph's firing, suggesting that perhaps Delgado is more comfortable under Jerry Manuel. Maybe. Delgado *is* hitting .285/.375/.603 since Randolph's ouster, though most of the prominent Mets have improved offensively since then.

SI (via AP) breaks down MLB's replay central in Manhattan.

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Wallace Matthews is some kinda logic genius

In the early morning hours of June 17, following a rousing 9-6 victory over the Angels, Mets manager Willie Randolph was fired along with two of his coaches.

Exactly 10 days later, Carlos Delgado embarked on a hitting tear that, more than two months later, shows no sign of ending.

Hmmm.

“Hmmm” indeed. Isn’t there a Latin motto for this kind of thing? Something about post hock, helicopter hock?

by anonymous on Aug 28, 2008 2:40 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

Basically

It’s that whole causality/coincidence conflation (CCC? C3?) I mentioned the other day. Media types are in love with it for obvious reasons: it’s easy and makes for good copy.

by Eric Simon on Aug 28, 2008 2:44 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

so its not true

that going bowling in the morning causes you to go to school and murder a bunch of your classmates?

by kendynamo on Aug 28, 2008 2:50 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

All sports writers

should be required to take a basic statistics class. Political pundits too.

by ams258 on Aug 28, 2008 4:21 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

but this isn't even statistics, it's just basic rational thinking

I took an umbrella with me, and then it didn’t rain. Do I really need to know what a p-value is in order to realize that I didn’t cause the weather?

by anonymous on Aug 28, 2008 5:13 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

It doesn't?

Then why did I kill all those students back in high school?

by BobbyV_Incognito on Aug 28, 2008 11:23 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

and, nice piece on the replay war room

For the 20 to 30 games each year with no telecast, MLBAM already is sending its own production truck, with six-to-eight cameras.

Really? There are regular-season major-league baseball games that are not televised? I had no idea.

by anonymous on Aug 28, 2008 2:45 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

wow, that is really surprising.

We've got ourselves a ball club, the Mets of New York town!

by kingcritical on Aug 28, 2008 2:49 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Yea

The Saturday, 8/1 game between the Tigers and Devil Rays wasn’t televised. Apparently it fell within FUX’s broadcast window and they elected not to televise it. I’m guessing a number of other teams have a game or two that met the same fate, and since they don’t have their own regional sports network their fans get short shrift.

by Eric Simon on Aug 28, 2008 3:06 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

8/2, that is

by Eric Simon on Aug 28, 2008 3:07 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

yeah, weird

There must be two teams that don’t have their own cable channel (or where a channel has the option) and when they play each other, it wouldn’t be televised. Or a channel has the option and wants to show 60 yo Honeymooners eps instead b/c Sea/KC wouldn’t get great ratings.

by mmxii on Aug 28, 2008 3:11 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

great detective work by wallace matthews

yep, thats got to be it. no way its just a coincidence. not due to delgado’s BABIP steadily rising since the beginning of the season. or the full moon that also occurred 10 days after randolph’s firing. or any number of other wholly unrelated things that happened around the time randolph got fired.

what a god damn idiot. coincidence does not mean causality you jackass.

it would be one thing if it were hard to look up baseball stats but this is inexcusable. its this guys job to figure out whats going on with the mets and the best he can do is a ‘mere conjecture’ (in his own words!)? maybe if i had a deadline to meet every day for the last 20 years i’d get lazy too. whatever, matthews sucks it the fat one.

by kendynamo on Aug 28, 2008 2:49 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

it could be real

I thought Delgado was possibly the guy who taunted Willie saying "I’ll be here longer than you will.)

If they really had a beef, CarlosD could have been sandbagging or maybe he was off his game because his fiery Latin temper was raised by Willie “disrespecting” him.

by mmxii on Aug 28, 2008 3:16 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

C

I think Delgado has too much respect for himself and the game to purposely give it less than his best. Maybe his fractured relationship with Randolph weighed too heavily on his mind and that affected his performance adversely, but I find it hard to believe that he would tank intentionally.

by Eric Simon on Aug 28, 2008 3:25 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

plus it's an option year

is getting revenge on a manager you dislike worth millions of potential dollars?

by kendynamo on Aug 28, 2008 3:49 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

bwahaha

The idea of Carlos Delgado having a “fiery Latin temper” cracks me up (as I’m guessing you meant it to). He’s probably the most mellow, placid, thoughtful guy on the team. I heard him on the WFAN pre-game Mets Extra the other day and thought he ought to have a Charlie Rose-style contemplative talk show when he retires.

by anonymous on Aug 28, 2008 3:26 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

yeah

I don’t really think it was conscious on his part either. But I wouldn’t discount the possibility that if he was unhappy because WR was being too critical (or not critical enough) or not supportive enough, his performance might suffer.

It wouldn’t really explain his low BABIP, though. But the shift might do that.

by mmxii on Aug 28, 2008 5:54 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

not only

is this Thursday an off day, but the next two Thursdays are off days, too.

Who are the ad wizards who came up with that one?

by mmxii on Aug 28, 2008 3:12 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

While that is bad logic that Matthews was using...

There were rumors that one of the veterans on the team really didn’t get along with Willie, so it does seem like a natural conclusion to draw that the guy who had a conflict was the one who was hitting like shit early in the year and went on a huge tear later. I’m not saying that makes it true, of course.

by JoshNY on Aug 28, 2008 5:49 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

I'm shocked by Matthews article

Not by the whole correlation-is-causation fallacy: I expect that from hack sportswriters. I’m just shocked he broke through the wall of “Randolph is a martyr” that the nitwits like him, Celizic, Larry Brooks, etc. trotted out after Randolph was fired. After all, Willie was a True Yankee with championship intangibles. He must have been a good manager, but the Mets are all too much of a bunch of losers.

The True Yankee crap is why nobody, but nobody, will dare hold Derek Jeter at least partly responsible for the Yankees season. Instead, they blame (who else?) a guy with a damn-near 1.000 OPS who, once again, has been the best player on that team.

Vote change: DePodesta/Acta in 2009!!!

by Greenpoint Ian on Aug 28, 2008 11:16 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

Jeter v Rodriguez

Maybe cos it’s more fun to rail against the guy making $28,000,000 this year instead of the guy who’s making “only” $21,600,000? A True Yankee Fan can’t root against The Captain, when he so unselfishly accepts less money and jumps backwards before throwing more often than that more capable hitter and fielder who should have been the starting shortstop for the Yankees since the day he moved into town.

Or something like that. Men of wisdom; men of compromise.

'Catsmeat!' he cried. 'I see it all. It was that chump, Catsmeat.'

by Catsmeat Potter-Pirbright on Aug 29, 2008 12:06 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

A-Rod

Normally, I’m inclined to defend A-Rod in much the same way as I find I often have to defend Beltran on here. But this year in particular, A-Rod has met all the negative media cliches about him. Consider his performance in a variety of situations. Overall for the season, his OPS is .976, which is, obviously, excellent. However, he’s been poor with runners in scoring position, with an OPS of .801. With the bases loaded (small sample size alert), his OPS is.282 and he’s grounded into two DP against one hit. He’s been a god when he’s come up with one team ahead by 5 or more runs (OPS 1.337). In situations that B-R.com defines as high leverage, though, his OPS is .772.

Now, it deserves mention, of course, that a bad split for A-Rod (other than the bases loaded split over just 11 PA) is still better than Jeter’s overall OPS for the season (.758) and would constitute a pretty good level of production for, like, 75% of the league. But this year, at least, he HAS performed worse in situations that might be deemed "clutch.

Which still doesn’t, of course, equate to some sort of character flaw that idiot writers might want to label him with.

by JoshNY on Aug 29, 2008 11:13 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs