The Mets Are Who The Computers Thought They Were
by James Kannengieser on Aug 5, 2010 2:32 PM EDT
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PrintFlash back to March 2010 and the release of the season projections. You know the acronyms: CHONE, PECOTA, etc. The consensus projection for the Mets' record is in the 75-80 win range. Vegas is the most optimistic, predicting an 80-82 record. Dave Allen at Baseball Analysts plotted the win projections for NL East teams:
Now return to present day. The Mets' record stands at 54-54, an even .500. Injury hasn't ravaged the team -- the major contributors from the Opening Day roster have barely missed any playing time. Underachievement by the corner outfielders and second basemen is offset by the emergence of Angel Pagan and R.A. Dickey. No significant trades have occurred, so personnel turnover is rather low, except on the fringes of the bench and bullpen. Given the preseason projections, and our knowledge of true talent level variation, the Mets' performance is thus far exactly as expected. Yet lack of effort, playing without "urgency" and mental weakness are being blamed by media and fans for the Mets' problems, based on reading other blogs and fan reaction on Twitter. Maybe I need to stop obsessing over fan perception of the team and its players. Regardless, in the long run, talent trumps everything. If you think this team is at .500 mainly because its players don't have enough grission, then, to quote MFNY, "youah lawst".
If the team is expected to win 80 games, and does indeed win 80, great! The players, as a whole, lived up to expectations. If the desire is to win 90-95 games, then it's management's job to acquire players with the talent level to accomplish that. Barring a minor miracle, the 2010 Mets will not win 90+ games. Faulting the players for not magically discovering 10 more wins is misguided. Don't blame the players. Blame the front office.
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Were those calculated including a healthy Beltran
I think that a healthy Beltran would have pushed this team above the .500 mark for sure. An outfield of Bay-Pagan-Beltran would have to outperform the Bay-Pagan-Franceour by far.
by Sitebot'sGrisson on Aug 5, 2010 2:36 PM EDT reply actions
they were calculated assuming Beltran came back way earlier than he ended up coming back
I believe
I want Jerry Manuel fired now, not three years from now. That is my stance.- John Peterson
This is one of the hilarous parts of the mets fan base
every year they claim projections for players/the team are underselling them and build up expectations of 90+ win teams, every year when the projections end up being right they assume it’s because the core players suck and the team isn’t playing with enough heart.
I want Jerry Manuel fired now, not three years from now. That is my stance.- John Peterson
by Gina on Aug 5, 2010 2:39 PM EDT reply actions 3 recs
Yeah, you would think the core getting injured
last year would show them how flawed the team is without them. Instead it gave our FO a free pass. Really this season is going exactly how I expected and I really think that the Mets getting lucky and just missing or even making the playoffs would be one of the worst things to happen for the Mets long term-wise.
I agree and disagree at the same time
When I saw the prediction (and thanks for the clarification regarding the OF before thats an even more disheartening picture than I thought it would be haha) I made a rather piss poor assumption: that the team would make moves to root out the underperformers to make up for the last 3 years of heartbreak. That the Castillo, Franceour, Jacobs, Cattananto etc of the worlds would be replaced if need be with Davis, F! (thought oops on that one), Evans etc if the need arose instead of keeping the below replacement player personnel on the team.
I was wrong.
by Sitebot'sGrisson on Aug 5, 2010 4:44 PM EDT up reply actions
To be fair, this is generally true
of almost all sporting fan bases when faced with early success followed by regression to the mean.
the difference is that the Mets fan base doesn't seem to require early success before inflating its expectations
That’s why the WFAN-caller types seem to exist in a state of perpetual, angry disappointment.
Again, that's not unique to Mets fans either
Sports talk radio is littered with that stuff from fans of every team.
Not really.
In the south I found things to be very different. Even in SEC football it’s a little less stark and tragic than with Mets fans.
but im talking about before the season starts during the off-season
and how many of them then turn around and say the best players their teams have produced in decades are the problem?
I want Jerry Manuel fired now, not three years from now. That is my stance.- John Peterson
disagree
Dickey has been great, but I’m not sure the OF is any better than it was expected to be, Bay has severely underperformed, power-wise especially. Pagan maybe approximates what Beltran would’ve, minus a couple more home runs, but it’s still a net loss.
Even if you assume Santana/Pelfrey combined would be right around where they are now, Niese has been better than expected. I don’t think it was unreasonable to expect an above average performance, 12-10 or around his career average, from Perez theoretically rebounded from injury. Sure, Dickey’s been much better than what we probably hoped for out of a rejuvinated (that wasn’t true anyway) Maine, but overall I didn’t expect the pitching staff to be worse than it is. The bullpen is better than I expected though, I’ll give you that.
But they’ve just come off a month of playing miserable baseball to get back to what the computers said. Miserable baseball. Had they played as the “.500” team they were, they’d have maintained the 10 games pace. They are not more likely to play worse baseball after a winning streak to balance it out. Just like there is nothing saying that they’ll counter this losing streak with a winning one and go back to 6-7 games over.
There is too much on this team obviously underperforming to say this is just what they are. Reyes, Castillo, Beltran, Bay, Ike (can’t really say with him, but personally I thought Murphy would probably be at least what Ike is right now, it’s not too far off from what he did last year. )
It’s not hard to look at games and wonder “If Manuel played things more normally, they’d probably have won some of these” or “If Bay was hitting even half the home runs he normally does, we’d probably not have wasted that pitching performance.” From there, things like confidence probably do play in. You press, you struggle, and stress. Certainly not optimal conditions. Reyes missed like 30 games, Beltran 100, Murphy the whole season (and we had Jacobs for a couple weeks, not Davis) Maine, Perez, Niese missed a couple of starts..there have been plenty of injuries.
-Ceetar, the Optimistic Mets Fan
Eh, Maine and Ollie getting injured helped us so I dont think they're good examples.
After that, every team deals with some 15-30 Day DLs and has starters miss an occasional start. Losing Murphy in hindsight might’ve hurt us much more than I thought if he could’ve played a mediocre 2B.
I would have more to say in response
But for now I’ll just point out that Reyes has missed 15 games this season and Niese’s FIP is right in line with his preseason projections. Maybe a little worse actually.
And it’s less fact and more opinion, but a good year from Ollie Perez, sans velocity, is a huge longshot.
by James Kannengieser on Aug 5, 2010 3:10 PM EDT up reply actions
I'm sure we could go on and on and on
Well, Perez was coming off injury. I thought the projections were using too much of his 2009, where he was pitching hurt, and not enough ‘prediction’ as it were. Sure, his velocity wasn’t there in Spring, but it WAS getting better. I figured with a little regular pitching and building up his arm he’d get back to roughly where he was. maybe 12-12 or so. Regardless, I’m not sure any formula can predict how a player’s body will respond to injury/recover ,just like you couldn’t predict Reyes’ thyroid or how he’d recover from it or how long it would take.I was a little bit more optimistic in Perez’ recovery than the numbers, and sure, that’s opinion, but I’m not sure it was that much of a longshot.
Reyes did only miss 11 games due to the oblique, but I’m not sure how much those right on right starts count, not to mention what he wasn’t doing in terms of timing and infield drills.
-Ceetar, the Optimistic Mets Fan
his velocity really wasn't getting better
he’d been declining for years, the injury was more than likely an excuse to stash him on the dl because of his horridness.
I want Jerry Manuel fired now, not three years from now. That is my stance.- John Peterson
surgery?
I don’t think he had surgery just so they didn’t have to pitch him the second half of last year..
-Ceetar, the Optimistic Mets Fan
Sorry for the cliched response to this,
But they’ve just come off a month of playing miserable baseball to get back to what the computers said. Miserable baseball. Had they played as the ".500" team they were, they’d have maintained the 10 games pace. They are not more likely to play worse baseball after a winning streak to balance it out. Just like there is nothing saying that they’ll counter this losing streak with a winning one and go back to 6-7 games over.
You’re kind of missing the point here. The Mets were built like a .500 team. By definition this means that the odds of the Mets winning are just like the odds of a coin flip coming up heads. Since the Mets play 108 games, here is 108 coin flips:
After a hot start, my coin is two games over 500. The coin isn’t “balancing itself out,” it’s just that in a larger sample size the true talent level of the team is more likely to show itself.
by Sokojoe on Aug 5, 2010 3:11 PM EDT up reply actions 6 recs
that coin really fell off after being 29-11 after 40 games
I blame coins’ inherent lack of grission
by JoshNY on Aug 5, 2010 4:13 PM EDT up reply actions 3 recs
I blame the guy responsible for managing the other guys who were tossing the coin.
In lobby campaign for Chris Carter.
Also known as the guy who weighted the coin...
Not all coins are fair.
162.
well, then maybe we should wait for the whole sample before saying the computers are right?
This is like measuring 162 random pieces of wood. After 100, we have 50 that are five feet long. Does that mean that half of them are five feet long?
Baseball however, while it does contain luck (which is never going to be 100% measurable, and I don’t think we’ll ever get close) isn’t a coin flip. the difference between a .500 team and won that wins 87 and competes for a playoffs spot is merely 6 flips. 6 games. The team could make the playoffs and you could still say the computers were basically right, the difference between the Dickey surprise and Maine was the difference in this team. But that’s way too random for me to say “yeah, computer’s got it right” much more than I’d believe 162 coin flips deciding how the Mets would fare.
-Ceetar, the Optimistic Mets Fan
by Ceetar on Aug 5, 2010 4:51 PM EDT up reply actions 1 recs
The point is not to say "the computers are right, long live the computers"
But rather the Mets’ mediocre play thus far shouldn’t be a surprise. This wasn’t a team projected to win 90+ games, by any measure. Yet people seem shocked and overly disappointed that they’re at .500 right now. See this.
If this team does win 87 games it also wouldn’t be a shocker. If the win talent is 80 games (hypothetically), the chances of winning 87 is probably somewhere around 15%, give or take.
by James Kannengieser on Aug 5, 2010 5:01 PM EDT up reply actions
the road
I think the “I’m tired” thought process is more a result of the road traveled to get here rather than the specific destination that everyone knew we’d probably pass by.
The last month has been disappointing. I also wouldn’t describe most of the play as “mediocre”. it’s been worse than that.
I thought .500 was the bottom of the barrel, personally. I thought the team was more talented that, and they certainly haven’t played to the talent level I thought they had going in. But I watch the games, and I watch Manuel do some odd stuff, some silly bunts. I watch the team, last night, seemingly come unraveled mentally. I watch the Mets play a man short on the road when they’re not winning, because they won’t use K-Rod, and I wonder how much these things end up affecting the overall win total of a season.
I think the management/coaching of the team, and the way the entire roster has been handled has pushed them closer to the 81 mark than the 87-88 mark. It was never projected to be a ‘great’ team, and hence these little decisions that seem to be wrong have a bigger impact.
-Ceetar, the Optimistic Mets Fan
Agree with the sense of your last paragraph.
With good in-game management, and good management of the 25-man roster along with a couple of solid in-season acquisitions and this was very easily a 90 win team.
The waste is simply pathetic.
Agree with this too...
When you have a team that can win over 100 games, bad decisions take on greater importance because the measure of “success” is skewed in organized sports that don’t have a full-bracket or round robin playoff. In terms of post-season, a 60-win team is generally in the same boat as a 90-win team. The real issue is typically a few games around the margins. I am slightly perplexed by the comparisons between “predictions” by oddsmakers and a fair coin flip. Predicting a .500 team early in the season is an imperfect comparison to the semaphore for mathematical equality, given the number of variables present. For every sure thing in gambling, there is a former heirloom sitting on a shelf on Pawn Stars.
I predicted before the season that the Mets were not likely a playoff team, but could be if everything played out right. Even during the hot streaks I refused to get too excited, but did enjoy winning baseball while it lasted. For a middle-of-the-pack team management needs to be more than adequate, it needs to be excellent. Even assuming that a manager’s decisions affect the outcome of 5% of games (and due to thinkgs like BP management and lineup I think this may be a low figure), that’s still a 60-48 record now assuming Jerry is as bad as we all think. I think that this, and not so much the streaks, are the reason for frustration.
by MookieTheCat on Aug 6, 2010 7:10 PM EDT up reply actions 1 recs
Niese hasn't really been better than expected
and did anyone really believe Ollie was injured?
Also I’m pretty sure .500 teams go on hot streaks and then horrible streaks, thats why they’re .500 teams, I can’t think of any team that’s literally going 2-2 every 4 games or something.
I want Jerry Manuel fired now, not three years from now. That is my stance.- John Peterson
I think this is one of those times when statistics are actually just counter-intuitive
I’m starting to think there’s really nothing you can say to someone who believes in streaks that will convince them that “random noise” is a simpler, more Occam’s-Razor-friendly explanation than complicated psychological/cherry-picking stories about “hot” players or bad clubhouse influences or whatever. You just have to believe in randomness first rather than seeing patterns everywhere. It’s a big leap of faith for people who like to have explanations for everything.
Maybe a simpler explanation...
Is killing Cleveland and Baltimore on the road, and getting killed by everyone else on the road? Also, how does this explanation explain home-field advantage? I understand the Law of Large Numbers, but I also believe that when dealing with things that ultimately and necessarily involve the interaction of large numbers of variables, looking for explanations with few explanations are self-defeating. Scientific testing involves isolating variables. For that reason baseball can rarely be analyzed by scientific methods. While predictive theories based in math can be useful, there’s always the Mariners.
I honestly have no idea what you're talking about
Yes, obviously, winning baseball games is a complex, multicausal phenomenon. No, that doesn’t give us carte blanche to handwave away the difference between meaningful empirical explanations and made-up superstitious psychobabble.
and just in case anybody is wondering-----
Fred said today that Omar will be back and that Jeff has been doing a “terrific” job. Soccer, anyone? Unbearable.
I thought the club was a 500 team during Spring Training
It’s just the weird journey on how we got to that point. We were red hot in June and exceptionally bad in July. I guess I shouldn’t have been that surprised that we’d be a streaky 500 team based on our lopsided talent leaving us more prone to it.
no, wrong, totally wrong
its because the guys getting paid millions of dollars a year haven’t gotten it together and stepped up their game. our core needs to start suck it up and carry this team.
maybe if the FO cared about club house chemistry finding players with real passion for the game, these grown men and professional athletes would finally realize they are supposed to give one hundred and TEN percent.
nice try robot man, maybe try a new computer next time.
HELLO HELLO MR WILPON... BUY THAT MANSION. WE DONT NEED A CONDO.
by kendynamo on Aug 5, 2010 2:57 PM EDT reply actions 2 recs
That's the maddening thing when talking to my family or the MSM
We’re literally 3 players away from being the Pirates or Royals. Each has one real stud, a couple good players and than a world of hurt. And yet people like to blame Wright or Reyes… wtf?
I wasn’t expecting much more than a .500 finish this year, but I think there are positives we can take from this season, specifically the emergence of some key players. Dickey of course has been the most pleasant surprise, and despite being 35 could still have a number of productive years left in the tank. I hope that his recent success isn’t just a fluke; in my opinion he has finally mastered the knuckleball and his ability to change speeds and throw it for strikes is why he is finally having success at the major league level. I’ve also really liked what I’ve seen from Niese. Pagan has emerged as a legitimate star. I hope that next season and beyond we can build on these positives and the team can be a legitimate contender.
The team won't be a legitmate contender
without changes in ownership and the front office. What you wrote about has been true every year of the Minaya-Wilpon clusterfuck, yet we’re to believe that something happened this year that means next year they’ll change their approach? They haven’t changed, obviously they haven’t learned, and the team won’t contend.
Sorry about that.
I Agree
Yes I actually do agree. There are plenty of deep seeded issues with the organization that need to be addressed very soon for the team to be legitimate contender. I was pointing out some of the isolated positives. When the team I am rooting for is losing the one thing I can take enjoyment in is the success of individual players. I remember in 1995 when the team finished 69-75 I still really looked forward to every fifth game towards the end of the season when Jason Isringhausen started. It was exciting and I felt I was watching the start of something special, both for Jason and the mets. I was only 15 at the time so I was naive enough for that kind of thing to feel really special. Now I am lot more jaded but it is still nice to watch players break out and perform well, even if the organization as a whole can’t put it all together.
Someone on Twitter pointed this out, but it fits perfectly
Mets record after 54 games: 27-27
Mets record after 108 games: 54-54
As Bill Parcells would say, you are what your record says you are
I’ll admit though, after interleague, I didn’t think there was a chance this team was going to be .500 again
Of course, talent wins out in the end and the Mets simply weren’t built with enough of it.
There is no hope.... there is no future....there is only GRISSIONZ
The 2010 Mets- Hey, we may suck, but what did you expect?
by Syler on Aug 5, 2010 3:16 PM EDT reply actions 3 recs
mediocrity defined. mediocrity thy name is wilpon.
by jdon on Aug 5, 2010 7:10 PM EDT up reply actions 1 recs
Can you imagine what that halfwit's team's record would be
if he had only a league average payroll to play with?
Clearly
the projection systems take the lack of heart and grissionz into account.
You don't cheer for the Mets. You drink for the Mets.
The Mets' continually lofty expectations from the MSM, in many respects
are solely a product of playing in New York and having the media (and their management) over-hype the team. If the same team was in Milwaukee, or Kansas City, or Pittsburgh, or wherever, the “New York Media” would dismiss them as a .500 team as a result of their talent, whch is exactly what they are. In fact, they’re not unlike a team like the Brewers, which has a few stars (Fielder, Braun, Gallardo, Weeks) but awful complementary parts (like their entire pitching staff except Gallardo).
by dontstopbelieving on Aug 5, 2010 3:28 PM EDT reply actions
well it's also a product of having
arguably 3-4 of the top 10 players in the NL on our roster the last 4 years, the problem is we’ve surrounded them with absolutely nothing.
I want Jerry Manuel fired now, not three years from now. That is my stance.- John Peterson
And that's why it's literally unthinkable that by the end of the season, we'll have missed the playoffs every year.
John Olerud, Hall of Famer. Got a nice ring to it.
Agree going into the 2009 season, but
going into this year I think the MSM had it right: the Mets were going to win 78 to 84 games.
Projections have nothing to do with the manager, I imagine
So I’m curious as to where the 5 or 6 wins went that Jerry supposedly costs us. Honest question, no bating either way. I have my opinions, but am curious to know how many more wins you guys would think this team would have if Tom Tango was the in-game manager.
It's more than just the in-game decisions.
It’s Manuel’s choice to use what leverage he has to put Mejia in the bullpen for a couple of months instead of pushing for something sane like keeping Perez and Maine in extended Spring Training once April rolled around.
Earl Weaver could win 90 games with this team. The talent is there. Add in a good GM with another $15-20m in payroll to spend and they’d be up around 95 wins.
"Earl Weaver could win 90 games with this team"
No, he absolutely could and would not.
There is no hope.... there is no future....there is only GRISSIONZ
The 2010 Mets- Hey, we may suck, but what did you expect?
where would the 3 run hrs come from?
also, interesting tidbit: mets have 86 hrs, nl league average is 102
I.M. Forme
"When you get yourself into trouble is when you feel you have to do something, and then you get yourself in trouble." --Omar Minaya
none of these machines thought Bay and Maine were going to be the busts they have been
and therefore we are overperforming them in that sense. Othe other hand, the machines also never heard of the marvel that is RA Dickey and to a far lesser extent Tak II. Overall I think I enjoyed Matrix III a bit more than the Mets season this year.
let
"It’s just everytime we think the bar can’t get lower, they lower it. Now next year we’ll just be happy to hear that rogue shirtless officials aren’t implementing useless detrimental drills in spring training for no apparent reason."
-Gina, 3/1/10
by Greenpoint Ian on Aug 5, 2010 4:12 PM EDT up reply actions
let's not forget Pagan
please ignore that slip of the “enter” key above
Angel Pagan has been light-years ahead of where I think we all expected him to be, so I think he and Dickey cancel out Bay and Maine and voila!: the Mets are right where we expected them to be.
"It’s just everytime we think the bar can’t get lower, they lower it. Now next year we’ll just be happy to hear that rogue shirtless officials aren’t implementing useless detrimental drills in spring training for no apparent reason."
-Gina, 3/1/10
by Greenpoint Ian on Aug 5, 2010 4:13 PM EDT up reply actions
lightyears?
I’m not sure ‘light years’ is the correct measurement. Only in the sense that he wasn’t necessarily projected to the the full time starter. (not sure how much Beltran was projected to miss in the predictions) Pagan batted around .300 in the two half seasons as a Met before this season, so while He’s definitely doing much better than we would’ve hoped, I’m not completely surprised.
-Ceetar, the Optimistic Mets Fan
oh yeah, my mistake
I guess I buried the train wreck that was the 2009 baseball season so deep in the back of my mind that I didn’t realize what a fine season Angel had that year. I think I was looking at his 2006-2008 numbers and drawing my conclusions based on that.
"It’s just everytime we think the bar can’t get lower, they lower it. Now next year we’ll just be happy to hear that rogue shirtless officials aren’t implementing useless detrimental drills in spring training for no apparent reason."
-Gina, 3/1/10
by Greenpoint Ian on Aug 5, 2010 5:07 PM EDT up reply actions
FWIW
Preseason CHONE projection had Pagan at a .762 OPS and 2.0 WAR in 317 plate appearances, for a WAR/600 of 3.8.
In reality, he’s at an .846 OPS in 417 plate appearances, for a WAR/600 of 6.2. The WAR measurements are inexact but even if you just look at offense that’s a significant jump. Larger than the gap between Jason Bay’s projected performance and actual.
by James Kannengieser on Aug 5, 2010 5:12 PM EDT up reply actions
Pagan is currently an MVP candidate...that's def a surprise to me
Most people expected some good numbers, but not like this
by Mike Clemente on Aug 5, 2010 6:30 PM EDT up reply actions
the machines liked Pagan I believe
I want Jerry Manuel fired now, not three years from now. That is my stance.- John Peterson
whoever put the enter key next to the apostrophe key
is from hell
I want Jerry Manuel fired now, not three years from now. That is my stance.- John Peterson
yeah keyboard designs are horrible
They’ve come up with some awesome designs over the years that make much more sense…but of course they’ll never catch on
by Mike Clemente on Aug 5, 2010 6:32 PM EDT up reply actions
You know they were developed initially...
to slow down typing? Because old typewriters bound up a lot they moved the keys to ergonomically inefficient positions to keep folks from going too fast.
I think that's too be expected
you’ll always have a few guys severly overperform and a few severly underperform, but as a whole teams will trend to the 50%.
I want Jerry Manuel fired now, not three years from now. That is my stance.- John Peterson
Its all about Ollie, Maine, Beltran and Omar. They are he glue and future of this team. Sign them all to major extensions for 10 years. We will win if we have them all on our team until their bodies and minds completely break down. Come on Wilpons don’t let us down for the first time ever. We love you dumb guys.
LOL
that you put Beltran in with Ollie, Maine and Omar. Very trollish.
Let me add
A more in-depth, player-by-player look at projected vs. actual performance is probably in order. It would be more thorough. Another time though, not enough hours to do it right this second. Maybe at season’s end. I think this cursory snapshot is still valid.
by James Kannengieser on Aug 5, 2010 4:19 PM EDT reply actions
Need to change this team
All im saying is get rid of Beltran and Reyes. We need to rebuild using some useful pieces we have. These two guys don’t have the character and makeup of champions. Reyes is a little childish goofball that doesn’t have a head on his shoulders. And Beltran is a soft, useless old man who only cares about himself. Why would you not want to get rid of these guys and make some big improvements? This along with much better drafting and FA signings would make the Mets actually good.
All I have to say to this is
There is no hope.... there is no future....there is only GRISSIONZ
The 2010 Mets- Hey, we may suck, but what did you expect?
wait, TomCarvel is serious?
I thought his posts were an attempt at satirizing the most idiotic of WFAN callers. I was going to tell him he’s laying it on a bit too thick.
(facepalm)
"It’s just everytime we think the bar can’t get lower, they lower it. Now next year we’ll just be happy to hear that rogue shirtless officials aren’t implementing useless detrimental drills in spring training for no apparent reason."
-Gina, 3/1/10
by Greenpoint Ian on Aug 5, 2010 4:56 PM EDT up reply actions
(facepalm)
Well, at least you’re not posting overtly anti-Semitic garbage this time, only probably-vaguely-racially-motivated bullshit slanders against the team’s few best players.
Well, I agree with the part
much better drafting and FA signings would make the Mets actually good.
In lobby campaign for Chris Carter.
kinda hard to disagree there
… since it’s tautological. If the Mets were better, the Mets would be good.
I can only assume this refers to the Deleuzian "virtuality" of the Mets' goodness
The Mets’ goodness, at the moment, is “real without being actual” in the same sense as when Deleuze cited Proust’s landscape of living memory: “But let a sound, a scent already heard and breathed in the past be heard and breathed anew, simultaneously in the present and in the past, real without being actual, ideal without being abstract, then instantly the permanent and characteristic essence hidden in things is freed and our true being which has for long seemed dead but was not so in other ways awakes and revives, thanks to this celestial nourishment.” When we recall 1986, that is, we make present the Mets’ “real” goodness — but still, poignantly, we do not have the power to make them “actually good.”
Isn't there a line like that in White Men Can't Jump?
“You can listen to Jimi, but you can’t hear Jimi.”
Apparently there was, but I found another one for the Mets:
Gloria Clemente: Teammates can’t hustle each other.
Rhonda Deane: Why not?
Gloria Clemente: It’s not artistic.
In lobby campaign for Chris Carter.
Proust can only say that because for him, that which occurs primarily in the mind,
and to the senses without immediate, physical referent, is nonetheless entirely real (See i.e. Swann’s Way, the “monstrous funnel”—in most translations—of the ceiling of the boy’s bedroom).
The Mets, on the other hand, will continue to truly, profoundly suck until the Wilpons, Minaya, and Manuel are actually gone.
Oh crap...
Had some madeleines and lemon tea and for some reason want to watch the 86 Mets video, and then write 1600 pages on it. Oh even further crap. I think this is what AA does. It’s my own Proustian recollection, in about the same number of words.
Deleuze?
My brother was married to Felix Guattari’s daughter. I need to run this by her for her take.
I can argue with the drafting part....
FA signings, he nails it.
sell crazy someplace else
no one is buying here
This line of thinking
(minus the better draft/FA signings) is ridiculous. Why would you move two of your best players when they aren’t the problem? The whole “TRAID DA CORE!!!” line of thinking that some Met fans have is absurd because you end up making your team worse, and for what? To bring in “character guys,” to “shake things up,” & to “change the culture?” You’d probably end up making the team worse, and still not addressing the real problems within the organization. And lastly, you sound silly when you say Carlos only cares about himself. You know, training with Angel Pagan during the offseason, building academies for kids in the Carribean, & calling Wright & Francoeur while on rehab to tell them things he noticed about their stances at the plate & tips on how to improve. I fail to see how that person is “selfish.”
"I want to win now, not 3 years from now. That's my stance." - Kevin Burkhardt
Reality lining up with expectations is all fine and good
but I’m angry now!
/Homer
BUNCH OF BALONEY!
NO COMPUTER would predict Jason Bay being so SAD. As for PAGAN, he put up numbers BELTRAN would have put up anyway. Castillo has been BAD for years. R.A. Dickey has been great, but to have MAINE and PEREZ be 100% worthless was in no COMPUTER plan. Anyone would have said they would be .500 at least. The fact that Bay is so far off his carrier numbers has cost the Mets some serious run production. If Bay had played like “BAY” I would ADD at least 5 more wins and have them at 59-49, still not in first place, but well within striking distance.
Can you EXPLAIN why you're CAPITALIZING random WORDS?
Or is that another thing that we NERDS with all our COMPUTERS couldn’t UNDERSTAND?
Criticizing grammar on the internetz...
Needs it’s own analog of Godwin’s Law. I hate it too, but, ya know, it’s the internet.
SORRY you didn't APPRECIATE it, then
but SERIOUSLY, I’d still rather not SEE that kind of WRITING proliferate around here.
gotta be.
If there's ever a riot at Citi Field and Oliver Perez was the starter, I started the riot.
Right?
The disjointed thought and the random capitalization seem like obvious tip offs to parody. But at the same time, it’s not quite thematically over the top enough to make me sure. I mean there wasn’t one call to trade DW, Jose or Pagan.
another epic facepalm
If Bay had played like "BAY" I would ADD at least 5 more wins and have them at 59-49
Uh, so you’d expect a 6 WAR from Jason Bay at this point? I mean, Bay’s had a nice career, but he’d be far and away the most valuable player in baseball right now if was putting up a 6.0 WAR, ahead of Cano, Josh Johnson, Morneau, Longoria, etc.
"It’s just everytime we think the bar can’t get lower, they lower it. Now next year we’ll just be happy to hear that rogue shirtless officials aren’t implementing useless detrimental drills in spring training for no apparent reason."
-Gina, 3/1/10
by Greenpoint Ian on Aug 5, 2010 4:59 PM EDT up reply actions
big surprise
The team has delusional owners and a GM whose the worst judge of major league talent(castillo, cora, francoer, gmj , catalanotto) Remember Dickey started the season in buffalo. I don’t think omar or manuel knew a knuckler from a hole in the wall. I hope they have the sense to extend RA’s contract ,reward Pagan with generous arbitration and lock in reyes now and not wail till after next season
No seriously
Why would you not want to trade Beltran if we can get a nice return. We need help now right? Where, rotation? So why not explore the possibility of moving Beltran along with other prospects for guys we could use now. My idea was sending Beltran along with Flores, Mejia or Martinez to the Rays for B.J. Upton and Wade Davis. I think the best guy to give up would be Flores because he will not be ML ready for another few years and this club needs help now. If the Mets think he is really that special then I would trade Martinez next and Mejia last. We would have to kick in maybe $8mil to go toward some of Beltran’s money. This deal would make total sense for the Mets. We would get younger by getting rid of Beltran, and not letting Beltran go for nothing after next season b/c we can’t offer arbitration and get picks(which they don’t wisely anyway). We would be giving away an aging outfielder with diminishing skills and creaky knees for a much younger OF with tons of upside. This would allow us to keep Pagan in right thereby making our OF defense the same if not better. This trade also gives us a really great young arm in Davis who also has great potential and has a nasty repertoire. He would slot beautifully into our No. 5 spot and provide the team with at least 12 wins next year. Then to round out the team we add Lee and touch up our bullpen and bench and were set. Look at a lineup of: Reyes, Pagan, Wright, Davis, Bay, Upton, Thole, Tejada. And our shutdown rotation of Santana, Lee, Pelf, Niese, Davis. Tell me that team is not good and would not contend for a championship. Or i guess that’s not something that Mets fans like, you would rather rely on Beltran and Dickey to give us a full year of stellar production next year.
I just don’t think we should be relying on Dickey to pitch a full season next year when he has never thrown over 120 ip in a year. Given he is a knuckleballer but still i would rather not depend on a 35 yr old knuckleballer, like relying on Maine and Perez to be useful parts of a rotation. I would much rather see Dickey as depth and protection in the minors like this year when he came us and did awesome as a fill in for our scrub pitchers. And how can we be sure that Beltran is going to be able to return to form and give us a strong full season of production? I personally don’t like the idea of a 33 yr old CF with chronic knee problems whose game sis built around speed and covering ground. I would much rather have a young, speedy and rising OF and a young prized pitching prospect with tons of promise. Davis is a guy that reminds me of Lackey but possibly better. That trade makes our team much younger, athletic and talented.
somewhere andrew friedman is rofling
and he doesn’t even know why.
mediocrity thy name is Wilpon- jdon
Hmmmm
If I could trade Beltran, to bring in a young good CF and P, I would do it. I might even think of throwing in my best prospects too. But I would not do this to net a talented but inconsistent CFer and a guy to slot into your number five slot. No thank you.
I would rather have Pagan’s production in CF and have Cpt. Kirk in RF.
I think the Redsox would be a great deal partner.
by Coolpapabell on Aug 6, 2010 11:05 AM EDT up reply actions
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