Spectacular work by reader Glenn. I haven’t seen Psych, but this is really an excellent call.
James Roday (from Psych) and John Maine
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Category Archives: Baseball
Mets educating, terrifying community
I stumbled onto the Mets’ online community outreach brochure, which has a lot of nice pictures of Mets doing nice things. This one’s for Anit.
Awesome man achieves awesome feat awesomely
Cardinals slugger Albert Pujols just launched an opposite-field home run off Nationals pitcher Jordan Zimmermann. It was his 400th career long-ball.
Pujols is the 47th player to reach that feat and the third-youngest in baseball history, behind only Eddie Matthews and Alex Rodriguez. He is a .332/.426/.625 career hitter and has managed at least 30 home runs over his first 10 major league seasons.
Awesome. I knew he was young but didn’t realize he’d be the third-youngest ever to reach that plateau. <3 Albert Pujols.
Is this really happening again?
Join in the new debate: “Should the Mets claim Manny Ramirez?”
No. Thanks for joining us on another edition of Simple Answers to Stupid Questions.
– Billy Pilgrim, comments section here.
First of all: So it goes.
Now that we’ve got that out of the way, I’ll point out that it’s not a stupid answer. Or really even that stupid of a question, just kind of an irritating one. If the Mets were really anywhere close to contention and shouldering Jeff Francoeur’s “offense” in a corner outfield spot, with Jason Bay looking more and more like he won’t be back this seaosn, then yeah, it’d be worth at least considering picking up Manny, his outstanding bat, and all the significantly less outstanding things that go along with them.
But it’s not going to happen, so it’s not really even a conversation worth having. No way the Mets are going to take on the salary or the headache. Would I rather see Manny man a corner outfield spot for the Mets the rest of the way than Francoeur? Yes. But I’d also rather see Lucas Duda, Nick Evans, Chris Carter or our summer intern Adam, and all those guys might actually offer the club something in the future.
During the Bob Ojeda chat last night, some guy kept asking if the Mets should or would get Manny. I was moderating and I didn’t put the question through. I could have, I guess, but there were many more interesting questions — I try to avoid the transaction questions — and I didn’t want to open up the whole can of Manny nonsense.
The guy kept going, though, and kept getting progressively angrier, eventually naming Jeff Wilpon as the man responsible for his question not being put through to Ojeda.
If he could have seen the real-life chat environs, he would have witnessed me and Bob Ojeda sitting in the SNY Newsroom, in the bowels below the SNY studio, chatting with Gary Apple and a couple of show producers and watching the game. Bob ate nachos as I fired questions at him and transcribed. It’s about the least conspiratorial process imaginable.
Brief timeline of important events in my life
April 7, 1987: Darryl Strawberry hits a three-run homer in the first inning of the first baseball game I ever attend.
Aug. 26, 2010: Darryl Strawberry buys me a sandwich.
Fun facts
Current Buffalo Bisons with Major League equivalent OPSes greater than 150 points higher than Jeff Francoeur’s current total, according to MinorLeagueSplits.com: 3.
Of those three, number with experience playing right field in the Minor Leagues: 3.
Of those three, number who are Valentino Pascucci: 1.
Nineteenth-century ethical allegory seems vaguely pertinent to current Mets situation
A shipowner was about to send to sea an emigrant ship. He knew that she was old, and not overwell built at the first; that she had seen many seas and climes, and often had needed repairs. Doubts had been suggested to him that possibly she was not seaworthy. These doubts preyed upon his mind, and made him uphappy; he thought that perhaps he ought to have her thoroughly overhauled and refitted, even though this should put him to great expense. Before the ship sailed, however, he succeeded in overcoming these melancholy reflections. He said to himself that she had gone safely through so many voyages and weathered so many storms, that it was idle to suppose that she would not come safely home from this trip also. He would put his trust in Providence, which could hardly fail to protect all these unhappy families that were leaving their fatherland to seek for better times elsewhere. He would dismiss from his mind all ungenerous suspicions about the honesty of builders and contractors. In such ways he acquired a sincere and comfortable conviction that his vessel was thoroughly safe and seaworthy; he watched her departure with a light heart. and benevolent wishes for the success of theexiles in their strange new home that was to be; and he got his insurance money when she went down in mid=ocean and told no tales.
What shall we say of him? surely this. that he was verily guilty of the death of those men. It is admitted that he did sincerely believe in the soundness of his ship; but the sincerity of his conviction can in nowise help him, because he had no right to believe on such evidence as was before him. He had acquired his believe not by honestly earning it in patient investigation, but by stifling his doubts.
– William K. Clifford, The Ethics of Belief.
Hat tip to Carl Sagan.
Mets positively brimming with terrible, delusional, intransigent millionaires
Instead, Ruben Tejada started at second base for the fifth straight game. Castillo isn’t a starting player for the first time in his career and it isn’t sitting well. He told the Daily News that he and his agents, Sam and Seth Levinson, will try to get him into a situation where he can play every day again.
“I think we will talk to them about that,” Castillo said. “I need to be in a different kind of situation. I don’t know what they want to do. I want an opportunity to play, and if it is here, then I am happy. If it is somewhere else, then that’s what it is.”
I get it, of course: Baseball players are programmed to think they’re awesome and want to play everyday. And it’s probably hard for Castillo to look out at Tejada, hitting like a pitcher, and see how the 20-year-old gives the Mets a better chance of winning ballgames, which the Mets keep insisting he does.
But Castillo now joins Jeff Francoeur and Ollie Perez on the list of Mets willing to speak out for their right to continue playing regularly in the Major Leagues while making millions of dollars for their sub-replacement level production.
And I love Castillo’s assertion that he’ll talk to Omar Minaya about finding him someplace else to play everyday. Ahhh, Luis? You think, ahh, you think Omar hasn’t tried that already?
Go ask Bob Ojeda reasonable questions
Please, for the sake of the moderator’s sanity.
Well here’s what I don’t understand
That said, his decision to stay with the Tigers is downright idiotic . . . or there is some larger force at work.
I keep playing this out in my head, and none of it makes any sense. Why would Damon want to stay with the moribund Tigers when he had a chance to join the Red Sox for 5 1/2 weeks of stretch-run fun? Why try to keep hitting at cavernous Comerica Park when he could return to friendly Fenway? Why play games that don’t matter when you can play games that still matter?
– Dan Shaughnessy, Boston Globe.
There are a lot of things about Dan Shaughnessy that don’t make sense to me, but one thing I’ve never understood is questioning a player’s motivations when he is unwilling to waive his no-trade clause.
He has a no-trade clause! There’s got to be a reason he got it put in there and if I had to take a guess, I’d bet it’s because he doesn’t want to be traded.
And look, you can say whatever you want about Johnny Damon’s desire to win or whatever just like I can go to my grave maintaining that he’s a huge sellout just for shaving the beard and going to the Yankees after 2004, even if I understand full well that baseball’s a business and he was just doing well by his family and everything. That’s all within our rights as fans.
I have no inside information or anything, but I’d bet Johnny Damon probably didn’t waive his no-trade clause because being traded is a huge pain in the ass and something he doesn’t want to deal with at this point in his career.
Hat tip to Can’t Stop the Bleeding.
Tedquarters 