Not a lot of action here today, for which I apologize. Got busy trying to wrap things up so I could cut out a little early to go watch baseball with Toby. Anyway, couldn’t come up with anything better to fill up this post than this old Nooner from “The Pourhouse” set (green screen, whatever) back in April, 2009. Hit or miss, as always, but I’m still proud of the Santana joke that starts at 2:00.
“I don’t think anybody could have felt as bad as I did,” he said. “Not only did I have a whole team on my shoulders in that at-bat, I had a whole city. At the time, I just knew I’d be up in that situation again in the future and that then I was going to come through.”
Actually, McCovey was wrong. That Game 7 at-bat was the closest he came to being on a championship team. The Giants in the 1960s had five Hall of Famers — McCovey, Willie Mays, Orlando Cepeda, Juan Marichal and Gaylord Perry — but as McCovey recalled, “We always seemed to be one player away from winning it all.”
– Karen Crouse, New York Times.
Good read from Crouse on McCovey, who still goes to the ballpark and works with Giants hitters regularly despite being mostly confined to a wheelchair by back and knee problems.
But the excerpted section made me think about the Mets, and not just because most things make me think of the Mets.
Did people write columns like this one about Willie McCovey? I’m not asking that rhetorically, either. Seriously — did Giants fans deem McCovey an unclutch loser and clamor for his trade? I wouldn’t be shocked to hear that they did, since the bizarre tendency to blame a team’s problems on its best player long predates David Wright.
This is the last of these, unless we find more original Kiner’s Korner footage. Incidentally, if you have any original Kiner’s Korner footage, please email me. We’ll send an intern to your house or something.
Cliff Lee was spectacular last night. As advertised, really. Master of puppets, pulling strings, twisting minds, smashing dreams, the whole thing.
It’s awesome to watch, especially when it happens on a big stage against an excellent Yankee lineup. But it still doesn’t mean the Mets should pursue Lee this offseason.
I’ve long held that signing Lee to a long-term, big-money deal would ultimately do the Mets more harm than good, seeing as he’s a 32-year-old pitcher likely to require a contract that takes him deep into his 30s. In the comments section here recently, though, Metropolyglot made a good point that made me briefly reconsider my position:
Lee is the best free agent pitcher available for quite awhile. Look around the league — teams have made a habit of locking up young elite pitchers (Jimenez, J. Johnson, Lincecum, Hernandez, Price). Furthermore, they’re all more or less signed to team-friendly deals. The only reasonable get is probably Zack Greinke and that’s not until 2013. If you’re serious about contending in 2012, you have to sign Cliff Lee, or prepare to rape the farm system.
It’s a reasonable thing to consider, especially with rumors spreading that Greinke wants a trade but no part of big-market baseball and word coming down that Yu Darvish is staying in Japan for now.
But I still say signing Lee — at least to the type of deal he’s expected to get — would amount to a mistake for a team with finite resources. The odds just seem so long that he’ll be worth anything like the type of money he’ll be earning three and four years into the new contract.
That means, like Metropolyglot suggests, that the Mets likely won’t be finding an ace on the open market for a reasonable cost anytime soon. To that I say a couple of things:
First, who knows what happens from here? It’s easy and reasonable to look around the league at all the great pitchers, see that they’re mostly locked up and conclude that the Mets will never have a great pitcher, but things change in weird ways all the time in baseball. Hell, look at Lee’s emergence in the 2008 season. Or, for a perhaps more reasonable, less miraculous-seeming example, look at the way Dan Haren became available at the deadline this year.
Second — and something that comes up here a lot — there’s no hard and fast rule that you need a true, branded ace to contend. Don’t get me wrong: It helps. Having great players is an excellent step toward having a great team. But a strong, deep pitching staff combined with a potent lineup can make a pennant run too. Plus there’s enough regular fluctuation in baseball that if you have a few good, healthy pitchers in your rotation there’s some reasonable chance one can pitch like an ace over the course of 32 games.
And the best way to find an ace is still to develop one. Right now Jenrry Mejia appears to be the Mets’ best shot at one — and that’s at least a couple of years down the road. Plus I suppose there’s some chance Jon Niese goes all Cliff Lee and turns into an ace.
But investing in scouting, overslot draft picks and international free agents would go a long way to assuring that the Mets find a frontline starter eventually, or at least the right pieces to trade for one.
Jeff Francoeur beat out an infield hit last night, and you know what that means: No. 7! A pretty standard roundup of Frenchy fare from the Journal News, my local paper.
Keep in mind that for the purposes of the Frenchy Tracker, we’re only counting stories about Francoeur in New York-area newspapers, though I am trying to keep track of all the Internet features and Dallas-area newspaper interviews as well.
I’m actually a little disappointed that the New York papers didn’t seize Franceour’s gritty hit as a way to push the needle up toward pre-series the over-under of 20, and that goal is now looking a bit long. But I suppose Francoeur could get a big hit or make a big play or say something hilarious about football after his Game 5 start to garner a lot of attention.
Also, I’d be a poor Frenchy ombudsman if I didn’t mention this appearance on this network’s Wheelhouse last night, meaning he can boast at least as many appearances on SNY as hits thus far in the ALCS. And to Francoeur’s credit, he’s characteristically charming:
I have another managerial candidate for you: Tim Bogar. Here are his records from ’04-’07 in his four years as a Minor League manager; 41-26, 82-57, 87-55, 80-62. Finished first every season and was manger of the year three times. And that is the Astros and the Indians affiliates so not like he was managing all stars. Throw in the fact that he spent the last two years on the Red Sox staff and started his playing career as a Met and you got a candidate, no?
– Paul, via email.
Well there’s an interesting name. I liked Bogar when he was with the Mets, and I remember watching when he went 4-for-5 with two doubles and two home runs, the second of which was an inside-the-parker on which he injured his wrist, ending his season. I’ve always found it a little funny that Bogar probably would have been more lauded for that performance had he stopped at first on one of the doubles and stopped at third on the final home run, and would have reaped the added benefit of remaining uninjured to continue his rookie campaign.
Bogar interviewed for the Blue Jays’ manager position but is reportedly no longer a candidate for the job in Toronto. Like Paul wrote, he had a lot of success in the Minors. He earned league manager-of-the-year nods in three of his four seasons and was named the Eastern League’s “Best Manager Prospect” by Baseball America in 2006.
Bogar joined the Rays in 2008 in an interesting role: He served both as a coach and as a liaison between the scouting department and the club. He became Boston’s first-base coach before the 2009 campaign.
Obviously the next GM is the more pressing and more important hire, and I don’t know much about Bogar’s demeanor. But he seems to have a plenty lengthy resume, the existing Met connection and ties to a couple of well-run teams. So I think a good call by Paul.
Two more Jeff Francoeur stories in area papers, bringing the total to six thus far. If you’re playing at home, that’s three articles for every plate appearance Frenchy’s had in the ALCS, and nearly an article per pitch he’s seen. Even in a rough outing, it took CC Sabathia all of seven pitches to retire Francoeur twice last night. Frenchy swung at five of them.
Kudos should to go Andy McCullough of the Star-Ledger for turning in a balanced Francoeur feature, one that, after swipes at the Mets, mentions Francoeur’s petulance upon losing his job in Flushing and success in a diminished role in Arlington.
The second Francoeur feature comes from Mike Sielksi of the Wall Street Journal, he of the memorable “No Cameras for Francoeur’s Milestone” piece which some have claimed was meant to be tongue-in-cheek. This Francoeur piece is straightforward and rather damning. Sielski calls Francoeur a role player — rightly — and writes that “he needs to understand and acknowledge it.”
But best of all, Sielski includes this stunning tidbit:
Even then, though, Mr. Francoeur couldn’t contain his delusions of grandeur when it came to the money he might command on the open market.
He isn’t eligible for free agency until after next season, but during a conversation before a game in Philadelphia, he referenced Jayson Werth, Ryan Howard and Joe Mauer—three of baseball’s elite players—in talking about the factors that might affect where he played in the years to come.
Wow.
Will Leitch pretty much nails the Mets’ offseason situation. Nothing new here if you read this site regularly, but it’s comprehensive and clearly stated.
“Managers are very controlling. You look at the managers today and the ones that are ‘my way or the highway’ are very few. It’s a remnant of another generation. If an organization is worth its salt – why would you turn that company over to a middle manager? So the attitude (in Oakland) was, ‘We have a philosophy and we’re going to find a manager who is going to implement that philosophy. We’re not looking for someone to tell us how to run the team, or upon which theory it should be predicated. We already have that. We want someone who is going to implement it for us.’ That’s a very different approach.”
– Sandy Alderson to ESPN, via MetsBlog.com.
I’ve maintained all along that I won’t make any sweeping declarative statements on the Mets’ general-manager hunt and I’m not about to roll back on that now, but it’s hard not to get excited about Alderson based on this and just about everything else I’ve read about the guy.
This quote, in particular, makes me think about the way the Jenrry Mejia situation unfolded this spring, and reminds me that a strong general manager with a sense of priorities can and should overrule a field manager clamoring for short-sighted decisions in the name of middle-relief help.
Mets fans — in the MetsBlog comments section linked above and elsewhere — knock Alderson’s taste in managers because he hired Art Howe. But that neglects to consider that Howe, presumably hired by Alderson as a manager willing to implement his and then Billy Beane’s grand plan for the A’s, helped Oakland to three straight playoff berths and consecutive 100-win seasons before butting heads with Beane and fleeing for Flushing.
As Mets fans we hated watching Howe appear comatose at the helm of some truly awful clubs at Shea, but clearly he was, at least for a while, a capable company man in the middle-management role Alderson described.
Obviously philosophies related to reporters “years ago” are different than those employed actually running a team, and so it’s too soon to praise Alderson without evidence that, if hired, he practices what he preaches at the Mets’ helm. But just the suggestion of a top-down organization with a clear pecking order and a well-conceived, thoroughly implemented plan is enough to capture Mets’ fans imaginations after the last administration.
Thanks to all those who hipped me to this New York Times piece, which contains the stunning realization that Jeff Francoeur has yet again found a magical adjustment in his approach that will catapult him into the ranks of the game’s elite hitters and doesn’t mention once that his inflated stats with the Rangers might have something to do with small sample size or enjoying a higher proportion of his at-bats against left-handers.
And thanks to Joe for the heads up on this New York Post feature, which keeps us abreast on the Rangers’ platoon right fielder’s relationship with the Mets’ most recent manager and general manager.
That puts the total at four so far and the ALCS games haven’t even started, so it’s looking good for all those who took the over on 20.
Also, no Francoeur updates yet that I know of from the Bergen Record or the Newark Star-Ledger, which is baffling. How will the people of New Jersey get their latest Jeff Francoeur news?
And don’t quote me on this, but I don’t think any enterprising reporter has yet thought to catch up with Darren Oliver on how he essentially turned his career around with the Mets, or with Darren O’Day on his brief, weird stint in Flushing.
Tedquarters 