Awesome post from Patrick Flood. The short answer: Not enough.
How many runs did Jeff Francoeur’s arm save?
2
Category Archives: Mets
“Hey Malcovich, think fast!”
I’ve always wanted to be mildly famous. Not like big-time Tom Cruise famous where the paparazzi follows you everywhere, because that seems like a huge pain in the ass. Just like about as famous as James Rebhorn, the guy who played the secretary of defense in Independence Day, because I feel like being that amount of famous makes everything you do exponentially funnier.
Think about it: If you popped a tire and Tom Cruise helped you jack up your car, you’d be like, “that was weird… what a freak, he obviously wants his ego stroked or something, that’s creepy.” But if James Rebhorn pulled over and bailed you over, you’d be all, “Sweet, Rebhorn! This guy plays a sniveling bureaucrat in like a billion different movies,” and you’ve have a hilarious and random story to tell your friends for the rest of your life.
And it doesn’t even have to be James Rebhorn being a good samaritan. It’d be just as funny if James Rebhorn cut you off on the parkway or if you pulled up next to James Rebhorn at a red light and saw him pick his nose. Pretty much any vehicular interaction you could have with noted character actor James Rebhorn would be a funny one.
I know this for a fact because the younger brother of one of my friends once got into a fender-bender with the actor David Paymer, and I still find that funny.
I listed two character actors but any other means of minor fame is fine by me too. Character actors just the most identifiable random not-quite-famous people, for whatever reason.
Anyway, part of the fallout from this job is that on rare occasion people actually do recognize me from the video stuff I do on SNY.tv, which I enjoy, in part because I’m tremendously vain and in part because it feels like a very small step toward that Rebhorn stature I so desperately desire.
By “on rare occasion,” by the way, I mean “almost never.” Sometimes at Citi Field, but only three times when I’m not walking around the place where the Mets play with a credential around my neck that says my name on it.
One time was some guy in a bar who saw my stuff on MetsBlog. Not a particularly notable interaction.
Another time I was in a parking garage waiting for the attendant to bring my car around. A businessman was sitting in his car, nearly ready to pull out, and rolled down his window.
“Hey, are you Ted Berg?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I said, excitedly.
“I’ve seen your stuff,” he said, almost in disgust, as he rolled up the window.
The third time was last night outside MCU Park in Brooklyn.
I didn’t stay for the Cyclones’ last night. I wanted to because I love that park and I wanted to see some of the Wallyball everyone has such strong opinions about, but for a variety of reasons I also wanted to get home and I feared the hours worth of traffic I faced.
But before I left Coney Island, obviously, I stopped to get a cheese dog at Nathan’s.
Look: I’ve never been what you’d call a skinny dude. I played offensive line in high school football, and even then I carried a few extra pounds around my midsection. I like food a lot. I’m cool with it. I realize I could be healthier, eat better, work out more, all that, but that would mean not eating cheese dogs when I’m in Coney Island, and that’s inconceivable to me.
And though I’m hardly neurotic, it’s hard not to feel a little bit self-conscious when you’re walking down the street punishing a cheese dog, trying to keep all the excess cheese, ketchup and mustard from spilling all over your clothes, licking one hand clean while carrying a huge soda in the other.
It was the perfect time for some guy to drive by and, from a moving car, yell, “Ted Berg — Sandwich of the week!”
My first thought was, “oh Ted, you disgusting beast, what have you become?”
My second, a few moments later, was that this was a pretty hilarious way for someone to recognize me.
I mean, anyone familiar with the “Sandwich of the Week” series must be a TedQuarters reader, not just someone who sees the Baseball Show videos on MetsBlog or whatever, and so obviously a hero. I very much appreciate that. If you’re reading this, guy, feel free to identify yourself.
Second, it’s funny to think of how it must have been for that guy, who knows me as some sandwich-loving Mets fan, to spot me outside a Mets’ Minor League facility destroying a hot dog, cheese everywhere.
I don’t know if he saw me from far away or what, but I like to think he was all, “hey, that guy kind of looks like that Ted Berg fellow, but I’m not sure… oh, he’s eating a cheese dog, yeah, that means it’s definitely him.”
And I’m fine with that.
Baseball Show with Wally Backman
What’s funny about this
Jerry Manuel is suffocating from the silence above him.
The embattled Mets manager admitted yesterday that he would “love to know” if the organization plans to bring him back next season, but he also isn’t about to seek out GM Omar Minaya or Jeff Wilpon for an answer.
What’s funny about this is that on the Mets’ radio broadcast last night, Howie Rose and Wayne Hagin anticipated exactly that type of gravitas from the Post in response to Manuel’s comment.
But Manuel, they explained, said what he said after having been asked the same question by the same reporter several different ways. Rose said Manuel essentially relented and said, “yeah, sure, I’d love to know,” when asked if he would prefer to know his job status for next season. Because who wouldn’t?
The writing’s on the wall for Manuel, and from a fan’s perspective, you know, fine. He bunts too often and mismanages the bullpen.
Puma’s doing his job obviously, trying to come up with some way to sell papers on the first night of what looks to be a long September for the Mets. But this is a nothing thing. Hagin and Rose dismissed Manuel’s comment as a throwaway line.
Not that it really matters one way or the other, I guess.
Matt Cerrone FTW
Fatherly heroics
During the decisive fourth inning of the Yankees-A’s tilt last night, Mark Teixeira unloaded a massive moonshot towards our seats, Bob Iracane calmly stood up, pointed his glove towards the heavens, and easily snagged Teixeira’s thirtieth tater tot of the year.
Funny recap from Rob at Walkoff Walk of how his father caught Teixeira’s home run last night.
My own father caught a moonshot in his very first game at Citi Field last year, except by “moonshot” I mean “softly hit Ramon Castro foul ball” and by “caught” I mean “had it land right in his damn nachos.” But hey, at the time we had no idea that Ramon Castro foul balls would be in such short supply at Citi Field.
The nachos, miraculously, were mostly OK.
Toby Hyde: A Tale of Two Lefties
As Toby points out, Cohoon’s success is hard to ignore this year. We talked with him for a little while after the Baseball Show stuff we did in Binghamton and he seemed like a pretty interesting dude.
Metsimistic: Lucas Duda’s Encouraging Stats
Chris McShane is doing a nice job at Metsimistic. I’m excited when I see his updates on my Google Reader and I urge you to check the site out. His graph work is good but he’s got a long way to go to match this epic masterpiece.
Just sayin’s all
According to a source, the Mets are willing to engage in extension talks with Dickey this offseason, in lieu of salary arbitration or a one-year deal. Dickey is arbitration-eligible for one more season, meaning he will be under team control in 2011 regardless of whether he agrees to a new contract. Because of that, the Mets could wait to see if the 35-year-old knuckleballer can duplicate his 2010 success.
But according to people familiar with the Mets’ thinking, the team has determined that Dickey’s performance this year (9-5, 2.57 ERA) is not a fluke. Therefore, the Mets are open to a contract extension that would keep the pitcher from becoming a free agent after next year.
– Andy Martino, N.Y. Daily News.
Let me start by saying I love R.A. Dickey as much as the next guy. He’s a knuckleballer, for one, and who doesn’t appreciate a knuckleballer? The world needs knuckleballers. They allow 29-year-olds who can’t throw harder than 65 miles an hour to maintain some small hope of a Major League career. That’s important.
Plus he reads literature, philosophizes, and would be a ballboy at the U.S. Open but won’t part ways with his beard. Oh and he makes a hilarious face when he pitches. Plus he’s got a 157 ERA+. The guy is a hero any way you slice it.
And so I won’t immediately say talk of an extension is a bad idea, especially since Dickey has been unbelievable this year. But I’ll say a couple of things about the discussions worry me, even if I don’t put too much stock in any anonymously sourced stories. Remember that last year at this time we were hearing lots of talk of a Jeff Francoeur extension.
First of all, I was under the impression — or at least under the rampant speculation — that the Mets would have a new GM by November. Word of an extension for Dickey shouldn’t help dispel rumors of a muddied organizational structure or that the new hire will come from within. So there’s that.
The second thing is that, though there’s evidence that Dickey has been getting better for a while now, and though I don’t want to be the person to stomp all over an awesome thing, 20 starts is not nearly enough of a sample to call something “not a fluke.”
I hope and want for Dickey to be great, and since I don’t know the terms of the rumored extension there’s no real point in fretting about it too much. I can’t imagine the Mets would actually pay him like he’s going to be one of the 10 best pitchers in the National League. Which is good, because that would be ridiculous.
Dickey is a different pitcher from Tim Wakefield because he throws harder and throws his knuckleball at two different speeds, but Wakefield’s the best comparison we have in recent vintage since he’s pretty much the only other successful knuckleballer. And look what Wake did to the National League when he broke in with the Pirates in 1992 and the American League when he resurfaced in 1995. Kind of looks a lot like what Dickey’s doing this year.
Wakefield was a decent and valuable pitcher for the Sox for a very long time, but outside of a blip year in 2002 he was never again what he was in his first time around the league in 1995. And so I fear the same might be true for Dickey.
The Mets will always need effective innings, and it seems like guys who can control knuckleballs will be able to provide those. And so Dickey should be that. I just don’t know that it’s reasonable to expect him to continue dominating National League hitters once they’ve seen his signature pitch a few more times. I wouldn’t necessarily say this is a fluke, I’d say it’s the perfectly natural progression of a deceptive pitch.
A Jon Daniels possibility you might consider
So generally, nerdy baseball fans like me put Rangers GM Jon Daniels on the type of pedestal reserved for gentlemen like Theo Epstein and Billy Beane and Brian Cashman. One of us, we say, and we defend even his questionable moves.
His acquisition of Jeff Francoeur, even, is defensible. Through Frenchy was the worst regular right fielder in baseball, Daniels doesn’t intend to use him as an everyday right fielder, which cuts to the core of the difference between the Rangers and Mets. I’m not convinced Frenchy is the absolute best right-handed bench bat out there, but he’s got some value in that role. Just like Alex Cora’s got some value as a scrap-heap middle infield contingency plan, and decidedly not as a multi-million dollar free-agent signing.
But I will also allow another possibility: Daniels grew up a Mets fan in Queens. So I’m open to the slim chance that he manages his Rangers like a business but still secretly roots for the Mets like a WFAN-calling, David Wright-booing fan who worships Cora’s leadership and thinks Frenchy’s got all the potential in the world and is finally going to turn it around soon now that he’s got a new approach.
So when he is faced with the opportunity to acquire one of those players, he is unable to suppress the Mets fan inside. He saddles his team with Alex Cora and Jeff Francoeur because he has spent the last two years convincing himself that they’re winning players, gritty hustlers who will lead the Mets to greatness.
One of us!
Just a theory.
Tedquarters 