Actually, you know what? No. We don’t need to talk about Saturday’s game. Let’s agree never to ever talk about Saturday’s game ever again. Or let’s pretend we live in some parallel dimension where a storm suddenly blew in after the eighth inning and the Mets won 2-1 and Mike Pelfrey got a complete game victory. How does that sound?
Previewing the Mets-Giants series with Grant Brisbee from McCovey Chronicles. Brisbee is smart and says smart things so the only stupidity here is really my trolling, but I remembered the last headline on the site, realized the joke was inevitable and wanted to beat everyone to the punch.
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With Toby, Patrick and guest Mark Simon from ESPNNewYork.com:
On iTunes here.
Remember when I suggested the Mets’ issue this year was their pitching and defense, and not — as Elena Kagan (or her clerk) debatably suggested — their hitting? Consecutive clunkers from Johan Santana and R.A. Dickey and most of the guys behind them mean the team now has a 109 OPS+ and a 96 ERA+. Tiny sample yet, obviously.
Patrick Flood is smart, and he’s live-blogging today’s Mets-Braves game. Go read it.
Truth be told, the answer to the general question “What does ‘not an’ mean?” is “It depends”: The meaning of the phrase turns on its context. . . . “Not an” sometimes means “not any,” in the way Novo claims. If your spouse tells you he is late because he “did not take a cab,” you will infer that he took no cab at all (but took the bus instead). If your child admits that she “did not read a book all summer,” you will surmise that she did not read any book (but went to the movies a lot). And if a sports-fan friend bemoans that “the New York Mets do not have a chance of winning the World Series,” you will gather that the team has no chance whatsoever (because they have no hitting). But now stop a moment. Suppose your spouse tells you that he got lost because he “did not make a turn.” You would understand that he failed to make a particular turn, not that he drove from the outset in a straight line. Suppose your child explains her mediocre grade on a college exam by saying that she “did not read an assigned text.” You would infer that she failed to read a specific book, not that she read nothing at all on the syllabus. And suppose a lawyer friend laments that in her last trial, she “did not prove an element of the offense.” You would grasp that she is speaking not of all the elements, but of a particular one. The examples could go on and on, but the point is simple enough: When it comes to the meaning of “not an,” context matters.
– Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan, Caraco Pharm. Labs. Ltd. v. Novo Nordisk.
OK, first of all this is like the dumbest f@#$ing thing I have ever read. And I get that half of you are lawyers and there’s probably some legal reason why the distinctions in possible implied meanings of “not an” needs to be detailed in such thorough fashion, but c’mon. This case really made it to the Supreme Court without anyone hashing that out? There’s no legal precedent she can cite that covers how sometimes “not an” means not any and sometimes it means not one specific thing? This is what Supreme Court Justices do?
Second, after she gives two perfectly apt examples of what she’s talking about, she throws in a totally unnecessary joke about the Mets. And I’m all for lightening the mood at Supreme Court proceedings, but, again: c’mon. Stale, and too easy. Jokes about the Mets for people who can’t make lawyer jokes are like lawyer jokes for everyone else.
Moreover, Kagan’s a Mets fan, so you’d hope she’d have a little better sense of what she was talking about. DOES THE SUPREME COURT NOT CARE ABOUT ACCURACY ANYMORE? Hitting is the one thing the Mets do have!
If she said “the team has no chance whatsoever (because they [sic] have first basemen at four positions, shaky starting pitching and play in a tough division),” then she’d get a pass, a frustrated but reasonable fan airing her grievances wherever she finds a platform. But no. Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan thinks the Mets can’t hit even though the Mets can hit. And I’m just going to go ahead and assume she retires to her quarters to call WFAN to demand the Mets trade David Wright.
Let’s hope The People vs. Carlos Beltran never goes to the highest federal court because I suspect Kagan’s going to rule on the wrong side of that one.
Via Bill.
The Mets are apparently planning a video tribute to Jose Reyes upon his return to Citi Field on April 24, and people aren’t happy about it.
Personally, I’m finding it difficult to get too worked up one way or the other. Maybe it’s because the Mets are 7-3 and Ruben Tejada’s leading the league in doubles. Maybe it’s because I try not to get too upset over frivolities.
I get that it’s weird to pay tribute to a guy who just skipped town to take more money to play for a rival, but at the same time I’d way rather watch video highlights from Reyes’ time with the Mets than whatever else they’re showing on the video board, entertaining though the 800-Flowers Kiss Cam may be. You guys remember that Jose Reyes was awesome at baseball for the Mets, right?
[poll id=”105″]
Ten games into the 2012 campaign, the Mets are 7-3. It’s the time of the season when tiny samples drive our irrational baseball-fan minds to crazy and wonderful places, no matter how often we remind ourselves that many ultimately crappy teams have started better or that 10 games into 2010 Jeff Francoeur had a .535 on-base percentage. And the backlash to the small-sample frenzy — in which I frequently participate — is often so obnoxious and vigorous that it seems unnecessarily grouchy at a time when many fans just want to enjoy their fantasies while they last.
So let’s look at it this way: These 7-3 Mets are the same team that entered the season to low expectations, sure, but those seven wins are banked. The gambler’s fallacy would suggest that the Mets are now more likely to endure a rough stretch after starting the season hot, but rolling three sixes in row doesn’t make the fourth any less likely.
Which is to say that if the Mets perform exactly like the 74.5-win team foreseen by Vegas from here on out — that is, they play to a .460 winning percentage starting now — they win 70 of their remaining 152 games (actually 69.9, but I’m rounding up) and finish the season 77-85. So still not great, but hey, the over.
If the Mets can just muster .500 ball for the rest of the season — you can probably do this math yourself — they finish 83-79 and stay on the fringes of contention until late in the year, and a lot of breathless haters full of authoritative preseason predictions have a lot of explaining to do.
And if these 2012 Mets can somehow manage just one more 7-3 stretch like this one at any point in the season while playing precisely .500 ball for the rest of it, they’re an 85-win team — good enough for postseason play in two of the past 10 seasons in the National League if the new two-Wild Card system were in place.
Maybe that’s a small payoff for what still seems something of a longshot, but then the on-the-field part of the Mets’ early success and our first exposure to their feared division rivals help it seem at least conceivable.
This is where our imaginations run wild: With the Phillies relying on old, injured players and burying their prospects behind veterans like a vintage late-aughts Mets team and the Braves and Nats peppering their offenses with out-machines, the Mets’ lineup appears to rival the Marlins’ for the division’s deepest. The Mets’ defense doesn’t look great, with some lousy defenders and some guys out of position, but the Marlins and Nationals have some lousy defenders and some guys out of position, too. And the Braves have Chipper Jones, Dan Uggla and Freddie Freeman starting in the same infield. (The Phillies’ defense is good.)
The Phillies clearly have the division’s best pitching staff. The Mets… well, they don’t. But they have a constitution some of their competitors lack, with two starters that seem safe bets to throw around 200 innings, two that have stayed mostly healthy for the past two years, one that is Johan Santana, and a nice blend of ceilings and floors at the high levels of their Minor League system.
That’s squinting at the 7-3 team and seeing the best, of course. And it’s the inevitable fallout of a hot start: What once seemed very unlikely now seems just unlikely.
And naturally, it’s that pesky way small fragments of seasons can mess with our heads. All of this could fall apart at any time.
But every day David Wright keeps hitting provides more evidence he could enjoy a rebound season, every double Ruben Tejada lashes in the gap suggests he’ll hit more of them, every game Kirk Nieuwenhuis plays like a Major Leaguer makes it more likely he is one, and every Santana start without incident means another.
It’s 10 games, less than 1/16th of the season, and precious little evidence with which to make any bold declarations about the rest of the Mets’ 2012 season. But little evidence is evidence nonetheless, and most of what we have so far is good.
So that’s cool.
In a Fanpost to Amazin’ Avenue, MookieTheCat lobbies the Mets to honor Ralph Kiner with a portion of Citi Field named for him. No arguments here. The TV broadcast booth at Citi Field is named for Kiner (as it was at Shea), but that’s not something fans regularly pass by.
This is a silly hypothetical, but say you were managing the Mets in a single-elimination relegation game — the very existence of the franchise depends on winning this one baseball game and for some reason you’re calling the shots, high-pressure stuff. Andres Torres is healthy and Kirk Nieuwenhuis was sent back down to Triple-A, so you’re basically working with the Mets’ Opening Day roster. Oh, and Lucas Duda already told you that it’s really important to him to play right field, so if you want his bat in the lineup he has got to be there.
Your opponent has a good but not spectacular rookie right-hander set to start. No one on your team has faced him before.
Who’s playing left?
[poll id=”104″]
Tedquarters 