Courtesy Carly from SNY:
Tejada
Turner
Wright
Bay
Pagan
Evans
Pascucci
Paulino
Schwinden
Today’s Mets lineup
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Category Archives: Words
Mets as Taco Bell menu items
For yesterday’s Baseball Show, Randy from The Apple asked me which Taco Bell menu item Jose Reyes would be if Jose Reyes were a Taco Bell menu item. This inspired Twitter discussion about which Mets best correlate with which products, and, ultimately, this post.
Jose Reyes: Volcano Taco. The Volcano Taco is fiery and awesome, one of the very best options on the Taco Bell menu. But like all hard tacos, its value is hampered by its brittleness.
David Wright: Crunchwrap Supreme. We got so excited when the Crunchwrap Supreme first joined and dominated the menu that it might now be the victim of its own hype. Nonetheless, the Crunchwrap Supreme is excellent. It can boast all the ingredients that make Taco Bell great, there’s just nothing about it that stands out as obviously spectacular.
Daniel Murphy: Cheesy Gordita Crunch. Sometimes the Cheesy Gordita Crunch is on the menu and sometimes it’s not. Sometimes it seems soft, sometimes strong. Some people seem to overrate it, some underrate it. But it’s always pretty good, and due to its unique construction it’s pretty versatile.
Mike Pelfrey: Nachos BellGrande. Nachos BellGrande can be pretty frustrating. Sometimes you’ll get a bite that’s got the perfect distribution of toppings and be all, “holy crap, these nachos are amazing, they’re everything everyone told me they’d be and more.” But then other times you’ll wind up with a chip with nothing on it, and be like, “These nachos are mentally weak.” Too much of the Nachos BellGrande can be difficult to stomach. They require some patience, and they’re always much better at home than on the road.
Daniel Ray Herrera: Cinnamon Twists. Cinnamon Twists are unlike anything else on the Taco Bell menu. They’re small, but they’re a pretty good value. They can serve a useful but very specialized role when you need something sweet to counter all the salty stuff you’ve had. But you’re never going to want them as a full meal.
Nick Evans: Doritos Loco Taco. I’ll turn this one over to Twitterer @TeamHate: We’re not sure if it exists, but we’re all willing to give it a try.
Dillon Gee: Chicken Flatbread Sandwich. The Chicken Flatbread Sandwich is pretty new to the menu and some people probably went a little too crazy about it when it first showed up. But it’s OK. It’s inexpensive and a good, efficient way to fill out your order. Five Chicken Flatbread Sandwiches would make for a pretty boring and underwhelming meal, though.
Ryota Igarashi: Strawberry Fruitista Freeze. If Taco Bell decided to take the Strawberry Fruitista Freeze off the menu tomorrow, I’d be fine with that. And then years later I’d think back and chuckle, “Man, remember what a bad idea that turned out to be?”
Lucas Duda: XXL Grilled Stuft Burrito. The XXL Grilled Stuft Burrito is massive and pretty good.
Jason Isringhausen: MexiMelt. People sometimes snicker about the MexiMelt because it’s got a silly name and it’s been around forever. But truth is, the MexiMelt can still get the job done in a limited role.
Johan Santana: Bacon Cheeseburger Burrito. The Bacon Cheeseburger Burrito has been gone so long that it has receded in our minds, a hazy memory of something superbly awesome. But Taco Bell enthusiasts everywhere pine for its return.
Jason Bay: Taco Bell screwed up my order. Look: No one goes to Taco Bell expecting five-star haute cuisine. But you at least expect they’ll give you what you ask for with reasonable efficiency and at a fair price. Then every once in a while everything goes wrong, and you wind up paying too much and getting way less than you expected.
Who else?
Sandwiches of Citi Field: Pulled chicken sandwich
You might not know about this one. I’ve only seen it available in the Caesar’s Club, conveniently located right behind the press box. It may also exist at some of the other clubs at Citi Field, but I haven’t spent much time in any of those.
Speaking of, though: If you’re a sandwich enthusiast and Citi Field regular and you know of some less-heralded sandwiches available in odd spots in the park, let me know. I’m going to eat every one eventually. I’ve got my eye on the pastrami and the Mex burger, and I know there’s a Reuben at the Caesar’s club too. I hope all will be better than this:
That’s pulled chicken, cheddar cheese and barbecue sauce on French bread. I ate this one near the end of the Mets’ double-header with the Braves last week and it had clearly been sitting under a heat lamp for a while. But even knowing how it would have been better earlier in the game, this was still a pretty disappointing sandwich.
The bread was OK — toasty, bready — and the chicken was reasonably moist considering the circumstances. But I could hardly taste anything besides the cloyingly sweet barbecue sauce. I should have gussied this one up with some toppings, but by that point they were clearly trying to shut the toppings stations down for the night and I didn’t want to make anyone’s life more difficult.
Speaking of chicken sandwiches available at Citi Field and toppings, though: On Friday I tried the fried chicken sandwich from Blue Smoke again and topped it off with fresh jalapenos and pickles. It was unbelievable — better even than my wife’s pulled pork sandwich, which has never been as good as the first time I had it.
Long Island woman arrested for irony
A 37-year-old Ronkonkoma woman was so afraid of terrorist activity on a flight her son and mother were taking on Sept. 10 that she called in a bomb threat. Yikes.
Who ya got?
The Rays and Cardinals could still unseat the Red Sox and Braves for Wild Card spots and the division race in the AL West isn’t over. But assuming the current standings hold, who would you root for in the playoffs?
I know my picks, but I’ll hold back on noting them here lest they skew the results of these ever-so-scientific polls.
[poll id=”34″]
[poll id=”35″]
LOL Mets 2012 schedule
Major League Baseball released its full schedule for 2012, and the Mets’ kind of sucks. I’ve come to be something of an apologist for Interleague Play even if I think it lasts too long every summer. It’s a good way for fans to get to watch great players we don’t often see in person, like Jose Bautista and Kevin Youkilis and… Nolan Reimold?
The Mets will host two Interleague series in 2012: One with the Yankees and one with the Orioles. With the NL East and AL East due to match up, the Mets drew the one team in that division that’s not really at all compelling. The Orioles have a bunch of young players so there’s some chance they start to turn it around by June 18, 2012, but I was really hoping to get to watch Bautista tee off in Citi Field.
Of course, the Blue Jays are one of only six big-league teams I haven’t seen in their home park, so perhaps a road trip is in order. The Mets are ticketed for Toronto the weekend of May 18-20. Are there any notable sandwiches there? The Wikipedia tells me that one of the city’s nicknames is “Hogtown,” so that sounds promising.
John Sickels scouts Chris Schwinden
There is nothing special about [Chris Schwinden’s] velocity, his fastball is just in the 86-90 range. He mixes in a cutter, curveball, and changeup, relying on sharp command of his secondary pitches to succeed. He has little margin for error and needs a strong defense behind him, but there are pitchers with worse stuff who have made careers for themselves due to superior command, and he’s shown the ability to make adjustments to higher level competition.
Schwinden really snuck up on us this year, but I don’t see him as a total fluke. I think he projects as a fifth starter or long relief type as long as his command remains strong.
– John Sickels, MinorLeagueBall.com.
Sickels scouts Schwinden, a surprise Triple-A success. I link it here because I like the idea of the Mets trying him — and guys like him — in the bullpen. Middling starters often turn into very effective relievers. And though Schwinden doesn’t have the type of stuff typically associated with late-inning bullpen roles, he appears apt to get the ball over the plate — more than many members of the Mets’ current bullpen can boast.
But obviously the first step is securing enough decent starters that they won’t need Schwinden in the Major League rotation.
Mariano Rivera reaches inevitable milestone
Presumably you’ve heard that Mariano Rivera saved his 600th game last night. Sometime this week he’ll save his 601st game, and before the season is done he’ll save his 602nd game and break the all-time saves record, just in case anyone is silly enough to need that figure for evidence that Rivera is the greatest closer of all-time.
By allowing a single hit last night, Rivera maintained his career 1.000 WHIP. To date he has thrown 1206 innings, yielded 932 hits and walked 274 batters. That is, if you’re scoring at home, awesome.
Adjusted ERA+ factors park- and league-effects into earned-run average and scales it so that 100 is average — sort of like IQ tests and the old SATs. Among pitchers with over 1000 innings pitched, Pedro Martinez has the second best ERA+ of all time with 154. Third is someone named Jim Devlin, who dominated hitters for three seasons in the 1870s and managed a career 151 mark. Fourth and fifth are Hall of Famers Lefty Grove and Walter Johnson, with 148 and 147, respectively. Those men were pitching geniuses.
Rivera’s career adjusted ERA+ is 205, more than 50 points higher than the next best ever. Isaac Newton stuff, in this imperfect metaphor.
Of course, any discussion placing Rivera among the best pitchers ever must be qualified with the fact that his dominance almost always came in one-inning stints. Who knows what Johnson or Grove or Pedro would have done if afforded that luxury? Who knows if Rivera would have been anywhere near as effective if asked to throw 120 relief innings every year the way Rollie Fingers once did, or — heaven forbid — to start games.
It never happened, so it doesn’t matter much now. Rivera happened to emerge and succeed in the era of the one-inning closer, a role he has come to define better than Tony La Russa ever could.
And though there’s evidence to show that teams leading after the 8th inning have won the same rate of games since the dawn of the closer as they did in all the years before that, perhaps increased specialization in bullpens was an adjustment necessary to maintain that percentage in the contemporary game rather than a needless rejiggering of an already effective system.
Either way, Rivera is awesome. That’s the main thing.
Apparently we’re still talking about hats
And I have little urge to discuss them. The whole thing seems like the PR equivalent of a broken-bat dribbler bobbled by the pitcher then fired in the dirt to first where it was ole’d by the first baseman into right field then tossed into the crowd by an outfielder who had no idea how many outs there were while meanwhile the hitter faceplanted on his way to second base. It is confusing and ugly, and the only thing clear is that no one involved played it particularly well.
If you want more than that, check out what Patrick Flood has to say.
Also, if you’re looking for a slightly more upbeat (though still unutterably sad) bit of 9/11-memorial news, check out Newsday’s piece on my old high school football coach and his wife, who lost their son in 2001. Coach Caproni is on the short list of the warmest, classiest, most downright decent people I’ve ever known.
It’s like regular Earth, only better
More than 50 new alien planets — including one so-called super-Earth that could potentially support life — have been discovered by an exoplanet-hunting telescope from the European Southern Observatory (ESO).
The newfound haul of alien planets includes 16 super-Earths, which are potentially rocky worlds that are more massive than our planet. One in particular – called HD 85512 b – has captured astronomers’ attention because it orbits at the edge of its star’s habitable zone, suggesting conditions could be ripe to support life.
Well that’s exciting. And hey, it’s only 35 light years away! That means if we ever figure out a way to travel at the speed of light, which we won’t, we can put a bunch of babies on a space ship and they can go check it out and report back when they’re old. Provided the space ship that travels at the speed of light also can sustain human life for 70 years, of course.
I was driving north on the Sprain Brook Parkway on Saturday, looking at the pavement and the mild automobile congestion and the roadkill and the trees looming over the highway, when I decided there must be other life somewhere in our universe.
How arrogant are we to ever think otherwise? There are about 400 billion other stars in our galaxy, and maybe 400 billion other galaxies with that many stars. One recent estimate suggests there are 300 sextillion stars in the universe. That’s 300,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.
And you want to tell me this here, that Ford Explorer speeding over the remains of what was probably a raccoon, is the best the universe can offer? I don’t buy it.
Tedquarters 