Supposedly these are for help with the sun, much like Phiten necklaces are for help with… circulation or something. For what it’s worth, I remember seeing an ad for something similar when I was just a little younger than Harper and thinking they’d be totally badass to wear in high-school football games.
Bottom line: Wright may not go for the jugular with the Mets, but it’s hard to fathom him settling for less than Zimmerman’s $126 million. And since Wright is on the record wanting his next contract to take him to retirement (which the Mets hope to accomplish though options), eight years would seem to be the minimum for which Wright would settle unless he’s feeling benevolent.
Rubin makes a series of good points in his post and typically works with more information on the Mets than just about anyone. And I am a hopeful Mets fan, so my perspective is skewed by my bias.
But I wonder if eight years and over $126 million seems a little steep for Wright. Zimmerman’s second extension — the six-year, $100 million deal on top of his existing one — starts in 2014, when he’ll be 29. Wright’s already that old, and since the Mets hold an option on his contract for 2013, an extension beyond that will kick in when he’s 31. But then Wright is a demonstrably better hitter than Zimmerman and has missed less time with injuries than Zimmerman has, so maybe that makes up for their difference in age.
There are some semantic issues at play, too — would we call a six-year extension on top of Wright’s 2013 option a seven-year deal (as Rubin does in Zimmerman’s case), since it puts Wright in the Mets’ control through the end of the 2019 season? It doesn’t much matter and I’m not sure if there’s standard practice for clarifying these things in baseball writing, but either way I suspect there’ll be some confusion ahead.
Completely uninformed, shot-in-the-dark guess: Wright gets six guaranteed years and roughly $110 million on top of the 2013 option with a couple of team options tacked on to the back, and the deal is framed as a seven-year, $126 million extension.
Another hunch: R.A. Dickey does not get an extension, but is not traded before if and when the Mets fall out of contention in 2013.
Not many items of Taco Bell news this Tuesday, but this one’s hard to beat:
Taco Bell carjacking ends on the Yolo Bypass: Outside of the actual carjacking part, which sounds terrifying, this is all pretty hilarious and worth clicking through to read. It turns out that in addition to having a “Yolo Bypass,” East Davis, Calif. also has a Mace Blvd and a Chiles Road. Plus, the carjacker was chased into a cornfield by, among others, the California Department of Fish and Game. When cops surrounded the cornfield and demanded he surrender, he refused and laid down — a really good method if you’re ever hiding in a cornfield. Fortunately, the police have dogs that can distinguish the sickening smell of man from the sweet scent of corn, and the suspect was soon apprehended.
But really, I note it here because “Taco Bell Carjacking on the Yolo Bypass” is about the best title I could ever come up with for an album or poem or short story or autobiography. If I were on the Bleacher Report analytics team I’d definitely slip “Taco Bell Carjacking on the Yolo Bypass” into my massive list of potential UFC headlines just to see what someone came up with.
Taco Bell finishes second in survey of fastest fast-food: Wendy’s topped the list, which wouldn’t be surprising to anyone who frequents the outstanding Wendy’s in Hawthorne, N.Y. but would be absolutely f—ing baffling to anyone who has ever been to that Wendy’s in Yonkers. Taco Bell, I am near certain, was impacted by its continued affiliation with the Worst Taco Bell in the World in Elmsford, N.Y., where it once took over 20 minutes for me to get a drive-thru order.
Return of the Chicken Caesar Burrito?: Let’s ignore the typical LOLTacoBell stuff contained in the link and focus only on the potential positive: Is the Chicken Caesar Burrito coming back to Taco Bell? Will it be the original Chicken Caesar Grilled Stuft Burrito from the early part of this millennium or, as the article suggests, a new Lorena Garcia-inspired item?
The important thing is that it incorporates the Crunchy Red Strips. The first Chicken Caesar Grilled Stuft Burrito marked the introduction of that fine ingredient, and it would be a shame to bring a descendent back to the menu without a nod to the innovations of the original.
No sarcasm. Straight to the monkey.
Carlos Beltran hit two home runs last night to help the Cardinals beat the Nationals in the NLDS, because that’s one of the main things Beltran does. That power outburst, of course, inspired a lot of ironic Beltran-blaming from all corners of the Internet and this reasonable observation:
https://twitter.com/PatrickJFlood/status/255461454872977408
Patrick’s is a point I’ve made plenty of times before. July 11, 2011, for example:
No one really blames Carlos Beltran for anything anymore.
A joke that started as backlash to a pesky, ill-conceived idea forwarded in many corners of the fanbase and media has become a tired cliche, embraced now even by many of the same talking heads and columnists whose unsubstantiated insinuations prompted it in the first place.
And sure, a few stubborn fools maintain that Beltran is somehow at fault for all the Mets’ troubles, and in weak times we may turn to their blogs or Twitter feeds to see how their warped minds will twist his latest contributions to fit with their nonsensical narratives. But it is only a macabre appeal, like peeking through our hands at a train wreck. Anyone still blaming Carlos Beltran has long since careened off the rails.
Or later that month:
People who don’t appreciate Carlos Beltran by now don’t deserve to.
But then then there’s stuff like this, still appreciative of Beltran but apparently designed to tweak Mets fans:
https://twitter.com/JonHeymanCBS/status/255456475407867905
And I am tweaked. Beltran had a .978 OPS in his only postseason with the Mets. Sure, that’s below the absurd standards he has set for himself as the greatest postseason hitter of all time, but it’s still well within the range, I’d say, of “completely awesome.” And Beltran hit THREE home runs in the series for which he is blamed. Beltran’s 115 career postseason plate appearances make for an inadequately small sample, for sure, but you know what else is a small sample? ONE AT-BAT. It was an incredible curveball! Adam Wainwright is awesome. Babe Ruth wouldn’t have hit that!
Deep breath. Inhale. Exhale.
Don’t indulge; just enjoy. Carlos Beltran is so completely totally awesome — in the postseason, in the regular season, in Spring Training, whenever. And if you know and I know he would have been similarly awesome in later postseasons with our New York Mets if they had ever again managed to put a legitimate postseason team around him, there’s no real reason to harp on it.
The Jets will finish 8-8 this year. I can practically guarantee that. Don’t come at me with facts: The Jets finish 8-8 every single year, just bad enough to miss the playoffs but just good enough to ensure they’ll miss out on a premium draft pick.
Last night, the Jets nearly defeated an undefeated team. Hell, you might even argue that the Jets would have defeated an undefeated team were it not for classically Jetsish hiccups and nonsense in clock management and communication.
They somehow actually moved the ball! Their offense, which looked as bad as any I’d ever seen as of just last week when it had its best receiver, somehow moved the ball down the field against the Texans’ strong defense even though they still have no running game to speak of, most of their receivers still can’t really catch and Mark Sanchez can’t find a way to throw the ball over the line unimpeded. I don’t know how that happened. Tim Tebow willed it from the sidelines, maybe.
But too much Jets stuff happened. They had to call timeouts when they shouldn’t have because there were 40 guys in the huddle who then all panicked and left the field at the sight of each other. Tipped balls and dropped passes wound up in the hands of Texans defenders.
From what I’ve seen so far this morning, everyone’s crediting Arian Foster for the Texans’ win. And Foster’s a great back who had a great game, no doubt. But did you see the holes he had to run through? Massive. That happens because the Texans have a line that can protect their quarterback, a quarterback who can throw the ball downfield, and receivers that can catch the ball when he does. The Jets did a good job containing the Texans’ passing game, but — especially with Revis out — that means making concessions somewhere.
Look: I don’t think Shonn Greene’s a very good running back either. But do you really think it’s going to make a difference of more than a couple of feet per carry if the Jets give his touches to Bilal Powell, or, hell, to Tebow? There’s no place for the guy to go. Fantasy football and human nature combine to credit the individuals always in a football team’s success, but it is almost always the team.
Wouldn’t it be cool to root for a good one?
Also, that J.J. Watt guy looked awesome. CALL FOR HELP MARK SANCHEZ!
Remember this series? It’s back for another football season. This technically could have been a Sandwich of the Week as well, but I didn’t want to rate my own sandwich even if I’m pretty proud of how it came out. Also, I reserve the right to make something similar on an upcoming sandwich show.
Bold Flavors Snack of the Week: The following sandwich. Until I come up with a better name, I’m going to call it the Pork Bomb. This is actually only half of one. The pictures I took of the full thing didn’t come out as well. It was dark in my living room by the time we ate.
Directions:
1) Go home for your nephew’s first birthday party. Enjoy yourself, eating well. Have your mother send you home with a bunch of her delicious pasta sauce (optional) and some tin-can ricotta* (imperative). Enjoy the pasta sauce with some pasta and ricotta the next night. Save the remaining ricotta.
2) Work and frequently discuss sandwiches with Matt Cerrone. Have Cerrone go to Dante’s, an Italian deli in White Plains you never knew about even though you lived 10 minutes away for three years, get a delicious sandwich there, realize you would probably enjoy the peppery eggplant-tomato “bomb” spread used on the sandwich and bring you some. Start thinking of ways to use the spread.
3) Go to the farmer’s market and get a nice heirloom tomato and some basil. Act now, the tomatoes won’t be in season long. I used a yellow tomato but that’s got to be a personal choice.
4) Go to a grocery store with a good deli. Buy hero bread, hot capicola (sliced thin) and the ingredients for this recipe.
5) Follow this recipe and make that delicious rosemary pork tenderloin. Note that it actually took a lot longer to cook than the recipe said it would. Use a thermometer to avoid botulism.
6) While the pork is cooling, split and lightly toast the heroes. Spread ricotta cheese on one side and the bomb spread on the other. Go easy on the bomb spread if you’re sensitive to spice, but coat it on if you love delicious things.
7) Cut the pork tenderloin into thin slices. Sandwich a thin layer of capicola, a few pieces of pork, basil and tomato between the bread. Cut in half if desired.
8) Eat sandwich.
So to recap, that’s a rosemary pork tenderloin and hot capicola sandwich with tomato, basil, ricotta and Italian spread. And it’s awesome. It’s spicy from the spread, creamy from the ricotta, sweet from the tomato, tasty from the rosemary and basil, salty from the capicola, and porky from the pork.
*- I don’t think tin-can ricotta necessarily comes in a tin can anymore so much as the term refers to high-end ricotta cheese. Maybe there is a distinction in how it’s made, but I don’t know it. They definitely sell it in Fairway, but it’s in the section near the fancier soft cheeses, not by the Sorrento and Polly-O ricottas. No disrespect to Sorrento or Polly-O ricottas, which are also delicious. It’s just that good ricotta cheese is so amazing you could pretty much eat it from the thing with a spoon, and you probably will.
So here’s something.
Postseason baseball is awesome. But since our Mets have not partaken in it of late, this is the time of year for many of us to focus on rooting against the Yankees or rooting through baseball-reference.com for signs of hope. Since I’ve got no particular distaste for the Bombers beyond the boilerplate stuff, let’s engage in the latter.
Near the bottom of nearly every player’s page at baseball-reference, you’ll find his “Similarity Scores,” with lists of other players. The scores were invented by Bill James and are formulated through a process described here. Though every player is his own unique snowflake, the idea is that by comparing a current player to his nearest historical match, we can attempt to predict how he will perform moving forward. For active players, one of the lists provides the top 10 most similar players through that player’s current age. For Nick Swisher, say, the player who performed most similarly through age 31 was Jermaine Dye — though who’s to say if Dye could bro it down quite so hard?
It’s hardly a perfect way to predict how a player’s career will proceed, and it is indeed not even the best method for that. And certainly it’d be silly to expect Swisher to enjoy a career year at age 32 just because Dye did. But then there’s no perfect way to predict the future — what with, you know, the future — and looking at a player’s historical comps provides a handy, accessible guideline for guessing how guys will go forth. Players who produced like this to that age tend to produce like this afterward. That’s the idea, at least.
Anyway, with that in mind I took a look at the Mets’ position players’ age comps to try to figure which one has the best career in front of him.
Want to guess? Take a second and think about it: Which Met position player will be the best from 2013 through the end of his tenure in the big leagues?
There’s no right answer, of course. You might say it’s Justin Turner, and though I could point out that the players most like Turner through age 27 have averaged about one season’s worth of similar production afterward, I obviously can’t guarantee it will go that way for Turner. Plus the accuracy of the comparisons differs with every player, and in some cases we’re comparing contemporary players with guys who played in the 1890s when they might still get diptheria and such.
By this imperfect method, though, one Met is pretty clearly the safest bet to be the best from here on out. It’s David Wright and it’s not even close.
That might seem incredibly obvious to some of you: Wright is, after all, by far the best current Met and has established a level of production far more reliable than those of any of his teammates, so even though he’s a bit older and may have a shorter career in front of him, he comes with the least risk of collapse. But to others — especially those arguing for Wright’s departure this offseason — let it serve as a handy reminder. No player currently on the Mets is likely to be better than Wright for the rest of his career.
Hell, you could even argue that Wright might be the best of these current Mets five seasons from now, toward the end of a rumored extension, should he sign one. About half the guys on Wright’s list enjoyed healthy All-Star caliber seasons at age 35 or older — Chipper Jones, Carl Yastrzemski, George Brett and Carlos Beltran among them. Only two of them tanked. The average player on Wright’s list produced over 1,000 hits, 23.1 WAR and a .287/.376/.483 line after his age-29 season. And that average includes Beltran and Aramis Ramirez, who are both still playing and producing.
Does that mean Wright will definitely be worth whatever extension his agents are currently in the process of negotiation? Of course not. But it means it’s far from a guarantee that he won’t be worth it, since guys as good as Wright tend to stay good well into their 30s. It depends on the deal, of course.
Using the same method, the rest of the under-control Mets in descending order by projected future WAR: Ruben Tejada, Ike Davis, Daniel Murphy, Lucas Duda, Josh Thole, Jason Bay, Turner. That feels generally right, no?
Point is, David Wright is very, very good. Players of his caliber don’t typically fall apart at his age or immediately thereafter. Just because the Mets don’t appear primed to contend in 2013 doesn’t mean Wright won’t be an important part — if not the most important part — of their next contender.
Two things about that. One, that depends on where the runners were. And two, the rule does not ask, in fact does not allow for, the umpire to make a judgment about the chance of a double play. If you need to, go back up there and read the rule. We’ll wait … Okay, did you see anything in there about double plays? You didn’t, because it’s not there. All that matters is infielder and ordinary effort.
In the umpire’s judgment, that infielder was in position to make that play with ordinary effort.
I happen to love the infield fly rule, and not just because it sounds like a poppy early 90s hip-hop outfit. Click through for Neyer’s examination of the rules and defense of the umpire’s decision. As he points out, the Braves played terribly for most of the game so it’s hard for anyone to point to that one call as the difference-maker.
Also, if anyone’s just eager to complain — because Twitter — why not fault the format instead of the human umpires that made a judgment call? The Braves finished the 162-game regular season six games better than the Cardinals and now go home over one game. Bad umpiring is ultimately not what cost them, but imagine if it were?
Tedquarters 