The Mets (and every other Major League team) will wear new hats during batting practice and Spring Training in 2013. The Mets’ version looks like this:
I’m not a huge fan of the two-tone style, but I’m all for giving Mr. Met his due. Still, I probably would’ve gone with this:
I knew this, but it’s always nice to be reminded of it. It makes sense, since Chuck D was born in Queens, went to high school and college on Long Island, and is inexplicably awesome.
https://twitter.com/MrChuckD/status/284022218122461184
https://twitter.com/MrChuckD/status/284023442599194624
https://twitter.com/MrChuckD/status/284024880985427971
Also, in between Public Enemy’s heyday and his reality-TV revival, Flavor Flav was a regular at Freeport High School football games, big clock and everything.
Things will be quiet here until late next week. Enjoy yourselves, but be nice.
Get it?
Rob V made that for you.
https://twitter.com/LisaAnnNg/status/282148165765984256
I’m tempted to say the Breaded Steak from Ricobene’s, the highest rated sandwich ever reviewed on this site, but I’m pretty sure I’d go with the Full Bird, the sandwich that made me love sandwiches. I think I’d want something comforting in my final hours on earth, and that’s a sandwich that makes me feel like I’m at peace with everything, and home.
https://twitter.com/The7Line/status/282146278576619520
No disrespect to the bankers out there, but no. I do often dream of having much more money, though, and banking would probably be a good way to get about that. But I really don’t have the head for the particulars; I’d start thinking about how much money changes hands, and how that money rarely takes physical form and is instead just this weird ethereal wealth-cloud zipping through wires and how serious everyone’s being about this formless thing that seems six steps removed from anything of real, tangible value, and then I’d giggle a lot and lose focus on whatever banking stuff I’m supposed to be doing. Also, I don’t even really know what bankers do.
I think the only way I could actually do it would be as concept art. I’m not even sure if it’s true, but I read one time about David Byrne scheduling business meetings with executives, then showing up and putting on bizarre Powerpoint art presentations. I think I could do that type of banking.
https://twitter.com/andrewcilento/status/282146432406933505
Thin, definitely. No one wants a steak-sized portion of deli ham. Thinner slices allow for better ribboning, and better ribboning makes for better sandwiches. That’s proven.
One issue I’ve had though is it feels like people go so crazy with requesting their deli meat sliced thin that everyone’s always trying to one up each other, like, “Sliced extra thin!” First off, the deli man at anyplace worth its salt knows that you probably want your meats sliced thin, so even if you don’t say anything you’re going to get reasonably thin slices of meat. Second, there’s no “extra thin,” at least not that you want. When you specify you want your meat sliced thin, the guy’s going to set the slicer to make it about as thin as it can be without shredding the meat. Extra thin is a big (delicious) pile of shredded meat that’s impossible to do anything with after it’s wrapped up and it basically reconstitutes.
https://twitter.com/connallon/status/282146870975946753
At good New York pizza places, they’re largely unnecessary. A good, well-proportioned slice of New York cheese pizza is like a perfect thing. There’s no need to upset the balance. Sometimes I’ll order one slice of cheese and one slice of something meaty (buffalo chicken, perhaps) for the sake of having protein, but chicken works better than pork on pizzas — and no disrespect to pork here, obviously — because pork is crazy greasy and so is pizza.
Also: Pepperoni pizza is wildly overrated. It’s fine, and I’m not going to turn down a slice if you hand me one. But I would way rather you give me a small stack of thinly sliced cold pepperoni and a slice of cheese pizza than watch bake that pepperoni onto the pizza. Not a synergistic relationship. Once the pepperoni heats up, the fat drips out and the pizza becomes unreasonably greasy.
https://twitter.com/KlownKrusty/status/282148048786821123
Do you eat seafood and shellfish, or no? This sushi sandwich was awesome. And if I could eat lobster rolls without getting sick from them, I would do so as often as my budget would allow. Plus, I’ve recently decided to learn to like fish, so I’ll get back to you with more ideas if you’re open to fish.
If not, it’s pretty much falafel. The upside is that falafel’s amazing. Also, I’ve heard really good things about the broccoli sandwich at No. 7 Sub, but I’ve never been able to bring myself to order it when there are so many meatier options.
https://twitter.com/Ceetar/status/282153240001388544
Our man Ceetar’s referring to a weird recent Twitter thing wherein I have been accused (by many people, multiple times) of Tweeting as @JedSmed, a now defunct account known for making jokes about the Mets. It’s just not true. I don’t particularly care if people think it’s true, but I don’t want to take credit for the guy’s material either. Also, I can’t understand why anyone thinks I’d do that. I make jokes about the Mets on Twitter under my own name, both for sad pathetic Twitter validation and because it increases my exposure and helps me promote this site. Why would I put effort into making other jokes about the Mets on a second, anonymous account? Also, I write thousands of words here every day and manage all the real-job parts of my job, to boot. How much time do people think I have?
I started a fake Twitter once. I’m not going to tell you what it is. It was a stupid meta-joke about fake Twitters, no one seemed to get it, and it lasted about two weeks. That was the only time I’ve been moved to do so. Have I mentioned that I’m incredibly vain? I like having my jokes attributed to me.
Via email, Steve writes:
Hi Ted. On the Mostly Mets Podcast, the assertion was made that RA Dickey is one in a lifetime. I am of the mind that RA has provided a blueprint for a bunch of unsuccessful, hard throwing prospects and teams controlling them that there is a way to squeeze some success out of a proverbial lemon. RA is undoubtedly showing teams that the pitch can be thrown hard and for strikes, so it might be worth nurturing.
That’s a good point, and I suspect Dickey’s success will open up teams’ minds about grooming knuckleballers. But there are a bunch of things to remember here: For one, Dickey had a knuckleball when the Rangers decided to make him a full-time knuckleballer. Tim Wakefield had one when the Pirates converted him from infield. I suspect most baseball players mess around with knuckleballs at some point or another, but it’s an incredibly difficult pitch to throw and far, far from a guarantee a full-time knuckleballer will win with it. Dickey and Wakefield are great success stories. Recent knuckleballers like Jared Fernandez, Dennis Springer, Charlie Zink and Charlie Haeger are not. (Steve Sparks had some success too, but hardly on the level of Dickey and Wakefield.)
Moreover, from the Knuckleball! documentary it seemed Wakefield, Dickey and their predecessors Phil Niekro and Charlie Hough brought more intellectual or more reasonable approaches to the game than many of their teammates. As I said upon seeing the movie (and asked Wakefield about later): Tim Wakefield willingly, repeatedly threw 65 mph pitches over the plate in the heart of one of baseball’s best offensive eras, in one of its best hitting environments, in front of one of its most hostile fanbases. That takes a special type of resolve, and a certain philosophical leap that I’m not sure every pitcher could make.
Lastly, and this is utterly speculative (and something I’ve wondered about before): I wonder if there’d be a law of diminishing returns on knuckleballers across the league. If there were a knuckleballer on every team, would so many hitters still have so much trouble hitting the knuckleball? Would managers get a better sense of the guys who tend to get good swings off knuckleballers and figure out the best way to fill out their lineup cards when facing one?
https://twitter.com/MattThe84th/status/282147501069443072
I actually looked this up around the time of the trade when I was vaguely planning a trip to Toronto. It seems like the Toronto area’s local sandwich delicacy is something called peameal bacon, a type of Canadian bacon rolled in cornmeal. Sounds pretty delicious to me.
That’s not particularly close to Cornwall, though. Am I missing an obvious joke here? The Cornwaller? Also, like half of the Wikipedia’s list of notable current and former residents of Cornwall are hockey players.
https://twitter.com/itsmetsforme/status/282147940724772866
Chipotle. There’s a Chipotle in Port St. Lucie, and Minor Leaguers — it has long been proven — f–ing love Chipotle, much like most people. Minor League free agents everywhere would want to be part of the Mets’ organization so they could train and play in Chipotle Park, or as we call it around here, the Burrito Bowl.
https://twitter.com/RayBendici/status/282154340020539392
Seems like we’ll have a pretty clear idea sometime next offseason, right? After 2013, basically everyone’s off the books. It’d be hard to play that card with a $50 million payroll or whatever.
https://twitter.com/RobvanEyndhoven/status/282155997949222912
I agree it’s weird, for sure. But if you listened to the Internet, you’d know it was because Jeff Wilpon himself obviously oversees the production of the Mets’ holiday e-card, working long and late at MLB Advanced Media’s offices in Chelsea to carefully position the blue and orange scarf on the image of Mr. Met so that it hangs naturally but does not cover the Mets logo on his jersey. Really, it’s amazing he found the time among all the other things the Internet seems certain he does, from setting ticket prices to devising the Citi Field menus to meddling in contract negotiations to controlling the content of every one of my Tweets. Busy dude, I guess.
Look: I don’t know who produced the video or how it all went down, but I can practically guarantee it’s no top-down conspiracy. Somewhere, a video producer and editor were charged with creating a minute-long holiday e-card of Mets highlights under the headline “Season’s Greetings from the Mets.” R.A. Dickey, as sad as this is to say, is not on the Mets. It’s a damned if you do, damned if you don’t situation, right? If the Season’s Greetings from the Mets card did include footage of R.A. Dickey, that would seem weird, too. That would also prompt LOLMets, without a doubt.
And I’d say it’s entirely possible the original version of the video included footage of R.A. Dickey, since Dickey was traded just a couple of days before the card was sent to fans. If anything — and again, I don’t know that this is actually how it happened, I’m just guessing — I’d figure someone who put together that video was really irritated that the trade talks were dragging out that long because he or she needed to know how to handle the Dickey thing in the video, and the deal happened so close to the producer’s deadline that he or she just said, “screw it, let’s just cut out the Dickey footage and go with Wright, Davis and Santana.”
There are a lot of things the Mets do that we can and do complain about. But a baseball team is a huge operation, and it’s downright silly to assume everything coming from a baseball team is the direct, ordered output of its upper management.
https://twitter.com/dagreendragon53/status/282152013066797056
If I can’t choose both, then it has to be Swisher. I only suspect Uggla likes to bro it down, whereas there’s ample evidence that Swisher loves to bro it down. I’d like to hang out with him for one night just to see how long I could keep up, honestly.
https://twitter.com/JoeBacci/status/282152572545019904
I don’t think so. His fate is tied to the Mets. If d’Arnaud stinks and the Mets start winning anyway, people will remember the trade but forgive him for it. If d’Arnaud’s awesome and the Mets don’t win with him, people will argue that the deal was not enough and say Alderson should have done more.
Arian Foster rewarded each of the Houston Texans’ offensive linemen with a unique gift for paving the way to his third consecutive 1,000-yard season.
The star running back presented each with a Segway personal transporter on Wednesday.
The linemen screamed with delight when they discovered their new toys, and learned how to ride them with help from Foster, who has had one for a while.
– ESPN.com.
Bar: raised. Click the link for video of 300-pound linemen riding Segways.
Oh how I wish Segways were $4000 less expensive, or at least that the secondary Segway market were more robust.
Trick question, suckers: It is always time to bro it down with Nick Swisher. Nick Swisher exists in a state of perpetual bro-down, draped in Ed Hardy and marked, undoubtedly, by ever-flowing Jaegermeister, virulent chest-bumping, thumping technopop and an array of macho gestures unintelligible to anyone but the broiest of bros.
But as it pertains to the Mets, the possibility of Nick Swisher broing it down in Flushing is discussed here only because it came up through a Twitter hoax yesterday and because the Mets still desperately need outfielders.
Though occasionally infuriating, Swisher is a good player. As a switch hitter who has been slightly better from the right side across his career, he could fill the Mets’ need for a right-handed bat in the outfield without requiring a platoon hedge. Outside of a down season in 2009 that was at least partly induced by a low batting average on balls in play, he has been a remarkably consistent (and very good) performer, posting a park- and league-adjusted OPS+ in the 120s in 2006 and 2007 and in every season from 2010 to 2012. By defensive metrics, he is about an average defender in right field. Swisher turned 32 in November, but he has not played in fewer than 148 games in any season since 2005. As an added bonus, he can fill in at first base if necessary.
So yes, if the Mets had plenty of money to spend or the Mets were the only team bidding on Swisher’s services this offseason, he’d seem a damn near perfect fit for a club without a single outfielder under contract who has ever played 148 games in a year or managed a 120 OPS+ for a full season — the things, again, Swisher does reliably.
But all that matters are the things we don’t know: Namely, how much money the Mets have to spend this offseason and how much it will cost to acquire Swisher. The Indians have a widely reported offer on Swisher’s table — presumably right next to the pile of empty Red Bull cans, under last month’s Maxim — believed to be for about four years and $52 million.
That doesn’t sound like something the Mets could afford or even something they should be willing to part with for a 32-year-old outfielder who will cost them their 11th overall draft pick, and who’s good but not good enough to make them certain contenders in 2013. So if everything is as it currently appears: No, the Mets should not bro it down with Nick Swisher this offseason.
There are a couple of wild cards, though, however unlikely. Swisher is married to actress Joanna Garcia and, per that Jon Heyman report linked above, “loved New York” and has unrequited interest in the Dodgers. It seems to me that $13 million a year should be enough money to charter flights from anywhere in the country to New York or L.A. when Ms. Garcia needs to audition or work, so I’m not sure how much stock I’d put in Swisher’s preference for the coasts. But if the convenience of living in New York appeals to the Swishers enough to afford the Mets some sort of discount, the outlook becomes murkier.
Also, we keep hearing that the Mets will spend in free agency after the 2013 season, when more money comes off the books, and the team has a better understanding of its particular needs and is closer to contention. But though a lot could change between now and next offseason, the list of free agents for 2014 does not appear overwhelming. If the Mets could find room in their 2013 budget to pay Swisher, would Swisher on a three-year deal starting in 2014 be more appealing than the alternative free-agent options that offseason? The team’s need for outfielders probably isn’t going away, and there are a few but not a ton to choose from slated for next offseason’s market.
Meh, I still probably say no, if only because one year’s worth of information on next season’s free agents plus the draft pick might be worth more than the prospect of having Swisher at a then-somewhat-reasonable rate, since Swisher, for all his consistency to date, is still a human subject to all the same awful whims as the rest of us. Plus, the Mets’ signing Swisher now would interfere with my own personal pipedream: The team landing a different switch-hitting corner outfielder next year to lead them to postseason glory.
David Wright was born on this day in Norfolk, Va. in 1982. He has spent the bulk of the thirty years since punishing baseballs. Here is what he looks like:
Using baseball-reference’s version of WAR, here’s how Wright stacks up with baseball’s top 20 active players aged 30 or younger:
[sny-table rowheader=true columnheader=true]
Player; Age; bb-ref WAR
Miguel Cabrera; 29; 44.4
David Wright; 30; 39.1
Joe Mauer; 29; 37.0
Robinson Cano; 30; 34.8
Justin Verlander; 29; 33.6
Ryan Braun; 29; 32.0
Felix Hernandez; 26; 31.8
Dustin Pedroia; 29; 30.7
Zack Greinke; 29; 30.0
Jose Reyes; 29; 29.8
Matt Cain; 28; 29.7
Ian Kinsler; 30; 28.7
Ryan Zimmerman; 28; 28.7
Evan Longoria; 27; 28.5
Cole Hamels; 28; 28.2
Adrian Gonzalez; 30; 28.1
Jered Weaver; 30; 27.8
Grady Sizemore; 30; 26.5
Joey Votto; 29; 26.2
Hanley Ramirez; 28; 26.2
[/sny-table]
If you don’t get it by now, I don’t imagine you ever will. David Wright is so, so good.
I don’t know much about tennis beyond how to eat at tennis events, and I don’t know a damned thing about world No. 1 ranked tennis player Novak Djokovic. But I’ve got a newfound appreciation for the man this morning after learning he secured the entire global supply of the world’s most expensive cheese:
Tennis great Novak Djokovic has purchased the entire global supply of a rare cheese produced from donkey milk that can cost over $500 per pound….
The cheese, which recently set the record for the world’s most expensive cheese, is reportedly so pricey because 2.2 lbs of the delicacy requires 6 gallons of donkey milk.
Djokovic reportedly bought the annual output of Pule from the world’s sole producer, a donkey farm 50 miles west of the Serbian capital Belgrade.
Supposedly it’s for a chain of restaurants he’s opening, but I prefer to think he just really, really likes the cheese and wants to be the only person in the world who gets to enjoy it. Novak Djokovic is my new favorite tennis player.
Also, I guess I need to taste this cheese. Unfortunately, Novak Djokovic controls all of it.
Via Moses.
The Mets traded Minor Leaguer Jefry Marte to the Oakland A’s for Collin Cowgill, who is a human outfielder that bats right-handed and thus a massive upgrade to their roster.
It’s actually a good deal for a number of reasons: Though Cowgill’s 75 career OPS+ won’t turn many heads, he’s posted a strong .298/.379/405 line against lefties in a tiny sample in the Majors and a .281/.330/.536 line against them over the past two seasons at Triple-A. He plays all three outfield positions and supposedly had a good arm, he always hit pretty well in the Minors — though he was a bit old for every level — he stole bases in the Minors at a Beltranian rate, and he’ll be under team control for the next five years if it comes to that. Unless the Mets sign multiple righty-hitting outfielders, Cowgill’s likely to make the big club out of Spring Training.
Also, he’s short. Listed at 5’9″, Cowgill inspires all sorts of short-guy love in everything I can find about him from Google. Here’s a fantasy article from 2011:
That latter stigma is the one that has been attached to the fiery Cowgill, 25, for so long. Standing just 5-foot-9, Cowgill has been a victim of his stature, and perhaps his own intensity. He has gotten labeled gritty — perhaps even an overachiever — but he could be the next Eric Byrnes with speed and pop.
“He really has no pride; he really has no ego, other than the drive to be successful,” said Triple-A manager Brett Butler, who knows a thing or two about being a dirt-baller. “There are certain guys who could have played in any era. He’s one of them. You can pay him $5 or you could play him $50 million and he’s going to be the same guy. He’s going to give you his heart and soul every single day.”…
Cowgill, perhaps because the scouts don’t tend to be fans of grit and any outfielder under 6-feet, is flying well under the radar in fantasy. Just this week, he was finally owned in at least one percent of CBSSports.com’s leagues. The story about a potential call-up has ticked him up to 3 percent.
Wait, since when are scouts not fans of grit?
Cowgill’s going to have to be really good for that type of talk not to become infuriating. But hey, at least he does all the little things. Plays the game the right way. Gives his heart and soul every day.
Also, his name is only one letter off from “Cowgirl.”
Tedquarters 