Albert Pujols is an Angel, and not just in my heart anymore.
Kind of sucks that we won’t get to see him face the Mets as much anymore, and that I’ll have to stay up late more often to see him hit. Really sucks for Cardinals fans. Doesn’t suck at all that he’s not on the Marlins.
I like many other Mets fans have been upset regarding the Reyes thing. Then this morning I remembered you have the embarrassing Cole Hamels pictures. Took the sting of Reyes being a Marlin away a little bit. Remind people to look at the photos. At least it will give them a quick laugh!
– Cat, via email.
Not only that, but I’ve added one. Go check it out.
And to top it all off, there’s this to consider, from the man himself:
I don’t know what’s happening to me — if this is some sort of Stockholm Syndrome thing or what — but I believe I’m starting to like Cole Hamels. I fear he might be kind of awesome, actually, in his utter and obvious disregard for what various snarky Mets bloggers might think about him. Plus it’s impossible to ignore that he’s just really, really good at pitching.
[Taco Bell chief executive officer Greg] Creed outlined an aggressive game plan for 2012 built around what he referred to as a breakthrough product designed to reinvent the taco. That product has been revealed as the Doritos Locos Taco, which through a partnership with Frito-Lay was developed as a taco in a shell made from Nacho Cheese Doritos.
Other menu upgrades for the future include a Chef’s Signature lineup of upgraded tacos and other menu items, as well as the reformulation of several key ingredients, from the beans and pico de gallo to marinades and seasonings for proteins.
Creed also confirmed that the brand’s breakfast platform, called First Meal, would roll out to 800 locations in the West in early 2012. Taco Bell also has plans to refranchise about 400 locations over the next two years, taking its percentage of company-owned units from 23 percent to about 16 percent by 2013.
– Mark Brandau, RestaurantNews.com.
Everything is happening so fast. I feel like for the first time I can see and feel and hear the world spinning on its axis and hurtling through space, and I just want to grab onto something rooted and squeeze it tight and stop everything from moving for one damn second. But there’s nothing rooted! All of the matter in the universe is flying, whirling, scattering, throttling through space, diffusing into the great inconceivable darkness beyond.
Doritos Locos Taco!
First Meal!
What a terrifying and beautiful existence.
And when Torres comes back next summer with the Mets, I’m going to give him a standing ovation as if he’s Willie Mays carrying Joe Montana on his shoulders after they’ve returned from the first manned mission to Mars.
– Grant Brisbee, McCoveyChronicles.com.
Brisbee writes a love letter to Torres upon the outfielder’s departure from San Francisco. As he writes, his fondness for the man is all mixed up with the Giants’ 2010 world championship, but everything I’ve read and seen in the past couple days makes Torres seem like a decent and interesting dude.
It also got me thinking about the nature of trades in sports. I recognize that it comes with the territory, and that a team’s right to trade players is one of the things it pays for when it shells out millions of dollars to those players to have them play baseball, and something players realize is a possibility when they enter into a life in professional sports.
But it’s still pretty weird on some human level, no? I can’t think of any reasonable analogy in real life. I know people get transferred at work sometimes, but it’s not the same as being traded. You’ve been traded. For whatever reason, your boss thought what you had to offer your company was less worth than what some other guy (or collection of guys) could bring to the table, so now you have to pack up your family and all your stuff and ship out, bro. Wave to that other guy as you pass him in the night, because his whole life has been uprooted too. We’ve swapped the two of you, just like you used to with baseball cards, except unlike baseball cards you’re real human men.
And I will continue to do it, but it’s pretty damn funny that we all throw it around so callously: Trade this guy. Trade for that guy. Traid. Trade him.
You ever wonder what you’d be worth on the trade market? What it’d be like if you could be traded to do your job at some similar company across the country? Maybe I’d be flattered that someone wanted me, or impressed by the package of bloggers I brought back to SNY.tv. Or maybe I’d look at their collective output and be all, “This? I’m worth less than this to you in a trade? You’re making me go through all this nonsense so you can have this?”
Luckily that can’t happen. At least I don’t think so. I don’t remember there being a no-trade clause, but I kind of assume that’s the case in most salaried positions outside of baseball.
Checking in with Kevin:
From The Franchise on Showtime, via Meredith:
Oh, Jose. What have you done?
Maybe it’s for the best. This is ours and ours alone:
Over at Mets Minor League Blog, Toby Hyde looks at the Mets’ top center-field prospects. Presumably Andres Torres, who’ll be 34 on Opening Day, is not the long-term solution.
I’ve seen a few fans wondering already why the team, unlikely as it is to contend in 2012, wouldn’t just hand the starting job to Kirk Nieuwenhuis. I chatted with Toby about it this morning and he confirmed what I was thinking: First, and most obviously, Nieuwenhuis is coming off season-ending surgery, so there’s no reason to rush him back to full health at the big-league level.
Second — and this speaks to the larger point about not rushing prospects in general — baseball is tough enough as it is, and there’s no sense in overwhelming a player by forcing him to compete at a level he might not be prepared for. Plus there’s the whole arbitration-clock issue, for what that’s worth.
Unless Nieuwenhuis shows up in Spring Training fully recovered, then turns tons of heads with his Grapefruit League performance, he’s likely ticketed for at least another month or two in Buffalo. If goes to Triple-A and again plays like he did in the couple of months of 2011, I suspect we’ll see him in Flushing before long.
In Torres, the Mets have a veteran stopgap and switch-hitter who can play all three outfield positions and slide into a fourth outfielder role if and when Nieuwenhuis or any other young Met is ready to command center field at Citi.
The one interesting thing I can find looking at Jon Rauch is that he had a seriously down year in terms of infield flyball rate and HR/FB, both of which fluctuate a lot in general. Now, it could mean that he was unlucky or it could mean that he was leaving a lot of balls up and getting punished. For whatever it’s worth, looking at pitch fx data, he threw fewer pitches in the middle of the zone (which I’m arbitrarily defining as a full baseball’s width from the edge of the strike zone in all directions) in 2010 than in ’09, and fewer in far fewer in 2011 than he did in either. He was, however, missing the zone a lot more, going from between 53 and 55% every year from ’07-’10 down to 50.3% last year. To some extent, this probably goes together, since he was pitching away from the middle of the plate. Still, it seems to suggest he may have just been unlucky.
Frank Francisco actually had the same thing with the off year with IFFB and HR/FB, which makes me wonder if I’ve reverse-engineered the Mets’ recipe here. But he also left a lot more pitches out over the plate than he did in the three (good) years before last.
– Seth, comments section here.
Interesting, and probably worth noting. Could easily be a coincidence, too.
Also worth noting on Francisco, from Dustin Parkes at The Score:
A glance at his numbers for the whole of last season may not impress many, but it should be remembered that he missed most of Spring Training, and because of Rauch’s failings combined with the realization of Octavio Dotel’s one dimensionability, he was likely rushed back from the Disabled List and hurried through his rehab stints. As a result, Toronto didn’t get a glimpse of the real Francisco until mid-season when he finally began delivering on the promise that made the Blue Jays trade Mike Napoli for him before the season started.
After a brutal first half, Francisco posted a 1.37 ERA with a 6:1 K:BB ratio in 24 1/3 innings after the All-Star Break last season. Small sample, though, and his full season line didn’t wind up looking all that different than the ones he posted from 2008-2010.
Angel Pagan was one of my favorite Mets, and upon his departure I meant to write some small tribute to his style. I’ve touched on that a bunch before though: I just appreciated the aesthetics of the way he played baseball, from the loping strides in the outfield to the Michael Jackson thing he does when he grabs his helmet and tucks it toward his shoulder as he retreats back towards a base on pickoff attempts.
But that’s basically all I have to say. I think and hope Pagan will bounce back, and I was getting sort of tired of insisting he would. And when I went to find a picture to accompany a post about Pagan, I found a series of awesome photos of Angel Pagan looking at things that I thought would make for a far more entertaining tribute than anything I could write on few hours’ sleep and with a studio appointment pending.
So here’s Angel Pagan looking at some stormtroopers:
Here’s Angel Pagan looking at Poppy Montgomery from the CBS show Unforgettable:
Here’s Angel Pagan looking at a baseball:
Angel Pagan looking at whatever Marc Anthony told him to look at:
And Angel Pagan looking at his teammates after a walk-off home run:
Tedquarters 