Mets want ‘a monster package for Dickey’
Reply
Friday Q&A, pt. 3: The randos
https://twitter.com/JeffSposato/status/269518403025371136
Well, if we’re considering my current living situation, I’m pretty limited. The apartment’s cramped enough with just two of us in it, so as badass as it would be to have a white tiger skulking around — and as much as that would fit with the decor — it just wouldn’t be practical. And I’d say a small monkey of some sort because monkeys are hilarious, but we know from Beltran that monkeys can wreak havoc on apartments and I’ve got a large outstanding security deposit. So I think I’d go with a two-toed sloth, just chillin’ out on top of our bookshelf, bothering no one, cracking me up with its apparent laziness. Look at this thing:
If I had a lot more space, I think it’d be cool to own an elephant because you can RIDE elephants. What if you lived in some quiet suburban town somewhere, and you’re setting off on your sorry little day, and who’s blocking your route to the train station but me on my way to the deli on the back of my trusty three-ton elephant? The only issue is elephants in captivity make me and everyone else who has seen Dumbo very sad.
For those of us who celebrate Christmas, it’s Christmas. Thanksgiving at my parents’ house is typically better than Thanksgiving elsewhere because my mom’s Italian and serves delicious Italian food alongside the traditional Thanksgiving fare. But turkey is pretty wildly overrated and not nearly worth the build-up. The sides are still good, and in principle I support a holiday based on sitting around, eating and giving thanks for the things you have.
But though the build-up and hype before Christmas and the Christmas-shopping process are awful, the relief from Christmas preparation that comes with the holiday, combined with all the same family togetherness stuff from Thanksgiving, combined with the fact that the food is often just as good if not better, combined with the promise of gifts, give Christmas the clear advantage.
I’d still put Thanksgiving up against most holidays, though.
https://twitter.com/TheZaharaDesert/status/269446195905187840
Near as I can tell, pants are a thing because it’s difficult to ride a horse in a tunic and because a strong breeze up a kilt can get awfully chilly in wintertime. But I’ve been pretty consistent in this, I think: Once our oppressive society deems it appropriate for men to wear skirts to work, I will wear a skirt to work.
I try not to complain about any aspect of my job because I realize plenty of people don’t have jobs to complain about and because mine is a sweet job in which I get to write about baseball and the atrocities of mandatory pants. But I’ve been pretty open in my distaste for this office’s dress code, which states that men must wear non-denim pants even when their responsibilities are limited to editing websites and rarely having anyone outside their immediate vicinity in the office seeing the lower halves of their bodies. It’s like they have no idea how much my output would increase and improve from the comfort afforded by shorts in the summer and jeans at all other times. Man, I hate pants. Quoth me:
Today in articles clearly tailored toward getting me to read them
At the Classical, Dave Bry reimagines the songs on Prince’s Purple Rain as a batting order. My only issue with it is doubting Prince’s lineup construction. He’s right about “The Beautiful Ones” being the underappreciated best song on the album, though. I don’t know that there’s a better build-up/payoff ratio in any song in the history of human ears. Prince rules so hard. Not sure I’ve expressed that before.
Friday Q&A, pt. 2: Food stuff
https://twitter.com/Devon2012/status/269454363133632513
What kind of vile hypothetical is this? Are we counting just traditional American-style belly bacon, or does this extend to jowl bacon and back bacon as well? And do I get to choose which pinky?
Depends on the deal, but I’m probably severing the pinky. I might ask for a grace period to try life without bacon for a year or so to consider how frequently I use my pinky versus how often I want bacon.
But outside of typing, I really don’t have much all that use for my right pinky. I need the left for playing the guitar even though I don’t use it as much as I should when I do. The right one is sometimes useful for little grace-note flourishes on the bass, but those are hardly worth bacon. I bat and throw right-handed in baseball, but I’m pretty certain I could do both just as terribly with one fewer digit.
I’m glad someone asked about Hostess. This can’t really be it for the Hostess line of products, right? The way I figure, the Twinkie and HoHo are too valuable for those products to disappear entirely. So we just need to hope whatever company purchases the brands maintains the same standards that Hostess did, and, ideally, the same bakeries. I also suspect that there are probably enough extant Twinkies to keep the world well-stocked until long after oil production peaks and society crumbles, at which point the lack of Twinkies will be the least of our problems. Though I suppose they’d be at their most useful then, since they’ll never, ever go bad.
All that said, it’s Hostess Cupcakes. So good. One time, for some occasion or another, I gave my wife a kit to make homemade Hostess-style cupcakes. They were delicious, but not as good as the Hostess Cupcakes we could have purchased at the supermarket with far less hassle.
https://twitter.com/bjr54/status/269454008345821185
Seems that way, huh? I’ve had, to date, three food items that I know of “named” for me, mostly due to my own prodding. The first was an ice cream sandwich on cookies at the freshman cafeteria in college, “The Berg.” People would argue that ice cream sandwiches existed long before I arrived on campus, but I countered that the idea to construct ice cream sandwiches from the cafeteria’s cookies and ice cream — which were, for whatever reason, pretty far from each other — was my original concept. Oh, the naivete of youth! Some of my friends took to calling it that, but I think only when I was around to humor me.
The second was “Berg’s Pepper Barge” at the deli where I worked. Pepper ham, pepper turkey and fresh mozzarella with optional roasted red peppers and oil and balsamic vinegar on a hero. It’s delicious.
The third is “The Ted Berg,” a drink inspired by the green tea and whiskey combination I enjoyed in China and, of course, the Arnold Palmer. It’s roughly three parts unsweetened green tea, one part lemonade and one part whiskey. It’s delicious and refreshing and it gets you drunk. Order it by name at your favorite local watering hole. Be prepared to then explain what it is and be disappointed when they don’t have unsweetened green tea. But keep ordering it by name anyway. I’d really like this to catch on. The Ted Berg.
As for the “OG” in my Twitter handle, I never expected it to remain there this long. I ripped it off from Chad Johnson (ne Ochocinco), who was @OGOchocinco until whoever had @ochocinco relinquished it. But I do keep it real on there, and the construction’s still pretty funny to me.
What would be on The OGTedBerger, though? That’s the important thing. I don’t like my burgers too buried in toppings, so some degree of topping austerity is paramount. I’ll have to think on this more, but it might be bacon, cheddar, barbecue sauce and fresh jalapenos.
You’re blowing my mind right now, Michael. Oreos are by far my favorite mass-produced dessert, nuts to the Hostess products discussed above. But on a sandwich? I don’t know. I’d try anything once, but I’d be concerned you’re ruining a good sandwich or ruining some good Oreos? It’s aesthetically unsettling, for sure.
Follow the two-fold path: Is the sandwich appreciably better for having the Oreos? Are the Oreos better on the sandwich than they would be on their own? Tell me.
Mostly Mets Podcast presented by Caesars A.C.
On iTunes here.
The Red Sox’ efforts to defeat the Empire with fried chicken were far less successful
A true dog of the people, the Chihuahua has tirelessly devoted his life to one thing – the pursuit of tacos. This kind of dedication has allowed him to heighten his natural skills of navigation, negotiation and general deviousness. Now he is putting his considerable talents to work fighting the ultimate evil in the universe. Because, he rationalizes, when the universe is free, the tacos are free. In the meantime, he’s confident he’ll get that Jedi mind trick to work eventually.
Catsmeat passed along this link to the promotional website the Yum! Foods restaurants used in a promotion coinciding with the release of Star Wars: Episode 1 back in 1999, via The Onion, via the ol’ Wayback Machine. It’s way too good to sit on until Tuesday. I mean:
Friday Q&A, pt. 1: Baseball stuff
Via email (on Thursday), Regina writes:
Hey Ted! I work at a middle school, surrounded by billygobs of Yankee fans. I am wearing my T7L “The Dickey Strikes Back” t-shirt, and received one complaint (actually, not to my face) that it was inappropriate. Thoughts? I am also wearing a blue sock and an orange sock with my blue/orange Reebok sneakers that I spied on Shannon Shark’s blog. They are a year old and have never been worn outside. Too much? I value your opinion. Should I turn my shirt inside out, or bask in the warm glow?
What? No! Wear it with pride! Are we not in the peak of the anti-bullying movement? Assuming you’re not breaking any sort of workplace dress code (and more on that will follow), be a role model to the middle schoolers and show them you’re not afraid to swim upstream when celebrating something as important and monumental as R.A. Dickey’s Cy Young Award victory. In other words:
Yes, and I don’t think it was all that close. By WAR, Wright beats out the next guys in the division by more than a full win. His total in that stat was bolstered by his massive uptick in the notoriously capricious defensive metric UZR, but so was the NL East’s second-best — Jason Heyward — and Wright plays the more premium defensive position and far outpaced Heyward offensively.
By offense alone, the only guy who hit appreciably better than Wright in the division was Giancarlo Stanton, and Stanton played in 33 fewer games due to injury. Phillies catcher Carlos Ruiz, whose park-adjusted 149 OPS+ narrowly topped Wright’s 143, would have had a strong case had he not missed nearly all of August with a foot injury.
Don’t forget it: David Wright is really, really good. For whatever reason, fans of every team get frustrated with their club’s best players on occasion. But Wright didn’t stumble into becoming the best player in franchise history. It’s a pretty safe bet that no prospect any team would ever consider trading for anybody will ever become as good as Wright, and a reasonable wager the Mets won’t see another homegrown position player as good for at least another 25 years or so.
https://twitter.com/RobPatterson83/status/269446398301323264
Well, pitcher wins are fluky, so it’s hard to expect another 18+ win season from anyone pitching for the Mets next year unless the Mets come into a lot more offense. But the complete list of starting pitchers who have been as good or better than Dickey since he joined the Mets in 2010 is pretty short, and every guy on there is someone you’d probably call an ace. Here are the fellows who’ve thrown at least 500 innings with an ERA+ of 125 or better since 2010: Justin Verlander, Clayton Kershaw, Jered Weaver, Johnny Cueto, Cliff Lee, Roy Halladay, CC Sabathia, Cole Hamels, Felix Hernandez, Gio Gonzalez, David Price, R.A. Dickey and C.J. Wilson.
Dickey’s the oldest of the bunch, but his marked improvement in strikeout rate in 2012 suggests he’s not really slowing down. At this point, it’s fair to say he does have a true history of success. And he has improved pretty steadily since he became a full-time knuckleballer. With every passing year, Dickey’s more likely to fall victim to injury, but provided he stays healthy he’ll likely be good for at least a few more years. It’s not as if the league still lacks exposure to his pitch at this point.
Dickey is an outlier even among knuckleballers, so it’s very hard to predict his future. But Phil Niekro had his best three-season stretch starting in his age-38 season. Tim Wakefield stayed pretty consistent into his 40s. I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect Dickey to repeat his 2012 performance, but I don’t think the concern in re-signing him should be whether he’ll remain effective for the next few seasons. It’s whether he’ll be effective enough to justify the cost over the cost of his replacements on a team with a very finite payroll and massive holes to fill elsewhere.
Wait, the rook who needs to know his place or the guy to put said rook in his place?
The former almost has to be Jordany Valdespin, based on reputation. I’ve been accused of unfairly ripping Valdespin on the podcast, so I won’t say more. My concerns have far more to do with his approach than his attitude anyway.
The latter? I’m hardly a club insider and I don’t want to make myself out to be something I’m not. But I heard a couple stories I can’t share here toward the end of the 2012 season that speak pretty well of Wright’s clubhouse leadership. It was far more productive and decent than “know-your-place” type stuff and, again, I don’t think anything provided behind the scenes is as valuable as what can be measured on the field. But my understanding is that Wright demonstrates a much more assertive personality when the cameras are off than he ever does in post-game interviews and such.
Sorry to be vague.
That’s a pretty wonderful hypothetical, and I don’t have a great answer. Are they expanding roster sizes? Mike Trout continues playing both ways forever. Probably guys like Robinson Cano and Adrian Beltre, too. And it would probably take a while for teams to fully exploit the system, so there’d be a period in which not all that much changed while teams started re-working their Minor League systems into separate instructional branches for defensive players and hitters. With zero focus on defense, could more than a handful of players develop into David Ortiz-style mashers?
And moreover, how would run scoring around the league change if every team could field a lineup full of David Ortizes and a defense full of Rey Ordonezes and Brett Gardners? Would they balance each other out due to the diminished batting average on balls in play, or would enough home runs be hit to bring back the late 1990s? Someone with math, get on this please.
What, what?
Coyotes now inhabit every state in the country except Hawaii, eating mostly rodents, rabbits, and fruit while making their homes between apartment buildings and in industrial parks and popular recreation areas in metropolitan areas from New York City to Chicago to San Francisco. Recent research suggests that coyotes could prove to be just the first of a wave of larger carnivores — bears, cougars, and wolves — moving into residential areas.
– Josie Garthwaite, N.Y. Times.
I’m sorry, did you say bears, cougars and wolves?
I clicked through on the recent research and couldn’t find any reference to bears, cougars or wolves. But it turns out coyotes are about as fascinating as they are terrifying, and are difficult to control or study because they’re too smart to trap. So good luck out there. And here I thought nothing could be worse than Cougartown.
Link
Baltimore Sun interview with Gus Triandos neglects to mention the reason I’ve heard of Gus Triandos
This won’t really make sense to anyone who hasn’t seen The Wire, but anyone who hasn’t seen The Wire should probably get on that. Trust me, once you get past how many Baltimore natives have British accents, it’ll be worth it.
I don’t know what Internet rabbit-hole led me to this 2009 Baltimore Sun “Catching Up With…” piece with former Orioles catcher and object of Herc’s affection Gus Triandos last night, but while I found it entertaining and learned that Triandos — as Herc acknowledged — seemed to have a pretty strong sense of humor about himself, it was disappointing to see that it contained no references to Triandos’ numerous mentions in the critically acclaimed series.
There’s a couple of likely explanations: First, it could be that veteran Baltimore sportswriter Mike Klingaman himself never saw The Wire, or he did and is so deeply entrenched in Baltimore-area sports stuff that he doesn’t think there’s anything particularly notable or funny about lengthy discussions of carnal relations with Gus Triandos. So when some reader — perhaps due to series, perhaps not — suggested he catch up Triandos for the series, he did not know or think to discuss the catcher’s inclusion in the show.
Alternately, it could be that Triandos himself never saw The Wire, and that given the nature of the conversations surrounding Triandos in the show, the topic was too awkward to broach with a then 78-year-old former ballplayer.
“Gus, have you seen The Wire?”
“No, I’m a 78-year-old man and it’s 2009. I exclusively watch Law and Order and its spinoffs.”
“Oh. Your name came up several times.”
“Yeah? In what context?”
Tedquarters 