Some of these are stretches, I know.
Matt Cain and Badger from Breaking Bad:
Sean Marshall and Bill Hader from Saturday Night Live:
J.J. Hardy and Mac from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia:
Jon Jay and Juice from Sons of Anarchy:
Bryce Harper and Charlie from Lost:
Gerald Laird and Homer Simpson from The Simpsons:
On one hand, we have everything Matt Harvey did in his short stint in the Major Leagues this season. On the other, we have glowing quotes like this one about Zack Wheeler. I’ve got an opinion in the matter and if you’ve been reading TedQuarters as vigilantly as you should you probably know it, but I’m not going to share it now because I’m curious where you stand. I’ve got a podcast to record in a minute and things will be dark here for a bit, so take your time and think this one over. Feel free to hash and/or hug out your thoughts in the comments section.
Years ago, one particularly incessant SNY.tv reader used to email me practically every time a player whose inclusion on the Mets’ roster I railed against did anything positive on a baseball field. If Marlon Anderson slapped a ground-ball single up the middle, seconds later I’d find in my inbox a subject-free message from this guy asking only, “What do you think of Marlon Anderson NOW!?” Stuff like that. Shawn Green makes a sliding catch, I get an email. Robinson Cancel somehow reaches first base safely, email. All the time. It was endlessly frustrating, but still somehow entertaining.
He gave it up around the time I started this blog; I suspect he just never joined me in the venture over from the network’s proper website, but I hope for his sake he found something more productive to do with his time. Maybe he fell in love. I don’t know. I kind of miss him.
Still, in the bottom of ninth inning of last night’s Yankees-Orioles tilt, when Raul Ibanez — a player frequently linked to the Mets during Omar Minaya’s hapless, years-long quest for capable corner outfielders and an option I frequently denounced — homered to tie the game while pinch-hitting for Alex Rodriguez against Baltimore closer Jim Johnson, I immediately checked my email to see if it was enough to prompt a comeback. I did so again after Ibanez hit a walk-off homer on the first pitch of the bottom of the 12th. No dice.
There are plenty of reminders of Ibanez’s unlikely heroics on the Internet and in the local newspapers this morning. Many of them — especially in the tabloids — focus on his production in A-Rod’s absence.
But despite the outcome, and leaving aside Rodriguez’s mostly baseless reputation for postseason struggles, Joe Girardi’s decision to pinch-hit Ibanez for Rodriguez against a right-hander with the game on the line should hardly seem indefensible.
Rodriguez is one of the greatest hitters in baseball history, but Joe Girardi had to manage to win the game in a short postseason series. And Rodriguez, for as dominant a hitter as he was in his prime, has not been immune to the effects of aging. After posting a stellar 153 park- and league-adjusted OPS+ over a ten-season run from 2000 to 2009, A-Rod has sported an only pretty-good 118 number in the same stat since the start of the 2010 season as nagging injuries began to take their toll on his offense.
This season, Rodriguez especially struggled against right-handers, sporting only a .256/.326/.391 line for the season. Since Ibanez posted .248/.319/.492 marks in the same split and the Yankees’ next four hitters all batted left-handed or from both sides of the plate, Girardi had pretty strong justification for the substitution beyond Rodriguez’s reputation for October choke-jobs. Maybe it was even in the much-reviled binder somewhere.
That’s what seems too often lost in discussions of whether the Yankees should drop Rodriguez from his third spot in the batting order this postseason (beyond, of course, research showing that the effects of batting order are wildly overrated): He’s not their best hitter anymore. Robinson Cano, Nick Swisher, Derek Jeter, Curtis Granderson, and Mark Teixeira all outperformed A-Rod at the plate this season. Certainly Rodriguez should earn some benefit of the doubt for the 647 home runs on his resume, but time could hardly care less, and seems more bent on debilitating A-Rod than it is Jeter or Ibanez.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out for the next five years of Rodriguez’s contract.
Before New York’s 23-17 loss to the Houston Texans in Week 5, backup quarterback Tim Tebow tweeted, “Looking forward to giving God all the glory in tonight’s 666th Monday Night Football game. Romans 8:37-39.”
With the No. 6 jersey on his back, starter Mark Sanchez connected on 14 of 31 passes, had one touchdown and two interceptions.
File this under “You can’t make it up”: Sanchez’s line means — drumroll please — on the season, he now has a 66.6 passer rating, 6.6 yards per attempt, six touchdowns, six interceptions, and his longest completion of the season was good for 66 yards.
– CBS New York.
And — as I pointed out when Josh noted the same series of stats in the comments section yesterday — don’t forget that Sanchez is devilishly handsome.
I’d love to dismiss this as a series of coincidences with a joke about how Tebow’s secretary is named Sanchez and Sanchez’s secretary is named Tebow, and obviously I do think it’s a series of coincidences and I don’t think Mark Sanchez is actually Damien from the Omen or anything. But it’s a pretty amazing series of coincidences.
Or maybe — maybe! — Mark Sanchez is unbelievably good at football and he’s just trolling Tim Tebow something fierce, Dawson in Varsity Blues style.
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.
I do not watch the show, but I would pay a lot of money to see a sparsely lit stage play featuring Christopher Walken performing the dialogue.
Anyone who thinks Jersey Shore spells doom for our society has not seen what’s airing on TLC these days. It’s shocking — or maybe not at all surprising — that we get so bent out of shape about bullying, then sit down to watch What Not To Wear.
Via Vulture.
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.
Tedquarters 