The Daily News gets Dr. Lewis Maharam on the horn to talk about PRP therapy. “It’s not a controversial technique,” he says on page 54. But according to Teri Thompson, Michael O’Keeffe and Adam Rubin on page 53: “The treatment, which is a controversial but legal procedure…”
Rob Neyer makes an interesting point about Minor Leaguers, per diems and healthy eating.
This absolutely nails it. I am terrified of the Google.
Here’s video of Ike Davis’ double, in case you missed it.
OK, I was going to try to construct something more cohesive on today’s game for all y’all who aren’t permitted (or, in my case, obligated) to watch Mets’ Spring Training games at work, but I just found out I’ve got an opportunity to meet Shaq in an hour so I’m kind of in a rush. Because SHAQ!
Anyway, here are some notes on a very small sample and a very meaningless game:
Ike Davis looked bad in his first two at-bats, chasing a bunch of pitches in the dirt. He struck out against Tommy Hanson in the first — hardly a crime — then grounded out weakly against Kris Medlen in the second (at-bat, not inning).
He roped a double into the gap off Jesse Chavez in his third at-bat, though. And even better, I think, he stroked a nice opposite-field single off lefty Mike Dunn his last time up off an outside fastball.
Ruben Tejada looked rangy in the field, to the eye at least. He made one near-hilarious misfire, wildly overthrowing Davis after making a nice play going to his right. He also worked counts pretty well at the plate, and lined an RBI single in the Mets’ three-run fifth.
Gary Matthews Jr. killed his first rally of the season with a double play.
Bobby Livingston has a sweet chin-strap beard.
Nick Evans still exists.
Chris Coste’s defense left a little to be desired. I’m no Joe Janish, but a few balls got passed Coste that looked like they could have been blocked by a better catcher. They were all ruled wild pitches, so I guess I shouldn’t kill him for them, but, you know, he’s making Bobby Livingston look bad. And look at that chinstrap beard. Bobby Livingston’s clearly putting a lot of effort into looking good.
I read the print edition Daily News every day on my commute into Manhattan. I realize, of course, that I could get all of it online on my iPhone, but I like the effect of seeing the front and back pages, plus I don’t think reading on such a tiny screen is good for my eyes or back.
Anyway, with all the Tony Galea stuff going on that vaguely involves Jose Reyes, Alex Rodriguez, Tiger Woods and now Carlos Beltran, something keeps jumping out at me: The Daily News consistently refers to the platelet-rich plasma therapy that Reyes underwent in June as “controversial,” but it never explains why the treatment is controversial, and I don’t remember it being controversial in the summer.
And it’s always in news stories, too. Actually, the columnists who have mentioned the story — Mike Lupica and Hank Gola — have avoided the term “controversial” when discussing blood-spinning, but just about every reporter mentioning the therapy has not. Check it out:
Michael O’Keefe: “controversial but legal therapy known as ‘blood spinning.’”
O’Keeffe and Teri Thompson: “a controversial technique called platelet-rich plasma injection therapy, also known as ‘blood spinning.’”
Thompson and Adam Rubin: “the controversial ‘blood-spinning’ or plasma-replacement therapy”
Thompson, O’Keeffe, Mark Feinsand and David Saltonstall: “the controversial – but legal – therapy known as ‘blood-spinning.’”
Thompson, O’Keeffe, Nathaniel Vinton and Christian Red: “a controversial blood-spinning treatment.”
I could continue. In all, platelet-rich plasma therapy has, by my count, been noted as controversial 13 times in the Daily News without any mention of the nature of the controversy surrounding the method.
And then there’s this, from a Gola column in December:
“It’s well-established in the sports medicine community to do this,” [Dr. Lewis] Maharam said. “The Steelers’ team physicians have done it with Hines Ward. The team physicians for the Giants have done it. I’ve done it on my patients. People at NYU have done it. It’s all over the country. I call it almost a magic bullet in sports medicine equivalent to when we first got MRI.”
So even though Maharam, the Daily News‘ sports-medicine expert on call, doesn’t note anything controversial about the treatment, the treatment can’t be noted in terms of Woods, A-Rod, Reyes or Beltran without mention of the massive, mysterious controversy surrounding it?
I’m confused. Certainly it’s bad if Galea was distributing HGH and other performance-enhancing drugs, because that’s illegal. And it’s bad if he was practicing medicine without a license, as he allegedly was in Florida, when he performed the platelet-rich plasma therapy on Woods.
And I’ll allow that it’s a little weird that all these guys had to go to Canada to get this treatment, which sounds, from all the reading I’ve done, like a relatively simple procedure.
But this New York Times article from last February makes it sound like the only potential controversy surrounding the treatment is whether or not it works.
And the treatment was not controversial even by the Daily News’ standard in September, when Sean Avery had the treatment, nor a couple of weeks before that when Katie Charles wrote a feature on the subject.
And platelet-rich plasma therapy did not seem controversial in any of the nine times it was mentioned in the Daily News before that, including when Reyes underwent the treatment in June.
Maybe I’m missing something, or I entirely missed something, or the Daily News neglected to cover some story that exposed to the world how blood-spinning therapy is a giant hoax or a stealthy way to inject patients with mind-control drugs or something. The only vaguely fishy thing I can dig up on it is that Brits call it “Dracula Therapy.” (Ed. Note: DRACULA THERAPY!)
Either way, since none of the 13 stories mention why exactly the treatment is controversial, since the treatment was apparently not controversial until it involved a slew of favorite N.Y. media whipping boys, and since several of the reports specify that the treatment is “legal” or “not illegal” — implying that its legality should be even in question — it strikes me that more than just blood is being spun.
Doin’ my duty:
David Wright will join Kevin Burkhardt on SNY’s pre-game show today at 12:30, showing off his now even-more-jacked physique.
If you’re someplace where you can watch TV, I recommend checking it out.
Here’s video of Jose Reyes’ triple in yesterday’s intrasquad game:
Spring Training games start today, weather permitting. Howard Megdal reminds us how little they matter.
I have a feeling this article provides a whole lot of basic background knowledge we’re going to want for the dystopian future.
How terrifying would it be to lift weights for two hours, run on the treadmill for 30 minutes, do 300 lateral sit-ups, then look in the mirror and realize you’re still Carrot Top?
Wait, why did no one tell me the Pirates play in Pirate City? Yarrrgh. How have I missed this for all these years?
I don’t like pat myself on the back, but — oh, wait, I love patting myself on the back. It feels so nice. Soothing back-pats.
The Internet’s blowing up today with this John Harper column about Tony Bernazard and how he’s to blame — because no one’s ever found anything wrong with the Mets that can’t somehow be blamed on Tony Bernazard — for the Mets’ misguided opposite-field heavy approach to hitting in 2009.
Rob Neyer weighed in on the column, agreeing that all the opposite-field hitting was a bad idea.
But you know what has two thumbs and was on top of this in July? This guy. Check it out:
In 2008, the Mets pulled 26 percent of the balls they hit onto the field of play or over the fence, according to the best Web site ever. They hit 59 percent to the middle and 15 percent to the opposite field.In 2009, they’ve pulled 25 percent, hit 56 percent to the middle and 19 percent to the opposite field.
In 2008, David Wright pulled 29 percent, hit 55 percent up the middle and hit 16 percent to the opposite field.
This season, Wright has pulled 26 percent, hit 48 percent up the middle and hit 26 percent the opposite way….
What I do know is this: The Mets, most notably Wright, are hitting the ball the opposite way more frequently this year. And if that’s intentional, they should probably stop. I’m no hitting coach and I’ll never purport to be, but the Mets have not hit a single home run to the opposite field in 2009 according to baseball-reference (Fernando Tatis‘ blast to right-center in Pittsburgh must count as center field, I guess).
Obviously, there are times and places for going the opposite way and good hitters do it naturally, but forcing it more frequently than it is necessary does not seem like a good idea. Power — power that the Mets have so often lacked this year — comes most easily from pulling the ball.
So in conclusion, I hereby announce my candidacy for Tony Bernazard’s job.
Patrick Flood wrote a great post today about two of my favorite things to think about, Jeff Francoeur and the Internet. I heartily recommend it. He writes:
I find it sad because I know one day the free-swingers like Francoeur will be gone, and one day every part of America will read the same websites I read and will get their news the same way I do, and will probably think just like me, or I’ll think just like them, or we’ll all think just like each other. Newspapers, music stores, crazy people with pamphlets, players regard accepting a free pass as nothing more than a draw – they’re all victims of the information age, and one day they’ll be gone like the monks drawing elaborate letters. It’s so easy to get the correct information from somewhere else now, usually for free. It’s too easy to see why Jeff Francoeur is not the answer to the Mets problems, and why he’s probably going to fall apart again. All you need is a computer and to know what BABIP stands for.
Flood’s piece hinges on the assumption that Francoeur will fall back to earth in a Mets uniform in 2010, something I realize is far from a certainty for a lot of Mets fans and something I am obviously rooting against.
So hard. Despite all the nasty things I’ve said about his acquisition and his utter lack of plate discipline, I do desperately want Francoeur to succeed in New York. I will gladly abide the I-told-you-sos and inevitable overblown media lovefest to have another good young player on the Mets moving forward.
That lovefest — and the blogosphere has figured this out, I gather — stems from the fact that Francoeur is, quite simply, a friendly and candid guy. He’s nice to reporters, so reporters pay it back in writing. I don’t think it’s a strict quid pro quo system or anything — I’m guessing it’s purely subconscious. Francoeur’s a good dude, so people covering the team portray him favorably. And I can attest that it’s refreshing to speak to a baseball player who looks you in the eye and honestly answers your questions.
So that’s what all the recent hubbub surround Francoeur and his attitude and his leadership are about, I’m certain. He makes for a good quote, so he makes for a good story, and since there’s not a whole heck of a lot of hard news coming out of Port St. Lucie, everyone’s focused on good ol’ Jeff Francoeur.
But the nicest guy in the world — heck, Gandhi himself — wouldn’t last so long in the good graces of Major League fans or the Major League media if he didn’t start taking pitches. That’s what eventually went wrong for Francoeur in Atlanta and what Flood’s piece assumes will go wrong for him in New York.
And it’s a reasonable assumption. It’s extremely rare for a player to walk as infrequently as Francoeur did in his time with the Mets in 2009 and maintain his level of production. I got at this in the first days of this blog: If keep hitting that well without taking pitches, pitchers will stop throwing you pitches to hit.
Of course, as difficult as I find it to believe that Francoeur could maintain an on-base percentage slightly above the league average while walking in only 3.6% of his at-bats, I find it nearly as difficult to believe that his apparent turnaround in Flushing could be merely a reversal of fortune and the byproduct of small sample size.
There, I said it.
That sentiment might seem ripped from the front page of Duh! Magazine for some people, but it’s in pretty stern defiance with sabermetric logic. David Golebiewski did a great job at RotoGraphs showing how Francoeur’s BABIP spiked in Queens even though his XBABIP remained more or less static, implying that, indeed, Francoeur just got massively lucky upon switching teams.
And in some way, I hope he’s right, because a whole lot of strange things make a lot more sense, and justifies so many things I write about randomness and sample size and our tendency to assign narratives to arbitrary events.
Still, it seems like a pretty outrageous coincidence that Francoeur’s fortune should change so severely as soon as he changed uniforms.
Stranger things have happened, for sure, but I wonder if there could be some other explanation, something to do with Citi Field that hasn’t been quantified yet, or something to do with the exceptionally atrocious lineup the Mets were trotting out around Francoeur after the trade last year changing the way pitchers approached him, though I realize that stuff is generally discredited.
I have no answers and I probably never will. I’m skeptical that Francoeur will produce anything like the numbers he did for last season’s Mets for this season’s Mets, but I’m hopeful, because I’m a Mets fan.
More than anything, I want the season to start so we can start finding out. I’m growing quite sick of being a wet blanket on all the Francoeur-driven optimism all the time.
From the billboards alone, you might assume the Food Network broadcasts MMA events and Bobby Flay kicks outrageous amounts of ass. I feel any advertisement I see for the station’s programming features one of its celebrity chefs with his arms crossed and a combative scowl that says, “if you don’t like this gourmet doughnut, I’ll fight you.”
And apparently that renegade mentality comes down from the Food Network’s decision-makers themselves.
I caught an episode of Food Network Challenge this weekend called “Cereal Bridges 2.” The original installment of Cereal Bridges, which challenged world-class pastry chefs to recreate famous bridges out of Rice Krispie Treats, failed miserably. Only two of the four cereal bridges even made it intact to the judges table and the winner, by all accounts, took the contest by default.
If Food Network executives operated under fear of embarrassment, they might opt to just move on, recognize the episode as a failed experiment, and agree never to rerun the program.
But Food Network executives, apparently, are a bold and reckless bunch. They rallied the pastry chefs for a thrilling sequel to “Cereal Bridges” because, you know, it’s really important to determine once and for all who can best build a bridge out of Rice Krispie Treats.
The United States rules. People are starving all over the planet, and we construct six-foot tall likenesses of great architecture out of cereal for our own entertainment, with no intention of anyone ever eating them. Take that, world.
One of the chefs, working on her version of the John A. Roebling suspension bridge in Cincinnati, actually used a bandsaw to cut precise towers for her delicious, marshmallow model. A bandsaw. Her plans went horribly awry when, about four hours deep into the eight-hour competition, the bandsaw broke and her assistant had to take time away from crafting suspension cables from spun sugar to attempt to fix the machine, something I’m almost certain is not covered in culinary school.
One of the judges — the hardass judge in the Simon Cowell mold — told a competitor that she needed to better understand her medium. Just a reminder: Her medium was Rice Krispie Treats.
It has been said that Michelangelo stared at a slab of marble for months before sculpting the David. I can only assume that the woman who ultimately won Food Network Challenge: “Cereal Bridges 2” meditated for years on the structural qualities of Kellogg’s classic breakfast snack, dining only on the dried and toasted grains themselves, lulled to sleep every night by that familiar soundtrack: Snap. Crackle. Pop.
I have no idea what practical application there could possibly be to the ability to mimic complex works of architecture out of cereal. Maybe if the Museum of Modern Art holds a bake sale.
The winner, inarguably the Le Corbusier of Rice Krispie Treats, earned a $10,000 check and, of course, bragging rights. Her sweet, chewy rendition of the Valentre Bridge in Cahors, France impressed the judges with its attention to detail and its structural integrity.
Because, you know, nothing says “structural integrity” like a bridge made out of cereal.
No idea if this is legal, but it’s the Internet, it’s sunny in New York and it’s a busy day for me, so here’s this.
This song comes courtesy of reader Tom. I linked it a long while back on Flushing Fussing, but that link broke.
It’s by a calypso singer named the Duke of Iron. It’s about Casey Stengel’s Mets, but some of the lyrics still apply:
When you want to hear how people scream,
Go see New York’s latest baseball team.
Such loyalty, such charity.
Although they’re last, not one of them have no regrets,
They believe in the New York Mets.
They’re cheering,
We want a hit! We want a hit!
From the crack of the bat, there’s noise in the place,
Especially if a Met can get on first base.
Tedquarters 