Optimistic t-shirt spotted in soul-crushing mall

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If you ask me, the Westchester in White Plains might be the world’s most obnoxious shopping mall. Its anchor stores are Nieman Marcus and Nordstrom, and its architects have pretty clearly taken measures to hide its food court from the rest of the shopping areas, so upscale consumers can shop undeterred by the smells of delicious Master Wok or the sight of disgusting plebes chowing down on chicken-in-goo, the specialty of every mall food court.

But, as a native Long Islander — as I’ve discussed before — I’m drawn to malls for reasons I don’t fully understand. Plus, it’s got an Anthropologie, a store that apparently understands my wife’s tastes far better than I do, and tomorrow is Valentine’s Day.

Anyway, that’s a lengthy setup for this picture of a t-shirt I spotted hanging in the window of The Athlete’s Foot on the third floor of The Westchester today:

Bold.

I suppose I should add, for those who don’t know the area, that Westchester is decidedly Yankee territory. In fact, this was the only Mets shirt selling in the store in question.

I went inside to check the front of the shirt to see if maybe it said something clever like, “It’s Opposite Day!”, but no. Just a plain white front, with this on the back.

There was no logo anywhere to be found, so I’m guessing there’s a very real possibility that one gung-ho and disgruntled Mets fan who works at The Athlete’s Foot in the Westchester got fed up spending so much time in a store that only sold Yankees gear, printed a bunch of these up and put them on the racks himself, throwing caution and grammar to the wind.

I really have to stress the juxtaposition here, again. This isn’t at some random shop on that weird stretch of storefronts on Broadway in the 20s or anything, this is in the fanciest mall imaginable, right next to a Teavana and a L’Occitane. And it’s proudly displayed in the window:

“I Predict, The METS Will Win The 2010 World Series !”

I can’t say who’s responsible, but I respect his optimism.

Of course, if you’re that bullish about the Mets’ chances this year, you could pretty much say the same thing with this gem, available for $19.97 from Mets.com:

Race for the prize

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According to Matt Cerrone’s spidey sense, the Mets might incorporate a New York-centric on-field race at Citi Field next season, like the Presidents Race in Washington or the much-lauded Sausage Race in Milwaukee.

Cerrone’s looking for suggestions for what the Mets should have race. Here are some:

The last four mayors of New York: Is it me, or do Gotham’s mayors really lend themselves to caricature? If the Mets are going to borrow the on-field race idea from other teams, they might as well go all the way and use politicians, as the Nats do. And what better than blown-up foam likenesses of Ed Koch, David Dinkins, Rudy Giuliani and Mike Bloomberg? It’d be worth it to hear Koch constantly get booed, just like he used to whenever he showed up at Shea Stadium while he was still mayor.

(Incidentally, Ed Koch sat behind me at a showing of Synechdoche, New York a couple years ago. He appeared to be in really good shape for a man of his age, so maybe he could hold his own in the Citi Field Mayoral Race. Afterwards, Ed Koch looked like he needed some more time to process the movie, just like I did.)

Big apples: New York is the Big Apple, so why not? Milwaukee uses its local delicacy — the sausage — but New York has too many local delicacies to settle on any one for an on-field race. They could have Granny Smith as an old-lady apple, Macintosh as a Scotsman, Fuji as a Japanese person, and Gala as a fop.

And finally:

Copy machines: Think of the sponsorship opportunity for Xerox: Anthropomorphic copiers racing around the warning track. It’d be a great way for the company to promote its fastest models, plus, could anything be more meta? What better way to celebrate a copied idea than with, you know, copiers? Besides, New York has always been a commercial and marketing hub, and one that probably uses a whole ton of copy machines. It’s perfect. Do it.

The order of business

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In the comments section this week, someone brought up a potential batting order for the Mets this year and it got me thinking.

Specifically, it got me thinking: “Hey, I should run the Mets hitters through David Pinto’s Batting Order Optimizer and see what comes.”

Pinto’s tool, based on the work of Cyril Morong, Ken Arneson and Ryan Armbrust, uses players’ on-base and slugging percentages to generate the optimal lineup for each team, by runs per game. It’s fun to play with, though since it actually involves plugging player names and stats into a spreadsheet, it’s one of the nerdiest baseball-related pursuits you’ll ever enjoy.

Anyway, I probably should have considered platoon splits and all, but it’s Friday. I simply plugged in the Mets’ position players’ CHONE projections for 2010 and a .150/.150 line for “Pitcher McGee” and this is what it spit out, a lineup that would, it claims, score 4.78 runs per game:

1. David Wright .391 / .502
2. Jason Bay .376 / .514
3. Angel Pagan .334 / .428
4. Daniel Murphy .328 / .429
5. Jose Reyes .360 / .458
6. Jeff Francoeur .317 / .435
7. Omir Santos .296 / .359
8. Pitcher McGee .150 / .150
9. Luis Castillo .367 / .350

Before you freak out, I’m not saying that’s what should happen. Obviously it won’t, for one thing — there’s no way the Mets will hit Wright leadoff and Bay second — and it’s all based on the CHONE projections, which are only projections. It doesn’t account for handedness or egos or anything else. This is merely what would be optimal for that group of guys based on Morong’s assessment of how to best weight OBP vs. SLG with respect to batting-order positions. Wright bats first because he projects to have the highest OBP, simple as that.

I imagine the Mets’ actual lineup to start the season will look something more along the lines of:

1. Reyes
2. Castillo
3. Wright
4. Bay
5. Murphy
6. Francoeur
7. Pagan
8. Santos
9. McGee

I have no evidence that will be the order, plus there’s always a chance someone gets hurt. This was just my best guess at how it will shake out. Francoeur and Murphy are flip-floppable, but I figured hypothetical Jerry Manuel would want to use Murph to break up the righties in the order.

That lineup, according to the Baseball Musings tool, would average 4.536 runs per game if the players held to their CHONE projections, which they probably won’t.

Here’s something, though: All of the top suggested lineups for the 2010 Mets, according to the optimizer, include the pitcher batting eighth and Luis Castillo batting ninth.

I remember when Tony La Russa first started batting his pitchers eighth a couple of years ago. I ripped him apart for it. Not in print, thankfully, but man, I called him all sorts of nasty things to anyone who would listen. What kind of moron would voluntarily give his pitcher an at-bat earlier in the game than a position player, and more at-bats total?

But Tom Boorstein, in the midst of one of my rants, told me there was a lot of evidence that showed that, indeed, there was an advantage to batting the pitcher eighth and a high-OBP, low-SLG guy ninth. I don’t remember exactly what article he pointed me to online — it might have been this one — but I’ve since come to realize that the idea actually makes a lot of sense.

After all, a team tends to concentrate its very best hitters near the top of the order — as it should — to maximize their at-bats and increase its chances of scoring runs early in the game.

But after one time through the lineup, it’s no safe bet the batting order will reset with the leadoff hitter starting off the inning. Putting a hitter like Castillo in the ninth slot decreases the odds that the top of the Mets’ order — the best hitters — comes up with outs on the board and ups the chances they’ve got someone on base to drive in.

Since Jose Reyes has pretty decent power for a leadoff man, having Castillo hitting ahead of him the second turn through the order would give Reyes more opportunities to drive runs in, rather than forcing him to hit after Omir Santos and the pitcher, near-automatic outs.

Plus, part of my original argument — that moving the pitcher up in the order ultimately gives more at-bats to pitchers — is just silly. Starting pitchers rarely bat four times in a game, and when they do, they’re probably pitching well enough that it doesn’t really matter that they’re hitting so frequently.

More likely, a starting pitcher is being replaced in the lineup by a far superior hitter after his second or third at-bat, and every time his spot in the order comes up after that.

Going back to the Baseball Musings tool, I plugged in this lineup:

1. Reyes
2. Pagan
3. Wright
4. Bay
5. Murphy
6. Francoeur
7. Santos
8. McGee
9. Castillo

The outcome? 4.737 runs a game, .21 higher than the one I’m guessing the Mets will actually go with, and about 34 runs more over the course of a 162-game season.

That’s all just in theory, of course, and I’m just having fun with some nerdery on a Friday afternoon. So calm yourselves down.

How to make ski jumping more awesome

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I’ve voiced my distaste for the Olympic Games on numerous occasions, but due to my old job editing the now-defunct WCSN.com, I know more than I’d care to about the Games and have plenty of opinions about them that I’ll probably end up sharing here.

Before I continue, a little background: WCSN.com’s big calling card was its abundance of live streaming video. The site broadcast sporting events from around the globe, which required a whole lot of mechanics to pull off, and so always necessitated someone to just sit there monitoring the video stream to make sure nothing went wrong.

Many times, that guy was me. I got paid to watch silly sporting events from all sorts of strange places at all sorts of bizarre hours. Sometimes I’d have to write recaps, at least a few of which are still archived at UniversalSports.com. Often, they ooze with sarcasm.

One of my favorite sports to monitor in those days was ski jumping, but I won’t lie: The event’s appeal — especially during the overnight shift — is identical to what I understand is a big draw of NASCAR. You watch to see if they crash.

Sorry if that sounds inhuman. It probably is. But no one ever got irreparably injured in the events I was watching and, you know, they signed up to be ski jumpers, so it clearly comes with the territory.

What I didn’t realize in all the time I spent watching ski jumping was that apparently the entire sport has something of an eating-disorder problem. Who knew? The Times has a great, lengthy feature today detailing the dilemma, including proposed solutions to the issue.

I’m fully in support of much fatter ski jumpers, because, like I said, the most entertaining part of ski jumping is when they fall. (Again, I’m sorry I’m such a jerk.) And as I stated yesterday, fat people falling is hilarious.

But the most important rule change that needs to be made to ski jumping — and if I haven’t offended the ski-jumping community already, this probably will — is this: Ski jumpers should not be judged on style. As it is, five judges rate each ski jumper on a scale of 1-20, and the outcome weighs heavily in the event’s final standing.

I cannot express how dumb it is that ski jumpers are judged on style. It’s inexplicably dumb. The object of ski jumping should be to ski jump as far as you damn can. Who cares how cleanly you land, or how you hold your skis while you’re in the air, or your balance?

It should be about distance, baby. Length. I don’t care if you look like a total clown getting there and crash at the finish, I want to see how far a human being can propel himself on skis. That’s ski jumping. It’s not called “ski aerial balancing.”

Put up a big, cushy pad at the finish, enforce a 200-pound weight minimum, then sit back and watch these fat bastards fly. I guarantee it’d be the most-watched sport in the history of the Winter Olympics.

Items of note

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Honestly, Bob Raissman. Not to sound like an SNY homer, but does anyone expect Keith Hernandez to be less than ridiculously candid, ever?

Pat Andriola of the Hardball Times stops by Amazin’ Avenue to drop some Perpetual Pedro love. Feliciano’s long been one of my favorite Mets, and he’s pretty hilarious to cover. One time, after he got out the Phillies’ big lefties in order on six pitches or something, I asked him about it, and he was so remarkably matter-of-fact. I was trying to wean a decent quote out of him, and he was just all, “yeah, I get lefties out, that’s my job.”

I think it’s time we stopped calling futuristic things “space age.” We’ve been going to space for like 50 years, and now we can’t even get to the Moon, apparently. I don’t know what the next frontier is, but we clearly botched the whole space thing. Maybe it should be “deep-sea age.” I bet there’s some awesome stuff going on in the deep-sea that we have no idea about yet.

Frank Thomas retired. I saw him walking around the Hall of Fame in 1992 when I was there for Tom Seaver’s induction ceremony and the White Sox were playing the Mets in the Hall of Fame game. I didn’t consider then that he’d be enshrined himself one day.

Chester A. Arthur: Muttonchops hero

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As far as I’m concerned, this nation’s Golden Age came from 1861-1913.

Now I recognize that the Civil War and plenty of other terrible, horrible  things happened in that span, but I also know that, across those years, nine of the 11 presidents had facial hair. Never before and never since has this great country seen such an explosion of glorious whiskers.

And though he may not have been the greatest Presidentially of the mustachioed and bearded Presidents, one man stands head and shoulders — nay, neckbeard and sideburns — above the rest in terms of facial-hair magnificence: Chester A. Arthur.

I’m convinced that Chester A. Arthur was born with his muttonchops. Seriously. Probably this has something to do with how few likenesses there are available online of Chester A. Arthur as a boy, but even the youngest available portraits of the man feature the impressive chops.

At times in life, and indeed, during his presidency, they would grow so wild as to constitute truly freakish facial hair, like something you’d see at a Korn concert in 1998. The dude had shoulder-length mutton chops. Unreal.

Another fun fact about Chester A. Arthur — which is decidedly not a fun fact for James Garfield — is that Garfield’s assassin shot him specifically so that Arthur, his vice president, could take over. That’s the only time that’s happened. The Wikipedia says this has something to do with rival factions within the Republican party at the time, but I’m unwilling to rule out the idea that assassin Charles Guiteau was just showing some horribly misguided and overzealous respect for Arthur’s awesome muttonchops.

Anyway, here are various likenesses depicting Chester A. Arthur’s muttonchops:

I actually just spent my last 10 minutes making a terrible photoshop rendering of what it might look like if Barack Obama brought back awesome Chester A. Arthur muttonchops, but then I grew concerned that there might be some sort of law in place about drawing facial hair on pictures of sitting Presidents or something. But he should do it, believe me. It’d make politics so much more interesting.

Rex Ryan exposes gut, inspires ridicule

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Look: I’ve made plenty of fat jokes at Rex Ryan’s expense. Scores of them.

But I’m not going to beat the guy up for what happened Tuesday night, when he accidentally exposed his gut to the crowd while changing jerseys at a Carolina Hurricanes game, inspiring a New York post news story in the process.

Because it’s not like he pulled up his shirt and did the truffle shuffle for the crowd. Cheerleaders came and brought Rex a new jersey, and I’m guessing he was up on the Jumbotron, under all sorts of pressure to change jerseys immediately, plus he was wearing an undershirt, so he made the switch.

Revealing himself like he did, that’s embarrassing. And unlike devouring tons and tons of food every day, it wasn’t something he was doing consciously. So I just kind of feel bad for the guy.

And in sympathy, I’ll share a story:

I’m no stranger to gut ownership. The size fluctuates depending on the season, how active I’ve been and how much Taco Bell I’ve been eating, but it gets pretty damn impressive at times. Not quite Rex Ryan impressive, but sizy nonetheless.

And it was probably at its largest during my junior year of high school, when my friends first got cars so we first had near-unlimited access to Taco Bell.

That same year, a ski mountain my family used to frequent added something called “tree skiing,” a bizarre and, in retrospect, terrible idea that was exactly what it sounded like; basically they just cleared out the brush from the mountain’s off-slope forest and let people ski among the trees. Awesome.

I was sixteen and so, despite my girth, eager to try all of the dumbest and most dangerous activities available to me, so tree skiing was about the most intriguing thing imaginable.

The place, presumably to minimize lawsuits, didn’t allow skiers to tree-ski from the summit, so you didn’t use the regular chairlift. Instead, you had to take a J-Bar — an antiquated type of lift normally reserved for bunny slopes — which sort of hooks under your ass and shoves you up the mountain while you stand there like a goon.

I’m a decent skier, but I’ve always sucked at negotiating ski lifts. Don’t know why. Maybe I don’t have the patience for it, or I have some sort of mental block.

Regardless, something happened on the J-Bar that day about halfway up the slope. I slipped a little, I guess, and the hook part of the J-Bar — the curl of the J — lost its grip on my ass and started sliding up my back.

Thanks to gravity, I began sliding backwards down the mountain while the J-Bar was still driving forward.

The hook snagged my jacket, pulling me to the ground and somehow yanking my coat, shirt and undershirt up over my head,  exposing my pasty gut to the world as it dragged me up the mountain with my bare back against the snow.

It sucked.

And it would be embarrassing enough just knowing that it happened, and that it was happening, and that the person behind me on the J-Bar might see it all go down. But of course, there was a regular chairlift overhead, and so everyone on there was clapping and laughing and having the time of their damn lives.

I’ll fully admit that if I were in their place I’d have been doing exactly the same thing, because fat people falling makes for some of the world’s strongest comedy. It’s basically the driving force behind the movie The Great Outdoors, which is hilarious.

And so I can’t really fault people for laughing at Ryan’s expense. But I’ll say that inadvertent public gut exposure, when yours is the exposed gut, is not fun at all, and so excuse me for taking it easy on Rex just this once.

For the life of me, I can’t remember how I got up from that precarious position. Maybe whatever happened was so scarring and humiliating that I’ve blocked it. It’s a shame, because if it was that terrible, it was probably also something that would be pretty hilarious to remember now.

The devil you don’t

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The fun thing about Daniel Murphy — or maybe the frustrating about Daniel Murphy, depending on whom you’re talking with — is that you can make about 100 different arguments about what role he should play for the 2010 Mets and not really be wrong.

You can use Sabermetrics 101, point to his .266/.313/.427 line from 2009 and say that’s unacceptable for a Major League first baseman. And you could add that he really only had one good partial season in the Minors — in Double-A Binghamton as a 23-year-old in 2008.

Or you can dive a little deeper into his Fangraphs page, as Sam Page has, to show that, despite all his reputation, some hiccups and a tiny sample size, Murphy demonstrated enough range at first base to indicate he might be a good enough defender to make up for any offensive shortcomings.

And you can claim — as I have — that we haven’t seen enough of Murphy to know how good he’ll be moving forward, and that 707 Major League plate appearances are not enough to judge a 24-year-old hitter.

A less convincing argument, I think, is the one that says Mike Jacobs deserves to start over Murphy on the strength of his 99 Major League home runs and 308 RBIs. Sam does a pretty good job tearing that apart in the Amazin’ Avenue piece linked above, and Patrick Flood goes to town on Jacobs’ defense here.

As I wrote yesterday, I don’t even know that it’s worth the time because I can’t imagine the Mets really would consider starting Jacobs at first base. But the Mets have blown my mind plenty of times before, so here’s this:

We don’t know yet that Daniel Murphy is not good. We certainly don’t know that he is good, but we don’t know that he’s not good either. He has yet to fully embarrass or distinguish himself at the Major League level.

We do know that Mike Jacobs is not good. I’m sorry. I know he hits home runs. He also plays terrible defense and never gets on base. And he’s 29, so he’s probably not getting any better.

Murphy, opening the season at 25, could be. As hard as it may be to believe considering how long it seems like we’ve been watching him play, he is the devil we don’t know, which, as far as I’m concerned, is better than the devil we know isn’t very good.