In case you missed it, Nate Robinson returned from a month-long benching to score 41 points in the Knicks’ comeback win on Friday night. Then — and huge hat tip to Can’t Stop the Bleeding for this one — he gave an absolutely epic postgame interview. Enjoy:
Nate Robinson thanks you, XBox Live community.
Every time I read an update on the Mets’ pursuit of Bengie Molina, I think about the following scene from the best television show of all-time:
The latest report — the one linked above — says the Mets are willing to give Molina a one-year deal with a vesting option, but Molina is holding fast in his demand for three years. Obviously.
I spend a lot of time making fun of Molina in this space because he’s incredibly slow and he’s not fun to watch and he’s an old, overweight catcher, but I don’t actually think a one-year deal for the man would be the worst thing in the world. He’ll be a catcher, and he’ll hit a few home runs, and he won’t get on base enough to clog up the basepaths.
That would be, I suppose, the baseball equivalent of the end of the scene linked above, which unfortunately is not included in the clip — GOB and Buster plow into each other in slow motion. It is silly, but ultimately harmless.
The vesting option is troubling, and it seems as though vesting options may be becoming Omar Minaya’s new folly of choice, but without the details it would be hard to analyze.
Going past one guaranteed year, though, for a 35-year-old catcher who is pretty obviously not in prime physical condition, doesn’t strike me as a good idea. Not when Josh Thole is readying himself in Triple-A, or when both Joe Mauer and Victor Martinez could be free agents next offseason, or when the catcher in question isn’t that good to begin with.
Defenders of the deal point to Molina’s ability to handle pitching staffs. Always. And that’s nice. All I can say to counter that is that people said the exact same thing about Brian Schneider two years ago, only to have Dan Warthen throw Schneider under the bus for the same quality this season.
Handling a pitching staff, I would guess, is the type of thing to which there is actual value, but for which a catcher’s ability varies greatly by situation and pitcher and is impossible to completely define. Maybe Brian Schneider really was great for the Nationals’ young pitchers in 2007, and heck, maybe he was great for Mike Pelfrey in 2008, but for some reason his Brian Schneider Staff-Handling Magic Dust was not as effective on John Maine and Oliver Perez. Maybe Bengie Molina’s will be, or maybe it won’t be, or maybe it’s nonsense. Since it’s not something I imagine could ever be properly evaluated, it’s not something I would ever recommend paying for.
I imagine if the Mets sign Molina, he proves to be a nice guy, and Perez gets off to a nice start, you’ll hear a ton of talk about Molina’s positive influence on Ollie. Then, when Perez inevitably tanks, no one will say anything about how Molina has stopped being able to handle him. That’s how these things work.
Again, that’s not to say they’re not there. They are, I’m sure. But we never really know to what extent, and so mostly they just make for good stories.
Anyway, none of that will matter until someone chickens out and gives in to the other’s demands or they agree on a compromise. The Mets have more leverage as long as Miguel Olivo and Rod Barajas are still available, but Molina can lord over the Mets his indisputable Bengie Molina-dom, which they apparently value.
I had a great idea for a Decade in Review list. It was going to be: “The Decade’s 10 Dumbest Decade In Review Lists.”
I was going to put the list itself sixth or seventh, because I’m meta like that. But I ran out of steam about two deep, because I got really bored scouring the Internet for dumb decade-in-review lists, plus I don’t really begrudge people the right to wax nostalgic at the times when it is deemed socially appropriate.
I’m not immune either, of course. I did write this just the other day, after all. I just usually spend more time, for better or worse, speculating about the future than remembering the past.
And I’ve got to be honest, I thought things would be a lot cooler by now.
Seriously: This is 2010? The future sucks.
I distinctly remember reading in Ms. McKenna’s third-grade class, when it turned 1990, that by 2010 we’d have a colony on the Moon. No joke. I read that in some sort of science magazine they handed out to elementary school kids. Oh, and Back to the Future II sure made it seem like hovercars would be pretty well established by 2015.
Where are all the hovercars? Why am I still grounded in my dented 1999 sedan like some sort of chump or sucker? Answer me that.
Heck, the Jetsons were supposedly set in 2062, according to the Wikipedia. Are we 52 years away from living in that world?
Get on it, science.
I mean, look: I don’t want to sound like an ingrate. I have a phone that gives me access to every bit of information I could possibly conceive, plus thousands of songs, and it streams video of live baseball games. I suppose that’s OK.
But we still can’t even get to Mars! Mars! Not even outside our own damn solar system! Are you kidding me? As the great comedian Jake Johannsen has pointed out, we transmit signals to far reaches of the galaxy in hopes of making contact with intelligent life, and what are we going to say if they answer? “We can meet you on the Moon”?
So I expect big things out of the next 10 years. Big, big things. Awesome things. I don’t mean like, “oh, we’ve really made the Internet better and more universally accessible, and now we have Hybrid cars that could save the Earth, and we’ve made tremendous strides toward curing various diseases” things, I mean like, “robot dinosaurs we can fly.”
Here’s hoping for that. Enjoy whatever festivities you get up to or don’t get up to tonight, and good luck in the coming decade. Thanks for reading and Happy New Year.
I promised hdarvick I’d post something about Nelson Figueroa yesterday and failed, but here’s something.
Conventional wisdom says that Nelson Figueroa should not be allowed to pitch more than a certain limited number of innings in any given Major League stint before he’s exposed and big-league hitters figure out his stuff, but I’ve never been much one for conventional wisdom.
Figueroa pitched well for the Mets down the stretch last season, long after the wheels had already come off for the rest of the team, and exceptionally well in Buffalo. It’s difficult to put too much stock in the 70 1/3 innings he totaled for the big-league club in 2009 because of the sample size, but they can’t be entirely discounted either. He finished with a perfectly average 100 ERA+ and a reasonable 2.46 K/BB ratio, highlighting his season with the Mets’ only shutout at Citi Field.
Figueroa has a long history of very good Triple-A stats, but he did pitch better than usual at both that level and the Majors last year, and it’s difficult to decipher why. There was probably some luck involved, since Figueroa significantly lowered his home run per flyball rate and batting average on balls in play — figures that usually normalize in time — in 2009.
Judging from Fangraphs, using a limited sample, it appears Figueroa threw his slider a bit harder, more frequently and more effectively last season than he did in 2008.
I’m not certain if that’s the whim of small sample size or the sign of a real adjustment. Figueroa is a crafty guy, and maybe he made some change to his grip or delivery that allowed him to pitch to more weak contact.
I don’t think the Mets or most of their fans would be thrilled to see Figueroa penciled into the rotation for 2010, probably because he’s unspectacular, or because he’ll be 36 in May, or because of that old conventional wisdom.
But Figueroa’s great value is in his durability. As he told me back in 2008, he has thrown 153-pitch games and 280-inning years. I’m unclear on his contract status, but he’s still listed on the 40-man roster on Mets.com, and good. He should compete for a long relief role in Spring Training and is a great option to have around for spot starts for when someone in the rotation inevitably goes down.
The wife was out last night and Death Race was on Cinemax. So that’s what this is about.
Jason Statham is awesome. He perpetually looks like he’s about to kick someone’s ass, even in scenes when he’s tenderly romancing his wife in the kitchen and such.
In fact, it feels like just about every Jason Statham movie has a part when he unexpectedly beats the crap out of someone, like going from zero to Bruce Lee in a split second. The only movies he doesn’t do that in are the ones where there’s no downtime between him kicking asses.
Jason Statham is a master of beating people up with objects that are not normally used to beat people up, like a cafeteria tray or a bicycle or whatever. I know that this is nothing new in action movies, but he really makes an art of it. Anything is a deadly weapon in Jason Statham’s hands. Sometimes it seems like he’d be better off just using his fists, but whatever. If there’s something within Jason Statham’s reach, he’ll find a way to beat you senseless with it.
Jason Statham should play Bond. I don’t understand why they keep trotting out debonair charmers like Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Craig when Statham’s ripe for the picking. It’s the 21st century, baby. Bond should be doing a lot more kicking. Hollywood’s sitting on the most badass Brit since William the Bastard (who it turns out was French, but whatever) and they trot out Daniel Craig? What, you think Statham can’t wear a tux? C’mon.
The plot of Death Race was very similar to that of Gladiator in that both male lead characters were enslaved and forced into gladiator battles by someone who had murdered their wife.
Unlike Gladiator, though, Death Race had triumphant explosions. And somehow, Jason Statham didn’t win the Academy Award for his role in Death Race. Also, unlike Gladiator, Death Race was jaw-droppingly stupid.
They didn’t even bother explaining the rules of the death races themselves, nor why — and this part was particularly baffling — there were so many experienced death racers at this one prison even though nearly all the competitors in most death races die.
Apparently it’s a remake of a Stallone movie from the 70s, but I haven’t seen the original. I assume that one, like the original Rollerball, had some subtleties that the remake glossed over.
It basically seemed like someone made a movie out of a video game, only no one bothered to read the game manual or figure out what all the buttons on the controller did before they started filming. It even had random “lighted shields” in the middle of the road that the death racers tried to drive over for no clearly defined reason. Maybe for points, or bonus lives, or to unlock new levels or secret characters you can play.
But all that said, it was still awesome. Some movies are just about the spectacle. I’m still trying to find a showing of Avatar in IMAX 3D at a reasonable time that’s not sold out. Hoping tonight’s my night.
Chad Ochocinco gave what Dan Graziano called “what may have been the greatest midweek opposing player conference call in NFL history” yesterday.
Sam Borden explains why the “pending physical” bit actually means something in the Jason Bay signing.
David Waldstein at the Times writes the definitive Jason Bay reaction piece, remembering previous Canadian Mets and investigating whether Bay could be baseball’s greatest Canadian hitter.
I thought we already settled this. Send Bruce Willis.
Rob Neyer’s usually spot-on, but I think he misses the mark a bit in his remarks on Jeff Passan’s recent rip-job of the Mets’ front office. Neyer and Passan agree that the Jason Bay signing, to paraphrase Neyer’s headline “continues a disturbing pattern.”
If you read this site or my columns with any regularity, you know that I’m the first to criticize Minaya when he deserves it. In fact, I actually touched on a lot of the same themes Passan did in this column in August.
I’m certainly not out to excuse the club for refusing to spend above slot on draft picks. I still can’t, for the life of me, figure out what that’s about, unless it’s playing nice with the league in an effort to secure an All-Star Game at Citi Field.
But throwing money at Jason Bay, while perhaps shortsighted given the length of the deal, does not really do anything to hurt the Mets’ farm system. In fact, if there’s a year the Mets should be signing a Type A free agent, it’s this one, when their first-round draft pick is protected.
And citing Rubin’s work to rate the Mets’ farm system, as Neyer does, well, I don’t know. I’m skeptical. Organizational winning percentages are nice, I guess, but I don’t imagine they matter much, since it’s the performance of the prospects that matters more than the performance of the organizational guys who fill out most Minor League rosters.
The Mets’ Minor League rosters certainly lack depth. And they haven’t, under Minaya, produced a whole lot of top-flight Major League talent. Some warm bodies, for sure, but no All-Stars. That’s all true, and it’s certainly not good.
But for the first time in recent memory, the Mets now actually have a crop of intriguing prospects set for the higher levels of their farm system. Fernando Martinez, Ike Davis, Jonathon Niese and Josh Thole should all start the season in Triple-A. Brad Holt, Jenrry Mejia, Reese Havens and Kirk Nieuwenhuis should all start at Double-A Binghamton.
Granted, as a Mets fan, I’m probably overvaluing some of these guys. But all are still quite young and have performed well in the Minors, and so appear to have at least decent shots at becoming decent Major Leaguers.
And thus far this offseason, coming off an embarrassing 2009 campaign, Minaya has resisted the urge to trade any of them for a proven starting pitcher or an everyday catcher or a power-hitting first basemen.
I’d say, given the Mets’ history of quick fixes, that actually bucks the disturbing pattern.
Would I have signed Jason Bay to a four-year, $66 million deal with a vesting option? Probably not. Do I think he’ll help the Mets? Almost certainly. Would I choose him over Matt Holliday? Definitely not. Do I think his acquisition dooms them forever? Not at all.
The deal will probably hamstring the Mets financially down the road, especially since, in Minaya’s administration, they’ve had a whole, whole lot of problems grasping the concept of sunk cost.
But they have the advantage of playing in a huge market, so they can take one on the chin and recover if they can find cost-effective contributors elsewhere. And if they let their prospects develop into Major Leaguers, they’ll be doing just that.
Plus he’ll hit. It’s just not that disturbing.
Today’s From the Wikipedia comes upon request by multiple readers, but does not aim to make light of the numerous deaths — at least six, according to the Wikipedia — that occurred at the theme park in question.
It does very much aim to make light of the horrible, horrible planning that led to said deaths, and I sincerely apologize if anyone out there lost a loved one due to the carelessness and downright stupidity involved in the creation of these rides. Death due to any circumstance — theme park mishap, bear attack, leprosy, whatever — is tragic and not funny, and please do not take this post to imply otherwise.
From the Wikipedia: Action Park.
Action Park was a water park and motor-themed park that opened in Vernon Township, New Jersey in 1978 and stayed open, against all odds, for 18 years. I’ll quote the Wikipedia directly:
Many of Action Park’s attractions were unique. They gave patrons more control over their experience than they would have at most other amusement parks’ rides, but for the same reason were considerably riskier.
In other words, unlike most theme parks, Action Park made no attempt to idiot-proof its rides. Then, as if to tempt fate, they put it right in the middle of New Jersey.
(That’s not to say, of course, that everyone in New Jersey is an idiot. Plenty of the most brilliant readers of this very blog are from Jersey. It’s just that every place in the world has idiots there, and the suburban New York variety of idiot is a particularly brazen and callous idiot, like the cast of Jersey Shore or 30 percent of the drivers on the Turnpike — precisely the type of idiots that strike me as likely to injure themselves if trusted with their own safety on theme-park rides.)
Oh, and they served beer there. Brilliant.
The Action Park Wikipedia page is amazing. Absolutely, blisteringly amazing. It basically goes into detail about how every single ride contained serious design flaws that led to injuries. It’s far too long to even summarize here.
The best part is that I remember most of them. I used to go with my family about once a summer. On my block, we called it “Traction Park,” though other nicknames listed on the Wikipedia include “Class Action Park” and “Accident Park.”
We called it Traction Park and we went anyway, because no matter how dangerous it was, Action Park was still really, really fun.
The Wikipedia mentions that the Go-Karts were regulated by governor devices which limited their speed to 20 miles per hour, but that park employees knew how to disable the governors so they could race the Go-Karts at up to 50 miles per hour when the park was closed.
I didn’t know that backstory, but I’ll tell you this much: I sure remember that every once in a while, one Go-Kart in the race would be zipping around the track about twice as fast as the rest. No joke. Amazing. My dad got one once. He was terrified, but at the same time really proud to have so handily beaten my brother and me in the Go-Kart race.
Even the mini golf course at Action Park was dangerous. Why? You guessed it: Snakes.
The biggest and best symbol of all that was awesome and ridiculous about Action Park was the looping water slide. A water slide with a loop-de-loop. How would that even work? You’re not harnessed into anything, like you are on a roller coaster. Doesn’t seem to make any sense, right? But it made perfect sense at Action Park.
The Wikipedia claims it was actually operated on occasion, but I never saw it open. And anytime you asked anyone about why it was closed, you always heard the same thing:
“Some fat guy got stuck in there and drowned.”
It turns out that was probably an urban myth, as were the stories that crash-test dummies sent down the tube to test it out came back dismembered. But who really thought a looping water slide was a good idea?
The Action Park people, that’s who.
Some of the Action Park rides are still open today at Mountain Creak Waterpark, but the Wikipedia mentions a “vastly increased emphasis on ride safety,” which I’ll take to mean they’re “incredibly lame now.”
With rumors swirling about the Mets’ pursuit of free-agent catcher Bengie Molina, I thought I’d touch base with my friend Dailey, a San Francisco Giants fan, for a very formal and professional interview. Dailey has a first name, I believe, but I am not entirely sure what it is, so I am crediting him here as “Dailey McDailey.” The interview follows:
TedQuarters: yo can I interview you?
Dailey McDailey: OK, what do I have to do?
TQ: answer my questions about Bengie Molina
via IM
DM: OK
His official nickname is Big Money, but I call him Snoopy Gut
TQ: OK, first off, are you, in fact, a San Francisco Giants fan?
DM: Yes
It would not be easy to kill me
TQ: is that so?
DM: Die Hardest
not even with a vengeance
TQ: wow, that’s for real
tell me about Bengie Molina
DM: He’s not good
He doesn’t make me want to not watch baseball any more (like, say, Barry Zito)
but he has an annoying proficiency at being put out.
TQ:: can you identify anything that he does well?
DM: I assume you mean on the field, so eating doesn’t count
TQ: yes, on the field
DM: I can identify things with which he’s CREDITED as doing well: call games, manage a staff, hit clutch home runs
TQ: are you certain that he does any of those things well?
DM: Not really. I will go out on a limb and say he does them all better than A.J. Pierzynski
TQ: Are you at all concerned that Tim Lincecum will completely suck next year when he’s pitching to Buster Posey or Sandoval or whoever?
DM: The only thing Tim Lincecum is going to suck is the end of a [tobacco] pipe.
TQ: Does Molina get punched in the face as well as A.J. Pierzynski?
DM: Probably better. Lots of face flesh to take the blow.
TQ: Who would you bet on in a footrace, Bengie Molina or continental drift?
DM: Bengie, because one of his footfalls would most likely push the continent backwards.
TQ: why do you call him Snoopy Gut?
DM: You know how snoopy has two skinny little legs and then a spherical body that hangs over them? That’s exactly what Bengie Molina looks like in his uniform.
TQ: That’s a good point
why do others call him Big Money?
and is that an alarming prophecy for Mets fans?
DM: Big because he is large, and Money because that is slang for clutch
Knowing the Mets, yes
TQ: BM are also his initials, you know
DM: Wow. That had escaped me.
TQ: I’ve got amazing powers of observation
As a Giants fan — and this part is important — not named Brian Sabean, would you recommend signing Bengie Molina to a multi-year free-agent contract?
DM: Absolutely not. Under no circumstances. No.
TQ:: Why not?
I thought he’s money
and big
and has a snoopy gut
DM: All these things are true. My #1 Bengie Molina memory from 2009 is him hitting a game tying home run in the 8th or 9th and waddling his large self around the bases.
However…
72% of the time he is asked to not make an out, he makes an out. And that is how you lose baseball games.
TQ: I’ve heard that
but he’s a great staff handler
and he’s so good with young pitchers, right?
DM: So they say, but can it be proven that the Giants’ stable of young, awesome, stallion-like arms would not thrive under the slimmer, less-money, more-gooder-hitting tutelage of a league average catcher? I say no.
TQ: Your logic befuddles me.
‘Tis the season for stupid headline puns. Mike Francesa broke news that the Mets agreed to a deal with Jason Bay yesterday, and now everyone’s weighing in.
I’d still really like to reserve judgment until we know more, though. Specifically: the terms of the deal. By all accounts, it’s worth about four years and in the neighborhood of $66 million. By some accounts, it’s backloaded. By most accounts, it’s got a vesting option for a fifth year that will bring it to about $80 million.
That’s the part I’m curious about, and I expect in the coming days we’ll get a much clearer picture as to exactly what that vesting options means. If it’s as easy as Joel Sherman suggests, then I’m not sure why the Daily News is showering Omar Minaya with praise for holding his ground on the four-year deal when that’s, well, not what that is.
I suspect part of the motivation for including the vesting option is just that — maintaining the perception of holding firm while actually compromising with the player — and so good for Minaya if his intention was to convince the Daily News that he was strong-willed.
If his intention was to build the best possible club for the years beyond 2010, though, I’m not so sure the vesting fifth year was the best idea. Nor is a backloaded contract, if that’s the case.
But I’m getting ahead of myself; I’ll whine about the terms of the contract when I know the terms of the contract.
What I know for certain is that Jason Bay is a terrific hitter. He was a terrific hitter in Pittsburgh, and he was a terrific hitter in Boston, and he will likely continue being a terrific hitter in Queens. He mashed pitching in the uber-competitive AL East and returning to the NL should be a relative cakewalk for him.
Sure, he was aided a bit by Fenway’s friendly confines and short left-field wall. But there’s evidence that Citi Field plays well for right-handed pull hitters, and the Mets put out word (through Francesa) that they had data that Bay’s power would play better at their home park than would that of fellow free agent Matt Holliday.
They had me at “data.”
He’s patient, befitting his reportedly quiet professional demeanor. In fact, as I Tweeted yesterday, Bay walked 20 more times last year than Daniel Murphy, Bengie Molina and Jeff Francoeur combined.
He does strike out a bunch, and he’s not a great defender. It’s tough to tell to what extent, since it’s tough to evaluate defense in general and especially tough to judge defense in Fenway Park, as Sam pointed out in the Amazin’ Avenue post I linked earlier. And at 31 and with knee trouble in his past, he’s probably not getting any better in the outfield.
The good news is the Mets have Carlos Beltran, and when he was healthy in 2008 and the Mets began haphazardly trotting out infielders with no outfield experience into their outfield corners, Beltran responded by making an obscene number of out-of-zone plays, clearly deciding that the chumps alongside him had no business catching fly balls when he could do it so much better.
It’s no safe bet Beltran will again be the defender he was in 2008, nor am I certain that his ability in center allows the Mets to sacrifice defense in left, but the combination of a rangy Beltran and a plodding Bay should at least inspire some aesthetically awesome running grabs from the graceful center fielder.
So that’s cool.
Wait, how did this post about Jason Bay become about Carlos Beltran?
Oh, because Carlos Beltran is awesome, that’s why. And now he has Jason Bay in the lineup to drive him in sometimes. So that’s cool, too.
Tedquarters 