Patrick Flood does a nice job defending the Mets’ decision to start Miguel Batista over Matt Harvey. BUT I DEMAND HARVEY NOW!
Batista or Harvey?
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On the Cantina Burrito
I tried the burrito from Taco Bell’s new Cantina Menu yesterday. It looks like this. The sauce packet is included for scale:
The Cantina Bell menu is not for me. By that I cannot imagine I am the person Taco Bell had in mind when creating and marketing the new Cantina Bell menu. Celebrity chef Lorena Garcia, while fire-roasting her corn salsa, never stopped to say, “man, I hope this will finally be the innovation that gets Ted Berg into Taco Bell.” I don’t need winning over.
The new burritos and burrito bowls, boasting “citrus-herb marinated chicken,” “guacamole made from real Hass avocados,” and “pico de gallo prepared fresh daily,” seem aimed at the squeamish girlfriends, the healthy-living husbands, the no-beef bros and every other blight on society who seems like a perfectly reasonable person to spend time with until it becomes clear they will refuse to accompany you to Taco Bell.
Here’s the good news, for them: The Cantina Chicken Burrito isn’t bad. It mostly tastes like cilantro, presumably due to the “cilantro rice” and the “creamy cilantro dressing.” Cilantro — unless you genetically despise cilantro — has sort of a clean taste, and because we associate its increasingly popular flavor with table-side guacamole and carefully constructed banh mi, it seems like a great way to code “freshness” into food.
Don’t tell this part to the others: It still sort of tastes like Taco Bell. It’s definitely different from anything previously served at Taco Bell, since that cilantro flavor and the presence of sweet corn kernels are new and unfamiliar to the seasoned Taco Bell palate. But still there’s some subtle, difficult-to-describe aftertaste that is unmistakably Taco Bell’s own. I think it’s in the tortilla. And I like it; it’s grounding.
There’s chicken in there, though not a ton of it. It was reasonably moist and more enjoyable than typical Taco Bell chicken — which I almost never order — but I did not pick up on the citrus-herb flavor. The burrito is nowhere near as filling as the one from Chipotle that pretty obviously inspired it, though it is several dollars less expensive. It’s supposed to come with guacamole, but if mine had any, I couldn’t identify it. There are also black beans, which added some interesting texture but not much flavor.
Will I order the Cantina Burrito on my next trip to Taco Bell? I won’t. Would I choose it over a burrito from Chipotle? I wouldn’t. But then — again — though I’m good for about one Chipotle trip a month, I’m not someone that Taco Bell has ever had trouble convincing to eat Taco Bell. No sir.
This is an effort, we know, to cut into Chipotle’s market. Maybe that works. And by making Taco Bell more enticing to more people, the Cantina Bell menu appears apt to get me and people like me into Taco Bell more often, since we will inevitably sing its praises to those around us reluctant to visit Taco Bell. The Doritos Locos Taco invigorates the base, then the Cantina Bell menu broadens it.
These are both, in their own way, clever tricks to get you to eat more Taco Bell, but then I guess life is just a clever trick to get you to eat more Taco Bell. And we can sit here and debate whether this represents Taco Bell’s progress or Taco Bell’s selling out, but the truth is, if it goes as planned, it means we all ultimately eat more Taco Bell. So, you know, I’m for it.
$666 burger available
We took the most offensive pieces from other famous burgers and just took it up a level. I mean, what’s the point of putting gold flakes on your food? It doesn’t add to the flavor, it’s just to be able to say you ate gold flakes. So screw it, we’re going to wrap the whole patty in gold and make people eat that.
– Franz Aliquo.
The food truck 666 Burger offers a $666 burger, a foie gras-stuffed kobe patty with champagne-steamed Gruyere cheese, lobster, truffles, caviar and a barbecue sauce made with Kopi Luwak coffee beans. It’s pretty funny, but it’d be funnier if Aliquo didn’t reveal himself in the same interview to be rather uptight about his definition of hamburgers. Still, their regular burger sounds like something I should try.
Via Bill.
Stuff about Delaware
I spent my weekend in Delaware. Before this, the longest stretch I had ever spent in Delaware was in my freshman year of college, when I went to see a friend from high school play lacrosse against the Blue Hens and wound up stranded in Newark (Delaware, not New Jersey) for a couple of hours.
Here are the things I knew about Delaware before this weekend:
– It was the punchline of a gag in Wayne’s World that made me laugh as hard as I ever have to date in a movie theater. I was 11.
– It boasts a very solid rest stop that was typically my only stop on drives to and from D.C. until it parted ways with its Roy Rogers. I still stop there sometimes because it’s a good distance for breaking up the trip and because Popeye’s Chicken is delicious. But if I’m going to eat anywhere along that drive, I usually seize the opportunity to get my Roy Rogers fix.
– There are somehow roughly 20-25 tolls in the 15 minutes you spend in Delaware on that trip.
– If you’re stranded in Newark after your buddy gets on the bus with his lacrosse team to head back to their college, and the light rail has stopped running, and it’s the year 2000 and you don’t have the Internet on your phone or more than $20 on you, you pretty much have to hitchhike to Wilmington to get to the Greyhound station to get back to Washington. Not my best plan.
Here are some things I know about Delaware now:
– Once you get off 95, the trip down US-1 to the beaches is very nice, but still heavy on tolls. They’re inexpensive tolls, like Delaware just wants to remind you that you’re in Delaware and you need to pay for that service. The upside is there are fruit stands.
– There’s a river (and a corresponding town) called Broadkill. Presumably it got its name for being a broad kill, but I prefer to pronounce it as a portmantbro. Broadkill refers to discarded solo cups and lacrosse sticks left on the side of the highway.
– Delaware, like many mid-Atlantic states, features scrapple. Scrapple is a fried pork loaf invented by the Pennsylvania Dutch to make use of offal and scrap meat. I had some at Countrie in Dover on my way home. It looked like this:
People seem to judge scrapple because of its constitution. They shouldn’t because it’s good. It tastes like a breakfast sausage, but with a different and interesting texture. The hog meat is mixed with cornmeal to make the loaf, then slices are pan-fried before they’re served. The fried outside is crispy, but the inside is mushy like tasty pork pudding.
Fiat photobombs VW
Is it time to panic about sports?
I missed most of the Braves’ thrashing of the Mets this weekend. I caught the series finale yesterday on radio — Braves radio, no less — but only saw the box scores for Friday and Saturday’s game. Let me guess: some bullpen meltdowns, some poor defense, the Mets losing games the way the Mets lose games.
The difference this time, of course, is that David Wright mustered only two hits in the series and both R.A. Dickey and Johan Santana turned in underwhelming starts. Those three stars carried the Mets to a successful first half, so when they disappoint — however briefly — to kick off the second half, the flaws they’ve helped cover become more striking.
Plus, with Dillon Gee out until at least September, the healthy rotation that worked to keep the ball out of the hands of the woeful bullpen suddenly looks, well, it looks like it might have Miguel Batista in it. Gee is second on the team in innings pitched, so the Mets need people to occupy those innings — ideally as capably as Gee did.
Where have you gone, Mike Pelfrey?
At this point in this post, I intended to point out that Matt Harvey is pitching tonight, putting him on turn to pitch Saturday when the Mets next need a fifth starter. And so I was planning to note that it does not benefit the Mets in any way to commit to putting Harvey in the rotation until they accidentally do, and that if Harvey pitches well tonight he could well be pitching at Citi Field on Saturday.
It turns out that’s pretty much exactly the case, and I missed Terry Collins saying as much on Saturday. If Harvey puts up a clunker or the Mets see something they’re sure won’t translate to the Majors, they can start Batista on Saturday without rolling back on their word. If Harvey pitches anything like as well as he has since the middle of June, he should make his next start for the Major League Mets.
Harvey has thrown 158 innings in the high Minors over the last two years, about 20 more than the minimum the Mets want before Major League promotions. Toby covered this last week, but to reiterate: Calling up Harvey is not optimal for his development, but it’s hardly crippling. He’s 23, he’s been their best Triple-A starter this year, and his last five starts have been excellent.
Harvey’s acceleration through the Mets’ system has earned comparisons to Pelfrey’s, but beyond the surface-level they don’t really bear out. Pelfrey dominated High-A and Double-A in his first professional season, 2006, then got called to the Majors and into the thick of a pennant chase after only two starts in Triple-A. He returned to Triple-A to start the 2007 season, but Harvey already has 58 more Minor League innings under his belt than Pelfrey ever did.
Also, Pelfrey whiffed the world in Single-A and Double-A but never really did at the Minors’ highest level, where — by reputation at least — professional hitters can turn on a mid-90s fastball and lay off breaking pitches out of the zone. Check this out: in 82 innings in Triple-A across 2006 and 2007, Pelfrey struck out 62 batters. Harvey has struck out 102 batters in 98 1/3 innings at Buffalo this season. That seems to me like a pretty important distinction between the two.
More importantly, Harvey is his own unique snowflake, as is Mike Pelfrey, as we all are. Supposedly he still needs some work on his secondary pitches. I buy that. But the Mets do have coaches and side sessions and video scouts and everything. Presumably it’s easier to sharpen your changeup against lesser hitters and away from the Major League spotlight, but the Mets have a shot at a Wild Card and a hole in their rotation and Harvey looks like the best person to fill it. No reason he can’t keep working on his arsenal in Flushing.
Also, for what it’s worth, I think scouts are very important and that baseball teams should put a lot of stock in the things scouts say. But I suspect that among many fans, the pendulum of trust in Minor League evaluations has swung a bit too far back toward traditional scouting. Results matter too. And putting too much faith in the opinions and biases of any one scout or even a small handful of scouts seems sort of silly, what with the human element.
Mostly Mets Podcast presented by Caesars AC
Twitter Q&A, pt. 2
Now the baseball stuff:
https://twitter.com/GSchif/status/223424645775368193
I’d take Castro, partly because he’s hit a bit better, partly because he’s ever-so-slightly younger, and mostly because he’s performed well over a sample nearly twice as large as Tejada’s. To succeed like he has in the Majors at his age bodes extremely well for his future. Sam Miller covered this at Baseball Prospectus recently. This sounds ridiculous, but it’s basically even money Castro winds up a Hall of Famer.
That I had to think about it speaks very well of Tejada, who’s not exactly an old man himself. Tejada doesn’t come with Castro’s prospect pedigree, but I suspect that is more an indictment of the fickle hype machine than the player. Tejada’s not flashy in any way, but he’s quickly becoming one of my favorite Mets to watch play. And I know I’m not alone.
And check this out, following Miller’s lead: If Tejada stays healthy this year and plays well enough to keep his career OPS+ at 92 or above, he joins a very short list of guys who have regularly played shortstop in the Majors at his age and not embarrassed themselves offensively. Only 16 shortstops in history have amassed 1,000 plate appearances with at least a 92 OPS+ through their age-22 season. Of them, five are Hall of Famers and one of them is A-Rod, and every single one that played after the dawn of the All-Star Game was an All-Star at some point.
https://twitter.com/JamesPJennings/status/223414750879555584
No, and thank heaven for that because I want to enjoy Mike Trout unencumbered by any of those thoughts. The Angels had two consecutive picks that year from New York teams that had signed away their free agents. With the Mets’ pick — 24th overall — they took a high-school outfielder named Randal Grichuk who is now in High A ball. With the Yankees’ pick — 25th overall, a compensation for Mark Teixeira’s signing — they took a high-school outfielder named Mike Trout who is now impossibly good.
So yeah, if the Mets had their 24th overall pick that year they could have taken Trout. Didn’t happen, but there’s no guarantee they would have anyway. Also, check this out:
The Angels traded Casey Kotchman for Teixeira and got a decent part-season from Teixeira that helped them to the 2008 playoffs, then the pick that brought them Trout. Following the Teixeira transaction-thread back, the Braves’ role in it looks awful. They traded Neftali Feliz, Elvis Andrus, Matt Harrison and Jarrod Saltalamacchia (and Minor Leaguer Beau Jones) to get Teixeira and Ron Mahay.
Mahay left in free agency after that season, and the Braves got a sandwich-round pick they used on lefty Brett DeVall, who never pitched in the Majors and appears to be out of baseball. They kept Teixeira for essentially one full season, then traded him for Casey Kotchman and Minor Leaguer Stephen Marek.
They kept Kotchman for 54 games then traded him to the Red Sox for Adam LaRoche, who provided them excellent production over 57 games but whom, as far as I can tell, they declined to tender a contract in the offseason — meaning no draft-pick compensation.
So for Andrus, Harrison, Feliz and Saltalamacchia — all Major Leaguers, three of them All-Stars — the Braves got one season of Mark Teixeira, part seasons of Casey Kotchman and Adam LaRoche, and two guys who never played in the Majors. For Kotchman and Stephen Marek, the Angels got a part season of Mark Teixeira and a draft pick that netted them Mike Trout.
https://twitter.com/e_lobell/status/223412225451376640
I don’t think they’re going to give up on him in right field this year, nor do I think they should. Duda has been woeful defensively, no doubt, but he’ll likely hit better than he has at some point and we’ll all suddenly be willing to cut him some slack. Plus, if they determine conclusively that he’s a DH/1B type, he’s got to have some value in a trade. And in that case, they’d probably want to keep playing him regularly until they ship him out.
Left field might be an option down the road, but he’s not going to be rangy anywhere. His arm might play a little better in left, but I don’t know that it would make a huge difference for his defense in total.
https://twitter.com/Huerts31/status/223411261868740608
They have Rocky Mountain Oysters in Denver. I seriously considered them for the novelty, and I’m not normally squeamish about anything, but it came time to get on the line and I just couldn’t do it.
I don’t know that I’ve had anything particularly weird at a ballpark. I had an Ichi-roll in Seattle because I couldn’t not, but though that’s not standard ballpark fare, at this point I’d hardly call sushi “weird.”
I can tell you the most satisfying ballpark food I’ve ever had though: Corn. In the midst of a long baseball roadtrip during a brutal heatwave, stuffed with all sorts of greasy fried food and fast food, my friends and I went to see the Peoria Chiefs. I didn’t know I wanted corn until I saw the corn, but I guess my body was trying to tell me to take a break from the processed food because the corn — roasting over a charcoal grill — looked so amazing. And it was. That’s corn country, after all.
Twitter Q&A, pt. 1
I’m heading out of town this weekend for a friend’s bachelor party. I’ll have a more Mets-heavy Q&A post tomorrow, but I’m writing it today so if there’s any major breaking news between now and then it won’t be in there. Also, if you come to this site for major breaking news, you’re probably not still coming to this site.
Here we go. Apparently the Twitter/Wordpress thing is going to embed my one Tweet with all the responses:
https://twitter.com/connallon/status/223408510271098881
Do you mean I have to choose between pizza and ice-cream cake and can never eat the other one again, or I have to pick which one I’d rather eat for every single meal for the rest of my life?
Either way, it’s pizza. For one thing, there’s way more variety. Ice cream cake is great, but it’s always primarily ice cream. There are so many possible options for pizza toppings, not to mention styles of pizza. I could eat a New York-style pepperoni slice for breakfast, then a Chicago-style sausage slice for lunch, then a brick-oven pizza with soppressata on it for dinner. That’s three different types of sausage in one day, my friend. And pizza is one of our best delivery systems for sausage.
And maybe now you’re saying, well there’s nothing in this hypothetical question that prevents you from eating sausage-topped ice-cream cake. Well how about propriety, bro? Until I taste it and determine otherwise, I’m going to assume any sausage-topped ice-cream cake is a gluttonous gimmick. Sausage-topped pizza is a delicious meaty meal. Also, most of the places that sell ice-cream cakes don’t even stock sausage, so I’m going to have to bring my own sausage to the Carvel and ask them to whip me up something fresh. Not only does it seem like that’d take a long time, but it also, I think, violates the spirit of the question.
Carlos Beltran is fit to be blamed for everything. Presumably your waitress was tired from staying up too late watching Beltran do awesome things on a baseball field somewhere.
There was a Comic-Con in Phoenix when I was there a couple of months ago. My friends alerted me to it on the trip from the airport to our hotel, and within five minutes we witnessed a parking-lot light-saber battle fit for George Michael Bluth.
Judge me if you must: I’m hardly a bully and really never was much of one even in high-school when I was a total football bro, but walking through herds of people in makeshift superhero costumes gave me an overwhelming urge to start dolling out spirited wedgies. Note that they would have been vaguely ironic wedgies, because, again, I’m a 31-year-old man and I’d be doing it more to celebrate the very silly concept of wedgying nerds than because I actually want to punish them for their hobbies of choice. But that’s a difficult distinction to elucidate when you’ve got a guy’s underwear up over his head.
My wife brought home a Rubik’s Cube from a med-school class a few weeks ago. I’m still not clear on what it has to do with medicine, but the thing has been sitting on the coffee table next to my recliner since. So inevitably I started messing with it, trying to figure it out without resorting to the instructions or the websites upon websites I assume exist that are dedicated to cracking it.
It’s so hard. After playing with it for a while you start seeing the cube differently, and you get to understand which moves you need to make to get each square where you want it. But I still haven’t gotten it. I can get a full face of one color pretty easily, but then I start working on a second face and screw up the first one, then eventually get really frustrated and just jumble it all up again. I assume I’m not going about it the right way, and that someone’s going to tell me that in the comments now. I know. I don’t want your help. I need to make this happen on my own.
I wouldn’t call that “my favorite” though. I think I actually hate it. But every so often I’m watching TV, a commercial comes on and I pick the thing up and can’t stop.
I think I’ll go with the Slinky. Slinkies are awesome. Total one-trick pony, but it’s a really neat trick.
When I was really young, I harassed my dad into taking me to an automat somewhere in Midtown while we were in the city for some reason or another (probably the car show or the Museum of Natural History). I remember him insisting that the food wouldn’t be very good, but the idea of vending-machine cheeseburgers was about the best thing five-year-old me had ever heard of. I can’t remember if I liked the food or not.
When Bamn! opened, I was in grad school at NYU and my band was playing fairly regularly at The Continental on St. Mark’s and 3rd. Bamn! offered cheap, quick, surprisingly fresh food in snack-sized portions, perfect greasy treats to follow a night of drinking or bass-slapping. And sometimes when it’s late and you’re spent the last thing you want to do is interact with an actual human being, so I appreciated that too. They had some sort of fried macaroni-and-cheese thing that I really liked.
I believe it’s closed now, though.
Airships: Happening
You know what’s cool? Led Zeppelin. You know what’s equally cool? Actual zeppelins.
Over at PopSci.com, Josh Bearman checks in with Igor Pasternack, a man who has wanted to build airships since childhood. He’s developing one that can take off and land on its own and that can carry up to 500 tons of cargo — nearly twice as much as has ever been hauled through the air. Oh, and it’s awesome looking:
According to the article, if these, ahh, get off the ground, they will initially be used to ship freight to inaccessible places but “could eventually be developed into flying hotels that silently transport guests from New York to Los Angeles overnight.” Sign me up. The Hindenburg be damned.
Also, it’s worth noting that blimps and zeppelins are two different things but they are both considered dirigibles or airships, and that all four of those things have awesome names.
I yearn for a day when the skies are dotted with massive, efficient, rigid airships hovering over cities. Also, if I had an airship company I think I’d name it “Ice Cube’s A Pimp” and plaster that on the side of every one of our vehicles.
For now, we can consider:
[poll id=”114″]
Tedquarters 