Which Mets are worth a shift?

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Mark Simon at ESPNNewYork.com looks at the Mets with the most pronounced pull tendencies in advance of the series against the Rays, who employ aggressive defensive shifting. Not surprisingly to anyone who has watched a Mets game in the last couple of years, Jason Bay and Scott Hairston pull nearly everything. I imagine aggressive infield shifting would/will hurt Bay in particular, since he seems to get many of his singles on ground balls that find holes on the left side of the infield.

In a related story, a guy at my weekly baseball game in Brooklyn downloaded some iPhone app that tracks stats and creates spray charts. I, too, almost exclusively hit my ground balls to the left side of the infield. I’ll hit line drives up the middle sometimes, but everything on the ground goes to the shortstop, the third baseman, somewhere in between, or right over the third base bag. I’m a bit concerned that once the data is available visually, opponents will shift their second baseman over and destroy my BABIP. Pete if you’re reading don’t say anything.

Taco Bell Tuesday

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As part of the more-regular-features initiative that (thus far unsuccessfully) brought you Wikipedia Wednesday, I’m hoping to make every Tuesday “Taco Bell Tuesday,” featuring at least a post about the latest from my Taco Bell Google alert. Maybe this will continue. No promises.

Most of the news today focuses on the upcoming launch of the Cantina Menu, Taco Bell’s effort to compete in the Chipotle/Qdoba/Baja Fresh space.

At iradiophilly.com, iradioal makes a strong point: This does seem like the first salvo in the Franchise Wars, no? Demolition Man was set in 2032, so Taco Bell has 20 years to realize the prophesy. No word on when we start replacing toilet paper with seashells.

Taco Bell invited select bloggers and journalists to taste the new Cantina Menu at the Empire State Building last week. Gothamist provided a funny but judgy review. Also, and more importantly, WTF? Seriously, Taco Bell? After all I’ve done for you? What has Gothamist done for your brand before this? Answer me that. Search the site for Taco Bell and it’s all pink slime and Hazmat suits and LOLTacoBell stuff. I HAVE A TACO BELL TAB. I understand they get 50 times my traffic or whatever. But last I checked you can’t put a metric on love. AND ART.

Next, in a feature that will likely frequently get link-love here if Taco Bell Tuesday continues, the OC Register’s Taco Bell Crime of the Week reports on a scheme to sneak marijuana into an Indiana jail using Taco Bell as a front. A prison guard got caught wrapping up weed and Suboxone in Taco Bell wrappers and bringing them to work in his lunchbox. Presumably it was a bit disappointing for his clientele every time they bought the weed and it didn’t come with Taco Bell. No access to Taco Bell has to be like the 14th or 15th worst thing about being in jail.

Finally, there’s a new Taco Bell commercial featuring a wedding party in a limo that stops by Taco Bell for Fourthmeal. We did that at my wedding, except it was more of a late lunch, in the gap between the ceremony and the reception. It was my wife’s idea, too, and a really good way to make me feel good about the marriage from its first hour.

The mehs have it

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As of right now, 63 percent of responders said “meh” to the news that Jenrry Mejia will move to the Buffalo bullpen. If you did — or even if you didn’t, since I have no way of knowing — here’s your opportunity to be a little more specific.

The following poll assumes you agree that Mejia would have more longterm value to the Mets if he could stay and succeed as a starter, since healthy starters typically throw about 130 more innings in a season than relievers. But if you don’t agree with that, feel free to abstain or voice your dissension in the comments below.

[poll id=”111″]

You think that sucked?

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Yeah, this installment of the Subway Series was bad, but not nearly as bad as the script of Prometheus. And I get that you might share your office with some obnoxious Yankee fans and put extra stock in the three games, even realizing that they’re only three games against an opponent outside the Mets’ division in the course of a 162-game series. And you probably recognize that Prometheus is a summertime sci-fi action thriller, not exactly Oscar bait.

But though a series including a blowout loss with Johan Santana on the mound, a couple of solid starting-pitching efforts wasted, a slew of strikeouts in big spots and a bullpen meltdown culminating in a walk-off Yankee Stadium home run, it’s hardly as taxing or as baffling as the plot of Prometheus, a movie apparently aimed to clarify one moment in another movie from 33 years ago that mostly opens up dozens more questions that need clarification.

Why is the cyborg the most relatable character? Why does he start acting irrationally and in some way that doesn’t seem to benefit his maker/programmer, even though he’s a cyborg? Why is handsome-ass Guy Pearce in the movie to play an old guy in awful old-guy makeup when there are hundreds of capable old guy actors looking for work? Why does the dialogue seem like it’s written by a 9th grader? Without SPOILERing this, why are certain humans affected certain ways by the things that happen in the movie when other humans are affected in other ways? Why do they bother doing the thing so many movies do now where they set up an obvious sequel when nothing about the movie really makes me care what happens next?

And yeah, just like enjoying a brutal series of Mets losses is still way better than not watching professional baseball games, Prometheus was still great to look at as a computer-graphics spectacle. But really, if the outcomes are going to be so wholly unsatisfying, why bother with things like standard nine-inning games or a loosely rendered plot? Next time maybe just have a home run derby or a story-free celebration of contemporary computer-graphics technology in IMAX 3D and we’ll all enjoy the awesomeness without the accompanying heartache and confusion.

Idris Elba and Scott Hairston are still sweet though.

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We had Internet issues in the office today so I couldn’t do much work for a while this morning. Luckily, one of the producers who sits across from me was working on some piece about Mike Piazza that required him to sit there watching Mike Piazza highlights on his monitor. They were awesome because so is Mike Piazza.

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