When longtime baseball fans discuss players who have just emerged from the minors it is commonplace to compare them to veteran players with whom we are familiar. Whether one is using Similarity Scores (you can find these at Baseball-Reference.com) or “Comparables” as they are listed in the Baseball Prospectus or even facial resemblance or other [...]
Today’s article was going to be a straightforward piece entitled, “There’s a lot to like about Neil Walker.” It was going to point out how popular Walker was in Pittsburgh both with his teammates and the Pirates’ fan base. Then it would describe how seamlessly he has fit in as a Met and all his [...]
The Kansas City Royals seemed to have laid out the template that the Mets hoped to follow. In year one you surprise the baseball world by making it to the playoffs and then getting as far as the World Series before succumbing. Then in year two you build on year one making it to and [...]
There was a little girl, And she had a little curl Right in the middle of her forehead. When she was good She was very, very good, And when she was bad she was horrid. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882) Who says there’s no culture in the baseball blogosphere? The first domino to tip over was [...]
While it is quite an amazing skill for a person to make solid contact with a bat on a quickly moving, often darting, ball it is even more impressive when the batter can do it from either side of the plate. A pejorative term sometimes used in politics is RINO which stands for Republican In [...]
Bill James in his early Baseball Abstracts first discussed what he called the “defensive spectrum”. Basically it runs from the easiest position to play to the most difficult. It looks like this: DH-->1B-->LF-->RF-->3B-->CF-->2B-->SS-->C* The asterisk after the C for catcher refers to the unique skill set necessary to play that position. While you would expect [...]
Let’s not mince words here: Eric Campbell is a very poor excuse for a major league baseball player. Now he may be a wonderful person and a great addition to the locker room environment but players at the top level of the game are expected to have major league tools. Superstars have all five while [...]
Obviously, 200 is a nice round number. People like round numbers especially those ending in one or more zeroes. Until Roger Maris came along it was comforting and easy to remember that the record for home runs in a season belonged to Babe Ruth with his 60 in 1927. 200 is the Mets’ franchise record [...]
We Mets fans are use to hearing Keith Hernandez refer back to his days of playing Strat-O-Matic baseball as a teen. He mentions the game when lauding a great defensive player saying things like “this guy’s a definite ‘1’ in Strat.” But if an outfield messes up consistently he’ll label him a “4”. The well [...]
Quick – name the player you first associate with the Washington Nationals? You likely said Bryce Harper and except for some stragglers saying Daniel Murphy you would have plenty of company. No credit to you if you said Jonathan Papelbon. How about an Angel? Mike Trout, surely. Here’s a tough one: the Phillies? Don’t say [...]
During the period following the First World War and before the beginning of the Second World War the first one was called "The Great War." Obviously they did not know at the time that after WWI there would be another one, even worse as if that were conceivable, so World War I got its name [...]
Let’s put this right at the top. The Mets will not be making a change in the third base coaching box this year. It is not in their nature. Any team that would allow Curtis Granderson to play regularly against left handed pitching despite his career numbers (.224 BA and .296 OBP vs. lefties) and [...]