There were high hopes for this offseason from the New York Mets and Sandy Alderson. We fans were promised that with several onerous contracts off the books – if you’re reading this, you already know who they are – the ramp-up to 2014 was going to be an exciting shower of gold. To Alderson’s credit, [...]
When the Atlanta Braves commit three errors in one inning, it better be pretty easy to score seven runs. Of course, having the game kept at 1-1 through the seventh certainly helps, too. Thank Zack Wheeler for part of that as he had another strong start on Sunday, going three innings, striking out three while [...]
In 2011, the National Football League endured a 130-day lockout when the NFL Players Association and the league couldn’t agree to terms on a new Collective Bargaining Agreement. Later that year, the National Basketball Association suffered from a 161-day lockout and was forced to shorten the 2011-2012 season to 66 games. When the National Hockey [...]
Yesterday morning my colleague Spencer Manners introduced a new fielding data set, Inside Edge Fielding, that was unveiled this week at FanGraphs. This new data breaks down each play a player has the opportunity to make into six categories based on the difficulty of successfully making the play. The category titles are pretty self-explanatory. For [...]
In 2012, Matt Harvey came up and announced his presence with authority. Last year Zack Wheeler came up, dominated the Braves and by the end of the year had established himself as ready for prime time. These two may have created some unrealistic expectations for future rookies that the Mets promote. Right now we are [...]
Evaluating defense has always been imperfect. Primitive statistics, such as number of errors or fielding percentage, were very flawed. Newer statistics -- such as UZR and DRS -- are better, but still are flawed. It takes three years for UZR data to become a reliable sample, and three years is a good amount of time [...]
I’ve been in the book production business now for over thirty years. In the summer of 1982, my first job after college was at Simon & Schuster in New York City. I was hired as an assistant and I was put in charge of making advanced reader copies for new books being published. This was [...]
They don’t call it a New York minute for nothing. We’re all impatient and we want to get things done so we can move on to the next thing we’ve got to do. So, while Sandy Alderson takes his time and acts like the adult in the room, here’s my armchair GM and the 25-man [...]
Six out of eight playoff teams--Boston, Tampa Bay, Detroit, St. Louis, Cincinnati, and Los Angeles--all featured a top-10 OBP leadoff hitter and all made the playoffs. A 7th team represented on this list, Texas, missed the playoffs on game 163. The non-contending teams with strong leadoff hitters were Toronto, Milwaukee, and Colorado. The two teams [...]
Terry Collins is now the oldest manager in the major leagues. He’s played his part of the development of the young players in the organization from his years as the minor league coordinator to the past three years as the Mets’ skipper. The majority of the players on the prospective 25 man opening day roster [...]
Joe talks about Mets pitching prospects, and why starting Eric Young Jr. over Juan Lagares is lunacy.
There was the Miracle of 1969. There was its even more unlikely cousin, the “Ya Gotta Believe” pennant of 1973, which saw a second championship fall short – just when the Mets were poised to take it -- due to un-robust hitting and some managerial malpractice. What was lost on the management of the time [...]