The Buscher

Yeah now seeing other angles it was definitely the right call. Still feels like refs often let things like that fly in the closing seconds but ah well. I don’t think anyone’s taking down South Carolina anyway. Not a total loss for UConn either as they got the #1 recruit for the 2024 class today.

Refs pretty much just rigged the end of UConn/Iowa to get Caitlin Clark into the finals.

Sadly it feels like KB might already be washed. It feels like player primes last longer now than they used to with all the changes to sports science, conditioning, analytics helping guys make adjustments with age, etc. At 32 and in the ultimate hitter's park you'd think he should have a few more productive years but the real problem is it seems like his bat speed is toast and it's basically impossible to succeed in MLB without that. If he's got a nagging injury causing the lessened speed hopefully he can work through that but if this is just who he is now that's quickly become one of the worst contracts in the sport.

Diggs' production took a bit of a dive in the second half of last year. Obviously the Bills have some concerns over it but I feel like it's more of a by-product of the Bills not having other weapons making it easier to gameplan against Diggs. Well, my dynasty team sure hopes Diggs adjusts well to Houston.

A win! It took the longest hitless streak in Mets history (13 innings) but it’s a win. My little Mets cap in my office doesn’t have to end up in the trash tomorrow.

0-5. When Tommy Pham got traded last year he told the media that the Mets were the least hard-working group of players he's ever been around. None of the players even attempted to defend themselves in a rebuttal. And go figure, they're still playing the same way a calendar year later. Again my issue isn't the losing it's that they come across like a complacent group of losers just happy to be there. It's shocking how uncompetitive they look the second they face even a smidgen of adversity in a game.

On one hand, I'm glad the video was made because it shows the Mets have a track record of sliding this way for several years running. This would point to it being something they've been deliberately coached to do that no other team other than the Mariners is, and hopefully prompts some internal discussion. On the other, it's pretty eye-rolly because it's Jomboy. He's a Yankee fanboy and, as such, he'll never personally do any positive coverage of the Mets or Red Sox even in cases where they're doing well - that's usually left to some of his other staffers. Moreover I think if this were any team other than the Mets it'd be a quick video breaking things down, not a 20 minute mini-documentary. Dunno, it's just one of those things where like, there's already enough crap to endure as a Mets fan. Having the biggest baseball content creator putting out a long video ripping them is just adding more dirt. There's a phrase on Mets Twitter called "Mets for Clicks" as it pertains to baseball media going out of their way to tweak the Mets fans. It's tough to argue when you see stuff like ESPN or B/R putting out a list of their top 10 power hitters in baseball and omitting Pete Alonso who literally leads the league in HR since he debuted. Like...it's surely meant to troll one specific fanbase. At the same time, they do it because Mets Twitter routinely proves they're the most easily gotten-to fanbase. And so the cycle continues. "LOLMETS" became a popular baseball internet phrase with their 2007 collapse and it's just never gone away. For people in my generation, where 2007 was now half my life ago, kinda easy to see why a lot of the fanbase around our age are just worn down to the point we don't want to deal with it anymore.

Yeah this feels like the Bills' window is even more firmly slammed shut. The Bills badly needed another weapon to go alongside Diggs and they've now done the complete opposite. The Dolphins should've won the East last year and the Bills got hot and ran them down. Can't see that happening this time around. Also for as much as we all love to laugh at the Jets and would love to see Rodgers fail, their defense kept them in the season and if they had an even remotely serviceable QB they'd have been a playoff team. If Rodgers actually stays healthy then Buffalo's a pretty firm 3rd place in that division.

Plus Cohen himself has an ego, is pushing 70, and is probably regretting his "I'll be upset if we don't win a title in 3-5 years" statement when he first got the team but also too stubborn to fully commit to a blow-up. The fans loved his statement at the time as it showed he was gonna go all-out to try to put together his East Coast Dodgers vision. I don't know that he has the stomach for a full rebuild, let alone the fans. The nightmare scenario will be the Mets keep all the stars in place, fail to make the playoffs again. Maybe a few of the kids get up here but they'll probably struggle as very few prospects hit the ground running here, outside of Wright and Alonso it hasn't really happened in 20 years. As said the other day I do not envision any realistic scenario where the Yanks let Soto go to the Mets, they'll match Cohen's offer even if it's more than they wanted to pay. And then I see Cohen panic-paying Alonso trying to placate fans by keeping a homegrown talent to shatter their club HR records. But really all he's doing then is quintupling down on a core that's failed 3 of 4 years (and the one year they didn't they won 101 games and still ruined it by collapsing in September and letting the Braves embarrass them). Again I know this is dramatic for 4 games in but the vibes are already really bad and have been all offseason aside from the brief happiness of signing JDM. Feels like the in-between 2014 Mets but with a lot more money and fewer likable players.

Mets start 0-4 for just the 5th time in their history (the first 3 years of existence, 2005, and this year). More alarmingly though they've scored 1 run or less in 3 of these games. The one game they scored, the pitching was awful. But they're just taking completely non-competitive at-bats. Again the baseball season is long but when you look at the Mets' schedule it's easy to not feel that way. They play 4 in Atlanta next week which feels like a borderline lock for a 4-game sweep given the Mets never win there. Like there's a legit chance JD Martinez is gonna arrive to and provide thump to a lineup that might be already 8+ out of it by the time he gets there. They're speedrunning futility. I think most fans assumed that, if the season went poorly, the move would be to get the kids up here and sell off JDM, Manaea, Severino, Quintana, and anyone else here for the short-term. But if the start to this season is any indication of how this team is gonna play I think there's a non-zero chance Cohen finally realizes half-measures aren't gonna work and he just blows the thing up. Lindor, Nimmo, Alonso, McNeil etc are associated with a massive September 2022 choke job and a point might come where you realize that group ain't it. It's tough to sell a NY fanbase on a complete teardown and rebuild but if this year really goes that horribly I don't think the fans care about losing anyone on this roster not named Francisco Alvarez.

Vontae retiring at halftime of the first game of the season is one of the greatest stories in NFL history. RIP

Mets swept to open the season. I know my posts seem like “typical Mets fan” but every flaw fans saw on this roster got exposed in the very first series. There’s really no positive takeaways beyond the basic trope of there’s 159 to go. Meanwhile, the Yanks open 4-0 with Soto serving as the main catalyst in 3 of the wins. If/when the Mets season falls apart totally I can’t wait for Mets fans to pivot to “well, at least Cohen will get Soto”. While he will probably make the highest offer, there’s no player who willingly picks the Mets over the Yanks. I suspect he’ll give the Yanks a chance to match and, for all the talk of “Hal isn’t George” I think that flies out the window when it comes to possibly losing a 26-year old generational superstar to the Mets. They’re paying him whatever they have to.

A jobber pitcher on the Mets threw way over Hoskins and got ejected with no warning. Of course it was after Hoskins was 3-3 with a dinger and 4 RBI. Ron Darling and Keith Hernandez were both in agreement that it was a stupid thing to do. If they felt the need to send a message to Hoskins the time to do it was the 1st inning. Instead they waited til he killed them all day and now it just looks like sour grapes, sore loser bush league shit. 29 other fanbases are roasting them on Twitter. And they lost (of course). Only took 2 games for the Mets to re-establish themselves as the league’s bitch. Every team loves to beat them, and every fanbase clowns them. Wild how the only people who don’t see this is their reputation are the ones in the Mets organization. I might just shell out for extra innings so I can watch teams that don’t give me existential dread.

Jeff McNeil and the Mets bench bitched and moaned about Rhys Hoskins making a dirty slide yesterday (it wasn’t dirty). Hoskins called them crybabies and did the motion and all of that. Today. 1st inning. Hoskins at the plate with 1st base open with 2 runners on. Yeah maybe it’s draconian to call to put one in someone’s ribs but the thing with the Mets over the last few years is they never, ever retaliate no matter how performatively upset they get. So everyone knows it’s easy to get under their skin. Even when they were leading the league in HBPs. They never even attempted to brush someone off the plate which emboldens teams to keep working inside with impunity. Does Severino send him a message or pitch him inside? Nah. He throws a first pitch meatball down the middle which Hoskins promptly rips to drive in 2 and he celebrates wildly at first base. So again, nothing’s changed. Gutless team that the rest of the league loves to clown. Business as usual.

From western CT I can’t really imagine calling it anything else. I guess maybe if I went to Subway I’d call it a sub by default but it’s too overpriced now. somehow it was the highlight of the game Mets 1-hit in a loss. Whatever, 1 game but not exactly shocked a team that couldn’t hit a lick last year running out the same lineup couldn’t hit again. I just want them to be watchable. That’s all. I basically stopped watching after a June last year. If they look hapless a month from now they might finally break me.

Every 3rd inning for home games the Mets bring out the Veteran of the Game. The veteran for Opening Day, the largest crowd of the year, was named Seymour Weiner. Respect to the man and all but holy shit.

Starling Marte’s first AB of the year is a home run out of the 5-spot. Like I said this morning, Carlos Mendoza is a genius and a visionary!

My own Opening Day traditions: I’ve had an orange Johan shirsey since we got him and that’s usually my default shirt for Opening Day. Even when I have to work I’ll wear a blue or orange button up with the shirsey as my undershirt. If I can’t watch the game live it’s DVR’d and I stay off the internet, as I think the opener works best as a “live” thing. I also always go to my favorite grinder place. Grinder, chips, and a beer while I watch. Love the simple things.

I know it’s a “typical Mets fan” thing to complain about an Opening Day lineup but after hearing all winter about how much of an analytics whiz Carlos Mendoza is, he’s batting Francisco Alvarez 7th even though he’s likely the 5th best hitter on the team and clearly the 2nd best power threat. He’s hitting behind Starling Marte who looked like a corpse all spring in the 5th spot and DJ Stewart who was the worst player in camp on the 6th spot. “Gotta defer to the vets” and “gotta have L/R balance no matter what” are both very much old school managerial decisions, not ones I’d expect from someone praised for new school thinking. Guess we’ll see.

Opening Day player intros in front of nobody is one of the saddest things I’ve ever seen. Fuck John Fisher.

Opening Day is a day worth waiting through a delay for. My dad and I though won’t ever entertain a game if there’s a reasonable chance of rain. We only do weekday night games (cheaper, less crowded, etc) so it’s usually one of those deals where we decide and buy tix day of. It’s about a 75 minute drive for us so being stuck there late after a delay, after working all day and with work the next morning, is something we avoid at all costs. Of course, in the last few years we’ve called off plans to go not just because of rain but because of that Canadian wildfire smoke we got last year, and generally just really disgusting humid nights. Wish every team had a retractable roof and we could return to the days of scheduled double headers. Ah well.

As has been expected all week, Mets Opening Day tomorrow is postponed to Friday due to heavy rain in the forecast. This was the only game scheduled for a 1 PM EST start. Opening Day around the league now won't start until 3 PM EST at the earliest and that's if the Orioles don't have to postpone. If they do the season won't start until 4 PM EST. Brilliant job of scheduling as always by the MLB braintrusts.

There was a Twitter account called GENY Mets which was just an aggregator account. Routinely stole tweets/speculation/reports from others, never did any original reporting of his own. Got suspended multiple times. What really ticked the writers off the most though was that he'd never quote or re-tweet. He'd instead take a screenshot of the original and post it as new tweet, crediting the writer but getting all the likes/shares etc for himself to keep his numbers up. So upon him announcing yesterday that he was shutting the account down, the Mets' official twitter account trolled him by doing the same thing to him that he did to so many others. Outstanding.

The last big free agent hold-out is now off the board. Jordan Montgomery to the D-Backs. 1-year, $25 million with a vesting option that will probably turn it into 2-years, $50 million

Caleb maybe purely because he’s a rookie they might want to get a series or two of reps. Stroud almost certainly not. Starters rarely play at all during the HOF game. Teams definitely view the extra preseason game as a hindrance rather than an honor.