MLB 2023

[Toe]

22 hours ago, Toe said:

Not the best start to Chris Bassitt's time as a Blue Jay...

...and Berrios follows that up with a stinker. At least Gausman looked good, and Manoah was able to work through his struggles in the opener. 

[Mx. Canadian Destroyer]

19 minutes ago, Toe said:

...and Berrios follows that up with a stinker. At least Gausman looked good, and Manoah was able to work through his struggles in the opener. 

Will be hilarious if Kikuchi has the best start of any of them considering his results last year. 

[Gabriel]

46 minutes ago, Mx. Canadian Destroyer said:

Will be hilarious if Kikuchi has the best start of any of them considering his results last year. 

Get ready to laugh. Yusei's leading the boys to victory today.

Prediction: Kikuchi pitches six strong innings, gets at least seven K's and the Jays belt three dingers today.

Reality: probably not that.

[The Buscher]

75 and sunny.  Absolutely perfect day for baseball.

Too bad there’s none of that in Queens because the Mets decided to call their home opener off at like 4:30 PM yesterday.  Even at the time they called it, the forecast wasn’t calling for showers to start until like 6/7 PM, long after the game would’ve finished.  Had they waited until later last night to decide I think they would’ve went through with the game.

I get that teams really want to avoid any risk of having to delay or postpone a home opener on the day of, because it’s a zoo.  They probably worried the storm would move in earlier than anticipated.  Friday there’s no threat of rain supposedly, but it’ll be like 55 degrees and cloudy.

Feel bad for fans who have to sell their tickets now though.  I always felt if you’re gonna go to the home opener you need to book two days off - one for the game and the emergency backup day.  But that’s just not doable for everyone.

[gunnar hendershow]

The Orioles did the exact same thing. Fortunately I can still go to the game tomorrow but today is perfect weather. Forecast did have thunderstorms in the afternoon followed by steady rain around 6pm so makes sense, but it's been pushed later and they all but certainly could've gotten the game in today.

[Krabby]

Ohtani becomes the first player to get a pitch clock violation as both a pitcher and batter LMAO

[Meacon Keaton]

To be fair, with the DH in both leagues, he was really only in competition with himself for that accolade.

[The Buscher]

And this ladies and gentlemen is more proof why LOLMets is never, ever going to go away.

Like...most of these sponsorship patches are tastefully added to the sleeve in a way that isn't a distraction. The Mets manage to have their patch take up an entire sleeve when it's just an empty box. It could've been SO much smaller than it is.

Have no earthly idea how anybody looked at this and greenlit it. How could anybody have looked at this and thought the result would be anything but ridicule?

Fuck this team man.

[The Buscher]

So the Mets intended on entering this season with a 50/50 catching split between Omar Narvaez and Tomas Nido - neither guy is really expected to hit much at all but most teams view offense from catchers as a bonus nowadays, you can live with it in the 9 spot.  Meanwhile, Francisco Alvarez, one of if not the top prospect in the sport, was gonna be in Syracuse getting much-needed work on his skills behind the plate.

Well, the baseball gods had other ideas and Narvaez got hurt last week and he'll be out 2-2.5 months.  Since Alvarez was the only other catcher on the 40, they brought him up for the Mets' first homestand and he got one of the loudest ovations during the home opener intros.  But he sat two days straight.  Yesterday he made his first start behind the plate and drove in a run, but the Marlins ran wild on him and exploited that he's still got a lot of work to do behind the plate.

All Buck Showalter has done in his press conferences over the weekend was rave about how much he loves Tomas Nido back there, and he's all but said Nido will be his primary catcher moving forward.  The optics of that are pretty bad.

I like Buck, I really do, but this really is the case where the front office needs to step in and I say that as someone who hates that so many front offices practically dictate lineups to managers nowadays.  Buck's an older manager on a win-now team that won 101 games last year, of course he wants to stick with his vets.

You pretty much have to tell Buck - either you play Alvarez 2 of every 3 games behind the plate, or we're sending him back to AAA and sending you the 4th string catcher to be the new backup.  There's no better way to mess up a 21-year old kid than to only play him once or twice a week.

[Meacon Keaton]

I'm actually with Buck on this. I think Buck is forcing their (front office) hand to send the kid who isn't ready yet, back to the minors in hopes of a better defending veteran. As you said, it's a win now team. If Alvarez could control a staff the way Ruschman does in Baltimore, it'd be different. But Buck ain't there to make sure everyone gets their Little League fair play time.

He's gonna play the catcher that'll best help them win. Having a catcher back there that my grandmother could run on is not it. 

[gunnar hendershow]

The post game interviews saw Kyle Gibson refer to it as the "homer hose" but the people have spoken and the world is calling it the "dong bong".

[GhostMachine]

6 hours ago, Meacon Keaton said:

I'm actually with Buck on this. I think Buck is forcing their (front office) hand to send the kid who isn't ready yet, back to the minors in hopes of a better defending veteran. As you said, it's a win now team. If Alvarez could control a staff the way Ruschman does in Baltimore, it'd be different. But Buck ain't there to make sure everyone gets their Little League fair play time.

He's gonna play the catcher that'll best help them win. Having a catcher back there that my grandmother could run on is not it. 

You know what you call a catcher who can't stop anyone?

A future DH.

[The Buscher]

20 hours ago, Meacon Keaton said:

I'm actually with Buck on this. I think Buck is forcing their (front office) hand to send the kid who isn't ready yet, back to the minors in hopes of a better defending veteran. As you said, it's a win now team. If Alvarez could control a staff the way Ruschman does in Baltimore, it'd be different. But Buck ain't there to make sure everyone gets their Little League fair play time.

He's gonna play the catcher that'll best help them win. Having a catcher back there that my grandmother could run on is not it. 

While I certainly understand this, my concerns with Buck's handling of prospects isn't limited to just Alvarez.  The Mets had a black hole at 3B for much of last season with Eduardo Escobar being largely terrible and at one point being physically incapable of swinging a bat from the left side.  Despite this, the front office asked Buck if they wanted to send up Brett Baty and Buck declined even though he'd become the best hitting prospect in the organization.  Eventually Escobar got another injury and they brought Baty up anyway, and Buck immediately shoved him into a platoon as if he didn't hit LHP in the minors at all.  Baty himself ended up hurting his thumb but all indications were he'd be riding the pine the second Escobar got healthy again.

Separately, they called up Mark Vientos who was absolutely mashing LHP in AAA for the last 2 seasons, and the team had a black hole on the short side of their DH platoon.  Buck instead kept Darin Ruf out there to hit .152 while Vientos more or less just sat on the bench for a few weeks, unsurprisingly looking ineffective when he was only taking cuts once every few days.

Given the importance of catching I understand being hesitant on playing a guy who isn't ready defensively, and think the front office needs to really sit down and discuss this with him because otherwise they gotta get him back to AAA.  In general though I'm concerned over how much, if at all, he'll trust the young players if and when Alvarez, Baty, Vientos, Ronny Mauricio etc have to come up this year.  People are already clamoring for Baty to come back up and I can already see "WHY IS BRETT BATY SITTING AGAIN?" being asked on the Mets subreddit daily.

Oh speaking of Tomas Nido, he played a part in this yesterday.  You see only a handful of these plays across the entire league all year.  For them to happen in the same game, let alone the same inning?  Probably never going to see this again.

 

[The Buscher]

It's hard to imagine the 1962 Mets ever being surpassed, but this year's A's might come close.  There is nothing good about that team at all.

[Szumi]

We need MLB clubs to start signing a lot more people, apparently. But this is seriously a great touch by LA.

 

[GhostMachine]

On 16/04/2023 at 23:16, Justin Buschlander said:

It's hard to imagine the 1962 Mets ever being surpassed, but this year's A's might come close.  There is nothing good about that team at all.

You may be right. No one will ever surpass the 1899 Cleveland Spiders, though. (They play more games now, so the losses record could be beaten, but even so I don't think there will ever be another team that only wins 20 games.)

[gunnar hendershow]

Oakland will have the benefit of facing many teams in August and September who are in tank mode.

[gunnar hendershow]

Speaking of Oakland. Their possum has apparently hitched a ride with the Mets and is how in Dodger Stadium.

[The Buscher]

Scherzer apparently is the first victim of the Domingo German rosin fallout

Dodgers asked the umps to check Scherzer’s glove.  Scherzer was adamant it was just rosin.  The umps seemingly agreed but gave him a warning and made him change gloves.

Then after the next inning the Dodgers moaned, the umps checked his glove again, determined he had too much rosin and threw him out.

I don’t know if he was thrown out because of the rosin or because he was getting increasingly mouthy with the umps, screaming “IT’S JUST FUCKING ROSIN” at them.

[Meacon Keaton]

Domingo German was made to wash his hands and had no issues after that.

Sounds like your boy didn't think he'd get checked twice.