Over on the main Baseball Prospectus site today, I wrote a piece about when spring training matters: the answer is “usually not much,” and particularly I don’t think traditional statistics like ERA or FIP are of any great concern. These are minuscule samples against varied competition with players often not exerting at full capacity. As […]
Category: Articles
BP Mets Unfiltered: Can America’s Pastime Change America’s Future?
I lost my first friend over a Trump fight on Super Bowl Sunday. The friend, a wealthy white guy here in New York who I’ve always known to lean Left, is also a big Tom Brady fan (for his underdog status in the early years, he says). After the Patriots’ win he took to Facebook […]
How Syndergaard and deGrom can be the Next Koufax and Drysdale
Would you read an article written by Sandy Alderson describing exactly what went down at the 2015 trade deadline? Crying Wilmer Flores, rejecting Carlos Gomez, and acquiring La Potencia? Imagine the retweets. Something like that actually happened in 1967, when the Los Angeles Dodgers’ general manager, Buzzie Bavasi, penned a four-part series in Sports Illustrated. The best of […]
Mets Madness
There’s something paradoxical about Spring Training. It feels great at first. We have pitchers, catchers, and sun shining on outdoor sports again. The season is full of hope. Then we get to the actual games … a whole lot of games that do not count. After a week or so, the novelty can wear off. […]
What If?: Alex Rodriguez Signs With The Mets After 2000
After the 2000 season, Alex Rodriguez signed a 10-year, $252 million deal with the Texas Rangers. But during a recent taping of Undeniable with Joe Buck, Rodriguez said that he would have taken half the money to play for the New York Mets after the 2000 World Series. The quote is new, but the sentiment of […]
Ryan Church and the Concussion that Ended his Career
On the verge of a breakout, 29-year-old right fielder Ryan Church suddenly found his career crash to an abrupt halt after suffering a severe concussion on the basepaths. Less than two years later, he quietly retired from Major League Baseball. Church recently spoke with BP Mets about the aftereffects of his concussion, Shea Stadium’s final game, […]
The Mets Have To Play Their Second-Best Outfielder
Coming out of the 2015 season, I never would’ve thought we’d still be sitting here in spring 2017 talking about why Michael Conforto can’t find full-time work with the Mets. It was obvious that they’d make room somewhere. Sure, Terry Collins kept finding silly excuses to play Michael Cuddyer, even into the playoffs, but talent […]
BP Mets Unfiltered: In Defense of Tim Tebow
Full disclosure, I have an orange and blue bias here: I went to the University of Florida.* Tim Tebow graduated in December 2009; I started in August 2010. We never crossed paths–never had a Rocks for Jocks class together or bumped into each other in the student union–but that’s not to say Tebow wasn’t part […]
How To Grade Your Terrible Sports Ownership Group
As we move along in Spring Training, teams will judge some of their players unworthy of a spot in big league camp and send them to the minor league fields. We may want to judge some of these players. After all, there isn’t a whole lot to do besides watch for amazingly weird catches and […]
From BP: Short Relief: Ty Kelly Cannot Advise You on the Subject of Rivers
Over at the Baseball Prospectus main site, Patrick Dubuque and company are rolling out a new daily collection of short posts “… concerned primarily with the aesthetic, the metaphorical, and the ridiculous aspects of baseball as an unproductive labor that induces such devotion and contentment.” Every weekday, expect a couple of quick hits on a […]