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The rumored availability of Royals’ starter Zack Greinke – who turns 27 next week – is of greater significance. Coming off an off-year – for him, anyway – he’s expressed some displeasure at the slow pace of progress in Kansas City. Just a year removed from a Cy Young Award, Zack is under team control for another 2 years at $13.5 million per, a little bit of cost certainty that looks like a bargain for an arm that’s topped 200 innings 3 years in a row. It would require a package of prospects – including a couple of high ceilinged types – to get a deal with the Royals done for someone of Greinke’s caliber. The Royals need a lot, and while Greinke apparently has some limited no-trade protection, I doubt it would be too hard to sell him on the D.C. area, just a short flight from his home in Orlando. — MASN Sports - benmaller
The 1965 New York Mets needed plenty of help on the field, compiling a record 29 games worse than the benighted 2010 club, but they were plenty popular, all 50-112 things considered. Met attendance 45 years ago totaled 1,768,389, a phenomenal figure considering Shea was no longer brand new and the Mets remained in tenth place. Casey Stengel’s final (and Wes Westrum’s first) club outdrew every other team in the majors except the eventual world champion Los Angeles Dodgers and the novelty-riding Houston Astros, who had the world’s first indoor stadium/Eighth Wonder as a selling point.
The Mets sold themselves in 1965, despite all the losing, and they kept the turnstiles clicking more frequently than almost anybody else in baseball, no matter the staggering regularity of their defeats:
• Second to only the Dodgers in 1966 (66-95; ninth place)
• Fourth only to the Cardinals, Red Sox and Dodgers in 1967 (61-101; tenth place)
• Fourth only to the Tigers, Cardinals and Red Sox in 1968 (73-89; ninth place) - FaFiF
I wouldn’t exactly call myself an adherent of Bill James’ Game Score — the underlying formula smacks of arbitrariness and appears downright esoteric on its surface, and is also tilted towards the modern-era pitcher due to its heavy reliance on strikeouts. Those criticisms aside, it does have some utility as a quick-and-dirty reference point for the quality of a pitcher’s single start, and some tinkering with the Play Index database reveals the following: of the 2,560 individual post-season starts in major league history, only 379 have had Game Scores of 73 or better, of which five belong to Cliff Lee. Only eight other pitchers have amassed five such 73-or-greater Game Score playoff starts, and only three pitchers — Curt Schilling, Bob Gibson, and Christy Mathewson — have more than five. Lee could join that club as early as tonight. - musings
The Mets are still hoping to speak to at least one more candidate. They were turned down by the Detroit Tigers in their efforts to get permission to speak to Al Avila, the Tigers assistant GM. Until the Mets complete the first round of talks they won’t begin the second round – which will include meetings with principal owner Fred Wilpon and team president Saul Katz. Chief operating officer Jeff Wilpon and acting GM John Ricco have conducted all of the interviews so far. –
Popper
What makes Martinez such a hot commodity is his position. If he remains behind the plate, he’ll be one of few catchers in the league that has the ability to hit for both power and average. If he’s shifted to First base or DH, his value decreases significantly. Any team is greatly improved when they add a power-hitting catcher to the middle of their lineup, and as usual there are multiple teams looking to fill that need. Boston will make an offer, but it doesn’t seem they are willing to give the number of years other teams will.
PREDICTED DESTINATION: Detroit Tigers - dugoutdoctors
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