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2/18/14

Mack’s Morning Report – 2-18-14 – Bobby Parnell, Terry Collins, Tampa Bay Rays




(Remember… effective Friday you will not be able to leave comments using ‘Anonymous’ as your handle. Our Blogger blog simply can’t handle and process the spam… (in only the past 2 weeks the site has been hit with over 1,230 spam comments).
please change your account to your name or some made up handle… and please don’t go away)


Also… we still need a couple of more active writers for the upcoming season. Please contact me at macksmets@gmail.com and we’ll discuss the details.



 - I threw a baseball 173 days post-surgery.A lot of fun feeling those laces again. Looking forward to many more positive days.



Later today..

    10am – Christopher Soto – Mack’s Mets Top 25 - #15 Gavin Cecchini

    12 noon –  Christopher Wuensch – Let The Derek Jeter Circus Begin

     2 pm – Luis Tirado Jr. – David Is Always Doing The Wright Thing

 

Jed Weisberger ‏@jedleyq  - Rafael Montero ready for #Mets rotation. Syndergaard, until he gets a third pitch, is not. Had problems late in 2013 EL season because of that.


Word is that closer Bobby Parnell is ‘just fine’ after throwing around 15 more tosses on Sunday when the cameras weren’t around. They weren’t very fast and the catcher was standing in front of the batter’s box, but that’s just fine. This is far more progressed than we thought he would be at this point in the off-season. My guess is he will still not make the opening day roster, and will be placed on the 7-day DL until full arm strength is built up sometime in April. I would expect this would open up a small window for one of the old veterans (Farnsworth, Valverde) to fill in for him until he’s ready to return. We’ll keep an eye on pitch count here to see the progress.


The Boston Globe on baseball’s best managers –

13. Terry Collins, Mets — Extremely underrated, according to our panel. Collins hasn’t had much to work with in New York, but has maintained a very upbeat approach to the Mets’ rebuilding process that has resonated with his players. He was once a feisty type but has mellowed to adapt to the modern player.

            Mack – I should probably let Reese Kaplan comment on this one J


Fangraphs broke out the five tp organizations in baseball. It’s good reading and here’s what they said about another small market team like the Mets:

3) Tampa Bay Rays - Ever since Stuart Sternberg took over as owner of the Rays in 2006, they have been one of the best-run organizations in baseball. Operating with one of the smallest payrolls in baseball, the Rays quickly turned it around under new ownership, as they reach the playoffs and World Series for the first time in the organization’s history in 2008. Since 2008, the Rays have had five seasons of at least 90 wins in six total seasons. Their success, despite being located in one of the smallest markets of any MLB team, can be attributed to their shrewd personnel decisions and reliance on young Major Leaguers under team control. The Rays have not drafted particularly well, since 2007 when they landed David Price and Matt Moore. Despite little success in recent drafts, the Rays have acquired young, controllable talent by trading veteran players, who were nearing Free Agency. The two best examples of this strategy are when the Rays traded Matt Garza to the Cubs and landed Chris Archer, among others, and when the Rays traded James Shields for Wil Myers and Jake Odorizzi. Their ability to remain competitive, despite being located in one of the smallest markets in baseball, earns them the designation as one of the top organizations in baseball. http://www.fangraphs.com/community/top-five-organizations/

Mack – Another great trick that the Mets need to continue doing. Players like OF Chris Young and SP Bartolo Colon should be able to bring to the Mets quality AAA/AA prospects in the Travis d’Arnaud mode. This would follow in a year with a decision to either resign 2B Daniel Murphy or put the ‘for sale’ sign out. It’s the Mets call.


In closing –

                       Two things happened yesterday that opened my aging eyes to the reality of the times I live in and the reputation I seem to have earned.

                       The first was a quick update that I posed around 6am reporting what another Mets ‘blog-porter’ had reported on Twitter… that Curtis Granderson was placed in a walking boot by the Mets trainer. It could have simply been something he was asked to do until he got back to his hot tub, but I thought it was necessary to pass it on to my readers. As it turned out, the original posting was a poor attempt at humor and one of the Mack’s Mets writers DM’d me later on during the day with that info. I made my apologies on Twitter as I do here, but took my flack online from the original writer who posted the joke (I was even called an 'asshole' by one of the guys I did the podcast with a couple of weeks ago).

                  The followers of those two bloggers took over Twitter and I was pretty much trashed all day within the Mets community. I can't believe how Mets fans can be so cruel to someone that spends every day trying to give them free information about the team they love.

                       The other was my morning report which included some really important exclusive stuff about the future of radio broadcasts in St. Lucie. Again, this story generated no reaction whatsoever, either on Twitter or on even Mack’s Mets. My own Mack’s Mets writers didn’t even comment on it. I’m sure the fact that I was wrong about the Granderson post caused even them to back off from me on the day before my 67th birthday.

                       Needless to say, I think it’s time to alter the content of the ‘Morning Report’, while, at the same time, look for a replacement for me posting it every morning. Maybe in the long run I should reduce my content to a ‘Kiner’s Korner’ type weekly appearance.

                   I would hope that one of the Mack's Mets writers would want to do this first, but it is time consuming... averages around 1,000 words a report, either original material or 'cut and paste'.

                  If you are a reader and who like your chance to write it, email me at macksmets@gmail.com and we can discuss it.

                       For now, I apologize again and will try to limit what I report here as fact from others. I also will answer any questions you send to my email address (macksmets@gmail.com) or as a comment directed to me in a post. That content will be opinion only. Past that, I will not report anything I don't have multiple sources... no, ya know what... I'm out of the source business. All it ever  game me was heartburn, no revenue and tons of grief by Mets fans.

                       I guess in the end you earn your reputation by your actions in both the present and the past. It’s obvious that, after around ten years at doing this, I’m still thinking that I’m a ‘real guy’ in the world of Mets reporting. I’m finally realizing that I never got above the ‘AAAA’ level which is still quite an accomplishment.

                       Fine. I can live with that. 

19 comments:

  1. No worries. The best part of this site is that feels like a dinner table that we all can share and enjoy the conversation. Mistakes happen but don't worry baseball is a sport of forgetting your last at bat. Have a great day

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  2. There are no Met sites out there better than this one. I look forward to reading your morning report every day and value the info on this site more than any other.

    I can't imagine anyone who reads this site being so critical over a minor error when so many other sites are such a wast of time.

    i don't twitter, but I'd love to know who was doing the trashing.

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  3. I agree with 68, and I'd add that the reaction you got is a sign that people pay attention to what you write. The old saying, " love me or hate me but don't ignore me" is an very valid one. If you wrote that and no one noticed, that would be worse than getting heat from crude critics.

    Keep doing what you're doing, Mack!

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  4. Mack,

    I wouldnt look to much into the name calling. Through out the day I come to this site to read whats new in the land of mets prospects and the draft its self. I even have you as a friend on facebook to see if I'm missing any new updates. Out of all the bloggers you are the only one who takes time to answer questions. No matter how dumb the topic of the question is. So keep doing what you are doing. Your only human. Mistakes happen.

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  5. Mack,

    I wouldnt look to much into the name calling. Through out the day I come to this site to read whats new in the land of mets prospects and the draft its self. I even have you as a friend on facebook to see if I'm missing any new updates. Out of all the bloggers you are the only one who takes time to answer questions. No matter how dumb the topic of the question is. So keep doing what you are doing. Your only human. Mistakes happen.

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  6. Moving onto the Morning Report....

    What Jed Weisberger stated about Syndergaard is just appalling. Synder had zero issues in the Eastern League.

    THe "struggles" he is referring to is 1! start, his last of the season, where he gave up 11 runs in 3 innings.

    By that point of the season the club was not allowing him to throw anymore than 5 innings per game! I guess he failed to point out that Thor's 2nd to last game was a 5 IP, 10K performance where he gave up 0, yes 0 Line Drives.

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  7. Happy birthday, Mack.

    I am back from Florida, and sad to say, i did not make it to St Lucie Camp...the closest I got (on our way north back to Orlando) on the Florida Turnpike was the Port St Lucie sign! My wife just couldn't get going early enough yesterday so we could stop over there before the flight back to Long Island.

    Lots of mean spirited folks on blogs - but they are a small subset, and certainly would be incapable of doing what you do with your daily posts, so do not sweat it. The vast majority of those who read your (and your co-writers') posts greatly appreciate them.

    Frankly, when I saw "Granderson in a walking boot," I thought it might be a joke, given all the injury calamities this team has had over the past several years.

    Jokes like that, the guy who you saw post it should have just posted that it was a joke, and most would have appreciated the humor of it.

    I joke like that with my brother Steve (a huge Met fan) all the time.

    Steve would have made your top lefties draft list back around 1984 - for instance, he had one game in High School where he threw a one hitter and K'd 17 in a 7 inning game. He had no one holding him back, unfortunately, and I was not around, so he was in 3 leagues pitching virtually every day - and ruined his shoulder.

    HAt 17, he was up around 90 with a nasty curve and control - and a pitching personality that would have made Al Hrabosky seem like a choir boy. Stevie was no softy...he had the make up to make it - but not the restraint to realize his phsical limits - and no one to tell him any better.

    He needed you as a coach.

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  8. Happy birthday, Mack!

    Not being in the market losing Mets games on the radio didn't really impact me, hence no comment seemed necessary.

    On Terry Collins I'll just point out that 13 is considered an unlucky number :)

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  9. Mack don't listen to those fools, please keep doing exactly what you are doing every morning. Like most, this is my first site I visit. So please don't give up... Also that does suck about the port at Lucie radio station, it just seems typical for something like that to happen in this organization, even for if its not the Wilpons fault this time, lol.

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  10. The tubes are overflowing with tough guy wannabes. Also, the easiest thing in the world is to criticize anonymously from a distance.

    Don't lose any sleep over what some wannabe says on Twitter or any other social media platform.

    Take seriously any criticism that's left directly on your site. Rebut it if appropriate or otherwise learn from it.

    No one has a monopoly on truth and all we can do is try to be better than we were yesterday.

    Keep on truckin

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  11. Sorry, Mack---I forgot to wish you a Happy Birthday. Hope it's a great one. Don't let the bastards get you down.

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  12. Mack, just do what you do. Clearly you have an audience that is listening. People like that you report differently than everyone else.

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  13. Mack - It's a jungle out there. Twitter is Lord of the Flies.

    don't let it get to you.

    You're the best.

    IB

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  14. Thank you all for your warm thoughts.

    The wife and I have chosen sushi and a marathon day of 'House Of Cards', season 2 for my birthday.

    Jeez... I had no plan for 67...

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  15. Mack:
    Your site is my first read of the morning. Don't worry about what goes on in the Twitter universe. Guys used to get beer muscles, now it's Twitter muscles. Keep giving us your opinions. Blame any fallout on the Wilpons, if they put a better product on the field there would be a lot less angst among the fanbase.



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  16. I'm now pulling out the Les Paul for a round of Clapton licks...

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  17. Well.....I'm still here as a reader, and writer.............
    Hey Mack, with all the damn 35 something relivers brought into camp, what happens to prospects? Does everyone (like mazzoni, degrom, walters, etc) all quietly get shipped to the desert in Vegas so Terry Collins can have his veterans?
    Also, if 5th spot goes to dice k or Lannon, does that mean Mejia, and all that talent he has, also end up in the PCL?.................all just doesn't seem right, unless management sees playoffs and wants the veterans to help make it happen.

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  18. Ernest -

    I'm going to give you my opinion on this in the 2-20 morning report

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  19. Mack,
    Keep your chin up, enjoy your commentary regularly. Try to ignor the negative stuff! Happy 67th!

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