12/31/19

John From Albany – Mets Breakfast Links 12/31/2019


The biggest story yesterday seemed to follow a story I linked yesterday from MLB.com that said the Mets Bullpen is projected to be NLs Best.  The key term here is “on paper” and projecting big bounce back years from Dellin Betances, Edwin Diaz and Jeurys Familia.


Metsmerized also noted that all eyes will be on the Mets Bullpen management. “Handling a bullpen like this will be a challenge for a first-year manager like Carlos Beltran. It won’t be an easy task, but the former all-star outfielder always showed excellent baseball savviness during his playing days, so he should be able to put his relievers in the best position to succeed.”

MetsBlog had that ZIPS projections sees a dominant 2020 for Edwin Diaz. They also note that FANGRAPHS sees another tremendous year from Pete Alonso (43 homers and a .551 slugging percentage), and a bounceback from Noah Syndergaard coming.

Also on SNY.TV, John Harper had the 10 most memorable Mets moments of the decade.  He also listed the top 5 moments to forget including the Jason Bay signing.

The NY Post had the top 10 NY Teams of the decade.  The 2015 Mets made the list.


Blogging Mets had the list of biggest Mets trade with each team. The list spans big trades like the one for Gary Carter to trades for players like Addison Reed.     
  
NBC sports continued to run down the top Baseball stories of the decade.  The latest story, #4 also includes links to numbers 5-25.  Here are the ones posted yesterday:

Number 4, Bud Selig retires and Rob Manfred takes over.  The article runs down all of Bud Selig’s and Rob Manfred’s accomplishments.  It does not talk about Manfred’s current idea to shut down 42 minor league teams. 




MLB.com had the biggest dates and questions for the Mets entering 2020.  Next biggest date: “Jan. 10: This is the deadline for the Mets to exchange arbitration figures with their eight eligible players: Noah Syndergaard, Steven Matz, Marcus Stroman, Edwin Díaz, Seth Lugo, Robert Gsellman, Michael Conforto and Brandon Nimmo. Deals tend to come together quickly after that.”  The article had the biggest question for the Mets being “Will any more major roster changes occur?”



No games last night in the Puerto Rican Winter League last night and no current Mets played last night in the Dominican.  Here are some notable ex-Mets that played last night:

In one game last night, the Leones del Escogido beat the Tigres del Licey beat 6-2 (box).  In that game -

Former Binghamton Mets and Las Vegas 51 Cesar Puello went 3 for 4 with a walk and a strikeout.

Former Binghamton Rumble Ponies Joey Terdoslavich went 0 for 1 with 3 walks, 1 strikeout and a run scored.

Gerson Bautista got the win for Leones del Escogido pitching 1 plus innings giving up 2 hits, 2 walks, and no runs. 

In the other game Aguilas Cibaenas beat Toros Del Este 6-5 (box). 

Juan Lagares was back in the lineup playing center field and went 1 for 5 with a run scored. He also was charged with a throwing error.

Carlos Gomez played right field and went 1 for 4 with a solo home run, a walk, a strikeout, and 2 runs scored. 

Jonathan Niese started for Aguilas Cibaenas going 5 innings giving up 4 hits, 2 runs, 1 earned run on a solo homer. 

Former Mets and Syracuse Mets Tim Peterson pitched for Toros Del Este where Phil Regan is the pitching coach.  Currently a free agent, Tim did not record an out giving up two runs on a walk and a home run. 

Former Met Dario Alvarez also did not record an out walking the only batter he faced. 

In keeping with the year-end lists that everyone is posting, we end 2019 Mack’s blast from the past with the top 10 most read Mack’s Mets posts of the year as chosen by you – the loyal Mack’s Mets readers (Please note there were many great posts this past year from the Mack's team that are not listed.  I simply listed the posts the same way the web site has the top recent posts on the right side of the web page.  Either way, I think it gives us a great re-cap.) :









#2: From May 21, 2019: Mack New Weekly Post.  This includes an interesting note on former Binghamton Rumble Ponies pitcher Matt Pobereyko.


UltimateMets has this date in Mets History:

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Los Angeles Dodgers signed Claudio Vargas of the New York Mets as a free agent on December 31, 2008.


Want something else tracked here each day?  Please leave a comment below.

6 comments:

Mack Ade said...

Happy New Year to you John.

Thank you for all your hard work this year.

John From Albany said...

Thanks Mack. Thank you for having me. Happy New Year.

bill metsiac said...

Thanks again, John. I look forward to your updates every morning.

Question : Do you, or anyone else here, think it might be worth a MnL deal to Niese. If it works, he could be a welcome LHRP for us. If not, nothing lost.

Along the LHRP track, I'm surprised that I haven't read anything all Winter about Avilan. He's been consistently solid for years, and after being set back by injuries/ineffectiveness in the 1st few months of 2019 he bounced back well in the 2nd half. Another guy worth a look IMO, even with a MnL deal.

Anonymous said...

Also

I think "Friends" Jen and Monica could be interested in the "Coffin's Water Park" TV series thing for their cast. Just a hunch here! But at least I gave Jerry a shot first since he is NY Mets fan and partial owner.

Anonymous said...

Sneak In

NYK with a nice "V" last night against Portland. And Walt had a new sport coat on too!

What's Missing

Basketball is like baseball in that the whole enchilada begins with the capability and strength of the center position. In baseball, it is the catcher position.

Since the end of the Ewing/Olajuwon Era (1990's) there has been a real draught of good sound NBA centers. We all know this factoid too. However, it is (right now) finally starting the next great center era, and it has gratefully expanded out to include more and more of the Euroleague centers. This is probably where I would begin my search for the new NYK center.

At current, the Miami Heat really are doing things right by building for themselves a very competent younger team. I really like twenty-two year old (PF/C) BAM Adebayo, and also seven foot Myers Leonard.

I find it almost humorous (at times) that both the NYG and NYK have gotten so very far away from their own franchises' traditional strategy on how to build a great team. The plan laid out by NYG coach Bill Parcels (in the mid 1980's) is the same exact plan that Bill took to every team that he ever coached. It works.

Whereas the NYK strategy was always been sound defense with great offensive talented players who mesh well with each other. There was always an intimidator at the PF and C positions, the "strong men' underneath both ends of the court. Oakley, Mason, 'grandma-ma" Johnson, DeBusschere, Ewing, and Reed.

The only current NYK player that consistently seeks offensive rebounds is Mitchell Robinson. His whole game is underneath. But Mitchell is an extraordinary sixth man who can single handedly change the direction of the tide in just a few minutes of play.

But the Knicks need a compliment center now, and a powerful monster underneath is recommended with offensive skills. Someone recently said on the Knicks, a management person, "The NYK needs a star center big man." But Karl Anthony Towns is injury prone and very expensive, so being careful here might be most advisable.

Anonymous said...

On all the incessant talk by fans and the press online regarding concern over basically infield and outfield defense. Crying, "It's got to get a lot better!"

To me, it's a little overplayed really. The thing not everyone evidently gets is that the positions of first base, shortstop, left field, center field, and possibly right field were all manned by basically first and second year players who were still growing into their respective positions.

In Jeff McNeil's case, he played what like five positions last season? Was he supposed to be a "gold glove candidate" at each one?

Geesh.

JD Davis was learning left field literally on the fly (no pun intended) and did pretty darn well there once invited by management to play second half. Nimmo had a broken neck, and Conforto has been shifted all around the outfield so many times that it hurt Nimmo's neck more trying to find Michael.

The other thing that few seem to get with all this, is that several of these NY Mets' younger players actually do play several positions. So if like one player started and struggled, they would probably be replaced by someone else and reassigned to a new position themself.

It's called crazy depth and the Mets have it.