Other than the Mets missing out on Sunday Night Baseball this season — though more than half of Sunday Night Baseball’s schedule is decided during the season, usually two or three weeks in advance of the game — we’re light on Mets news today. How about some basketball analysis via the New York Times instead:

Shot creation has long been crucial to ascendancy as a premier scorer, but Michael Jordan’s eminence brought that particular skill to unprecedented heights. Jordan revolutionized one-on-one play with his electricity; one of his many enduring legacies is the way scorers are perceived and evaluated today.

. . .

But with scoring efficiency valued now more than ever, perhaps it’s time for us to look beyond those who take difficult shots when in search of dominant scorers. Rose, Bryant, and Durant all combine production and efficiency (hence their current standing as the centerpieces of their respective teams’ offenses), but so do some of the league’s most impressive off-ball scorers.

- Rob Mahoney, “Bosh and Anderson, Efficiency Experts”
The New York Times

That’s an excellent point about Michael Jordan revolutionizing one-on-one play. I’m young. When I play basketball, I’m all about little fakes to create space — jab steps, step backs, and fadeaways, things like that. My moves are aimed at beating someone in isolation, and I think as much is true for everyone who learned to play basketball after Jordan.

But does anyone ever play pickup basketball with old guys, or at least watch old guys play pickup basketball? Old guys are all about moving the ball and finding the open man, and once the ball passes halfcourt, there’s very little dribbling. I’ve found that off-ball defense against old guys is more important than on-ball defense, because old guys almost never face the basket while dribbling. They’re only going to look for and find easy baskets in a cutter or by running someone off a screen. And old guys love backdoor cuts. It’s like they play a different game.

Michael Jordan changed his sport all the way down to the way amateurs play pickup games. Babe Ruth, who decided to swing with an uppercut and ended the deadball era, is the only other athlete to do so, right? Jordan made one-on-one play acceptable, and Babe Ruth made trying to hit the ball over the fence acceptable. Has anyone else changed their sport as dramatically as those two?

Moving on. Jon Bois writes about the startling decline of athletes named Bob:

Again: only one of 1,844 Bob-athletes are currently active, and most of the rest were playing only a handful of decades ago. If that slope were a road, it would have been gated off years ago. Very few trends drop off at such a startling rate without some sort of explanation: yes, people are buying fewer typewriters in favor of computers and the like. But who usurped Bob? Where is our better Bob?

- Jon Bois, “The Bob Famine”
SB Nation

The Mets should have R.A. Dickey, Robert Carson, Bobby Parnell, and Rob Johnson all in camp this Spring. All have the first name Robert, yet none of them go by Bob.  I know two fellows my age named Robert: One goes by Bobby, the other by Rob. I actually don’t know if I’ve met anyone named Bob, even though “Bob” or “John” are still what I consider commonplace names. Why has Bob become so unpopular? Where are all the Bobs?

Today is January 17, a full month before the Mets’ pitchers and catchers are to report for Spring Training. It’s still far too early for a season preview, and too soon for a spring training preview – but is it too early for a pre preseason preview view? Probably. But the Mets’ 40-man roster looks set, and barring a trade and a few inevitable minor league signing, the Mets are ready to go for Spring Training. One can even see the beginnings of the Opening Day roster. Here is a very early look at the 2012 Mets: (more…)

So this post began life awhile ago — I wanted to evaluate Terry Collins’ first season as manager of the Mets in a more objective manner, and I decided I wanted to do so by comparing Collins with other managers of the Mets.

Anyway, fast forward to now, and I still can’t make much of a case either way about whether Terry Collins managed the Mets well or not. I don’t know enough about managers and what goes on behind the scenes. So that totally failed. But I did learn a whole bunch of things about the tendencies of all the Mets’ managers, so I’ll share those nuggets here. Who bunted a lot, who didn’t, who used pinch hitters, who didn’t, all those sorts of things — and we’ll check out where Terry Collins falls in each category. Here’s what I’ve learned about the Mets’ managers: (more…)

Gee, I love baseball. I can’t wait for a thoroughly non-depressing day reading about the New York Mets. Let’s see what you’ve got, internet!

Intuition — which is often fallible — strongly suggests it isn’t just to tinker with bookkeeping, or to draw a couple of lines differently on the org chart. The nature of the Mets’ situation and the kind of business companies like CRG do both make you suspect something more is going on.

It also doesn’t help that, to be blunt, the last few years have trained me to automatically discount anything the Mets say about their own business affairs.

But the nature of that something more that might or might not be going on? You got me. And this is where I start to worry about how the world we live in has changed, and might be making us all a bit nuts.

- Jason Fry, “Stuck in the Why and Now”
Faith and Fear in Flushing

Oh. Well, uh . . . yeah, I don’t know why we wouldn’t trust what the Mets say anymore. But the real point here: There’s a downside to the instant media cycle, and sometimes we have too much information about the Mets. Or, rather, too many random pieces of information. Good stuff from FAFIF.

All the bankruptcy stuff strikes me like this: It’s like we’re slowly receiving random puzzle pieces from an extremely large jigsaw puzzle. Each time we find a new puzzle piece, we all look it over, debate what’s depicted on the piece and argue where it fits. Some people say, “Ye, I know what the puzzle looks like now,” and some other people say, “No, clearly the final puzzle looks like this, you stupid hobgoblins.” But in the end, we only have seven or eight pieces from a 500 piece puzzle, no box, and no real idea what we’re actually looking at. We’ve got enough stray pieces to know that the puzzle is, say, a beach scene and not a “Where’s Waldo” puzzle, but not enough pieces to know the fine details and how it all fits together. No one knows but the guys with the picture on the box, and they’re not telling. They’re also potentially selling off parts of the puzzle. There: The Metaphor is sufficiently mixed.

Now for some more hopeful, nonymous news . . . oh wait, no, wait . . .

Look at what happened to Mookie Wilson: He just got fired. Mookie went to the wall for the organization, but they still canned him. Look at Ken Oberkfell. Guy puts in twelve years with the organization; next thing you know, he’s been fired. No explanation. Those are the little things that tell you what direction a team is going in. People around the game hear about this stuff. They talk about it: “What’s happening to the Mets?” It depresses the hell out of me because I don’t think it’s going to improve until 2014 at the earliest. It’s going to be hard to ask the fans to sit through two brutal seasons, even though there’s some talent coming through the system.

- Anonymous Met, “The Met Who Blames Everything on the Wilpons”
New York Magazine

I find it surprisingly fun to guess the author by reading this piece aloud in the voices of current and former Mets. (Also, like everything, it’s fun to sing it in a Blonde-on-Blonde-era Bob Dylan voice.) I have my suspicions about the identity of the author: It reads like an “As Told To” kind of piece, and I believe the vocabulary provides enough hints.

Or maybe not. This may be trying to solve puzzle without enough puzzle pieces again. Man. Is it 2014 yet?

Sandy Alderson certainly makes his moves in bunches: After adding Omar Quintanilla on Wednesday and re-signing Scott Hairston on Thursday, the Mets continued to build their bench on Friday, signing shortstop Ronny Cedeno to a one-year, $1.2 million dollar deal.

Eh. Cedeno doesn’t bring anything with his bat (career .639 OPS) and his fielding rates as average-to-below average at shortstop by the advanced defensive metrics. It’s hard to get excited about this move unless you’re a connoisseur of utility infielders, but an OPS above .600 from a live body capable of playing shortstop is worth something: Fangraphs’ and Baseball-Reference’s versions of Wins Above Replacement rates Cedeno as a positive contributor to the Pirates as their starting shortstop the past two seasons. Cedeno isn’t great at anything, but he isn’t quite awful enough at any one thing to be awful overall. Should something happen to Ruben Tejada, Cedeno has proven himself a respectable major league shortstop.

The Mets bench now looks something like this:

C — Mike Nickeas
IF — Ronny Cedeno
IF — Justin Turner
OF — Scott Hairston
OF — ?

As it stands right now, Mike Baxter seems likely to edge out Josh Satin for that fifth spot, if only because Baxter’s lefthanded-batting-ness and outfielder-ness fit better on the righthanded-hitting heavy bench.

As with Hairston, Cedeno is coming in on a major-league deal, meaning the Mets will now need to clear two spaces on their capacity 40-man roster to make room for the new additions. I’m sorry, everyone. I don’t think D.J. Carrasco is going to make it.

The Mets have reportedly re-signed Scott Hairston to a major league deal worth $1.1 million dollars. That works. Hairston can play all three outfield positions in theory and hits righthanded, filling two of the Mets’ bench needs. He also demonstrated last season that he could sit on the bench for weeks at a time — superior sitting being an important talent for a bench player — and then jump right back into action without missing a beat, which is probably an underrated asset for a fourth outfielder. All of Hairston’s skills — swinging really hard, standing in the outfield, depilation – fit the Mets needs, so this seems like a natural match.

The Mets outfield depth now looks like this, with each player’s listed position being the one they can play without embarrassing themselves:

1. Lucas Duda – LF
2. Andres Torres – CF
3. Jason Bay – LF
4. Scott Hairston – OF
5. Mike Baxter – RF
6. Kirk Nieuwenhius – CF
7. Fernando Martinez – DL

Assuming Kirk Nieuwenhuis isn’t going to make the Opening Day roster barring injuries, and because Mike Baxter is signed to a minor league deal, the Mets may bring in another outfielder (Willie Harris?) before the winter is over. One more fifth-outfielder type and this isn’t an unbelievably terrible group.

One last detail: Hairston is returning on a major league deal, meaning the Mets will need to play roster musical chairs when the signing is officially announced. Their 40-man roster already has 40 men on it, so someone will need to be dropped to make room for Hairston — D.J. Carrasco, minor league pitcher Armando Rodriguez and minor league infielder Zach Lutz look like the candidates to my eyeballs, with Danny Herrera, Fernando Martinez (if he’s irreparably injured) and Jason Bay (probably not, but we can hope) as the long shots.

I’m back in the United States, mostly recovered from a 2 a.m. return flight and a nasty sinus infection. We appear to have missed the Mets signing infielder Omar Quintanilla to a minor league contract and nothing else. Here’s my quick take on the signing:

Pros:

• Quintanilla signed a minor league deal, allowing the Mets to keep their capacity 40-man roster intact.
• He’s a live human-person who can capably play shortstop, giving the Mets two such players above A-ball. He fills a big need providing depth behind Ruben Tejada.
• Career .815 OPS hitter in the minor leagues, albeit mostly playing for super hitter-friendly Colorado Springs in the super hitter-friendly Pacific Coast League and his performance hasn’t translated at the major league level (.552 OPS in 582 trips to the plate).
• Quintanilla signed for $10 Canadian dollars and an unlimited supply of pretzel M&M’s.

Cons:

• Is terrible as compared to other major league baseball players.

Whatever. The Mets had a need for an animate Quad-A shortstop, and they filled that need with Quintanilla at a low monetary and opportunity cost. Sandy Alderson might be done shopping soon: One or two bench outfielders and the 2012 Mets are probably set.

Some posts develop over days, starting with some clicks on Baseball-Reference and evolving into research projects and complex posts. Yesterday’s post was that type.

This post was the exact opposite. All emotion, no facts, published late at night and maybe poorly thought out. But it might be my favorite.

Originally Published December 5, 2011 (more…)