Minor point here. The picture above, originally from Baseball America, has been on MetsBlog all weekend. I really need to know: Is the face Zack Wheeler makes in the above picture the face he always makes when pitching? R.A. Dickey and he could have much to discuss.

The Mets play the San Francisco Giants (6-6) at home this weekend. He’s a short preview:

The Giants are managed by Bruce Bochy. His seat is quite cool. Here’s what the Giants’ lineup looks like:

CF – Angel Pagan – S
RF – Melky Cabrera – S
3B – Pablo Sandoval – S
C – Buster Posey – R
LF – Aubrey Huff – L
1B – Brandon Belt – L
SS – Brandon Crawford – L
2B – Emmanuel Burriss – S

Despite still being the Bruce Bochy-Brian Sabean Giants, this is no longer a lineup of 2002 All Stars. Aubrey Huff is 35 and our friend Pagan is 30, but the Giants’ other regulars all fall between 24-28 in age. There are few sure bets here, as everyone in the lineup is trying to prove something. Young players showing they belong (Belt, Crawford), outfielders coming off career years (Cabrera) and meh years (Pagan), players returning from injuries (Posey). The Giants could be pretty good or funny bad at scoring runs this season.

Here’s what the pitching matchups look like:

• Friday night: Jon Niese vs LHP Barry Zito. Zito has a 1.13 ERA through his first two starts, including a complete game shutout in Colorado. His fastball now sits in the low 80s, but he’s reinvented himself once more as a junkball pitcher. Pitch f/x says Zito throws a ton of cutters, sliders, changeups and curveballs, with his fastball now serving as an almost secondary pitch.
• Saturday afternoon: Mike Pelfrey vs RHP Ryan Vogelsong. Vogelsong, another Giants player looking to prove last year’s All-Star campaign was a breakout season. Pitch f/x says fastball, cutter, curveball and changeup.
• Sunday afternoon: Dillon Gee vs RHP Tim Lincecum. Lincecum’s fastball velocity is down a tick, and after 16 runs across three starts, his ERA is 10.54. This kind of thing happens with him every once in a while — August 2010, if I remember right — and his peripheral numbers are as good as ever. He’ll be fine.
• Monday night: Johan Santana vs LHP Madison Bumgarner. I know I’m not the only one to say “Butt Gardener” and giggle every time I read his name. The Giants just locked up this 22-year-old lefty to a six-year contract extension, with team options for 2018 and 2019. Pitch f/x claims he’s throwing an almost even number of fastballs and sliders, with an occasional curveball mixed in.

Other stuff of note: Brian Wilson is going for Tommy John surgery, so veteran reliever Santiago Casilla gets first dibs as closer. The remainder of the Giants’ usually excellent bullpen remains intact.

This one may or may not remain a semi-regular feature, but let’s review Terry Collins’ (and the coaching staff’s) performance during the Mets-Braves series.

Things Terry Collins did that I liked:

– Playing Josh Thole on Wednesday, day game after a night game: For most managers, this decision seems near automatic, like that of bunting with the pitcher and using closers only in save situations. The backup catcher starts the day game after a night game. Period. So it was nice to see Collins play lefthanded hitting Thole over righthanded Mike Nickeas on both Tuesday and Wednesday against Atlanta’s righthanded pitchers. Catchers need plenty of rest, but with an off-day today and the Mets seeing both a pair of day games and San Francisco’s lefties Barry Zito and Madison Bumgarner over the weekend, Thole can still gets his days off, Nickeas a start or two, and the Mets play the platoon percentages to their advantage.

– Kirk Nieuwenhuis leading off: With Ruben Tejada getting a break on Wednesday and career .287 OBP Ronny Cedeno set to take his place at shortstop and potentially atop the lineup — because only middle infielders or center fielders can lead off — yesterday’s lineup was breaking towards “boxscores that will be hilarious in three years.” Collins indeed stuck with his “only middle infielders or center fielders can lead off” rule, but went with CF Nieuwenhuis instead.

Things Terry Collins did that I’m unsure about:

– Mets batting down 6-1 in the fourth inning Tuesday night, two outs, first and third, Collins pinch hit Mike Baxter for Miguel Batista. Baxter singled to drive in a run, cutting Atlanta’s lead to 6-2, so that aspect can be judged a success. On the other hand, Secret Agent Batista had thrown just 1.2 innings in relief of Santana, so Collins ended up asking Ramon Ramirez and Manny Acosta for five innings combined, knocking both out of the equation for Wednesday’s game. From a “win today’s game at all costs” perspective, the numbers say it’s almost always beneficial to hit for the pitcher. On the other hand, if your starter gets four outs and you only let your longman get five, you still need 15-18 outs from the bullpen, which can have repercussion for the next two or three days. Not sure how I felt about this one.

Things Terry Collins did that I didn’t like:

– Not Terry Collins, but worth noting Tim Teufel’s rough day coaching third base on Wednesday. The Braves threw out both David Wright and Daniel Murphy at the plate, both by at least 10-15 feet. On a scale of Razor Shines to Chip Hale, Teufel thus far falls somewhere between the two.

– Nothing else on Collins. Two of the three games were blowouts. Not much to say manager-wise.

Well that didn’t go all that well. Notes on Mets-Braves after the jump (more…)

I’ll be “Blogging Live On Game,” or “BLOG”-ing for short, today’s Mets-Braves game. 12:10 start. Check back in about an hour and refresh for updates as they come: (more…)

Just as a warning:

1. I plan to live-blog tomorrow afternoon’s game (12:10 start time). So check in here to read along, comment, lurk, and so on. I figure I should maybe announce these live blogs a day in advanced, so ya’ll know to look for the before the fact, instead of just after.

2. I’ll be on the road for a few days next week, and am yet unsure how that will affect things around here. An Ohio friend will be playing for the Roswell Invaders of the Pecos League this spring, and I’m going to make the road trip out with him. I’ll fly to Ohio on Tuesday, make the drive from Columbus, Ohio to Roswell, New Mexico, then fly back from Roswell on Sunday. The trip will be tangentially baseball related, but don’t be surprised if PatrickFloodBlog temporarily becomes RoswellBlog. Or Waffle House blog. Something like that.

3. R.A. Dickey post about R.A. Dickey is upcoming.

First, the return of Amazin’ Avenue’s must-read This Week in SNY. I honestly can’t tell if the tone of This Week in SNY is gentle irony or genuine analysis or some combination of the two, which I believe qualifies it as some kind of internet-age work of genius and infinite Mets sadness.

Second, Adam Rubin recaps Chipper Jones’ chat with reporters about Jones’ impending retirement and how he’d like to be honored by the Mets:

It might be a recording of all my plate appearances where they announce my name and the chorus of boos rained down. I don’t know. Like I said, I’m not expecting anything. But anything would be appreciated.

Do you think Larry would volunteer for the dunk tank in center field? But imagine the lines . . .

Third, this essay about the internet from The Atlantic (which is, disappointingly, not a magazine about the ocean):

Vickers’s web of connections had grown broader but shallower, as has happened for many of us. We are living in an isolation that would have been unimaginable to our ancestors, and yet we have never been more accessible. Over the past three decades, technology has delivered to us a world in which we need not be out of contact for a fraction of a moment. In 2010, at a cost of $300 million, 800 miles of fiber-optic cable was laid between the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and the New York Stock Exchange to shave three milliseconds off trading times. Yet within this world of instant and absolute communication, unbounded by limits of time or space, we suffer from unprecedented alienation. We have never been more detached from one another, or lonelier. In a world consumed by ever more novel modes of socializing, we have less and less actual society. We live in an accelerating contradiction: the more connected we become, the lonelier we are. We were promised a global village; instead we inhabit the drab cul-de-sacs and endless freeways of a vast suburb of information.

- Stephen Marche, “Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?”
The Atlantic

There’s a lot more in there, but two points: A.) I believe Jonathan Franzen made this exact point — or a fairly similar point — only he did it 14 years ago, in “Imperial Bedroom,” an essay since reprinted in the enjoyable How to be Alone. So that theory certainly proved spot on. B.) Try to read the above piece without feeling an uncontrollable urge to check Facebook.

Notes from the weekend’s Mets-Braves series. Take the jump: (more…)