First Post

First of all, apologies to my brother for going somewhat behind his back and making this first post without his discretion. But, a lot of posts that find their way onto this site are gonna be done at random hours, and they will all be totally random thoughts. So what better way to start than with some totally random thoughts (inspired by links found through Amazin Avenue)

1. The more I learn about the team back then, the more I wish I watched the Mets' in the '80's

I read out there on the intertubes that the Jason Bay signing could be comparable to the Kevin McReynolds signing. While I've heard of McReynolds and knew his general make-up as a power hitter, I decided to check out his stats

http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/m/mcreyke01.shtml

Man, he had some pop. Two things struck me immediately. First, that he actually continued his offensive trends from San Diego over to the Mets. Second, he hit #3 in MVP voting in 1988?! That got me thinking, I wonder what Strawberry was up to that year

http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/s/strawda01.shtml

Guess he was #2. Who was #1? Kirk Gibson. Now, as I already implied, I was not around to watch baseball in the 80's. Well, I was in existence, but having been born in the Year of the Ox (i.e. 1985) I wasn't doing all that much baseball related activity.
In any event, I am envious of those who were able to see a Mets team that featured 2 of the top 3 best hitters in the NL at the time. Let's not forget, the Mets won 100 games and faced Gibson's 94-win Dodgers in the NLCS that year.

http://espn.go.com/mlb/history/season/_/year/1988

The Mets lost in 7. The Dodgers then beat the A's in the Series (in 5).

Still, I think the McReynolds deal was no failure. I'm not here to discuss his fire or drive. I didn't watch him so I can only go based off the numbers. Considering he was #3 in NL MVP voting that year, I'd say he must've been doing sometihng impressive.

2. Let's not throw the towel in yet.

Thanks to Fonzie Forever, I see the Mets' starting rotation might have a few viable candidates for the 5th spot.

http://fonzieforever.blogspot.com/2010/02/who-is-this-guy-fernando-nieve-edition.html

I had no idea Fernando Nieve was such a highly touted prospect just 3 seasons ago (which is to say, 2006). I seem to recall liking his stuff last season, but given the shape of his surroundings, that means very little, relatively speaking. It will be nice to know that there is also Nelson Figueroa and Jon Niese as supporting characters, should Nieve not work out - or should one or two of the starters experience injuries to a similar degree as last year. I'm reluctant to say this, but, what's the big difference between having your 3-4-5 (in whatever order) as Perez-Maine-Nieve versus, say, Niese-Figueroa-Nieve. I like Maine a lot, always have and always will, all I'm suggesting is after Santana and Pelfrey, it's all rather interchangeable.
Having said that, let's all hope for a break-out season from the 28 going on 29 year old Maine :)

3. Some fun with hypotheticals

Hypothetically, what if we could run hypothetical experiments? That is the question an admirable blog asks:

http://www.amazinavenue.com/2010/2/3/1291163/our-national-baseball-laboratory#storyjump

I like some of the ideas more than others, but it's certainly a fun exercise. Rather than think of other experiments, I'm gonna propose what results I think we might find, if we could run such a test. Since it's tedious and I don't think all of them are equally interesting, I'm gonna make speculations for the ones I find most fascinating. Brother, and all others, please feel free to respond to my conjectures, or make your own, or speculate about the other experiments listed at AA. I'm going to number my extrapolations according to AA's list of situations:

Experiment #1: If it were just the #4 hitter being roided and un-roided (I may have just coined that phrase. As in "now that Jason Giambi is un-roided, he can barely find a job as a PH for a middle market NL team"), I think we would find his stats would follow his steroid use. This is not to say that steroids alone make you a better hitter, but at the very least the psychological factor would have to work in his favor.
(Breaking my own rule of not proposing other situations, I must add that I would like to see how the entire league would fair under such circumstances. In other words, what would the results be if all players were put on and off steroids in conjunction with each other. Relative production should stay the same, but then again who knows??)

Experiment #4: I would think that players we might not expect to have high averages would blow away the competition, while players we think of as elite hitters might not change all that much. For example, Ichiro's batting average would probably not change all that much, relative to certain other types of players.
It seems to me that Ichiro can handle any pitch equally - slap it to the left side of the infield, bolt to first, pretend like nothing happened. On the other hand, a guy like Matt Stairs might indeed end up hitting some ridiculously high batting average. Or at least crush 50 homers. What I'm saying is, I don't think all averages would go through the roof. I think some guys have played their whole lives having to recognize different types of pitches. On one end of the spectrum, there's Ichiro, who can adjust his swing to any pitch no matter the movement. The other end of the spectrum is Stairs, who in every game - probably - waits on the fastball. If he got fastballs every time, I wouldn't be surprised if he hit .500 while Ichiro hit .450 (or something).

Experiment #6: I would say yes. For anyone who has played a team sport, or worked with a team on any sort of project really, camaraderie and group chemistry/group dynamic can seriously affect the production of said team. Perhaps the resident psychologist would like to say something on this, but in my opinion - yes, I am writing on a blog - the manager does have an affect on the team. How else could one explain how a team (like last year's Rockies) turn around a dreadful season after a managerial switch. I'm not saying Tracy himself did anything, but the very atmosphere of the clubhouse probably changed, even if only to the extent of players thinking to themselves "Damn, we gotta shape up or someone else is gonna get canned because of our lack of production." As wrapped up as I can get in the statistics, I am reasonably aware of the human factor involved in this beautiful game.

As it turns out, I only found 3 worthy of thinking through. The others are fun, or funny, but didn't really tickle my baseball bone. (NB: This is a reference to the part of my mind that thinks baseball, not the part of me that may or may not resemble a baseball bat.)

I think we should probably have some sort of welcome post, one that sets the goals of our blog or something like what our intentions are. Like a mission statement. But, seeing as how I envision this blog as being a little unconventional, maybe it's fitting that we postpone that until after a regular (read: not-so-regular) post. Or two. Speaking of which...Brother, your turn.