Jared Porter: Fired
It has been a very long time since I posted here. I had been avoiding posting because there has been relatively little to talk about over the last few years. Sure the Mets have had their successes. However the bad has far outweighed the good since my last post.
But with a string of positive events over the last few months, I have been feeling more optimistic. The sale of the Mets to Steve Cohen was a big step. Like many Mets fans, I had soured on the Wilpons several years ago. Even before their investments with Bernie Madoff came to light I had grown tired of them (despite the 2015 World Series appearance).
The next step was the hiring of Jared Porter as General Manager. Porter had worked his way through the baseball front office ranks and had become a highly touted general manager candidate. He brought with him a clear understanding of how the job of general manager has changed over the years and was viewed as one of the best of the new breed.
Then the Mets acquired Francisco Lindor in a blockbuster deal with the Cleveland Indians (I should probably stop calling them that now since they are abandoning that name). If there is one good thing that happened late in the Wilpon ownership era it’s that there are several good, young talents in the organization (forgetting for a moment the trade that sent Jarred Kelenic to Seattle). Adding a player like Lindor to the mix not only ups the talent ante but shows that new ownership will be aggressive. This was the type of move that fans needed to see in order for them to really feel good about this new era in their favorite team.
Just as I was starting to prepare a post on the current feel good situation, a situation that had me looking forward to the season a bit more optimistically, I got an alert on my phone telling me that new general manager Jared Porter, on the job for nary a month, has been fired for sexual harassment. Obviously, I support the swift action taken by ownership in firing an employee who was involved in such an activity and this is something that is bigger than baseball. But from a fan perspective, this really took the wind out of my sails and has me wondering: will things ever really get better for the Mets?
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2018 Opening Day Lineup
Here’s the lineup for tomorrow’s opening day game against the St. Louis Cardinals:
| 9 | Brandon Nimmo | CF | ||||
| 52 | Yoenis Cespedes | LF | ||||
| 19 | Jay Bruce | RF | ||||
| 13 | Asdrubal Cabrera | 2B | ||||
| 21 | Todd Frazier | 3B | ||||
| 23 | Adrian Gonzalez | 1B | ||||
| 28 | Kevin Plawecki | C | ||||
| 34 | Noah Syndergaard | P | ||||
| 1 | Amed Rosario | SS | ||||
Interesting choice to bat Syndergaard in the eight slot. I like it.
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Omar Minaya is Back?
Let me see if I’ve got this straight. Fire the GM because he spent too much money on free agents who didn’t pan out, depleted the minor league system because of his signing of those free agents, couldn’t keep the team healthy and drove the payroll sky high. Then, seven years later, re-hire him to help his successor, who you’ve already handcuffed by keeping his payroll low. I’m talking, of course, about the Mets’ hiring of former GM Omar Minaya as an Assistant General Manager.
I’m not saying that Sandy Alderson has done a perfect job. But he does have a decent track record of getting a lot done with very little monetary resource. I’m hoping that some of Minaya’s strengths will come to the fore and help Alderson but to me this sounds more like the Dolan’s hiring Isiah Thomas to a front office job with the Knicks.
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Mets Should Take Chance Sandoval
According to reports the Boston Red Sox have DFAed Pablo Sandoval. Sandoval has been lousy since going to the Red Sox in 2015 but he may be worth taking a chance on in this situation.
Who knows how long it will be until David Wright is ready to play? And could Sandoval do any worse than the players the Mets have been putting at third base in Wright’s absence?
Any team picking up Sandoval after he clears waivers would only need to pay him the prorated Major League minimum. Picking him up and letting him work through his problems in the minors for a short time couldn’t hurt. And if Sandoval could fix his problems he could give the team a significant boost on the left side of the infield.
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Knicks: No Dolan Outcry
I must question my fellow Knicks fans celebrating the departure of Phil Jackson yesterday without a word of criticism about ownership. Don’t get me wrong. I understand why fans are happy with Jackson’s exit and I agree with the reasons to a certain extent. But why is there no protest about James Dolan? Last week I wrote a short post outlining some of the great people who have come and gone over the Dolan era starting with the coach he inherited, Jeff Van Gundy, resigning just 19 games into the 2001-02 season. As a Mets fan I’ve seen many campaigns pleading for the Wilpons to sell the team over the years. As much as I’d like to see that happen (my reasons are a discussion for another post) why isn’t there similar outcry for Dolan to sell? Maybe I’m just not seeing so if it’s happening please let me know.
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Don’t Give Up
Watching football games with my son over the winter months I found myself imparting to him a lesson of the game. Whenever a team was losing by a wide margin at halftime he’d ask why I would want to continue watching the game. My response: “Anything that can be done in the first half can be undone in the second half.”
The baseball season has other factors that make it not equal to the football season (trade deadline, waivers, options, etc.) but I find it hard to count a team out just because we’re nearly halfway through. No matter how unlikely this team is to turn it around I just can’t give up yet. I understand and support the idea of unloading some players as the trade deadline approaches and that that includes building toward future seasons & likely giving up on this one. But we’re only about halfway through the season and when (if?) many of the injured players return I don’t see much reason to be any less optimistic about the win potential of this team (even though I know it will be too late to make a playoff berth by then).
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RIP Pete Flynn
If you grew up at Shea Stadium in the 1980s as I did then you couldn’t help but know who Pete Flynn was. It’s not every team that has a Hall of Fame groundskeeper but the Mets did. Who could forget when fans tore up the field the night the Mets clinched the division in 1986? But Flynn and his team had the field ready to play when the eventual 1986 World Champions played the Cubs again the next afternoon.
Flynn passed away Wednesday after a long illness. Though he retired in 2011 made it possible for the Mets to do their work since 1962. Flynn was behind all the memories – the highlights and the many lowlights – the team produce from it’s inception until he retired. Thank you, Pete. And rest in peace.
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Knicks: Blame Dolan, Not Just Jackson
Phil Jackson has been taking a lot of heat as president of the New York Knicks this year. The current flap about Kristaps Porzingis is just the latest in a list of controversies Jackson has had to deal with. But as bad as things are going for the Knicks I still find it hard to blame Jackson to the extent hat he’s being blamed by most fans. I hold team owner James Dolan even more responsible than Jackson.
Just look at Dolan’s track record since taking control of the team. In 1999, the year Dolan took over, president Ernie Grunfeld left the team. Depending on who you talk with he was either fired or resigned, but either way this was a harbinger of things to come. Donnie Walsh and Glen Grunwald were two very well respected basketball men who couldn’t make things work under Dolan either.
Head coach Jeff Van Gundy resigned just 19 games into the 2001-02 season. Lenny Wilkins, one of the winningest coaches in NBA history and a Hall of Famer, resigned in 2005 after coaching parts of 2 seasons. Larry Brown, another Hall of Famer, only lasted one season. Mike D’Antoni resigned in 2012 after not being able to run games the way he wanted.
And we haven’t even spoken about the disaster that was Isiah Thomas.
Yes, the Knicks are in turmoil right now and it looks like Jackson isn’t the savior that many thought he would be when he joined the team. But when you look at the track record under Dolan you have to wonder what may be going on behind the scenes between the owner and basketball operations and how he may really be responsible for what the team has been going through.
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Torre Agrees That Rizzo Broke Posey Rule
Apparently Joe Torre read what I wrote yesterday. Just kidding. I know very few people did. But nonetheless he agreed with me that Anthony Rizzo broke the Buster Posey rule that protects catchers on plays at home plate.
Torre, MLBs Chief Baseball Officer, let Rizzo off with a warning after sliding into Austin Hedges in front of home plate on a close play. While Torre told Rizzo he broke the rule he also said there would be no discipline… this time.
In a related story, Padres manager Andy Green said he would not instruct his pitchers to throw at Rizzo in retaliation for the slide. Green spoke very strongly about the slide and it was thought retaliation was inevitable. But when speaking to the media before Wednesday’s game Green said “For me, you assess risk and retaliation, and you wanted to put some trust in Major League Baseball to do some things at that point in time. The reality is, when you throw at a guy in retaliation, you’re not really protecting anybody. That’s a simple fact.” This effectively defuses what could have turned into a very ugly situation.
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Posey Rule Tested With Rizzo-Hedges Collision
Rule 7.13: “A runner may not run out of a direct line to the plate in order to initiate contact with the catcher.”
This is the so called Buster Posey rule implemented after a home plate collision ended the season of the San Francisco Giants catcher a few years ago. The application of this rule is under debate throughout the baseball world today after Cubs first baseman Anthony Rizzo ran into Padres catcher Austin Hedges. The rule itself has been a source of debate since it’s implementation with some arguing that it dumbs down the game and others saying that it evens things up for the catcher who is very often blindsided on home plate collisions. Regardless of which side of the rule you’re on (for or against) this play needs to be seen keeping the exact words of the rule in mind.
For those who haven’t seen it here’s the play:
The question here is did Rizzo stay in a “direct line to the plate”? If he did, as the umpire saw it, then there is nothing wrong with the play. But based on the angle of this video it looks like Rizzo is actually running on the infield side of the plate. In fact the contact is initiated in front of the plate. If he were on a direct line with the plate he would have been slightly behind the catcher who would have had to turn around to attempt to tag him. One could argue that if Rizzo was running on the foul territory side of the baseline, which is where base runners usually run, he would be on more of a direct line and could have touched home plate without such a harsh level of contact with Hedges. Based on this Rizzo violated the rule. (He was called out at the plate anyway so I don’t know what the penalty for breaking this rule would be.)
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