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Mets WS Crown is in the cards. And dice. (A WS Grab Bag)

batmagadanleadoff Oct 29 2015 11:15 PM

Strat-O-Matic predicts Mets win next four games of World Series Fear not, Met fans. A World Series title is still in the cards ? and dice. Terry Collins’ team may be trailing the Royals, 2-0, as the series shifts to Citi Field Friday, but according to the folks at Strat-O-Matic, the Mets are right on schedule. Strat-O-Matic, whose statistic-based board game has kept baseball nerds hunkered down in their basements for hours on end since 1961, announced that it has played a Mets-Royals World Series simulation that saw the Mets drop the first two games but rally to win the next four — and their first world championship since 1986. According to the game-by-game summaries posted at Strat-O-Matic.com, the series will play out like this from here: The Mets will take Game 3, 3-2, behind seven “electric innings” from Noah Syndergaard; rookie Michael Conforto will crack the decisive longball in a 2-1 victory in Game 4; Matt Harvey will fire seven dominant innings in Game 5 to give the Mets a 2-0 decision and a sweep of the three contests Citi Field; and the Mets will prevail, 7-5, in a wild, 14-inning affair in Game 6 that will see Jeurys Familia start the eighth but stumble in an attempt to notch a six-out save. If you are doubting the reliability of Strat-O-Matic’s projections, keep in mind that the gaming gurus did predict Alex Gordon and Alcides Escobar would hit homers in Game 1 (although in the simulated game, we are left to assume that Escobar’s was not of the inside-the-park variety). And their projected 4-1 final score in Game 2 was right on target in the bottom of the eighth Wednesday night, until Kansas City broke it open. Then again, Strat-O-Matic also says David Wright (.171 average, 0 HR, 14 strikeouts in this postseason) will hit a three-run homer that will prove to be the game-winner on Friday night. Maybe these people should stick to board games after all. http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/baseb ... -1.2415801

batmagadanleadoff Oct 29 2015 11:36 PM Re: Mets WS Crown is in the cards. And dice. (A WS Grab Bag)

Are The Royals Really This Much Better Than The Mets? 3:15 PMOct 29, 2015 A FiveThirtyEight Chat Today is an off day for the Kansas City Royals and New York Mets, but not for us. As the teams traveled to New York City to resume the World Series on Friday with the Royals leading by two games to none, ESPN.com editor and writer Christina Kahrl joined FiveThirtyEight’s biggest baseball obsessives from her Kansas City hotel to look ahead to Game 3. As usual, the transcript below has been lightly edited. Carl Bialik, lead news writer: Welcome, baseball fans! Historically, five out of six teams down two games to none in a best-of-seven series go on to lose. Can the Mets be the one out of six? Is there anything you see that makes that look likely? Neil Paine, senior sportswriter: Well, according to ESPN Stats & Info, the last time the Mets were outscored by exactly seven runs in the first two games of a World Series was in 1986, and we know what happened then. (But seriously, they are in deep trouble.) Christina Kahrl, ESPN.com editor and writer: Hrm. 1986: John McNamara, Red Sox manager and a model manager if tactical passivity is your thing. 2015: Ned Yost, Royals manager and a model manager if tactical passivity is your thing. I’m sensing a trend. Nate Silver, editor in chief: Well, the Mets are playing at home. They probably have the best of the starting pitching matchups in Games 3 and 4, especially with Chris Young coming into Game 4 with some extra mileage on his arm. Harry Enten, senior political writer: Let me offer this piece of hope for the Mets (because, as Neil notes, they are in trouble): The Royals are hitting at about their average through the small sample size of two games (.721 OPS vs .734 in the regular season), while the Mets are hitting quite below their average (.432 vs. .712 in the regular season). Neil: Yeah, perhaps one ray of sunshine is that the Mets were ?this close? to getting a split in KC, if Jeurys Familia doesn’t make that one mistake. And that was with Mets bats underperforming. Harry: And then, surely Yost is bound to cost the Royals. Right?! Right?! Christina: Actually, the thing you can say for Yost is that, a little like Tony La Russa in 2011 or Bruce Bochy in any World Series, he’s been working with what he’s got this postseason. Chris Young probably won’t have to face the Mets a third time through the order, he’ll be out and the Mets will be dealing with Kris Medlen or Danny Duffy in the middle innings. Harry: Christina, you mentioned that Yost wouldn’t stick with Chris Young. The Mets bullpen is so weak that they had to bring in Jon Niese again in Game 2. And while it worked for one inning, it killed them in that second inning. Carl: The starting-pitching matchups look good for the Mets on paper, and it does seem like the Mets bats are due to regress upward (progress?). So to what extent do we say the first two games were fluky, and to what extent do we reconsider our assessment of the two teams? Is Thor’s fastball advantage neutralized because of what we’ve seen Royals bats do to fastballs in the first two games? Nate: The prior for anything that happened in a two-game series is pretty much ?always? that it was random. These are two fairly evenly matched baseball teams. The coin came up heads twice. There were some interesting strategic decisions in Game 1: I think Yost was smart to bring in Chris Young, for instance, and the Mets might have been better off with Steven Matz or Thor in the game. But basically, this stuff is random. Also, I’m in the Ned-Yost-is-not-a-moron camp. He’s actually pretty laissez-faire, other than using his bullpen fairly aggressively. There are a lot of worse things to be. Christina: The Mets pen — and Terry Collins’s remarkably retro usage pattern of his relievers, because he just hasn’t done the situational specialist thing with a guy like lefty Sean Gilmartin all year — is not really a significant asset. It makes for some interesting stuff to speculate about as far as the aggregate value of a skipper, as Nate just pointed out. Dave Schoenfield and I were both scratching our heads about the decision to pull Niese as quickly as he was pulled in Game 1; he looked great, and if the alternative is feeding Bartolo Colon to that lineup … Nate: The Niese decision also strikes me as having been dumb. Someone out there needs to put together a primer on extra-inning bullpen strategy; teams sometimes seem to forget that the average extra inning starts with a leverage index of 2.0 or so. Carl: Part of the fun of a 14-inning Game 1 was how it generated so many tactical decisions we could debate afterward. We know from more than just the last two games that KC’s bullpen > Mets’ bullpen, as Christina mentioned. Were you surprised Yost left Johnny Cueto in for all nine innings in Game 2? How important is it to rest a bullpen after an epic game? And Neil, any evidence Yost and Collins aren’t headed for the Hall of Mediocrity you’ve written about? Christina: I’d also put myself in the “Ned knows what he’s doing” camp. Is it more sort of a Burt Shotton thing, where he’s pretty easygoing? Yes. Are people over-freaked on his sporadic bunting? Yes — the Royals got just 32 sacrifice bunts from non-pitchers this year, which ranked sixth in the AL, behind the smart guys in Cleveland and Toronto, among others. Harry: Soon enough, Yost will be wearing a bow tie in the dugout. Neil: FWIW, I think both managers have squeezed a lot out of their talent this year. For Yost, this is part of a two-year pattern, so there could be something there. Nate: One thing I’ve wondered about, Carl, is how leaving the pitcher in longer affects his next start. Cueto threw 122 pitches in a lopsided game. Is he 3 percent worse in Game 6 as a result? That’s not trivial, on the scale of these things. Maybe Yost was a little too laissez-faire in this case. Christina: I loved Yost’s decision to stick with Cueto, both for what it did for the rest of the pen, but also because it was an endorsement of sorts. Much as he had during his bad patch in August and September, Cueto seemed to struggle with slider location, but he nevertheless did a superb job of keeping the Mets guessing. And remember, he will get an extra day’s rest before his next start, if it ever comes. Neil: Right — maybe in that situation, you see the lead ballooning, so you know you’re on the verge of being up two games to none. The probability of needing another Cueto start goes down, but you can shield the weaker parts of the bullpen for later and simultaneously give Cueto that vote of confidence. Carl: Endgame strategies certainly take a new shape when they could be endseason strategies. Cueto might not throw another meaningful pitch until spring. Christina: I think my other big takeaway from Game 2 was that the Royals gave us a demonstration of one of the other important tactical factors that went into Terry Collins’s Game 1 lineup, which is that a bum wing handicaps Juan Lagares’s arm in center. With nobody aboard, no biggie, but it was part of the problem in that fifth inning. In that, you can feel badly for Collins — he “guessed” wrong in consecutive games, but he had good reasons both times for doing what he did, only to see the Royals exploit both options. Neil: Game 1 showed us what can happen with Yoenis Cespedes in center field. Christina: Exactly. Harry: It’s amazing how that cost the Mets not once but twice. If you look back at the highlight reels of Cespedes’ great throws, he often boots it before firing out of his cannon, like he booted it in Game 1. Yet I think Johnny Damon may have a better arm than Juan L. (Kidding.) Nate: I’m still having nightmares of watching Kyle Schwarber in left field. Compared to him, Cespedes looks like Willie Mays out there. Neil: And, in fact, he made a Mays-esque catch last night. Carl: Will it help the Mets to return to the outfield they’re more familiar with? Are there any other ways home field might help? Nate: Citi Field is a quirkier ballpark than you might think — and, sure, it helps the Mets to know the outfield angles pretty well. But it’s also a park that suppresses run scoring, and that could make bullpen and endgame strategy more important, possibly to KC’s benefit. Christina: I wonder if the Royals won’t profit here, as well. The Mets don’t really “do” the situational lefty thing, so the Royals could stack their lefties in the lineup even without Kendrys Morales and not have to worry too much about an in-game tactical penalty. I mean, Alex Gordon batting eighth is … simultaneously silly from our point of view, perhaps, but a reflection of how deep that lineup is in terms of not having one or two guys you can blow away handily. Neil: Also, home-field advantage probably shows up in how the umps call the strike zone as anywhere else. And the Mets need strikeouts. They need to avoid putting KC in hitter’s counts. (Then again, there isn’t much strike-zone home-cooking can do about allowing first-pitch contact.) Harry: The Royals have struck out just 10 times compared to the Mets’ 19 through two games. The Mets starting-pitching speciality is pitching the fast ball. Thor, who throws the fastest of any of the starters, is going in Game 3. This is not good. But then again, they play the game for a reason. Christina: Alcides Escobar: Positively ump-proof. Carl: We’ve praised the Royals lineup for handling the Mets heat so well. Why haven’t the Mets been able to hit for the last 16 innings or so? They obviously miss the home-run-a-game pace Murphy couldn’t sustain (to no one’s surprise), but what about everyone else? I mean, when a Lucas Duda infield single is about as good as it gets … Harry: Duda is hitting .444 (or 4 for 9) this series. Every other Met who started both games is hitting .222 or lower. My goodness. Christina: I can totally see a situation where Thor gives the Mets a great six innings, and maybe that’s enough to win with some run support. But the Royals are even better at making good contact against lefties, so I’m not wild about Matz’s chances if that makes the Mets defense a factor again. Harry: Matz has not been very good this postseason. Yes, he hasn’t given up the long ball, but his WHIP is 1.45. I mean, he just doesn’t strike people out. But that may actually be a good thing given the Royals can’t be struck out. But as Christina points out, you can forget about the Mets if they don’t start hitting. That’s their problem right now. I don’t care if you have Sal Maglie going in Games 3 and 4; you don’t hit, you don’t win. Christina: I also wonder if we weren’t oversold on Michael Conforto. His homer against Zack Greinke earlier this month is no small thing, but he fattened up on teams like the Phillies after his call-up. Cespedes is a notorious streak hitter; if tomorrow is the start of a hot streak, he could change up this source of concern in no time flat. And it is supposed to be warmer in New York than it was here in K.C., which ought to help. Nate: One theme I’m picking up in several threads here is that the Royals, top to bottom, are a really hard team to exploit. Which, if you’re into game theory and all that, is one hallmark of having a highly effective strategy. Harry: Here’s another question: How many runs has the Mets defense cost them? At least the first and last runs of Game 1. Beating a team that puts the ball in play like the Royals likely requires a good defense. The Mets defense has been “meh.” Christina: Murphy costs you every time out there; he’s just not a good second baseman. Add that to Wilmer Flores’s inadequacy at short, and it’s hard to see the defense conjuring up anything like a Goins-Tulo ballet on the double play to save somebody’s bacon. Harry: Such a change from the ‘99 Mets. Neil: Yet the Royals’ offensive batting average on balls in play hasn’t been notably great in the series as a whole. (Even if you count that Escobar inside-the-park home run as a “ball in play.”) The Mets haven’t been great situationally on defense, though — they’ve often had their struggles in bunches. Which goes to something KC has done all year: sequencing, bunching hits, etc. Carl: The Mets are struggling at pitching, fielding and hitting; the Royals are looking like a team with no exploitable weaknesses after being two innings from elimination against the Astros. Most sports books have the Royals as 1-4 favorites. Would you take those odds? And how many games do you think we have left in this series? Harry: I would bet on the Mets at those odds because they are a better team than they have shown so far. Now, maybe they end up dropping the next two. It’s happened before. But the pre-series statistics showed the Royals and Mets to be pretty even. If you assume each game is a tossup, then the Mets have a 25 percent chance to win both of the next two games. It’s probably a little higher at home. Then who knows in a best-of-three? Christina: I think if the Mets win Game 3, things get interesting, because I don’t know if anybody knows what to expect from Edinson Volquez in a Game 5. Carl: Yes, when Volquez was last pitching, in Game 1, he hadn’t heard the awful news that his father died just before the game. It’s uncharted territory for Kansas City and for Fox, which didn’t mention it on air until Volquez knew, at the Royals’ request. Christina: Indeed. Plus two flights to/from the Dominican Republic for Volquez, and what that does to a body. That’s where we just have to sit and watch, but how much Game 4 is won (or lost) by the Royals pen could be a factor in Game 5. Neil: I think about 4-to-1 odds of a Mets comeback make sense. I think the Royals probably win in 6 now. Christina: I’d subscribe to that line of thought, Neil. I can see the Mets winning two of three to get this back to K.C., but I still see this as a series the Royals ultimately win. Nate: I’ll take Mets in 11. http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/are- ... -the-mets/

batmagadanleadoff Oct 29 2015 11:52 PM Re: Mets WS Crown is in the cards. And dice. (A WS Grab Bag)

Looking Past the World Series, Are the Mets Still Broke? By Joe DeLessio Follow @joedelessio One of the things that's made the Mets' run to the World Series so remarkable is that they've done it while operating under the self-imposed payroll constraints that have kept them from spending like the big-market team they are. The Mets' owners had hundreds of millions of dollars invested with Bernie Madoff before his Ponzi scheme collapsed, and in recent years the team's finances have loomed over virtually everything the club has done. But could a run to the World Series change all that? To get a sense of the financial challenges still facing the team, earlier this week Daily Intelligencer emailed Howard Megdal, a journalist and author of the book Wilpon's Folly, about whether they're truly moving past Madoff, how much this World Series appearance might help, and whether they'll be able to afford to bring back Yoenis Céspedes. Fortune made the case recently that the Mets have moved on from the Madoff situation by making "savvy financial decisions, often galling but necessary." Is that a fair narrative, or is it too optimistic? So, that story missed the forest for the trees, I'm afraid. Mets spending hasn't been affected by the Madoff suit very much, and not at all since the trustee for the Bernie Madoff victims, Irving Picard, agreed to a hardship settlement with them in March 2012 which guaranteed that they'd be personally liable for a maximum of $29 million. So that number coming down isn't the issue. What's limited team spending is the interest on the more than $700 million in debt against the team and SNY, the sports network Sterling (the parent company) owns 65 percent of, plus the twice-annual debt-balloon payments against the Citi Field bonds — that comes to roughly what the St. Louis Cardinals spend on payroll every year. So Mets ownership has needed to find that money first, and the team comes second. It's been noted that certain things outside of the team's control (Jenrry Mejía's suspension, David Wright's insurance policy) helped free up some money mid-season. But looking ahead to the next couple of years, how hamstrung are they likely to be because of their finances? Is there any one thing in particular that worries you, or is it more a combination of factors? Well, the thing to be concerned about is the debt didn't go anywhere. It's still there — the owners just refinanced and combined the $250 million due against the team in 2014 and the $600 million-plus due against the network in 2015, and tied them together in due date. And while Josh Kosman over at the Post reported the interest rate is "lower," just how much lower is key. Few I've spoken to think it is much lower, especially if they didn't pay down any of it. Since that's been the issue hamstringing spending, the fact that it remains is a huge problem. Nor are the debt-balloon payments against the stadium going anywhere, either: They run until December 2045. So until the Mets owners prove they are capable of spending despite that annual debt financing, it is a concern. A deep playoff run can mean millions of dollars the team wouldn't have otherwise had. How far can that go toward putting them in a place where they can spend like a real big-market club? Or might it not even go toward payroll? Well, that's the huge question, which I wrote about last month: Fred Wilpon and Saul Katz made this incredible statement that never works — come to the park, and then we'll spend money. Except, incredibly, it happened — the attendance went way up, and the Mets have tens of millions of dollars they didn't have or had reason to believe they'd have on August 1. Then again, if you take it as the $45 million Kosman reports the Mets expect the extra revenue to be, well, that's a couple of Citi Field bond payments. Will the Mets' ownership use the extra money to give themselves a little financial breathing room? Pay down some debt? Or will they use the money on the team, as promised? Considering they've made similar promises for years, you'll only know they are spending that money on the team once it actually happens. But don't mistake the extra money this year for the idea that the Mets/SNY were, in total, a money-losing operation. The Mets have the TV cash coming in everybody else in baseball does, and then some — they started cashing in earlier, thanks in part, again, to a big loan from Bernie Madoff. They've just been siphoning off that revenue since Madoff went bust to keep the parent company afloat, the kind of thing that should bother MLB but so far hasn't. Let's say, for argument's sake, that the Mets would like to bring back Yoenis Céspedes, and that money will be the deciding factor. Right now, how likely do you think it is that he'll be a Met in 2016? Would the outcome of the World Series make a difference? I think the extent to which the Mets have been noncommittal or worse on Céspedes publicly isn't a great sign, nor is the team's track record on large purchases since the day Bernie Madoff and their liquidity went poof in the night. Then again: Has anything Mets-related since the day Wilmer Flores wasn't traded happened the way it used to? It's why you're seeing so many Wilpon stories right now. People are tired of it. I'm as tired of it as anyone. And it's appealing to think everything has changed in Mets land. Too bad Daniel Murphy home runs don't pay down debt. They just make Daniel Murphy more expensive. http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/20 ... roke.html#

batmagadanleadoff Oct 30 2015 12:50 AM Re: Mets WS Crown is in the cards. And dice. (A WS Grab Bag)

Mets Owners Sell 200 W Adams for $168M Chicago Office Oct 28, 2015 Chuck Sudo, Bisnow CHI The Mets may have lost a heartbreaker in Game 1 of the World Series last night, but the team's owners still woke up winners this morning. A [joint venture] led by Fred Wilpon and Saul Katz sold 200 W Adams to an Oregon developer for $200M. Wilpon and Katz's company, Sterling Equities, and Lincoln Property bought the 32-story building for $113.8M in 2006. The sale to Gerling Elden Development marks a 50% return on the JV's investment, according to Crain's. That return would have been unthinkable a few years ago. Wilpon and Katz faced a potential loan default on the property and lawsuits filed by investors who lost money through Bernard Madoff's Ponzi schemes. The sale is the latest nine-figure deal in the CBD and keeps Chicago's year-to-date office sales on pace to shatter the record $5.3B set in 2006. [Crain's] Read more at: https://www.bisnow.com/chicago/news/off ... um=Browser https://www.bisnow.com/chicago/news/off ... 168m-51645

batmagadanleadoff Oct 30 2015 05:25 AM Re: Mets WS Crown is in the cards. And dice. (A WS Grab Bag)

One good thing about a Mets-Royals WS is that you can be sure there'll be Joe Posnanski pieces throughout the series that you'll have more than a casual interest in reading. Even though, you know ... excerpt: KANSAS CITY — Long after this exhilarating and extraordinary and exhausting World Series game ended, the huge video board in center field at Kauffman Stadium flashed a message again and again and again. “Royals WIN!” it blared. Then there was a blinding yellow light. “Royals WIN!” it said again. More blinding light. “Royals WIN!” It was as if the video board was trying to convince itself that it actually happened that way. The Royals lost Game 1 of the World Series to the New York Mets many times on Tuesday night. They lost it when two-time Gold Glove first baseman Eric Hosmer could not decide whether to charge or back off a chopping groundball. They lost it when their No. 3 hitter Lorenzo Cain inexplicably tried to bunt the tying run from second base to third with nobody out. They lost it when manager Ned Yost decided to pinch run for the team’s best slugger Kendrys Morales, leaving the team with the punchless Jarrod Dyson in the middle of the lineup. They lost it when the Mets sent their unhittable pitcher with his Hollywood name — Jeurys Familia — to close things out. The Royals lost it and lost it, but in the end, as, the video board boomed, “Royals WIN!” because … well … they did. There’s a story about Stanley Ketchel, a staggeringly tough early 20th century boxer who was murdered a few hours up the road in a farm town called Conway, Mo. When his manager and New York man-about-town Billy Mizner was told that Ketchel had been killed, he shrugged. “Tell ‘em to start counting to 10,” Mizner said. “He’ll get up.” So it goes with these Royals. They kept losing the game but every time the Mets started counting to 10 … the Royals got up. [***] The finality trebled in the bottom of the inning when the Royals failed to score the tying run after Ben Zobrist’s double. The key at-bat in there was Cain’s; the Royals No. 3 hitter decided to bunt Zobrist over even though he has not had a successful sacrifice bunt in almost 2,000 career regular season at-bats. In a way, this reflected the pure unselfishness of this team — the Royals did not ASK Cain to give himself up, he did so on his own. In another way, though, it reflected a strategic void that so often is part of the Kansas City story. The bunt there is a terrible move for any number of fairly obvious reasons. Cain failed twice to get down the bunt, putting himself into a deep hole, and then he struck out. Hosmer followed with a feeble strikeout, continuing his agony and seemingly inextricable path to Game 1 goat. Two batters later, with the Royals still threatening, the Mets put in the indomitable Familia, who coaxed a sickly ground ball that ended the inning. Now there was only the ninth, and Familia had not given up a run in the entire postseason. He had not blown a save of any kind in more than two months. The Mets were counting to 10 and had reached seven or eight. Alex Gordon is the one player who remembers. He more than remembers: He lived the nightmare that was Kansas City baseball a few years ago. He was called up to Kansas City in 2007 to be a savior. The Royals did not put it in those terms, of course, but what else could he be? Gordon was the game’s best prospect AND he was a Midwestern boy who swung the bat like Royals legend George Brett (his brother had been named for Brett) AND he was joining a Royals team that had lost 100 games three years in a row. He might as well have had “Savior” written on the back of his jersey. He seemed exactly the type to handle it. Gordon had a confidence about him, a sense of his own place in the world, and that year just about every baseball analyst in the country predicted he would win the Rookie of the Year Award and lead the way to a moderately better Royals future. Two months into that first season, Gordon was hitting .172 and playing a frightened third base and there was an almost awestruck reaction to it all, something that might be loosely translated to mean: “Wow, the Royals are SO bad they even broke Alex Gordon.” It took a long while for Gordon to find his way. He had to leave third base for left field, where he would become a transcendent defender. He had to figure out how to compensate for a giant hole in his aesthetically beautiful swing, and he became one of the game’s great mistake hitters. He had to accept his place not as a dazzling star who makes all the magazine covers but as a quietly wonderful player who does all the little things at the plate, on the bases and in the field that are so easily overlooked. When he stood in the on-deck circle in the bottom of the ninth inning, he studied Familia. He had never faced the man and, to his recollection, had never even seen him pitch. He knew the situation. He was the Royals’ last, best hope. Royals catcher Salvador Perez, who was at the plate, had been so beaten up this whole postseason that he surely had nothing left to give. The man who followed Gordon, Paulo Orlando, was a 29-year-old rookie who had come in as a replacement. The game rested with Gordon and Gordon alone. He watched Familia quick-pitch Perez and took special note of it. Hall of Fame pitcher Warren Spahn once said, “Hitting is timing. Pitching is upsetting timing.” Nothing upsets timing more for a hitter than not expecting the pitch. After Perez grounded out, Gordon stepped into the batter’s box fully determined to be ready if Familia quick pitched him. read it all at http://sportsworld.nbcsports.com/keeping-it-realm/

Edgy MD Oct 30 2015 08:42 AM Re: Mets WS Crown is in the cards. And dice. (A WS Grab Bag)

Silver hints at it, but while it's nice to see so many smart people grasp and reach for a leg of hope on behalf of the Mets, they might indeed be right that the outcome in the first two games is somewhat flukey, but it doesn't particularly matter. Those two games are on the books. They're not coming off, and five remaining games is hardly enough to wait for flukes to correct themselves. The Mets have to bop their way home.

Ceetar Oct 30 2015 01:42 PM Re: Mets WS Crown is in the cards. And dice. (A WS Grab Bag)

Josh Lewin will be announcing the Chargers game in Baltimore on Sunday at 1. But don't worry, he'll make it to Citi for the game. [url]http://www.wsj.com/articles/josh-lewins-mission-to-call-two-games-in-two-states-in-one-day-1446148549

batmagadanleadoff Oct 31 2015 12:08 AM Re: Mets WS Crown is in the cards. And dice. (A WS Grab Bag)

[fimg=744:18rbnxrp]http://36.media.tumblr.com/6a6e0002ab73b694ff4330bb6afd1218/tumblr_nx1a1itaU61qz50r6o1_1280.jpg[/fimg:18rbnxrp] “Luke Gasparre, 91, has been an usher for the @mets since Shea Stadium opened in 1964. “Back then, the team was so bad, a lot of people gave up their seats,” he recalled. “They said, ‘If I wanted to see clowns, I’d go to the circus.’ But I told them, ‘Just have hope, and someday we’ll pull through.’ And sure enough, look where we are now.” At his age, Luke is the team’s oldest usher. He has become a fixture at #CitiField stadium the way he was for decades at Shea. Tonight, when the @mets return to New York to play the @kcroyals in #Game3 of the @mlb #WorldSeries, Luke will be standing in his usual spot, taking tickets and leading fans to their seats. @michaeldappleton photographed Luke at home in Queens. #?” By nytimes on Instagram. http://infosnack.net/post/132208035084/ ... er-for-the

Ceetar Oct 31 2015 07:02 AM Re: Mets WS Crown is in the cards. And dice. (A WS Grab Bag)

TONIGHT’S FINANCIAL FIGURES Attendance Net Receipts Players Pool Commissioner’s Office Each Club 44,781 $9,122,555.55 $5,473,533.33 $1,368,383.33 $684,191.66 Attendance Net Receipts Players Pool Commissioner’s Office Each Club 125,511 $25,768,286.71 $15,460,972.02 $3,865,243.00 $1,932,621.49 CUMULATIVE 2015 WORLD SERIES FINANCIAL FIGURES

batmagadanleadoff Nov 05 2015 01:06 AM Re: Mets WS Crown is in the cards. And dice. (A WS Grab Bag)

Which Loathsome Owner Is Your World Series Favorite? We're two games into the 2015 World Series—halfway over, if you're an optimistic a Royals fan or a pessimistic a Mets fan—but there are still a great many questions hovering over this match-up. Here is perhaps the most challenging one: Who do you want to have a ring, Kansas City Royals owner David Glass, or New York Mets owner Fred Wilpon? To put it another way: Which is worse, having been the chief executive of one of the most virulently anti-labor and anti-worker corporate blights in history, or having participated in a massive Ponzi scheme? Your first response might be yet another question: "Why should I give a damn about who owns a team when it comes to the actual drama of the game?" The wienery answer to which is that I've seen you complaining online about this team or that team's fans, and those people have far less to do with what's happening on the field than the men who own the ball clubs, so don't give me this purity of the game shit. The better, nicer answer is that you're not choosing to root for the Kansas City team or the New York team, not really. You're choosing to root for David Glass's Royals or Fred Wilpon's Mets, which happen to play in those cities. Professional sports clubs have spent a lot of time and effort portraying themselves as, to borrow Craig Calcaterra's phrase, "quasi-public trusts." The way they slipped into that perception was as much accident as it was intentional misdirection, perhaps more so. The municipality of Kansas City has no staked interest in the baseball team that proudly bears its name besides, perhaps, lease agreements with the private company that constitutes the Royals. It is not a minority owner of the team, and has no input into any of the decisions that the team makes. The same is fundamentally true of the New York Mets, with a couple of distinctions-without-difference with regards to the lease on the six-year-old Citi Field. Professional baseball in Asia, with its Nippon Ham Fighters and Chinatrust Brothers, has been remarkably honest about this for just about its entire history: teams are private businesses, run by companies, for profit. That's what "professional" means. Acknowledging that fact hasn't diminished the ability of Japanese and Taiwanese fans to enjoy their chosen teams. So, between David Glass and the Wilpons, who you got? Up until about three years ago, Glass was one of the most reviled owners in baseball, a miser who couldn't make his penny-pinching work and didn't seem to care. After his ascension to chairman of the Royals' board in September 1993, the team would not have another winning season until 2003, when they eked out 83 wins and a third-place finish in the AL Central before slipping back beneath the waves for another full decade. Glass was also vociferously in favor of using scabs to break the player strike of 1994-95 and of locking the players out until they agreed to a salary cap. Of course he was: his previous resume centered on growing Walmart into the malignant and metastatic thing it is today. If anything, his persistent loathsomeness was reassuring—more proof that God knows how to write a consistent villain. Two things rescued Royals fans: Glass finally backed into a good hire in then Braves executive Dayton Moore, and the analytical revolution in baseball happened. Suddenly any idiot owner able to hire a decent scouting department had a good blueprint for tanking their way to success. After spending only $38 million on the team in 2011, at the nadir of the Royals tank—at the time, most everyone saw it as fumbling, blind futility, and Moore as a buffoon—Glass has steadily invested more money in the team. This is not charity: with the ballooning media deals and postseason payouts that have come to the league as a whole and to the Royals specifically, Glass can now afford to spend money on the club while maintaining his margins. When the team's current window closes, the payroll will drop again. Glass has always been very transparent about what matters to him, and what doesn't. If Glass is no saint, he's at least a typical American sinner. Who can be surprised that a career executive is dedicated to kneecapping labor at every turn? Who among us is shocked that the man running a business cares more about the margin of profit than the customer experience? The difference between Glass and most any other owner or ownership group in pro sports is one of degree, not kind. No, for hideousness that separates itself from the crowd, you need a Wilpon. The Wilpons hardly need any introduction in this space, but let's give them one anyway. They made their fortune by being tax-dodging real estate speculators during the 1970s and 80s; they lost much, if not most, of that fortune to the one-two punch of the 2008 housing market crash and the collapse of Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme. That would be a case of what goes around coming around, except the Wilpons stayed afloat by using the Mets and the team-owned media partner SNY as their personal piggybank. As recently as this August, while the Mets were storming up the standings, the Wilpons leveraged their stake in the team, in which they bought a controlling interest in 2002, to refinance over $700 million in outstanding debt. Former Dodgers owner Frank McCourt was run out of the league for less blatant financial shenanigans, and he was somehow permitted to purchase one of the league's marquee franchises with the leveraged debt on some parking lots. Then there are the Mets' constant, mindboggling, insulting scandals. Jeff Wilpon, a team president whose only claim to legitimacy is his surname and with no claim to competence at all, should have been reassigned to a paper job in the organization by his father a long time ago—a position where he could still be paid a crass salary while being kept far away from anything important. Instead, he is all over everything, and the most obvious (and self-defeating) Anonymous Team Official quote in the game. The Mets' GM, Sandy Alderson, took the job at the behest of former commissioner Bud Selig, and the success of the current roster is in spite of the machinations of his employers, not because of it. Anyone who needs further proof of that after the Mets' near-disaster at the trade deadline isn't paying attention. The likely outcome of this thought exercise isn't picking either Glass or the Wilpons as less bad than the other; it's throwing up one's hands at the stupid insidiousness of how professional sports conduct themselves in an age when teams are worth billions. No one's saying that you have to give up your team because of its owner's conduct. Hell, maybe you hate unions, too. Life is a rich tapestry, and there is always something to get upset about if you want it enough. It is 2015, and everyone who cares to know understands that professional sports teams are not engaged in morality plays. Professional sports teams, like everything else in this country—like everything else in the world—are engaged in business, and play by its stark rules. Perhaps the behavior of the men who own and operate them should influence how we view the products they're selling. And if this casts an unpleasant pall over the consumption of those products, perhaps we should think about whose fault that really is. https://sports.vice.com/en_us/article/w ... s-favorite

Edgy MD Nov 05 2015 06:06 AM Re: Mets WS Crown is in the cards. And dice. (A WS Grab Bag)

That would be a case of what goes around coming around, except the Wilpons stayed afloat by using the Mets and the team-owned media partner SNY as their personal piggybank. I'm not sure what this is meant to suggest.

MFS62 Nov 05 2015 08:19 AM Re: Mets WS Crown is in the cards. And dice. (A WS Grab Bag)

David Glass seems a far cry from Ewing Kaufmann, the team owner after whom their stadium is named. Ewing grew up on a farm, and leveraged a $5,000 loan into a multimillion dollar pharmaceutical company. Later, he donated tens of millions to charity. From what I've read about him, his reputation is that of a nice, good and honorable person. People mattered to him. Its a shame that Glass couldn't have carried on that legacy. Later

batmagadanleadoff Nov 05 2015 10:28 AM Re: Mets WS Crown is in the cards. And dice. (A WS Grab Bag)

Edgy MD wrote: That would be a case of what goes around coming around, except the Wilpons stayed afloat by using the Mets and the team-owned media partner SNY as their personal piggybank. I'm not sure what this is meant to suggest. The author is "suggesting" that the Wilpons used Mets money to pay non Mets debt.

batmagadanleadoff Nov 09 2015 08:08 AM Re: Mets WS Crown is in the cards. And dice. (A WS Grab Bag)

That would be a case of what goes around coming around, except the Wilpons stayed afloat by using the Mets and the team-owned media partner SNY as their personal piggybank. I'm not sure what this is meant to suggest. The author is "suggesting" that the Wilpons used Mets money to pay non Mets debt. So's this author. The World Series is over. Back to shitcanning the Wilpons. Sports biz report: Where’s that extra Mets money going? By Howard Megdal 10:12 a.m. | Nov. 6, 2015 For the past several seasons, as the New York Mets' owners have struggled to finance a crippling debt load and maintain appearances for their major league ballclub, a public promise took shape, something more palatable from a PR perspective than Bear with us, we don't have the money. And so, instead, a sort of pledge took shape, from Fred Wilpon at his last public press conference in February 2013 to something periodically uttered by general manager Sandy Alderson: Once the fans show up, the team will spend more. It was, of course, ridiculous. Fans don't show up ahead of teams spending money; spending is actually correlated with attendance spikes more significantly than winning. And typically, teams don't ask for the support before providing the product. And yet, for the low, low price of what the Mets had already committed to spend, but became available for various unexpected reasons (David Wright's contract was insured and he missed 115 games, Jenrry Mejia was suspended twice without pay for PED use), the Mets added enough talent in July —Yoenis Cespedes, most notably, but also Tyler Clippard, Juan Uribe and Kelly Johnson as well — to pair with those already on board for a magical few months. You might have heard about it. The result? A veritable money bath: as much as $45 million in extra revenue, per the Post, or as high as $60 million, according to baseball economist Andrew Zimbalist. Nor does that take into account the significant additional windfall that the team's owners, who also hold a 65 percent share in SNY, can count on thanks to higher ad revenues from Mets games with dramatically higher ratings, or the greater demand (and thus, higher prices) for sponsors generally. To be clear: The sum total of the Mets and SNY already provided plenty of revenue — the Mets had enough to finance debt against the team, the network and twice-annual debt balloon payments on Citi Field bonds at a total comparable to their payroll. (An easy way to play the game of Where's That Mets Money is to add up their annual debt service and team payroll. You end up at roughly what the Yankees spend on just payroll because, right, no Madoff effect in the Bronx.) So the hope has been, essentially, that adding an unexpected windfall to this equilibrium tolerated by Major League Baseball for some reason — a siphoning of team and network revenue for parent company debt that hadn't abated, but had at least stabilized — and that extra cash could go toward adding talent to maximize the team's unheard-of collection of front-end starting pitching under team control for years. It's the kind of opportunity few teams ever get. The early indications aren't great, though. The Mets have already put out word — in fact, didn't even wait until the World Series ended to do so — that the team will not be pursuing long-term deals with either Daniel Murphy or Yoenis Cespedes. There are baseball arguments for not doing so in both cases, though failing to offer Murphy a one-year, $15.8 million qualifying offer by Friday's deadline would be pure negligence. But the reasons proferred have less to do with whether these players would help the Mets (they clearly would, specifically in 2016) and more about value for the money. All of which is fine, if evaluated purely as a binary pursuit. But that's not how the sport works. The Mets play in a salary cap-free league. Is Yoenis Cespedes worth $120 million over six years? That depends: who can the Mets get instead? Will they spend that money at all? And would Cespedes be making $20 million on a roster with a $101 million payroll, like last season, good for 21st in the sport, or on a team with a payroll commensurate with playing in the largest media market in the country, for owners with a massive stake in the television revenue associated with a team that also just received tens of millions of dollars in a postseason run? Alderson, at a news conference announcing that manager Terry Collins was receiving a two-year extension, said that he "hoped" payroll would be "somewhat higher." And when pressed on whether the increase in attendance meant payroll would go up automatically—you know, as per the years of promises by the team — Alderson's response was, "Automatically? I think it makes it easier. Absolutely. And I think that's kind of what we said over the last two or three years. As I indicated, I do think our payroll will start at a higher level this year than it started last year." That's a statement with a ton of ambiguity in it, though. The team's payroll has been artificially low already, even given relatively sparse attendance at Citi Field until the recent magic. So if the team adds as much revenue as laid out above, but takes payroll from $101 million on Opening Day 2015 to, say, $110 million on Opening Day 2016, it means that ownership has taken almost all the extra money, not to mention the extremely rare opportunity that comes with the current crop of young, elite pitching, and pocketed it instead. The team has significant needs, too. Consider that prior to adding Cespedes, the Mets were at the bottom of the National League in runs scored, and that was with Daniel Murphy. Losing both players puts the team in a hole going into the offseason, and there are plenty of other concerns, from David Wright's degenerative back condition to Travis d'Arnaud's trouble staying healthy to Juan Lagares' troublesome throwing elbow to the news Thursday that Curtis Granderson had surgery to repair a torn ligament in his thumb. That's a lot of potential problems, and the only counter the Mets have internally to throw at all the issues are a full year of Michael Conforto and the hope that the talented but young Dilson Herrera is ready to perform now. The same issues hold in the bullpen. The postseason revealed a difficulty in getting outs beyond Jeurys Familia, Tyler Clippard is a free agent, Addison Reed is useful but only with the bases empty and the team lacks a lefty specialist under contract or much in the way of depth. Alderson expressed a need to address both the offense and the bullpen at Wednesday's presser, and the thing is, that's all going to cost money, either in trades or via free agency, especially if the Mets don't use their starting pitching inventory to address it. And the Mets enter the offseason with obligations of roughly $92 million before adding anybody to the roster. There's one additional expense that complicates their ability to operate like a real team, beyond the annual debt service — the first half of the money owed by 115 separate entities (but essentially a group of people and companies within the Sterling Equities umbrella) to Irving Picard, the trustee for the Bernie Madoff victims, comes due in June 2016. And according to a source familiar with the settlement, the total owed is likely to be higher than the $29 million, total, it appeared the Mets owners would have to pay, maximum. The short version is, without any further disbursements from Picard, the Mets owners and associated parties will owe just over $30 million in each of the next two years, or a total of about $61 million. Another way of looking at that? It's right around the same amount of money as the high end estimates of Mets 2015 postseason revenue. Meanwhile, addressing team needs realistically is going to cost quite a bit of money, even if the Mets want to add secondary pieces in areas of need. If the Mets had solvent owners? Pairing the best free agent in the class, Jason Heyward, with the starting pitchers who are roughly the same age as Heyward would bring Mets payroll up to roughly 15th in the league while insuring the team a dramatic defensive upgrade and elite hitter. The Cubs, off an NLCS performance and with plenty of hitting already, are rumored to be in on Heyward. The Cardinals, who won 100 games last year, eagerly hope to retain him. The Mets? No one believes they can afford him. One way or another, a team with owners with the wherewithal to make strategic investments would take advantage of such an opportunity, an extra windfall, an open window with young pitching and perhaps most of all the desire not to break a years-long promise to a fan base that came back in droves at the merest hint that the team was ready to start competing again. Those are the stakes. Now we have a winter to find out whether anything has changed in Queens. http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/c ... oney-going

Centerfield Nov 09 2015 11:30 AM Re: Mets WS Crown is in the cards. And dice. (A WS Grab Bag)

Obviously I agree a lot with Megdal's overall points, but I just wish he wouldn't do himself a disservice with his sloppiness. *I don't know how one can know they were using Mets money for fund other debts. I suspect that they did as well, but I think you need a forensic accountant with access to the books to say for sure. He is a member of the media. Gotta be more careful. *I did not see the Mets notice that they would not be pursuing Murphy or Cespedes long term. Sure, some beat writers are speculating to that, but the Mets have issued no such statement. *I think the early indications are very good. Alderson has said he expects payroll to be higher. Sure, he tempered that, but only a fool would come out publicly and admit they have lots of money to spend. And Alderson has said they have needs on offense and the bullpen. Again, I agree with his larger point about the Wilpons, but if he had more credibility as a journalist, I think more would take his point seriously.