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Yankees smarter than Mets? Exhibit A

Bret Sabermetric May 13 2006 10:41 AM

When their powerhitting catcher enters his mid-thirties and stops being quite the slugger he used to be, they recognize reality, get other powerhitters to bat 3, 4, and 5 and drop him lower in the order, acknowledging that in this diminished state he's still a good hitter, just not the monster he used to be. No problem, no crisis, no one even notices, life goes on, obladiblada. The Mets are stubborn swine who profess to believe in their fans' fantasies rather than deal wtih what their own eyes tell them. They sell you guys on what you wish was true (not very difficult) and then behave as if it were, then say at wretched season's end, "Hey, who knew?: and you lap it up. Only exceptionally improbable early-season starts by Pedro and Glavine are saving them right now from disaster, but it's a long season and I don't expect them to make it through 2006 without an injury or extended down period from one of them and probably both. If you think you';re looking at an ill-thought starting rotation now, just wait until one of them hits the DL. Your cry will be "Who expected Pedro or Glavine to go down?" but the answer to that outside of Met-land will be "Everyone in the known universe."

Nymr83 May 13 2006 10:50 AM

even the hippo is tired of this...

Bret Sabermetric May 13 2006 10:54 AM

Well, that certainly shuts up my mouth...

metsmarathon May 13 2006 11:00 AM

batting 5th last night... bernie williams. those geniuses!

Bret Sabermetric May 13 2006 11:07 AM

Okay, if you're scoring that makes one "Bret, we're SOOOOO sick of listening to your bullshit" non-sequitur, and one "Okay, but they just lost their best OFer for the season so they put in a former All-Star in the lineup until their MVP-candidate RF gets off the DL" non-sequitur. Next?

Nymr83 May 13 2006 11:36 AM

you really need some new material. I'm not sick of you, I'm sick of "i hate piazza and mets management." Piazza is gone. Phillips is gone. Get over it.

KC May 13 2006 11:44 AM

I don't really give a crap what he posts, he's well within his rights so long as it's about baseball. However, what I find frustrating is that these broad brushed posts aimed as an indictment of the posters here ability to rea- son the day to day events of the Mets is often sprinkled with stupid com- ments like, "Who expected Pedro or Glavine to go down" when no one here will utter those words and no one here fully expects Pedro or Tommy to not hit the DL sometime this year or beyond. If you want to indict the content of the forum, stop making shit up, because it's you my friend who who drift in and out of these fantasy scenarios that you make up, not us. If you have a problem with 3am callers on WFAN .. call them up and don't lump us in with them.

metsmarathon May 13 2006 12:18 PM

jorge posada 0.869 OPS hideki matsui 0.807 OPS bernie williams 0.659 OPS how brilliant is it of them again to bat bernie ahead of posada in the order? heck, how brilliant of them was it to bat hideki ahead of posada this season?

Bret Sabermetric May 13 2006 12:35 PM Edited 1 time(s), most recently on May 13 2006 12:45 PM

KC wrote: I don't really give a crap what he posts, he's well within his rights so long as it's about baseball. . That's big of you. If you fully expect Glavine or Pedro to go down, or go bad, how can you possibly condone the trading of Benson and Seo for middle relief, even good middle relief? These guys are nuts, and I think that happened long after Phillips' watch was over. And on that, you dumb fuck (not you, KC, the other dumb fuck), Posada's movement downward in the batting order is happening now, not in the dim distant past. You dumb fucks (all of you this time) who wipe the slate clean of "past" mistakes (or you scream at me for being obsessed with "crap for the past,") are apologists for stupid baseball moves. You can say that the Kazmir deal is over and done with, but you know what? As long as Kazmir is a great pitcher and as long as Victor INO is a useless piece of crap with elbow trouble, Rick Peterson and Fred Wilpon are going to hear well-deserved grief for their colossal dumbness, and you will get grief for your obstinancy in defending them. So get used to it. If you're an idiot, or if you're defending idiocy, someone will probably notice it, even if you're the dominating, titanic figures on this website, squashing tiny bugs like me into the dirt of the Red Light Forum. I'd like to help you not to defend stupid shit, but I don';t know how to stop you. I'm doing my best.

Bret Sabermetric May 13 2006 12:41 PM

metsmarathon wrote: jorge posada 0.869 OPS hideki matsui 0.807 OPS bernie williams 0.659 OPS how brilliant is it of them again to bat bernie ahead of posada in the order? heck, how brilliant of them was it to bat hideki ahead of posada this season? Bernie shouldn't be in the lineup, he should be a 4th OFer--right now, they're coping with injuries to their two best OFers. I don't think you'll see him batting ahead of Posada a whole lot this season. Matsui's obviously a better hitter than Posada right now. That's more like my point, Piazza was (whatever the stats of the moment might have argued) aging, and aging catchers aren't a good long term middle of the order solution, so he needed to be moved. The Mets didn't. They suffered for it, and for pleasing the pajama crowd. Thanks for helping me make my poijnt.

soupcan May 13 2006 12:49 PM

Bret Sabermetric wrote: And on that, you dumb fuck (not you, KC, the other dumb fuck)... You dumb fucks (all of you this time) ... All this does is validate what people say about you and make others not want to read your posts.

Gwreck May 13 2006 12:50 PM Re: Yankees smarter than Mets? Exhibit A

Bret Sabermetric wrote: Only exceptionally improbable early-season starts by Pedro and Glavine are saving them right now from disaster Ya gotta hit and score to win games too. But Delgado, he doesn't contribute anything. Wright or Beltran either.

Bret Sabermetric May 13 2006 01:01 PM

soupcan wrote: ="Bret Sabermetric"]And on that, you dumb fuck (not you, KC, the other dumb fuck)... You dumb fucks (all of you this time) ... All this does is validate what people say about you and make others not want to read your posts. Take whatever excuse you like, Soupy. When I make a pure baseball post, and get the same old "Bret, you're a tiresome bore with holes in your underwear" type of response, I tend to get impolite. If you want to holds hands with KC and say "Good, he calls us names when we call him names, so let's all jump on his ass now" that's fine with me. Or you disgree that it's a dumb-fuck way to respond to a lineup post? Why is this not in the RLF already, anyway? You guys are very slow on the triggerfinger today.

ABG May 13 2006 01:11 PM

So since this is going to the RLF anyway, I'll pose a question herein since I think it's topical. What message board--actually, more broadly, what group of people--allows someone to refer to them as "dumb fucks" on a consistent basis? I know this is a high-fallutin, elitist, democratic, renaissance-inspired board, but if this were any other board, or if it were a classroom, office, bar, group of friends, family, convent, kibbutz or reality television show, Bret would be long gone. What is the point?

KC May 13 2006 01:13 PM

BS: >>>When I make a pure baseball post, and get the same old "Bret, you're a tiresome bore with holes in your underwear" type of response<<< I'm not going to break it down, but it doesn't even approach a pure baseball post.

Yancy Street Gang May 13 2006 01:27 PM

I wouldn't exactly say we "condoned" the Seo and Benson trades: We react to the Benson trade. We react to the Seo trade. I also don't think anyone here ever said that Glavine and Pedro were invulnerable this year. It's entirely possible that they'll both finish the season without seeing the DL, and it's just as possible that they'll both spend extended periods there. You may be able to prove me wrong with a link to another thread, but it seems to me that you're telling us we're dumb for stuff that few if any of us have ever said.

Bret Sabermetric May 13 2006 01:33 PM

And it's possible that they'll reveal that they're gay lovers. Arguing on the basis on what's "possible" is just one of the things that's wrong with this place. If it's bad and it hasn't happened yet, you get told it's possible that it will never happen--so there. Nyah nyah, Bret. If it's good and it hasn't happened yet--well, that's what this place is all about.

metsmarathon May 13 2006 01:34 PM

Bret Sabermetric wrote: Matsui's obviously a better hitter than Posada right now. ="metsmarathon"]jorge posada 0.869 OPS hideki matsui 0.807 OPS Bret Sabermetric wrote: Thanks for helping me make my poijnt. well, right now, i'd thik matsui would have a bit of trouble hitting a ball, but that's not what you meant. matsui is obviously a better hitter than posada. unless you consider that posada is outhitting him so far this season. but its early i guess. and if the yankees were so brilliant, why would they not have moved posada up in the order instead of leapfrogging bernie ahead of him in light of the matsui injury? why do we see bernie batting ahead of posada at all this season, even if it's only not a lot shoudln't a brilliant organization recognize the difference between an aging catcher and an aged popless centerfielder who's hitting 200 points of OPS worse? and a difference, too, is that posada was never the best hitter in the yankees lineup. piazza was. not that it makes the mets necessarily smarter for not dropping or replacing him sooner, just that it makes the yankees' job of dropping and/or supplanting him easier. when posada was a better hitter than tino and paul o'neill, posada batted behind them still. but the yankees are better at acknowledging diminished states. posada is a better hitter than bernie williams, and is hitting better now than hideki matsui. but the yankees are smarter for batting him lower. OK. were the yankees so completely taken aback by the matsui injury that they forgot how to put a lineup together, and simply put bernie ahead of him without stopping to look at hte stats? or are they forgetting to recognize the reality that bernie is not a good hitter now? as i type this, keep in mind that bernie williams' 0.659 OPS is again batting 5th, ahead of robinson cano's 0.764 OPS. but the yankees are smarter. unless you really think that right now, bernie williams is a better hitter than robinson cano, i guess...

Bret Sabermetric May 13 2006 01:36 PM

ABG wrote: So since this is going to the RLF anyway, I'll pose a question herein since I think it's topical. What message board--actually, more broadly, what group of people--allows someone to refer to them as "dumb fucks" on a consistent basis? I know this is a high-fallutin, elitist, democratic, renaissance-inspired board, but if this were any other board, or if it were a classroom, office, bar, group of friends, family, convent, kibbutz or reality television show, Bret would be long gone. What is the point? I don't know if anyone's ever told you this before, ABG, but you repeat yourself an awful lot. Of course, that's only bad sometimes.

Bret Sabermetric May 13 2006 01:42 PM

I don't know if you're just baiting me or not, mm, but my point is a simple one: Posada's gettng old, and he's not the hitter he used to be, and the Yankees are responding to his age with appropriate steps, IMO. That's my pure baseball point, Exhibit A. If you want to argue how the Mets are smarter than the Yankees, please open up another thread, called "Mets are smarter than Yankees, exhibit A" please. I'm not claiming that every move the Yankees make is smart and every move the Mets make is dumb. I'm just arguing what I'm arguing. It's very dumb of me to let you broaden tthis discussion out to include things I never claimed, so I won't do that. I will participate in threads that you start on other claims, so please don't take this as a general refusal to talk baseball. Would you care to discuss the widosm of the idea that the Yankees' dropping Posada down in the lineup, or are we done here?

KC May 13 2006 01:45 PM

BS: >>>So get used to it. If you're an idiot, or if you're defending idiocy, someone will probably notice it, even if you're the dominating, titanic figures on this website, squashing tiny bugs like me into the dirt of the Red Light Forum. I'd like to help you not to defend stupid shit, but I don';t know how to stop you. I'm doing my best.<<< Why do you feel like a tiny bug compared to us other bugs? This is a small liitle corner of the internet and when you get like this you make it seem like it is or was something so damn important somtimes. Yes sir, I am a dumb fuck indeed. Not because of baseball, or the Mets, or because I happen to be one of the people who run this asylum. No, I'm a dumb fuck for letting you hijack twenty minutes of this fine Saturday afternoon from me. Yupİ, dumb fuck indeed.

Bret Sabermetric May 13 2006 01:47 PM

Are you claiming you're not an idiot, or not defending idiocy? If either, then what I say doesn't apply to it, does it?

KC May 13 2006 02:01 PM

I'm not going answer you, until you answer me. Why do you feel like a little bug compared to us other bugs? Why do you think there are titanic figures compared to you? You haven't been squashed, why do you feel squashed? If anything, you're one of the biggest figures here.

metsmarathon May 13 2006 02:22 PM

here i was thinking we were talking about he wisdom of droping posada in the order. i think it is unwise of them to drop him (or keep him dropped) below bernie. i think that batting bernie 5th ahead of posada (and ahead, too, of cano) is unwise, and does damage to your point of the wisdom of the yankees' dropping aging and underperforming stars in the batting order below those players who are clearly better and better performing. because bernie williams is posada only more extreme - he was a better hitter in his prime, and is a worse hitter now, and is more of a fan favorite. and yet he's batting 5th, ahead of better, better performing, and younger players. exactly your point about what the mets had been doing with piazza. i fail to see how anything i've posted in this thread has not related directly to the position of jorge posada in the yankee lineup, and the relative wisdom thereof.

MFS62 May 13 2006 02:30 PM

Bret Sabermetric wrote: I don't know if you're just baiting me or not, mm, but my point is a simple one: Posada's gettng old, and he's not the hitter he used to be, and the Yankees are responding to his age with appropriate steps, IMO. That's my pure baseball point, Exhibit A. Would you care to discuss the widosm of the idea that the Yankees' dropping Posada down in the lineup, or are we done here? Talking about Posada is a valid baseball point, but I don't think the comparison to the Piazza situation is valid. I may be wrong here, but I don't think Posada was ever the cleanup hitter around which the Yankees based their offense. I always thought of him as a Moose Skowron-type player, complimentary to a very good lineup but not the key cog in the machine. edit: when I typed this reply, the thread was in the baseball forum, and I tried to bring it back to a topic of baseball. By the time I posted it, the thread ended up here. Oh well....... Later

KC May 13 2006 02:50 PM

Hey, you can be a sqaushed bug too 62 if you like.

MFS62 May 13 2006 03:04 PM

Huh? By whom? What did I do/ say wrong? Later

KC May 13 2006 03:18 PM

I was joking 62.

MFS62 May 13 2006 03:26 PM

KC wrote: I was joking 62. That's what I thought. But when you enter the RLF you can never be too sure. :) Later

Nymr83 May 13 2006 03:33 PM

right back where we belong...

Elster88 May 13 2006 06:40 PM Edited 1 time(s), most recently on May 13 2006 06:42 PM

Sup.

Elster88 May 13 2006 06:41 PM

Bret Sabermetric May 14 2006 12:50 PM

KC wrote: I'm not going answer you, until you answer me. Why do you feel like a little bug compared to us other bugs? Why do you think there are titanic figures compared to you? You haven't been squashed, why do you feel squashed? . About a half-hour after posting this, KC logged me out so I couldn't get back on. I think that's a pretty good explanation right there. After wasting a bit of my time trying to log back on repeatedly, I sent KC an e-mail asking if I had finallly been banned or what, and KC sent me a pissed-off note telling me that he just got sick of me and would allow me to post again tomorrow. (I think the term we usually use for this is "KC gave me a time-out.") I don;t think any other bugs around here get time-outs. Do they? Raise your mandibles if you've gotten a time-out from KC. He also instructed me not to e-mail him personally anymore, and gave me some general circular-file-type email address from which my future e-mails can be safely ignored. So the next time-out I get, I'll just have to assume that's what's happening. Anyway, I didn't mean to be rude and discontinue the discussion, but them's the breaks of holding contrary views. Anyway, back to mm's point: "were the yankees so completely taken aback by the matsui injury that they forgot how to put a lineup together, and simply put bernie ahead of him without stopping to look at hte stats? or are they forgetting to recognize the reality that bernie is not a good hitter now?" This is a long run thing. I think if Bernie continues to bat #5 in the Yankees' lineup consistently, you've got a very good point: he's no longer capable of batting in the heart of the order, and the Yankees would be dumb fux indeed to stick him there. But I doubt you'll see much of that. The contrast with the Mets has to do with catchers, specifically: as I tried to point out a few years ago, very few catchers last long as power-hitters, and when a catcher enters his middle 30s AND shows significant signs of decline, you can safely assume he's not returning to his power hitting ways. I'm addressing a very specific similar situation here. The Mets were foolishly stubborn (and Mets fans foolishly supported this stubbornness) in assessing Piazza as a reliable power hitter around 2003, 2004. I think if they had chosen, as the Yankees seemingly have, to get him out of the middle of the order, and get some better hitters to replace him, they would have done much better. That's what I'm saying. That's what I said at the time. That's all I'm saying. I don't even see where this is arguable: the Yankees are better at recognizing a fading power-hitting catcher than the Mets, and have coped with that problem with less hysteria, less controversy, and far less stubbornness than the Mets did.

Elster88 May 14 2006 04:58 PM

I'm confused. Was Posada ever in the middle of their order in the first place?

Bret Sabermetric May 14 2006 05:31 PM

Sure. The Yankee announcers noted this the other night. I don;t fiollow them closely enough to know how often he batted 4th in 2003 and how often he does so now, but he's definitely dropped in the order.

Yancy Street Gang May 14 2006 08:17 PM

I'm seriously considering giving myself a time out. If I disappear for a few weeks, please don't assume that I'm dead.

Bret Sabermetric May 14 2006 10:06 PM

Please don't, uh, BE dead, okay?

Yancy Street Gang May 15 2006 09:23 AM

Yancy Street Gang wrote: I'm seriously considering giving myself a time out. If I disappear for a few weeks, please don't assume that I'm dead. I've decided that I am going to give myself that time out I mentioned. I'm going to stop reading and posting here for a week or two. Or more. I'll try to check in once a week, maybe on Fridays, to do my Schaefer voting and to do the vote tallying. Other than that, you won't be seeing my rocky orange face around here for a while. And if a few Fridays pass without my dropping by, I'd still rather you didn't assume that I was dead!

metsmarathon May 15 2006 11:27 AM

="Bret Sabermetric"]The contrast with the Mets has to do with catchers, specifically: as I tried to point out a few years ago, very few catchers last long as power-hitters, and when a catcher enters his middle 30s AND shows significant signs of decline, you can safely assume he's not returning to his power hitting ways. I'm addressing a very specific similar situation here. The Mets were foolishly stubborn (and Mets fans foolishly supported this stubbornness) in assessing Piazza as a reliable power hitter around 2003, 2004. I think if they had chosen, as the Yankees seemingly have, to get him out of the middle of the order, and get some better hitters to replace him, they would have done much better. That's what I'm saying. That's what I said at the time. That's all I'm saying. I don't even see where this is arguable: the Yankees are better at recognizing a fading power-hitting catcher than the Mets, and have coped with that problem with less hysteria, less controversy, and far less stubbornness than the Mets did. well, posada was never really in the middle of their batting order. the most he's ever been in the middle of their order was in 2002 and 2003, when his average spot was 5.43 and 5.47. he was primarily a 5/6 hitter in their lineup. worth noting is that in 2003, when he was 31, he did get 88 at bats in the 4-hole, but still batted 6th more than half the time. his progression is as follows: 1999 7.21 2000 5.80 2001 5.58 2002 5.43 2003 5.47 2004 5.76 2005 6.63 2006 6.79 for the yankees to be smart for not having kept an aging slugging catcher in teh middle of their order, wouldn't he have had to've been in the middle of the order to begin with?

Bret Sabermetric May 15 2006 11:55 AM

="metsmarathon"]well, posada was never really in the middle of their batting order. the most he's ever been in the middle of their order was in 2002 and 2003, when his average spot was 5.43 and 5.47. he was primarily a 5/6 hitter in their lineup. worth noting is that in 2003, when he was 31, he did get 88 at bats in the 4-hole, but still batted 6th more than half the time. his progression is as follows: 1999 7.21 2000 5.80 2001 5.58 2002 5.43 2003 5.47 2004 5.76 2005 6.63 2006 6.79 for the yankees to be smart for not having kept an aging slugging catcher in teh middle of their order, wouldn't he have had to've been in the middle of the order to begin with? Quibbling aside, I'll take your stats as supporting my contention. He seems to have been dropped an average of one and a half places in the order without a scandal over the last five years. Not as extreme as Piazza? Sure. But Piazza was as hard to dislodge even one spot in the order as Osama is from the Himalaya Hilton.

Elster88 May 15 2006 12:19 PM

It's not that black and white. His moving down in the order coincided with ARod and Sheffield joining the team, no? You can't just look at place in the order in a vaccuum.

metsmarathon May 15 2006 02:26 PM

well, his point is that the mets chose not to get better players to push piazza down in the order while the yankees did. which raises the question of wethre or not the mets specifically chose not to get better players that piazza so as not to be forced into dropping him in hte order, and if they had gotten better players, wether they then subsequently chose not to slot them ahead of piazza. i'm not at my desk right now, so i dont have hte numbers handy. but in his first year, piazza batted primarily 4th. then mostly 3rd, and gradually moved down a bit. iirc. like i said. i have hte actual numbers back at my desk, where i am not. did the mets fail to get the better players (or just plain not try?), or were the better players on teh roster and the mets just stubborn about dropping piazza down a spot? which is it, or is it both? should mo vaughn or jeromy burnitz or richard hidalgo (god those teams sucked) have batted 3rd or 4th instead of piazza? and really... who cares or notices much when the 5 hitter is dropped to 6 or 7?

Bret Sabermetric May 15 2006 04:21 PM

Yeah, the Mets looked at Piazza and his seven-year contract and said that's our #4 guy, come hell or high water: to move him down in the order makes us look foolish for signing a seven-year deal. So they refused to look at all the signs that he was no longer the hitter he'd been (and publishing those signs here, and making that argument, insulted CPFers, especially Edgy, so badly that it resulted in my being more-or-less permanently ostracized in these parts, my own provocative behavior aside). As mm notes, Elster, you're making my argument for me: the Mets covered their asses, and the Yankees said, "Huh, looks like we need some better hitters in the heart of the order, sooner rather than later. If we're over-paying Posada to bat 6th or 7th, so be it, but he ain't going to cut it at #4 or #5 anymore."

Elster88 May 15 2006 04:26 PM

]As mm notes, Elster, you're making my argument for me: the Mets covered their asses, and the Yankees said, "Huh, looks like we need some better hitters in the heart of the order, sooner rather than later. If we're over-paying Posada to bat 6th or 7th, so be it, but he ain't going to cut it at #4 or #5 anymore." You're missing the point. I'm not arguing that the Mets were smart, dumb, covered there asses or walked around naked. I'm making the point that you can't simply say "Posada was dropped down in the order faster so the Yanx are smarter". Do you still care to argue that one?

metsmarathon May 15 2006 05:10 PM

so, sal, you're trying to say that, since the mets did not wish to look foolish in getting a better player that might force mike piazza's position in the batting order to drop from 4th to 5th, the mets intentionally avoided getting better players, and that many a met fan, particularly many a met fan in these parts, thought that to be the wiser play? because i can hardly think of any circumstance where anyone here would have said "gawrsh, we can't get player X. he's too much better than mikey. and i'm glad the mets haven't tried such foolishness!" i guess what you're saying is that the mets intentionally overpaid for underperformers so as to sucker us all into thinking they'd be successful when they knew they wouldnt be, all so that they could steal away our hard earned duckets, and avoid looking foolish for signing a slugging catcher long term by ensuring that no better hitter was on the roster. me, i just think they were dumb for not building a better team. and piazza's average batting slot: 2005 4.94 2004 3.55 2003 3.64 2002 3.42 2001 3.44 2000 3.96 1999 4.00 in 03, should floyd have batted 3rd, burnitz, 4th, and piazza 5th? in 04, where should cameron have batted? with fewer than 70 games under his belt at season's end, should he have been batting cleanup, or 3rd? the mets should have gotten better hitters which would have allowed them to move piazza down in teh order. that they didnt is, imo, more because of some degree of incompetence and ineffectiveness in team-building, and not some overt CYA policy to shield them from second-guessing on long term contract issuance to catchers. i guess the underlying point that the yankees have gotten better players than the mets did over the course of the last 5 years is still pretty rock solid...

Bret Sabermetric May 15 2006 05:20 PM

No, you've pretty much gotten my point (Where are those batting slot figures from? I've had to rely on memory, guessing, imagination and bullshit.) The Mets looked at Piazza and said "Well, we're all set for a #4 guy. No reason to move off our strategy of having Piazza bat #4 until his contract's over" and so avoided signing better hitters when they became available. Do you really see no connection between their CYA policy here and Piazza's attitude towards change in general? I see some small connection between his intransigence in changing fielding positions to his intransigence in accepting being lower in the order. Zero proof (they cited some stupid court order in keeping me out of their inner-sanctum meetings on the subject) but I feel he communicated a reluctance to do either, which sorta jived with their feelings that they didn't want to monkey with him anyway. A little bit of the Nationals' approach to Soriano this spring, I feel, would have done the team a lot of good but that also requires the team to say in public, "Our Plan A needs some serious adjustment" which they didn't want to do.

Nymr83 May 15 2006 05:28 PM

If you want to criticize the Mets for not knowing (or not admitting i'm sure you'd say) that they didn't have enough hitting entering 2003-2005 then make that case (it's a pretty easy case to make and i agree with it.) But I'm not sure how any ofthat has to do with where Piazza was in the order. I would stand by the statement that given the talent on the team Piazza was almost always batting in the "correct" spot during his tenure here.

Bret Sabermetric May 15 2006 06:10 PM

Nymr83 wrote: Iit's a pretty easy case to make and i agree with it Well, in retrospect,sure. But where were you when I was making that case at the time and getting my head chewed off for making that case? Towards the end of my Met-fan days, I looked at Piazza in early 2004 and noted that it looked like (if healthy, which was far from certain) he would hit 20-odd HRs and 70-odd RBIs, which doesn't cut it for the best hitter on a contending team. I argued that his talents made him a #6 or #7 hitter, and the Mets needed one or two better hitters than Piazza to contend, and this place went completely nuts at the idea. The concept that we needed to pursue other, better hitters aggressively was not viewed kindly at all. But now in retrospect you're telling me that the point is an obvious one? Well, thanks, I guess.

SteveJRogers May 15 2006 06:59 PM

I think the Mets also hurt themselves by not approaching Piazza in 1999/2000 with a first base glove. Keeping him behind the plate when he was approaching an age when catchers tend to start breaking down was just as shortsighted as keeping him as the 4th hitter in 2004-2005

Nymr83 May 15 2006 07:21 PM

Sal- i said we needed another bat in '02, '03, '04, and even last year when people were "content" after the beltran signing.

metsmarathon May 15 2006 08:13 PM

"please don't sign anybody better at hitting than me, steve/jim, i like batting 3rd/4th" is really something you think piazza had said to his gm, ever?

Bret Sabermetric May 15 2006 09:45 PM

Not sure of the exact wording, mm, but I think he gave that impression, yes, and more important, the Wilpons certainly wanted to believe it. They felt over-extended by the 7-year deal and, if he'd continued as a dominating slugger, they certainly would have looked much smarter than they did, with a weak, often injured, linchpin in (and out) of the lineup, with nothing to bolster it on the frequent occasions he was slumping or injured. Like I said, they had no B-plan, at least none that didn't require them to hemorrhage $$$$. I'm not sure of the conversations, I'm not sure if Piazza's ego was more important than Wilpon's bank balance, but I am sure of this: when I suggested that Piazza be traded (for anything the Mets could get for him, which was fairly considerable in 2002), or that he be put further down the lineup later on, I was informed repeatedly on this website that he was a fine hitter, that he was slumping, not declining (at least not nearly as much as I was saying), and there was no reason he couldn't continue to perform in the #4 hole through the end of his contract. IOW, not only was his presence at cleanup almost indisputed, the idea was heretical. It scarcely matters why the idea was so intractable, it merely matters that it was virtually impossible to dislodge (until it was far, far too late to do so.) Say what you will against the Yankees, and there's a lot of disparaging things you could say, they don't stubbornly cling to decisions they made five years ago about what the ballclub needs to change right now. I'm pretty confident, for example, that they won't avoid taking on another OFer's salary just because their Matsui was supposed to play 162 games every year--they are unwilling to finish 3rd in the Eastern Division just because their best OFer got hurt for the season. The Mets', OTOH, may well hold tryout camp all season long for their #3 rotation spot, also vacant for the season. Rationalize how you will, there's two different approaches here, and I don't like the Mets'.

metsmarathon May 16 2006 12:28 AM

i'd like to point out that in the above post, nowhere do you say anything to the effect of "i thought the mets should have added a hitter better than piazza to the lineup, and that notion was heretical here because it would supplant piazza from being the cleanup hitter of the crane pool's heart." that piazza should be traded, you surely argued, and "we" surely had argued back that there was no need, that the team could still be built to function with him in the lineup. a difference in opinion as to value to the team versus value of goods returned. you surely have a good case that "we" could have gotten back more than we stayed with. that piazza should drop in the lineup would have been a silly thing to argue without the mets having a better hitter to cause him to drop. so we're down to this: if the mets had traded piazza, or had acquired better hitters, then there would have been no need for him to have batted 3rd or 4th for the majority of the first half of this decade. huzzah, we've come to consensus.

Bret Sabermetric May 16 2006 05:42 AM

Not so fast, wth this "consensus" stuff. First place, it sounds like you're reducing my argument to a truism. Please don't forget that what I'm saying is that the Mets had a desperate, crying passionate need for better hitters than Piazza and chose to do nothing about that need, with the full support of their fan base includng those on the CPF. But the second place, they also had a need to try and develop better hitters. On the 2003 roster, for example, there was Alomar at 2b, and Phillips/Clark/Vaughn at 1B, and Wiggy at 3b, Reyes at SS, and Floyd in LF, which makes for a fair argument that Piazza should have batted fifth or sixth much of the time, instead of 3rd or 4th. You want to argue that Wiggy or Reyes belonged at the bottom of the order, or that Phillps should have batted behind Piazza? Fine, but you didn't know that at the time: You had a team going nowhere that needed to develop its young players by seeing what they could do in key roles. I would rather they had dismantled the team and acquired a few more younger players, but you work with what you have. The one near-certainty they had at the time was the Piazza was probably in decline, and they chose to ignore that near-certainty. Do you realize that he batted as low as 5th in the starting lineup only three times in his first SEVEN seasons as a Met, despite frequent slumps and two of the slowest feet on the planet? (Haven't checked but I'd guess that he was batting 4th for much of the first part of his final year as well-- you remember last year, don't you? You know, the year, where WWSB insisted on batting Piazza 4th when it appeared he'd never seen a fastball before, and batting David Wright way down in the lineup long after it was apparent that he was the best hitter on the club?) The most crucial day in NY Mets history over the last twenty years is the day in May of 2003 when Piazza went on the DL, thus assuring him he'd be a 5 and 10 guy later that month, making it difficult (i.e., more expensive) to trade him. Not getting value for him prior to the 2003 season has been the ruination of this franchise, and the Mets insisted that they never even considered trading him at that point.

metsmarathon May 16 2006 04:49 PM

alomar, phillips/clark/vaughn, wiggy, reyes, floyd doesn't really sound like a convincing argument for piazza batting 5th or 6th, rather it sounds like a convincing argument that we have no good 3 and 4 hitters, outside maybe cliff floyd. bat him 3rd, and who bats 4th? bat him 4th, and who bats 3rd? the best option on that team was piazza, i'm fairly certain. i think overall we have a fundamental difference in opinion as to the rapidity in which one would begin to put a young, rookie or second-year hitter into the three-hole. i prefer a more cautious, plodding approach that slowly brings a good young hitter up through the lineup, and you do not. that's a fair point of disagreement, and i'm absolutely certain, well mostly, that there is no way to really prove or disprove either notion. (but i'm open to ideas as to how...) in looking at the yankees, i was very much surprised at how many different players they had who had batted in different spots in the lineup over the past six years. it seems that joe torre really likes to juggle the lineup, presumably to go with the hot hand (but that's all presumption, and lacks any analysis on my part to substantiate it). i'm not sure if that makes him extraordinary in that regard, or if other managers do it, and i just don't notice. the mets, or mostly just art howe, sure seemed to favor stagnant lineups, and when bobby vee juggled, he was frequently derided for doing so. so maybe the mets caved to media/fan pressure as to the notion of the superior nature of stable lineups. i really have no idea. last year, i too would have started DW low in the order, but likely would have moved him north sooner and more rapidly. i think that by 2003, i had begun to turn towards the notion that the mets would have been well-served to trade piazza for some younger peices, tho i lack archives for checking. i think calling it the ruination of the franchise, and the seminal reason behind the poor records of 03 and 04 is a bit much, imo. i also think that you're overstating the "full support" angle, both from the fan base and the CPF, on the mets inaction towards their desperate need for better hitters. i don't believe they received anything close to "full support" for their player acquisitions of the time. i hardly thing the fan base was particularly thrilled with their not getting vlad, f'rinstance. i'm certain there were other players we could have/should have gotten that we didnt, and that made met fans sour.

Bret Sabermetric May 16 2006 05:25 PM

By "ruination of the franchise" I don't mean that Piazza's presence in itself caused the disaster, but rather that by keeping him in so prominent a place, the Mets became a win-now (and win-with this budget) team that persistently acquired more aging win-now type players, dealt its younger players like they were worthless turds, and were forced to rely on a power base that wasn't there. I think they didn't go for Vlad because they thought "We've already got pretty good power," which they didn't, It's not so much that Piazza was a problem, it's that he wasn't the solution they thought he was, and he gave a lot of signs of not being that solution. Now either the team was pretty dumb for refusing to see those signs, or it was pretty cynically manipulative of its loyal fan base. I suspect both at this point. After the Vaughan and Alomar disasters, they just stuck their heads in the ground and refused to see that they were well beyond quick fixes. This was a team crying out to be dismantled, and they insisted that they could contend, year after year. Piazza's prominence is a convenient symbol of that failed policy, but even putting aside the symbolism, their clinging to him for support he could no longer give just shows mismanagement (or misunderstanding of baseball.)