XIGT: 2/27, NYM @ WAS

[Edgy MD]

Despite the Mets fielding the home squad, they offer a lineup far less representative than the Marlins' of an opening-day peek, with Francisco Álvarez at catcher as very much the main attraction. You do, however, get your first looks at Adrian Houser.

#	Player	Pos.	#	Player	Pos.
1	Luis Arraez (L)	2b	1	Tyrone Taylor (R)	cf
2	Jon Berti (R)	3b	2	Francisco Alvarez (R)	c
3	Jazz Chisholm Jr. (L)	cf	3	Ji Man Choi (L)	1b
4	Avisaíl García (R)	rf	4	Mark Vientos (R)	3b
5	Nick Gordon (L)	lf	5	Luke Voit (R)	dh
6	Trey Mancini (R)	1b	6	Ben Gamel (L)	lf
7	Tristan Gray (L)	ss	7	Jose Iglesias (R)	ss
8	Jonah Bride (R)	dh	8	Rylan Bannon (R)	2b
9	Nick Fortes (R)	c	9	Alex Ramírez (R)	rf
	A.J. Puk (L)	sp		Adrian Houser (R)	sp

[MFS62]

That looks like the travelling team for a split squad game.
Later

[Edgy MD]

Murphy so far sounds like a guest interview subject, not really a TV presentation voice as yet.

Adrian Houser keeping the guests off the board through two, consistently keeping the ball on the ground. One torrid grounder skipped off of Iglesias' glove for a hit.

[MFS62]

Tristan Gray with a torrid (437' to center) homer off Jorge Lopez and it's now 1-0 Fish.
At least he didn't let him pull it.
Later

[Edgy MD]

"If you listen to the scoreboard, and do what it's asking you to do, you're going to get the best results over the course of a season." — Daniel Murphy

[MFS62]

A single by Ty (Cobb) Taylor evens up the score.

Later

[Edgy MD]

McNeil and Nimmo still haven't broken the seal on their spring.

[Benjamin Grimm]

Mendy (can we call him that?) says he doesn't expect McNeil to appear in a game until early March.

[Edgy MD]

Rylan Bannon looks pretty short but strong.

Alex Ramirez looks pretty tall. Taller than the 6'3" he's listed at.

[Edgy MD]

Nathan Lavender in complete command for his second straight appearance, and is in serious danger of entering the opening day picture.

[Edgy MD]

G-Man Choi has quick hands through the zone.

[Benjamin Grimm]

My guess is they'll wait for some veteran reliever to fail miserably and get released, and then they'll promote Lavendar. That seems to be the way these things generally go.

[Lefty Specialist]

Ji-Man appears to be Korean for 'Vogelbach'. But when he hits 'em, they stay hit.

Murphy isn't as bad as I feared. But he's got a lot of work to do to be a smooth broadcast presence.

[Edgy MD]

Nice to see Acuña and Gilbert in on a rally together.

[batmagadanleadoff]

Murphy isn't as bad as I feared. But he's got a lot of work to do to be a smooth broadcast presence.

No problem. It's a difficult gig at the beginning and I can name many broadcasters who I thought were awful initially, but improved vastly with more experience.


I can see Murphy hanging around and then filling in the eventually vacated Keith Hernandez seat. Then after announcing Mets game for a decade or so, he'll get the call to have his Mets number retired. Then we'll hear the gripes and lunatic rantings from the same knuckleheads who think that Gary Carter deserves to have his Mets number retired, complaining about Murph's number retirement as if Carter's Mets career was 10 times better than Murph's even though it's obviously the other way around. When the Mets get around to retiring Carter's number, it'll mostly be for what he did as an Expo, even though everyone's in total denial about that.

You know what? Who the fuck knows? Willie Mays's Mets number wasn't retired for solely what Mays did as a Met. So who the fuck knows? You know what? I don't know anymore. It's Steve Cohen's team and he can do whatever the hell he wants to do and retire anybody's number. Even Ariel Jurado's. There are no rules. It's a free for all and a rule-free zone.

[Edgy MD]

It's a thorough 7-1 thwacking by the back end of the Mets roster.

[MFS62]

Spring Training is when you work on things.
They showed they've got the GIDP thing down pat - three today.

Later

[batmagadanleadoff]

Murphy isn't as bad as I feared. But he's got a lot of work to do to be a smooth broadcast presence.

No problem. It's a difficult gig at the beginning and I can name many broadcasters who I thought were awful initially, but improved vastly with more experience.

Just to clarify that portion of my post quoted above (if anybody cares), I'm not saying that I think Murphy is presently an awful announcer. I have no idea. I haven't watched a single pitch of Mets ST baseball yet this year and haven't heard a single word of Murph's announcing so far. I was generalizing.