a700hitter

#495 for Ortiz. He is clearly the problem with this team!

Bradley guns him out at the plate for an inning ending double play! If Hanley was out there, it would have cleared the bases.

They weren't even good enough to keep Ben in the game.

True, but would no have changed the decision, makes it even worse. It really would have forced Collins hand. He clearly wanted to leave Syndegard in. Mets leadoff batter Lagares has been horrible. Mets fans knew it was a bad move. They live in fear of their bullpen.

I am getting a little sick of all this talk from management about how much has been asked of Hanley Ramirez. Seriously? He is getting $88 million that no other team would give him. Is it asking too much of him not to embarrass himself and his team on a nightly basis in LF. Maybe he should have worked at it just a little. Now, they have to beg him to try to play first base? They are talking to him about it? They are suggesting certain fielding drills that will not involve his shoulder? Seriously? They need to ship his ass out of town. Period.

Miley is a useful 4 or 5. If he is our #3 next season; we will not have a good staff. Kelly pitching well complicates the picture for 2016. Is this just a blip where he performs wel when the team is playing with no pressure or has he turned a corner? I wouldn't want to rely on him for anything other than being a #4 or 5 guy. If Miley and Kelly are 4 and 5, that means that Porcello needs to rebound to be a #3. That leaves little room for the kids: ER, Owens and Johnson as this staff needs to add 2 top of the rotation pitchers. I think the kids will have to remain in the minors as depth if Porcello continues to pitch like 2015 and if Kelly turns back into a pumpkin. Where does all of this leave part time pitcher Buchholz? Who know? Also, if Porcello starts stinking up the mound again, how long do they stick with him? $82 million is a big sunk cost.

The weakness of the Mets is their bullpen. Their strength is their hugely talented corps of young starters. The formula for beating the Mets is to get their starter out of the game. Lovullo had the chance to chase him from the game and he didn't. Also, the Mets didn't have a big time hitter on deck. Dumb move. It is rare when Collins wins a chess move.

Good company.

They played very well this weekend. Hopefully, they can continue the good play against the skanks.

Maybe so. That is being alleged, and that would be a matter of local law enforcement. It was likely the guide's (professional hunter's) fault if it was illegal. The tourist hunter relies on the PH's knowledge. You don't get to go out and hunt without one. If it was illegal, he should get his day in court and not be subjected to mob feeding frenzy. In those African countries, hunting is a big part of their tourist economy. It is culturally acceptable and encouraged and they have rules to conserve their wildlife. Those countries have huge problems with local poachers, who by the way can be shot on site under the laws in some of those countries. Edit: I know some hunters. Even protected animals can be hunted legally in Africa. The fees are very high to hunt some of the protected game such as leopards, elephants etc., but they can be hunted legally. An elephant hunt can carry a fee over $20,000 much more if you want the ivory. Poachers are the big problem, not the hunters.

Dueling managerial idiots today. LOL!! First off, Colins leaves his big power hitting right handed hitter on the bench against our soft tossing lefty. Next, in the sixth inning, Collins lets Syndegard go after Ortiz who is our only power threat in the lineup. This is a minor bobble, but it is David Ortiz, and he was locked in after the first check swing. Minor mistake, but Syndegard has had a propensity to get hurt with the HR ball lately. That has been his one weak spot. Not to be outdone, our interim idiot has an open base with 2 outs and the # 8 hitter up. Collins in a rare lucid moment puts a PH in the on deck circle. Lovullo bites and pitches to the # 8 hitter. If Lovullo had 2 working brain cells, he could have forced the big righty out of the game by walking the 8 hitter and forcing the Mets into using their bad pen to start the 7th inning. Instead they get Syndegard to start the 7th and he gets 2 big outs. But for the bad play by Uribe, he gets out of the 7th inning without a run. Stupidity on display by the managers. Collins ups the idiot ante by bringing in one of his bullpen pigs to pitch to Betts who took him deep yesterday, when he could have gone to his 8th inning guy for 4 outs. Granted that he made a good pitch and Betts got a bloop triple, it was still a bad move. As the mets, brutally honest announcers said, "here's Clippard, maybe a batter too late."

I think his OBP is fine when coupled with his speed to bat lead off. I think XB should be in the 2 hole when Pedroia comes back. I would drop Sandoval to #6 after Hanley when he is back in the lineup.

Reverse lock theory in action.

He definitely looks like a different pitcher than he was before his demotion.

The career standards of this group were much more favorable than their 2014 performance. IMO the 2014 standard is the better indicator of what they would do in 2015 -- a collective 4.53 ERA.

This is an excellent point. Most of societal "evolvement" is borne from people and movements that were considered initially to wrong, immoral etc. before those movements took hold in popular culture. If popular culture seeks to expel from society different ideas and to demonize and financially ruin those who hold those ideas, it will stop evolving and it will cease to be tolerant. A case of society going overboard is the case of the dentist who hunted the lion. I am not a hunter. I am an animal lover, but the reaction and hatred directed toward this guy in social media and the destruction of his property and demonizing him a frightening example of mob mentality. Hunting is not an illegal activity and not a big societal issue or problem yet it generated a frightful reaction.

What you posted still has the effect of unjustly painting a group of people with the same brush statistics notwithstanding. Sometimes even you can be guilty of being offensive. The under 50 crowd is not immune. LOL!

Well, if we wanted to start throwing around stereotypes that have degrees of anecdotal support, things could get very ugly very fast.

No, but I would debate the biased opinion that everyone over 50 had been opposed to those things. That is an offensive generalization.

Can we get political or is that reserved for you?

If Buch at $13 million is a good value, it stands to reason that he would be a valuable trade chip too. I am sick of his part time job status. Get him healthy and get rid of him immediately. Don't wait to let him build trade value, because he will get another 2-4 month tweak before you pull the trigger on a trade.

Taking into account that studies have shown that communication is 80% nonverbal, ie. not the words, a strong case can be made that the internet has taken communication backward.

Which is why Victorino was such a valuable part of the 2013 team. Victorino was the best Outfielder on the 2013 squad and those skills were huge in Fenway's RF.

If you want to give him a pass for unexpected under performance, that starts to ring hollow in light of such a thorough record of failure. The fact that everything he touches turns to garbage starts to reflect on him after a while. Also, I firmly believe that under performance was not his biggest problem. The team was very poorly constructed. If the staff had performed up to career standards, they still would have been a bad, noncompetitive staff. Where I really disagree with you is the pass you give Ben as he sat back in 2012, 2014 and 2015 as his moves and experiments were obviously crashing and burning. He had a complete inability to pivot when his moves were going bad. He always seemed to behind the curve. He stubbornly held onto his belief that Bard could be a starter when the guy's career was disintegrating before our eyes. He let the 2014 team flounder as the lineup was in desperate need of help. He kept too many rookies in the lineup for too long as they were imploding. What happened to Bradley in 2014 went beyond letting him get by some rookie bumps in the road. It got to the point where he was useless to the team and his confidence was getting shattered. Even Remy commented that Bradley should have been sent to AAA long before he was. Ben had a pattern of holding onto things for too long and reacting only after it was too late. Bradley's career was significantly derailed by Ben's stubbornness in 2014. The Hanley experiment was just the latest in Ben stubbornly clinging to failure. Even as his replacement was being courted, Ben was still stubbornly stating that Hanley would not be moved fro the OF. While the GM can't control the performance of the players, his job doesn't end after building the opening day roster. He is the General Manager. Ben couldn't manage as things went wrong until the flaws became team fatalities. That was his biggest shortcoming. His inaction went well beyond wise patience to foolish stubbornness.

After watching the Mets stud pitching this weekend, people will be all convinced that the Mets have the model for building excellent pitching within the organization. Please don't go there. The Mers have been tying to build this staff for almost 50 years since rheb1960's when they had Seaver, Koosman, Gentry and Ryan. They came close in the mis 80'a with Gooden, Darling, and Sid Fernandez. Generation K in the 90'a fizzled. This is a once in a lifetime staff. Add a little more hitting and they will be a consistent winner