Friday, May 31, 2013

After Pitching In WBC At 16, Brazil's Daniel Missaki Signs With Mariners | BaseballAmerica.com

I was wondering what happened to this kid. You figure if he was Dominican or Venezuelan he would have been signed on the day of his 16th birthday. Nice to read the Mariners are giving him a shot.

PUT A BROOM IN THAT BOOK | Metstradamus

Metstradamus has to be the best writer among the Mets bloggers, especially this blurb from today's post. (Extra points for the "8 Mile" reference too.)
"Now I know how the Yankee fans will react and how they already are reacting. After they spew out about 27 titles, they will try to shame us, Met fans, into feeling like garbage because "oh, you're celebrating meaningless regular season games in a season where you're going nowhere. This is like saying "Yeah, well we're on this beautiful cruise ship while you're in that piddly little row boat", meanwhile the cruise ship they're on is owned by Carnival and its sinking to the bottom. This is what Yankee fans like to do: make other people feel like imbeciles for merely being happy. They want us to golf clap and slink away while still slurping the 27 titles. And that's why we're happy. Because we know that trick is coming ... and it's silly and we will ignore it. And the only thing left for Yankee fans to do is bring up shit that we already know about. Bernie Madoff, Bobby Bonilla ... all of it. Sweeping the Yankees gives Met fans that feeling of Eminem in the final battle against Papa Doc. We know what's coming. But what they don't know is that we know what Papa Doc's real name is ..."

Tuesday, May 28, 2013

In case you forgot, David Wright = Captain America

Mets' David Wright hits clutch home run off Phil Hughes to bring team back - Daily News

Brett Gardner’s spectacular catch was proof this would be another night when the Yankees and Mets would go their separate ways.

And then Captain America intervened.

Wednesday, May 8, 2013

Matt Harvey’s Nearly Perfect Outing | FanGraphs Baseball

The GIF images in this Fangraphs post are great, especially the ones where multiple pitches are overlaid onto the same GIF, like this one showing the difference between his fastball and slider:

Harvey_ffsl

I'm amazed at how his release point on both pitches is in exactly the same spot. The image gives the appearance of the ball multiplying into two baseballs on its way to the plate.

Maybe It’s Time We Stop Underrating Pitchers From Asian Countries | FanGraphs Baseball

Very interesting post at Fangraphs about the 2013 performance of the nine MLB pitchers from Asian countries:
"All told, the 2013 active pitchers from Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea have put up the near equivalent of one Justin Verlander season. Darvish is obviously driving the numbers up with his ridiculous start to the season, but Iwakuma, Kuroda, and Ryu have also been excellent in their own right, while Chen is succeeding by keeping the ball in the ballpark, at least for now."

Friday, May 3, 2013

Mets’ Ynoa and Lara Add to Dominican Pitching Pipeline | FanGraphs Baseball

Fangraphs with a great review of two Mets pitching prospects further down the pipeline, Gabriel Ynoa and Rainy Lara. (Yes, his name actually is Rainy. No word yet if he has a brother named Sunny.)