Daily Archives: May 11, 2006
The Mets lost to the Phillies by a score of 2 to 0 in rain-shortened game in Philadelphia tonight…
For a full recap, read the Associated Press…
…a few thoughts…
…well, that stinks…
…i mean, rules are rules, and no team wants to sit around in the rain on get-away day, but losing these type of rain-shortened games just never seemed right to me, even when i was in little league…
…so, give the game ball to Aaron Roward, who made a sensational catch with the bases loaded in the top of the first inning…had that ball dropped, the mets win this game…however, rowand tracked the pop-up like Mark Duper receiving an over-the-shoulder pass from Dan Marino, and then broke his face by crashing into the wall…i mean, hat’s off, man…well done…
…also, a game ball goes to David Bell, whose diving grab to rob Steve Trachsel of a base hit in the top of the fourth, stopped the tying run from scoring, also keeping the game in favor of the Phillies…and on a night with pouring rain, and a clock clearly ticking on opportunity, that was all it took…
…ball game over after five innings, and now it’s off to milwaukee…
The Mets batting for tonight is…
1. Jose Reyes
2. Cliff Floyd
3. Carlos Beltran
4. Carlos Delgado
5. David Wright
6. Xavier Nady
7. Kaz Matsui
8. Ramon Castro
9. Steve Trachsel
…very, very interesting…
The Game…
The Mets (22–11) take on the Phillies (18–15) in the rubber game of a three game set against in Philadelphia starting at 7:00 pm EDT…
The Pitchers…
RHP Steve Trachsel (2–2, 4.96 ERA) starts for the Mets … Left-handed batters are hitting .327 in 49 at-bats against Trachsel this season … the Mets are 4–2 when Trachsel has pitched … He is 3–for-11 at the plate … Bobby Abreu is batting .211 in 57 at-bats against Trachsel …
RHP Gavin Floyd (3–2, 6.16 ERA) starts for the Phillies … Floyd has allowed just four runs over his last 12.2 innings pitched … No Mets hitter has more than six at-bats against Floyd …
The Notes…
The Mets pitching staff leads the majors with 282 strikeouts…
Carlos Beltran and Kaz Matsui each have a six-game hitting streak…
Carlos Delgado has eight RBI in his last eight games…
The Mets have hit a home run in 14 straight games…the club record is 21…
David Wright is batting .423 over his last six games…
The Bleachers…
To chat during the game, go to MetsBlog’s Bleachers … or, to access the chat room through IRC, go to server name irc.echo34.com and channel #metsblog…
…enjoy…
Our buddy C Dubbs e-mailed me to put forth the following stats…
In 26 at-bats as a right-handed hitter, Reyes is batting .346 with a .393 OBP…
In 120 at-bats as a left-handed hitter, he’s batting .250 with a .318 OBP…
As such, he feels that Jose Reyes should only be allowed to bat right-handed…
The thing is, Chris, we don’t know how he’d hit batting as a righty against a right-handed pitcher…
We’ve never see it, and there are no stats to support it…
When batting as a righty, it’s only against a left-handed pitcher – so, maybe he just hits lefties well, and not necessarily because he is batting as a righty. I doubt this is the case, but who knows…
I understand what you are saying, and I agree with you from a ‘fundamentals’ point of view in that he is far more sound when swinging the bat as a righty, regardless of results. I mean, he looks like a totally different hitter – he steps into the pitch, he wags his bat less, his hands stay more level and he loses the hitch…
I am not one to typically trust authority, but my guess is that the Mets are aware of this disparity and if they thought Reyes would benefit from batting only one way, they’d make him bat that way…
For those who may be interested in learning about the Knuckleball, check out Jeff’s column at The Baseball Report…
…interesting piece…it’s pretty lengthy, for those of you with a boss lurking over your computer…but it’s a good read if you have time…
…my cousin, joey, throws a pretty mean knuckleball for someone who has never played organized baseball…it’s the only aspect of playing the game that he has ever really been interested in…he’s 24–years-old, and my hope is that if he dedicates himself to it, he can crack the majors in 10 years as a one-dimensional pitcher, with no major experience…that would be a helluva story, j.d.a., so get to practicing…
At his blog in the Daily News, Adam Rubin answers the following question from his eMailbag…
“Does anybody in New York think Billy Wagner spends way too much time publicly worrying about how everyone else perceives him?”…
Rubin disagrees with the insinuation, but mentions that Wagner has subtly suggested to reporters that he’s being overused…
…hmmm…let’s see…
Last season, on May 11, Wagner pitched to roughly 50 batters in 14.1 innings spanning 13 games. At that point he had eight saves and a 0.63 ERA for the Phillies…
This season for the Mets, on May 11, Wagner has pitched to 73 batters in 17 innings spanning 15 games and has seven saves and a 2.12 ERA…
…he was worked more, he’s right…i don’t know what constitutes being over worked, though, as it’s all feel and no stat…however, if it’s blowing three saves and a win while allowing more runners to reach base than a year ago, than, yes, he’s overworked i suppose…
Phillies RHP Cory Lidle, who allowed eight runs in two innings to the Mets last night, as quoted by New York Times…
“For a little bit, I thought maybe they were on to my pitches, maybe seeing something I was doing with my glove. I couldn’t figure out why they were on everything.”…
…i think what i enjoy seeing most in the boxscore from last night’s win is that the team scored 13 runs, yet they hit only one home run, which came from Jose Reyes of all people…
In New York Magazine’s recent list of the Top 200 most Influential New Yorkers, Mets RHP Pedro 
Martinez checks in ahead of Yankees owner George Steinbrenner…
Martinez’s agent, Fernando Cuza, as quoted by the New Yorker…
“If you’re a 17-year-old prospect sitting in your living room with a scout from the Mets and a scout from the Kansas City Royals, who do you think you’re going to want to go with?”…
…hat tip to hotfoot for the link…
Jeff Angus is the author of Management by Baseball, which has been endorsed by Mets pitching 
coach Rick Peterson, Stephen Manes of Forbes Magazine, and the renowned economist Tom Peters…
Angus was kind enough to talk with me about his book, which is described as being the Official Rules for Winning Management in Any Field, using baseball as it’s model…
To purchase this book, go to Jeff’s outstanding blog, or Amazon.com…
…to read a transcript of this conversation, click here…
…to listen to this 20 minute interview, click the play button below…
This and all future Conversations at MetsBlog are available as a podcast, which you can subscribe to by either entering the following feed, 
, into your download software, such as iTunes or Yahoo! Music, or by simply searching MetsBlog on iTunes…
…you may also download an mp3 of this interview by using the link below
Jeff Angus is the author of Management by Baseball, which has been endorsed by Mets pitching coach Rick Peterson, Stephen Manes of Forbes Magazine, and economist Tom Peters…
Angus was kind enough to talk with me about his book, which is described as being the Official Rules for Winning Management in Any Field, using baseball as it’s model…
To purchase this book, go to Jeff’s outanding blog, or Amazon.com…
Matthew Cerrone, of MetsBlog.com…
First off, why don’t you give my audience a sense of what the book is about, because I am not sure I will do as good of a job as you will…
Jeff Angus, author of Baseball by Management…
The tagline that I tell people…almost everything you need to know about management you can learn from baseball. So unlike, for example, Moneyball, which proposes to teach baseball how to manage its resources by using Wall Street as a model. This book uses baseball as the model designer and test mechanism and description for how to do management for every other kind of field whether it’s Wall Street, small business, manufacturing, agriculture, government, academia or non-profit…
Matthew Cerrone, of MetsBlog.com…
Of all the guys in the league right now, not historically, but from today’s game, who do you feel has the best skillset to succeed in the business world, say, for example, as the head of General Electric…
Jeff Angus, author of Baseball by Management…
I’m gonna say something that’s gonna make 75 percent of MBAs shoot tomato sauce out of their ears: the 20th percentile of baseball field managers is a more skilled, diverse and capable manager than the 80th percentile corporate executive. And when I say this, what I’m saying is Don Zimmer, who I consider the all-time Mr. Potato Head of managers…Don Zimmer is a more capable manager than 75 percent of corporate executives. It’s not so much because Don Zimmer is significantly smarter than they are. It goes back to a point you made earlier about the adaptability, the knowledge, the implicit understanding that change is universal…Change is the immutable law of baseball and baseball people know it. Change is the immutable law of business, but most business people don’t react as though that were the case.
My personal picks would be Mike Scioscia…Madden in Tampa Bay has the exact set of aptitudes I would look for in a corporate president. I have no doubt that Tony LaRussa would be immensely successful. I believe Dusty Baker markedly successful. Bruce Bochy in San Diego is quietly competent – there’s a real corporate guy. I mean, if you took Bruce Bochy out of the Padres organization, and you put him in GE, the other people at GE wouldn’t recognize that he hadn’t been promoted from within…
Matthew Cerrone, of MetsBlog.com…
Admittedly, I’ve been unable to peddle through the entire book. However, I quickly turned to and read the chapter about adjusting to change, because I’ve always been of the mindset that baseball, like life, is about adjusting to all sorts of situations, some foreseeable, and some not. Tell me a little about the successful baseball managers who have this ability to adjust to new situations down pat…
Jeff Angus, author of Baseball by Management…
It’s pretty much a given in baseball field managers, and general managers, as well, that they have to cope with change…
Years ago, the man who invented Basbe Ruth, Ed Barrow, who also happened to be the first general manager as think of the general manager role, realized that given…and he was the manager of the late-teens Boston Red Sox…and he had an abundance of good pitching, including Babe Ruth…and he lost his outfielders. He decided that Ruth had been a wonderful hitter as a pitcher and he started figuring out ways to get Ruth in the lineup. He did an experiment, it worked out and he made Ruth an outfielder, traded him to the Yankees…and he remade the game, using Ruthian home run power, not just from Ruth, but from other hitters, as well. Managers that weren’t able to make that change from dead-ball-era baseball to Ruth-slugging-era baseball were out of baseball for good very quickly. So, it was a wonderful object lesson…
Matthew Cerrone, of MetsBlog.com…
When Willie Randolph came over to the Mets, there was a debate about whether it is best to hire a minor league manager with no experience on the bench at the major-league level, versus hiring a bench coach, like Willie, with no experience being the head-guy at the minor-league level. What do you make of that debate…
Jeff Angus, author of Baseball by Management…
I think it’s what the person brings and how capable that man or woman is…of knowing what they don’t know, recognizing what they don’t know and committing to learn, or delegating the thing that they don’t know…
I’ll give you two other bench coach examples. One is a total abject failure, and the other is one I think is gonna turn out to be pretty good, Joe Madden, who has been every kind of coach and scout, and who was Mike Scioscia’s bench coach for the Angels’s successful years, who is know managing the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. And, because he’s the kind of the person he is, he’s omnivorous about knowledge and craft, and everything he touches he wants to learn to do really well and he respects other people who do things really well, and he’s pretty assertive. And he’s lucky that he’s with a really, really bad team. He had as easier transition than Randolph did, because that team is so bad that if they become mediocre he’s gonna look like a star.
A few years ago, the Seattle Mariners chose an exact parallel, Bob Melvin, an old back-up catcher who had been the bench coach in Arizona. He had a very experienced team that had been doing very well, and he was too passive and in so far as when he cobbled together a coaching staff to compliment him he, or the front office, did not do a good job. He was too nice of a guy. He waited to learn. He waited. He didn’t push on things. He kind of hoped they’d work out. And he was just getting ‘on the job’ training.
And, I think Randolph is in between those two models. I think Randolph may not be the best in-game manager. But, in-game management, in terms of the spectrum of things that a field manager does…it’s probably a fifth or a third of a manager’s job in today’s game, depending on the franchise. However, it’s probably 80 percent of what’s obvious, or above the surface. So the mistakes they make…and, of course, the mistakes a manager makes are always more obvious than the things he or she does that don’t turn out to be wrong. The successful ones tend to disappear because we take those for granted.
To get back to your original point. Yes, Randolph was at a disadvantage. If he was the right guy, then he was sitting shadowing his Torre, shadowing those managers with his own ‘what would I do here.’…
Matthew Cerrone, of MetsBlog.com…
At what point is a manager only as good as his talent, because you hear that expression often…
Jeff Angus, author of Baseball by Management…
Angus’s first law is that in any job category, no matter how you cut it, 85 percent of people are crap or mediocrity, 10 percent are utilitarian…and five percent are excellent. So, a manager, who is in the 85th percentile is not going to be able to transcend the limits of his or her talent, whether it’s baseball or anything else. The example I use in the book is Davey Lopes. He got one shot at managing and what he got was the Milwaukee Brewers, who were designed to intentionally to lose games, basically. And Lopes came in and his one shot as a manager, his star player was John Jaha.
The point you make is very clear. If you have crappy talent there is a limit to what you can achieve, but you can always make crappy talent better…
