Tagged: Billy Wagner
Beerless Forecasts
Somebody Signed Strasburg On Saturday
Absolutely love this. Over the weekend, when things looked bleakest for Your Washington Nationals, a respected baseball writer with a fantasy league team revealed he filled a vacant roster spot with Stephen Strasburg. The punch-line is: it’s not a keeper league…What I don’t get: ownership of Billy Wagner at 0.6% in ESPN leagues and 6% in CBS leagues. He was in uniform at CitiField tonight and unless his arm falls off after a bullpen session tomorrow, he’ll be activated by Friday. How many contenders could use him, at the comparatively low price the Mets would ask – and wouldn’t teams like the Cubs, Marlins, Phillies, and maybe even Rays, contemplate using him in at least some save situations?…Gaby Sanchez came out of the New Orleans game early tonight and headed to join Florida. It seems implausible that he isn’t there to replace either Nick Johnson at first, or go to third and let Jorge Cantu move back to first – but the Marlins have already done bizarre things this year, like the last time Sanchez came up and didn’t play, and the fact that they’ve left Cameron Maybin in the Coast League even as he dominated it, just to make sure he wouldn’t become a “Super Two” arbitration guy…And the Brewers did let Mat Gamel come up and largely rot on the bench, setting him back a season’s development…Bizarre statistic that might not even qualify as such, maybe it’s just a coincidence: The Mets were 7-4 with ex-Rockie Cory Sullivan starting in left. They have now put him into a platoon with Angel Pagan in centerfield and when Sullivan starts there, the Mets are 1-3…While some agonize over the lack of a no-brainer Rookie Of The Year among N.L. hitters, there’s nothing wrong with just giving the trophy to Tommy Hanson…Atlanta also might earn the reverse equivalent of the Comeback Player Award: Kelly Johnson went from one of the majors’ premiere speed-and-power second basemen, to the victim of lingering injury, to Martin Prado’s backup, to going hitless today in a spot start while all around him were pounding Max Scherzer…Some in the Mets’ front office say they were told, but do not believe, that their first-round draft choice Steven Matz pronounces his last name “Metz.” Matz of the Mets is close enough, and Matt Helm, the seventh-rounder signed by Arizona, had a fictional counterpart in a ludicrous Dean Martin James Bond ripoff movie in the ’60s…Lastly, most politically incorrect joke in New York: they were really worried about David Wright after he got beaned Saturday because he couldn’t answer the traditional simple questions during the neurological work-up at the hospital. Then it turned out the doctors weren’t that baseball-savvy and had asked him to name the Mets’ starting shortstop, centerfielder, and first baseman.
F-Rod?
Lost in the adventures of Luis Castillo at Yankee Stadium last Friday was the reality that even if Castillo had made a game-ending catch, Francisco Rodriguez would have begun tonight’s Mets game in Baltimore having recorded consecutive saves in which he had allowed two base runners and just escaped with his life.