Please take a moment and put our man Junoir Blaber and his family in your thoughts. He lost his Dad yesterday. But he’d want us all to smile, so on with Replacement Matt’s piece.
DUMBO, NY – Well, that’s certainly a swift turn of events since my last entry to this scribe. The Mets brass apparently got the memos and have improved the squad. Which of course, has led to every game being agita-inducing. Be careful what you wish for I suppose. I forgot how a pennant race can wreak havoc on your intestines. With seemingly nothing to complain about, I’m going to dig deep and see what I can come up with.
Pitch counts and innings limits… We’ve all heard ad naseum how they’ve ruined the game – which is true. However, innings limits are really the problem. I speak of this as – of course – the Metsies phenom rotation are all knocking on inning limits’ door. All are looking to avoid the dreaded Stephen Strasurg shutdown that led drunken fans to serenading him with, “Don’t throw too many pitches Stephen, you don’t want to hurt your arm,” in a dreadful Wantagh wail. But I digress…
Innings limits are a totally flawed metric to judge on when to shut down a player. Why is one inning a determining factor? One inning could be seven pitches 1-2-3 or it could be a 38 pitch pulse pounding affair. Shouldn’t this be examined further? Surely some geek is working on a new metric as we speak.
Changing gears, I understand that Wilmer Flores has established folk hero status with his crying during the game episode and clutch hits. But how does that suddenly make him a shortstop? We all know there are more than five tools for a player: a good eye has been established by Tall Matt as the sixth tool. What are the others? I’d say being able to select a nice jammy bottle of zin is certainly one of them.
Different Matt, tomorrow.
