Lincoln Mitchell

Blog

This page contains links to recent blogs by Lincoln Mitchell

Tagged with: New York Mets

Will the Mets Finally Drop the Lovable Loser Narrative? →

The narrative that the Mets are lovable losers has probably been seen by people outside New York as one of those strange New York things like saying "on line" instead of "in line," walking fast or knowing a good bagel from a bad one. Outside of New York, the Mets are not compared to the Yankees all the time, but are just another baseball team. Today, they are not just another team, but one of the very best. Perhaps Mets fans will grow to prefer that storyline and recognize that compared to many teams they've had it pretty good.

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The Next Baseball Commissioner's Biggest Challenges →

The more difficult issues facing the new commissioner will be to ensure that baseball continues to generate the profits it has produced in recent years in an environment where the process of turning content into revenue is changing and becoming more difficult. Rising attendance throughout most of the Selig years has been a source of revenue for MLB and the teams themselves. That is unlikely to change in the near future, but the other major sources of revenue, notably cable television contracts are different.

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Don Zimmer and Baseball Lifers →

Baseball lost a bit of its history last week when Don Zimmer died. Zimmer was the starting 2nd baseman the day the Dodgers won their only championship in Brooklyn. Twenty-three years later he spent Rosh Hashanah managing the Boston Red Sox to their most famous defeat ever as Bucky Dent's three run home run dashed the Red Sox pennant chances. He was the starting third baseman in the first game the New York Mets ever played; and 27 years after that spent Yom Kippur managing the Chicago Cubs as they got eliminated from the NLCS on a clutch single by Will Clark. Zimmer, however, wasn't Jewish, so probably was not aware of the connection between important defeats and Jewish holidays in his life.

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Stories the Mets Tell Themselves →

Despite their four pennants and two World Series victories, the Mets have embraced the lovable loser narrative. This is a difficult thing to define; and clearly Mets fans to prefer their team to win, but the existence of this narrative, even though its relationship to reality is more tenuous, gives the Mets a more forgiving environment than some teams. This dynamic is, of course, exacerbated, by the more successful, wealthier and, according to most Mets fans, arrogant, team that plays in the Bronx. The Yankees are a great foil for the Mets. The Mets can explain away failure by saying they can never compete with the more wealthy and ruthless Yankees, but can also cultivate a following as New York's kindler and gentler team.

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What Does Carlos Beltran's Great Post-Season Play Mean?

Supporters of Beltran will argue that his post-season performance should inform his candidacy. That notion is also relevant for players like Andy Pettitte who started more than a full season's worth of games in the post-season. Beltran's post-season record probably should be taken into account, but so should everybody else's from this era. However, this record should not only be taken into account, but should be viewed in its proper context. One striking line from Beltran's post-season resume is that he has played in 38 post-season games, but none in the World Series. The great post-season performers from previous generations either played all their post-season games in the World Series like Babe Ruth or Mickey Mantle, or, like Reggie Jackson and Steve Garvey, played a good proportion of their post-season games in the World Series.

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What is a Pitcher For? →

On August 25th of this year, Matt Harvey the star pitcher for the New York Mets, suffered an injury that will require Tommy John surgery and cost him the rest of this season and most of the next one. This is a great disappointment, not just to fans of the star crossed Mets, but to anybody who likes exciting young pitchers. Since being called up late in 2012, Harvey has been one of the game's best pitchers, posting a combined ERA+ of 153 and averaging 9.9 strikeouts, and only 2.2 walks per nine innings. Harvey turned 24 at the very beginning of this season so, if he is able to fully recover from the surgery, as many pitchers do, he may still have a great future.

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The Yankees and Mets Are Facing Challenges Off the Field Too →

Despite the good first weak enjoyed by the Mets, and the recent hot streak by the Yankees, this season may be a rough one for big league baseball in New York. It is possible that, for the first time since 1992, both the Yankees and Mets will finish below .500. Additionally, the Yankees are an old team without any top-level prospects ready to step into major roles in either 2013 or 2014. The Mets are younger, but like many recent Mets teams, seem to be without a plan or vision for improving for the next several years. This tough situation is compounded by the resurgence of California baseball and of Southern California as a big market. To put this in perspective, if they played in California the Yankees would probably be the third best AL team in the state, while the Mets might make it that high among NL teams, but could also fall behind the Padres and be the fourth best team in that state.

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A Golden Age for Baseball in the Golden State →

Some of the most exciting young players in the game are also playing in California now. Mike Trout's rookie year was extraordinary, the most impressive debut by a young player in a very long time. Buster Posey, the catcher for the Giants won an MVP award in a season where most Giants fans would have settled for simply a solid return to catching. Posey and Trout could well be the two faces of baseball for the next decade. The only young players on the east coast who are similarly exciting, Bryce Harper and Stephen Strasburg, are playing not in Boston or New York but in Washington.

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What is Really Baseball's Best Rivalry

That rivalry may not be between the Red Sox and Yankees, but between two teams that are gearing up for another division race in the NL West, and who are also playing each other this weekend, the Giants and the Dodgers. Both the Yankee-Red Sox and the Dodger-Giant rivalries have had moments of intense competition, memorable games and pennant races, and genuine rancor between the two teams. However, the degree of competition and balance between the two rivals has been consistently stronger between the two NL rivals.

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Baseball's Best Boring Team

Describing a team as boring is subjective, but it is clear that at the halfway point in the season, the Yankees, despite their very good record, have not generated any buzz in New York. Last year fans watched Derek Jeter reach 3,000 hits and saw Mariano Rivera become the all time saves leader. This year they have seen Jeter pass Paul Waner on the hit list while Rafael Soriano has taken over as a good closer, but one about whom few Yankee fans care deeply. It is hard to think of any Yankee games which are even close to as memorable as Santana’s no-hitter, any one of several starts by Dickey, or even some of the early season Yankee-Red Sox games of recent years.

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The Yankees, Innovation and Derek Jeter

Jeter’s talent, ability to stay healthy and unique place in modern Yankee history have all contributed to his record of most games at shortstop for any one team, and the third most at any position for any team, but the Yankee management also should get some credit, not for giving in to the pressure from fans and media to keep playing Jeter at shortstop, but for recognizing that this may have been the best way to use this exceptional player, despite his shortcomings

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On the Passing of Gary Carter

Last week when Gary Carter, the Hall of Fame catcher and catalyst of probably the most famous rally in baseball history, died at only 57 years old, the baseball world mourned the passing of a great and beloved ballplayer. I found myself more saddened than I might have expected by his death. This is partially due to the arc of Carter’s career and life dovetailing so well with my life as a baseball fan. Carter was one of the few, maybe only, Hall of Fame players whose first baseball card came out the year I started collecting. His best years, from the late 1970s to the mid 1980s corresponded with my most youthful and intense period of being a baseball fan. He was not a fully formed star like Johnny Bench or Reggie Jackson when I first became aware of baseball, but he began his career at a time when my infatuation with baseball could still be described as childlike wonder.

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The New Free Agency

One would expect that many teams would be courting Pujols and Fielder, both of whom are likely to remain among the best players around for at least a few more years. The relative lack of interest in both of them indicates quite a bit about the state of baseball economics and salary structures today. As has been the case for many years now, although all teams are free to pursue Pujols and Fielder, there are several small market teams for whom, due to their lack of revenue and payroll limitations, signing a premier free agent is not a realistic hope. It has been a long time since the Pittsburgh Pirates, Kansas City Royals or Minnesota Twins, for example, have made a major splash in the free agent market.

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Prospect their Futures and their Teams

There are many variables that determine which prospects are the most promising and have the brightest futures. These include quantitative measures, scouting reports and even things like size, body type, makeup and family background. For example, prospects who come from baseball families are often seen as having a slight advantage over others. One variable that is often overlooked regarding minor league prospects is the organization for which they are playing.

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What is a "True Yankee" and Why Should We Care if Jorge Posada is One

Should Posada move on to another team next year, one of the great Yankee careers will have come to an end. Inevitably, the baseball media and blogosphere in New York, will begin questioning Posada’s credentials as a “true Yankee.” Putting aside the legitimacy of questioning the credentials of a player who played a key role in four Yankee World Series winning teams, delivering numerous big seasons and clutch hits along the way, this also draws attention to the absurdity of this term.

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The Beltran-Wheeler Trade in Context

The defending World Champion San Francisco Giants made two moves during the days leading up to the trade deadline. One, swapping top pitching prospect Zach Wheeler for slugging outfielder Carlos Beltran was intriguing, the other sending minor league outfielder Thomas Neal to the Cleveland Indians for Orlando Cabrera, a veteran shortstop who may well be finished as a useful player was not necessarily a terrible trade, but a frustrating one nonetheless.

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A Tough Call on Reyes

As Jose Reyes continues to play the best baseball of his career, the question of how the Mets handle their star shortstop will become even more of a story. The basic question facing the Mets appears to be whether they should try to trade Reyes now while he is playing so well, but about to become a free agent, or whether they should commit to keeping their biggest star by offering a big multi-year contract either during this season or, as given the Mets preference for not negotiating during the season, after the season.

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Giants Win!!

The Giants have won the World Series bringing the championship to San Francisco for the first time ever! When Buster Posey caught the third strike on Nelson Cruz, a journey which began with my mother dropping off me, my brother and our friend Charles, who back then was known as Tony, on the corner of Clay and Van Ness in San Francisco sometime in the mid 1970s, ended in a hotel room in Tbilisi, Georgia more than 30 years later. Those spring and summer mornings, my mother would give each of us seven dollars-three for a ticket in the upper reserved section of old Candlestick Park, the remainder was for bus fare and food. When the bus driver was in a good mood and only charged fifty cents for the ballpark express, there was plenty left over for hot dogs, soda, popcorn and ice cream, but if the driver charged two dollars or more, it made for a hungry day at the ‘Stick.

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For Torre, Going to the Mets Would Really Be Clueless

Joe Torre’s streak of nine straight seasons in which his team made the post-season but did not win the World Series, will come to an end this year because the Dodgers will not make the playoffs. While Torre enjoyed tremendous postseason success from 1996 through the 2001 ALCS, a period where his team went 14-1 in postseason series. He has been far less successful in the playoffs since that time, winning only five of his next fourteen postseason series. Moreover, during the first fifteen years of his managerial career, Torre only made the post-season once.

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The Cliff Lee Trade and the Current Strategic Context

The Cliff Lee trade was an interesting trade not only because it worked out well for all three teams involved, but because it exemplifies the different kind of strategic thinking that is becoming the norm for different kinds of teams. Although the Texas Rangers and Seattle Mariners were the only teams to move players, the New York Yankees were very involved as well. The Yankees offer of minor league prospects Jesus Montero and David Adams for Lee was initially accepted by the Mariners, before it fell through at the last minute when the Mariners accepted the Rangers’ offer instead.

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