Mets

[Amazin69]

Failing to do the important things (fire Stearns, fire Moron Mendoza), the Mutts attempt the CYA ploy of firing most of the coaches:



Antuan Richardson, whose base-coaching skills are also of the suck, is apparently spared because he's done a good job of teaching runners when to steal.

I hope Jeremy Hefner gets a new job, soon. Not because I'll miss him or the NL-high 324 BB he coached this Legion of Nibblers into allowing (Art Fowler to Ron Guidry, 1977: "Babe Ruth's dead. Throw strikes."), but because I'm hoping the sweet, sweet stench of Spider-Tac will send Edlose Diaz scurrying after him, to go boom-boom for some other suckers.

[Déjà Bru]

Wow, this thread was one line away from disappearing off the end of the forum!

I will rescue it with this article, from The Athletic:

YES Network to drop longtime Yankees analyst John Flaherty, others as part of latest moves

By Andrew Marchand



The YES Network is not bringing back longtime New York Yankees analyst and play-by-play announcer John Flaherty as part of a series of moves to streamline its broadcasts to feature its leading commentators, David Cone, Paul O’Neill and Joe Girardi, sources briefed on the decision told The Athletic.

Flaherty, 58, had been on Yankees broadcasts for two decades after playing three seasons with the team during a 14-year catching career. Cone, O’Neill and Girardi all won championships with the Yankees and are part of the Derek Jeter/Mariano Rivera championship dynasty run in the late 1990s and into the 2000s. The plan is for one or two of the analyst trio to be on every broadcast next year.

Cone has been a commentator on ESPN’s “Sunday Night Baseball.” Next season, under a new, yet-to-be-announced agreement, ESPN will no longer have “Sunday Night Baseball” but will have 30 exclusive weekday games at various points during the season.

As part of the YES roster renovation, part-time analysts Jeff Nelson and Dave Valle will also not return for Yankee broadcasts in 2026. A YES spokesperson confirmed the Flaherty, Nelson and Valle decisions.

Flaherty told The Athletic he was not surprised by the move when YES executive producer Jared Boshnack officially informed him Monday. Flaherty had an option in his contract that YES declined in August, but could have attempted to re-sign him to a new deal.

“I was kind of prepared for it so I think that helped,” Flaherty said. “It quickly went from, the reality that you are not going to be back to what a great run for 20 years to go right from retiring as a player to right into the booth in 2006 and stay with the same network for 20 years. I just became very grateful for what a long and great run it has been at YES and being connected with the Yankees all those years.”

Flaherty said it is kind of exciting to think there could be other opportunities in broadcasting or maybe doing something professional outside of baseball for the first time in nearly four decades as he signed his first minor league contract at 20 years old.

While Flaherty was well prepared and well received as an analyst and pinch hit when lead play-by-player Michael Kay and No. 2 Ryan Ruocco were unavailable, YES has been derided in some circles for its lack of consistency in the analyst booth. Across town for the New York Mets, the SNY trio of Gary Cohen, Ron Darling and Keith Hernandez were in the booth together and have generally been considered the best local booth in the game.

Kay will call around 135 games next season; Ruocco will call around 15 games between his ESPN schedule.

With Girardi, who won championships as both a player and a manager, returning to the YES booth in 2024, the cutbacks were made possible because YES felt it had three marquee analysts to feature.

After the season, all networks re-evaluate where they stand, so YES is doing a complete inventory of both its game and studio productions. Bob Lorenz and Jack Curry are the longtime YES pregame and postgame stalwarts.

YES has tried to reposition its game broadcasts in recent years. In 2022, YES brought in Carlos Beltran and Cameron Maybin to be part of its game and studio analysts, but quickly moved on from the duo. Beltran left on his own to join the Mets front office a year later.

Now, it is focusing on its most recent dynasty run, featuring what it considers its three top analysts, Cone, O’Neill and Girardi.

I bolded the part that is a backhanded compliment to your three guys.

[Westheim]

Backhanded compliments > getting fired as surplus to requirements

[Westheim]

Throwback to spring training, when the Mets were bold enough to ... well, we know how it ended, why pretend...

[Amazin69]

At least Canning outperformed expectations, until he got hurt. So that's what…15% success?

Do we think that Stearns and Mendoza might get fired during the season, or do they get the full Dead Management Walking treatment that Schmuck and Eppler got in 2023?

(Did I pick the right season to completely skip, or what?)

[Amazin69]

Who says comedy is dead?

[Westheim]

Don't care. I'm sure he left an address at the office to send his leftover crap to.

[Amazin69]

Frankie MOAN-tas exercised his 2026 player option, but since he's going to miss all of the season with Tommy John surgery, the Mets cut him anyhow. Won't save them any money, but opens a spot on the 40-man, so that they can protect Nick Morabito from the Rule V draft.

So, for their $34 million, the Metsies got, what, two months worth of pitching? Well done, Stearns! To be fair, it's not as if he'd had medical issues before…oh, wait.

[Amazin69]

Originally Posted by Amazin69

Based on his looking really good in 10.2 September innings, MLB.com's Kennedi Landry predicts that Jacob deGrom will win the 2025 AL Cy Young Award.

Oh, Kennedi. You dear sweet girl. It's nice to be young, isn't it?

Jake went 12-8 with a 2.97 ERA and 2.9 WAR, despite slumping after his All-Star selection, and finished 8th in the CYA voting. Sigh.

[Amazin69]

The Mets are expected to non-tender Danny Young, and Tylor Megill is projected to miss the entire 2026 season, recovering from Tommy John surgery.

And Adam Ottavino posted an angry rant on his social media about the "pathetic" mishandling of the Mets' staff under Mendoza and Hefner, whom he blames for many of the injury woes. He's probably 100% correct, but I can understand if nobody wants to see Ottavi-NO playing Cassandra.

Also, the Mets have declined to protect Kevin Parada from the Rule V draft, so essentially they're flushing the #11 overall draft pick in 2022 after just three seasons.

Oh, Mets. Never change.

[Amazin69]

Mets also tendered Alvarez, Torrens, Peterson, Garrett (despite HIS Tommy John making him miss next year, too) as well as Megill. Mets fan Max Kranick and his flexor tendon surgery gets the boot, along with Danny Young and Jose Castillo, who must be wondering what he did wrong.

[Westheim]

The front office shoulda gotten the boot first and foremost...

[David Watts]

Looks like y'all just got Marcus Semien for Brando Nimmo.

[Amazin69]

Originally Posted by David Watts

Looks like y'all just got Marcus Semien for Brando Nimmo.

EW

Sure, let's trade our longest-tenured home-grown star (the only-remaining link to the 2016 comeback team) for a 35-year-old 2B, who is coming off of a .669 OPS in Texas.

This is also supposed to signal an upcoming trade of McNeil, because David "Wild Turkey" Stearns wants to get rid of ALL our Hometown Heroes to bring in overpaid aging ALers, which always works soooooo well. Why has Uncle Stevie not fired this bozo yet?

But never fear! Perhaps Semien will bounce-back…instead of going down the sewer as old middle infielders tend to do. Perhaps he can once more scale the heights of 2024, when his OPS…was .699

Now he did win the Gold Glove last season, but his Range Factor was exactly the league average, so I'm not hugely palliated by that, I admit.

[Westheim]

Originally Posted by David Watts

Looks like y'all just got Marcus Semien for Brando Nimmo.

I wish anybody could give me any reason why I shouldn't cast my brittle body (soul departed already) off the nearest jagged cliff...

It's the orange, isn't it?

It's common knowledge that orange cats are the stupidest cats and all share a single brain cell.

And orange race teams are the most stupidest of them all.

And orange baseball teams absolutely can't stop themselves from shooting themselves in their own stupid *****.

Except for the 'stros.

I want to go back to bed....

[Amazin69]

Just think, we might lose Mr. Pointy AND Squirrel AND Polar Pete (and add the new Carlos Baerga/Roberto Alomar/Robinson Cano)*…

…and yet still see Boom-Boom scurrying back home for more of Uncle Stevie's cash, once Stearns decides it's a necessary CYA PR move. Holy Crap. (Perhaps not "Holy", but definitely…)

* In case y'all are wondering why "former AL All-Star 2B" makes me twitch, exhibits A, B, and C.

Indeed, if I ignore the chronological order, I can simply list these bums as

Alomar
Baerga
Cano

…but that depresses me as I think of how many slots to fill once we add

Semien

to that list.

[Westheim]

MLB floats that the Mets throw $45M at Devin Williams ($15M of that deferred for some reason).

Uncle Steve, are we running out of billions??

Also, Williams had a negative WAR and an ERA of almost five, so at least the expectations are much lower than that salary.

[Amazin69]

My rumor source says the deal is $51 mn.

One the one hand, this increases the odds that Boom-Boom goes bye-bye.

OTOH, do we want to spend the summer listening to Bru's compulsive giggling?

[Amazin69]

Cedric Mullins signs a one-year deal with Tampa Bay. Oh…darn.

[Westheim]

Cedric Mullins was such a great addition that I had to hand-crank the old brain for a minute trying to figure out why I should bother. Oh, right, he was here for two months and did nothing!