{"id":429,"date":"2008-05-19T23:44:49","date_gmt":"2008-05-19T22:44:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/?p=429"},"modified":"2008-06-04T08:39:40","modified_gmt":"2008-06-04T07:39:40","slug":"national-league-no-managerial-headaches-for-the-mets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/?p=429","title":{"rendered":"National League: no managerial headaches for the Mets"},"content":{"rendered":"

Most, if not all, British baseball teams generate the necessary revenue to be able to compete in the league each season by charging players an annual fee (something a little over \u00c2\u00a3100 is probably fairly typical). Because of this, if you are managing a team and have more than nine players turning out each week, then you have a decision to make. Do you try to give everyone a fair amount of time on the field (after all, they have all paid to play)? Or do you try to always put out what you feel are the best nine players available each week? The theoretically enticing middle-ground would be to play your best players in close games, and to give your other players their at-bats in blow-outs (either in your favour or against you). However, even then, if you have three tight games in a row and a couple of weeks off thrown in, a non-favoured player could \u00e2\u20ac\u0153ride the pine\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (i.e. sit on the bench) for over a month. I do not have the answer, and have not even begun to properly explore the pros and cons of each option, but I wanted to raise the point so that I could mention that the London Mets are managing to win games while getting a good mix of players out on the field, which is an achievement in itself. That said, there will always be an element of gambling in any mixing of players.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Mets, who lead the National League South, hosted the Croydon Pirates on Sunday. After a horrible half-inning from the Pirates in game one (8 unearned runs on 5 errors) put London 10 runs ahead going into the fifth inning, the Mets took a bit of a gamble in pulling their starting pitcher, Brian Essery. It was not a gamble in the sense of putting an all-but-certain victory in doubt, since the reliever, Ernesto Bolufer, is an excellent pitcher in his own right. But it was a gamble in that if the game had gone past five innings, Essery would not have been eligible for the win (the rule is that the starter must go five or more innings to be able to pick up the win, unless the game is only four-and-a-half or five innings long, in which case four is sufficient). If the Mets could keep their lead at ten or more runs at the end of the fifth inning (or in the middle, as they were the home team), the game would end on the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153mercy rule\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and Essery would get win number four of the season. But if the Pirates could reduce the deficit to a single digit at the end of the fifth, then the game would last at least another inning.<\/span><\/p>\n

So what happened? Well, the Pirates managed to score a run in the top-half of the fifth and then retired the first two London batters in the bottom-half of the inning. Then, the third batter singled to get on base and represent not the strict winning run, but the run that would see the game end on the mercy rule and give Essery the win. Three wild pitches later, the game was indeed over on the mercy rule. <\/span><\/p>\n

Now, is this me just making something that wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t at all significant sound dramatic? After all, are wins really that important a stat, being dependent not just on the pitcher, but the fielders and batters too? In a word, yes. Pitchers do genuinely care about wins (or at least they do when they are on a team like the Mets with good fielding and good hitting).<\/span><\/p>\n

And even though a pitcher\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s win\u00e2\u20ac\u201closs record is not as good a stat (in reflecting player performance) as\u00c2\u00a0several other pitching figures, it is far from meaningless. After all, for a truly bad pitcher to get a 20-win season in the Majors, he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d probably need run support from a line-up with a Barry Bonds in each of the nine spots. And that would be difficult, particularly since there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s currently not a roster in the Majors that includes even one Barry Bonds!<\/span><\/p>\n

The second game was much tighter, but the Mets won it too, by a score of 4-3. The Pirates scored two runs in the final inning and then loaded the bases with two out, but the game ended with a play to match the scoreline: a 4-3 put-out. At least, from Croydon\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s perspective, it was a game in which the Mets pitcher Troy Kantor was finally made to look human. He entered the game with the ridiculously good stats of 15 innings pitched, 2 hits, 3 walks, and 27 strike-outs. But the Pirates were able to amass four hits and draw seven walks (that said, they couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t stop him getting his fourth win of the season, to draw back level with Essery in that category).<\/span><\/p>\n

On the other side of the River Thames, in Richmond, the day belonged to Cody Cain, with his 6-for-6 performance helping the home team sweep the Bracknell Blazers (by scores of 13-1 and 14-5). His six hits on the day included two doubles and a home run; Grant Del Zoppo also homered for the home team. Michael Osborn and Ryan Bird were the winning pitchers.<\/span><\/p>\n

Up in the north, the Manchester Eagles and Menwith Hill Patriots (top and bottom, respectively) split a double-header to keep the gap between them at\u00c2\u00a0two games. If you compare the table with the results so far (see here<\/a>), you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll notice that the Patriots have a 2-4 record, even though they have won\u00c2\u00a0three of their\u00c2\u00a0six games. The reason is that for forfeiting two games on the opening weekend, \u00c2\u00a0<\/span>the team has had one win turned into a loss (this is an automatic and prespecified penalty). The Liverpool Trojans are sandwiched between the Eagles and the Patriots, having not yet got their season underway.<\/span><\/p>\n

The format for play-off qualification should be announced soon. If, like last season, the top two teams from the south and the north meet in the Final 4s, then it would appear that Croydon and Bracknell (both 1-7 at the moment) might be playing for nothing more than pride this season, not that I would want to write either team off at this early stage. However, it is possible that the format will revert to something used in previous years, which is a pre-Final 4s play-off weekend. An example of this format would see the top team from the north and the top team from the south being given an automatic berth, and then the second- and third-place teams from the two divisions fighting it out for the remaining two spots on the play-off weekend. Should this system be opted for, then the battle between Croydon and Bracknell would clearly take on a lot more significance.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Most, if not all, British baseball teams generate the necessary revenue to be able to compete in the league each season by charging players an annual fee (something a little over \u00c2\u00a3100 is probably fairly typical). Because of this, if you are managing a team and have more than nine players turning out each week, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-429","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-british-baseball-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=429"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}