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Introducing the Ed Walsh Award for ERA, and its 2018 winner Mets SP Jacob deGrom

Hey guys, I like JDG as much as you do, but let me make this super simple…

Quoting MLB.com about the CYA:  “Named for the winningest pitcher in baseball history, the Cy Young Award is voted upon by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America prior to the beginning of the postseason.”

So there you go.

Now, we know JDG had a great season but he won’t be the WINNINGEST whether or not that makes you sad or you hate the stat.  Therefore, I have created the ED WALSH AWARD which will go to the pitcher with the grooviest ERA.

Big Ed has a career 1,816 ERA in 14 seasons. Thus we name the award after him.  The award will be issued by me every year when I remember to do it and need a blog post on a slow rainy day.

Congratulations to Jacob deGrom, winner of the 2018 Ed Walsh Award!

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Dreaming of a Citi Field with better outfield seats

I come to you with a premise that the t-shirt people aren’t going to like.  Citi FIeld’s outfield sucks.

I know, right?

Yes I know there are 850 people who like to sit 550 feet from home plate and good on them, but Citi Field’s OF sucks.

Take a look at those OF seats in LF.  Never mind the ones upstairs where you can’t even see the LF, let’s focus on the lower bowl.

Look how set back those seats are.  Look how high they are above the wall.  Look how you have a deck hanging over some of the seats.

Now let’s look at Wrigley.  (This photo is from 2013 and the pre-renovated bleachers, although the new ones sit the same way).

 

 

Look how tight you are to the game.  As if you’re in a PARK not a mall that happens to have a baseball game in it.

Going around the horn – yeah the bridge is cool, but again look at all that space between the bridge and the fence?  What if we filled those with LOW seats where you could feel part of the action (maybe there is a batter’s eye concern).

As for the bullpens, maybe stick them where the whatever the Mo’s Zone is called now in RF.

Here’s another angle…what if we ripped out all that lower bowl and moved fans closer?  I will give you your choice of leaving the bullpen where they are and making seats lower to the fence where the Modell’s sign is – or putting the bullpen in RF and filling in under the bridge.

Then there’s the porch itself.  There probably was a good idea here, but that section feels like Citi Field Siberia.  It’s not easy to get to, and feels disconnected to everything else.  Maybe there is another approach to be had? Maybe more of a landing?   A bar/food/hangout plaza – especially for cold days when that’s one of the few places with sunshine.

Here’s Anaheim…

Anaheim t-shirt guys could hang out here.

Then there is the scoreboard.  Honestly, it’s too much,  It’s too big, it adds to the feeling that I am at the mall, and it’s surrounded by too many ads.  I get that there is money to be mad, but it’s visually unappealing.

Here’s Wrigley’s relatively new scoreboard in RF.  What I like it about it is they matched the aesthetic of the park.  It is a video screen, but they didn’t go bananas and they keep the white on green.

In between innings that becomes a video board for commercials.

Overall, here’s the look of Wrigley from this summer, and remember we are talking outfield between the poles here, isn’t this a much better aesthetic than the walls of Citi?

Here’s Anaheim again – not as low as I’d like but still better than that trapped feeling of Citi

And the noise in Queens…

Which do you like better?   I vastly prefer the Wrigley PARK feel and not the visual noise of the Mets version, not to mention the seats are more set back.

What about the players?

“We don’t know why, but something is going on in this ballpark and the way we play here,” Roessler said at Citi Field recently. “We’re trying to find out. One thing I’ve heard is that the centerfielders will tell you sometimes they can feel the wind at their back, coming in from both sides of the [centerfield] scoreboard. But that’s just one anecdotal thing.” (via Sports Illustrated)

I know the Mets don’t give a hoot that I don’t like the outfield, but maybe if they see a baseball reason they might maybe re-visit it some day.

 

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Here are the 2018 September 11th Caps

The Mets will wear these on Tuesday…

MLB will donate all of its royalties from the sales of the caps to the National September 11 Memorial & Museum, the Pentagon Memorial Fund and the Flight 93 National Memorial. (Via MLB.com)

I don’t have it in me to fight the annual Wear The Caps argument – but yeah the Mets should just were the first responder caps and someone should figure out a way to do that for charity.