The Mets Police

The Mets pretended they were interested in Yankees bench coach Carlos Mendoza according to the New York Post.

Mendoza, apparently a Yankees coach (I know you were like WHO) interviewed for the job which is obviously going to Craig Counsell, a favorite of Former Wilpons Intern David Stearns.

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In other news, congratulations to Jason deGrom who was smarter than everyone and realized that Steve Cohen’s money doesn’t matter if you keep hiring bad GMs and don’t have any organizational stability…..and wisely went to Texas who are committed to winning.

Jake now has more rings than Mike Piazza.

The MLB Finals, in which a 6 seed plays a 5 seed, ain’t doing so well guys.

Fox’s telecast of the Texas Rangers’ Game 3 win over the Arizona Diamondbacks on Monday night averaged a record-low 8.13 million viewers, according to Sports TV Ratings.

That was below the previous low of 8.15 million viewers for Game 2 of Rangers vs. Diamondbacks on Saturday night.  (Via Front Office Sports)

I imagine last night’s blowout didnt help things, although without any football games on I could see the number going up (baseball IS back!)

Hopefully Texas can just wrap this up, get Jacob deGrom his ring (?!!!!) and put baseball out of its misery.

The Baseball Mafia will have some excuse for the numbers, they always do….and hey attendance in Baltimore was up, and MLB engagement in Tik-Tok is up a zillion percent over Tik Tok use in 1973, so there’s always that.  Baseball is totally super popular!

I find MLB to be really really awful at marketing.  This is what they tweeted last night.

WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE?   Seriously, who are they?  Can you go 6 for 6?  Can you go 2 for 6?

WHY SHOULD WE TUNE IN?  What’s the hook? What’s the storyline?

If you think this is bad, the preliminaries I have seen for Game 2 (against College Football) will be devastating.   The bill has come due.  They let two generations grow up not watching after-midnight playoff games, and then they managed to chase the ME type with the expanded playoffs.  So as the 5 seed plays the 6 seed in the MLB Finals, it comes as no surprise that this has happened.

The baseball mafia will cling to excuses and tell us the Orioles attendance is up and whatever other metric they cling to – but you live your daily life, is anyone talking about baseball? They are not.

Baseball needs to get Ohtani to the Bronx and Trout to the Mets.  Then they need to make sure Ohtani, Judge, Trout and Vulgar Pete all get fed the special baseballs that show up from time to time.  Everyone keep your mouths shut and look the other way as baseball markets the 4 way crosstown rival Home Run Chase.  The rest of the country can hate on New York.  This is the formula.  This is the way.

Marketing Arizona’s Joe Mantiply vs. Texas’ Andrew Heaney is not going to get this mission done.

The Rangers’ 6-5 win over the Diamondbacks in 11 innings averaged 9.35 million viewers on Fox, Fox Deportes and Fox’s streaming service. The previous low was 9.48 for the opening game in 2020 between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Tampa Bay Rays.

According to Nielsen, Fox averaged 9.17 million for the game telecast. It is only the sixth World Series game that didn’t attract at least 10 million viewers. (Via ESPN)

Thanks to a reader who likes to lay low for putting this on my radar.  It’s a good article from the Washington Post about the 1973 Playoffs.  And it got me thinking that the Mets didn’t really do anything this summer for 1973+50.  They probably retired someone’s number that I have forgotten about (as Steve took it from 0 to 100 in terms of the Wilpons never retiring anyone and us being about 5 minutes away from retiring a number for Jose Reyes – not to mention Al Leiter is in the Mets Hall of Fame for some reason.)   Or maybe there was 1973 Day and I just forgot.  I really don’t remember anything from this season.

Anyway….from the Washington Post.

“One guy actually threw a Jack Daniel’s bottle from the third deck that landed about five feet from me,” (Pete) Rose recalled in an interview this month. “They threw everything. You’re talking about beer cans, hot dogs, hamburgers, wrappers and cartons for drinks. How’d you like to get hit on the head with a Jack Daniel’s bottle coming from the third deck of Shea Stadium?”

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“If those were policemen standing around there, I’m going out and start robbing banks, because they did very little to keep order,” (Johnny) Bench complained.

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“It’s unbelievable to me,” Reds Manager Sparky Anderson said. “I just can’t believe they don’t have better control over the people. It makes me ashamed I’m in this country, but I’m not too sure New York is in this country — not after this week. Can you imagine, in the United States of America, this happening?”

 

Fab article, possibly paywalled, but if you have Apple News it’s on there too.

I was thinking back on this baseball season and……….

….what even happened.

The Phillies had a bit of a run.  There was a hair of buzz on that, maybe just because I live within smelling distance of Philadelphia and I know some people that love down that way.

Other than that….the Mets had a bad season and are working on a new culture again.

I guess someone had a Cy Young type season out there.   Someone else may have had am MVP year – I think someone hit a lot of HRs and stole some bases, and he may be on the Braves, but I don’t even remember and that’s on MLB’s marketing team not mine, whereas I can even tell you the name of the Atlanta Falcons QB Desmond Ridder.

And now the 5 seed is playing the 6 seed, and it includes of of the Who Cares franchises in Arizona (if they aren’t the Jaguars of MLB they might be the Panthers of Texans or some who cares equivalent)

And it makes me wonder – what are we even doing?   Baseball is playing six months so that in the end none of it really mattered and nobody cares.

The other day I aw the number 714 on something, maybe my Dunkin order, and immediately thought of baseball.  Do you even know what the record is now? 735? 756? 763?  Are you sure?

The baseball mafia was claiming Game 1 of the M:B Finals was an “instant classic” – I already can’t tell you a thing about it.