You're engine's blown; time to change the tires

While I have enjoyed watching the Yankees lose as much as the next guy, I just can't fathom the calls for Joe Torre's head. The latest is from Jeff Pearlman over at ESPN, and it's as stupid as any other riff I've seen on the subject.

Pearlman's basis for canning Torre: everyone else has failed to do their job. Torre was great, Pearlman notes, at motivating respectful, farm-raised talents like Jeter, Posada, and Pettite, but now that the Yankees roster is full of lackadaisical high-priced mercenaries, he's got to go. Bring in Bobby Valentine is Pearlman's prescription. Or re-animate Billy Martin.

How about canning Brian Cashman or whoever is responsible for turning an organization known for a never-ending supply of talent into a bunch of ill-fitting parts with no depth? How about acknowledging that, as a result of an improbable number of injuries, Torre has been forced into using a cast of starters that would make the 2002 Devil Rays blush? No, Pearlman says, time for Torre to go.

Aside from the curious notion of Torre's seeming failure to motivate players (A-Rod, Abreu, Giambi) everyone acknowledges to be unmotivatable, I have yet to see one single critique of Torre that identifies a flaw he has which would be corrected if he were removed as manager.

And I'm still not ready to write the Yankees off this year as many seem to be willing to do.

Baseball Jazz Opera

If you happen to be in Cooperstown tomorrow night, $10 will get you in to see something called a "baseball jazz opera":

"Cooperstown," a jazz opera set in current-day baseball about an up-and-coming pitcher struggling with fame, fortune and love, will make its world premiere at 8 p.m. Saturday in the Baseball Hall of Fame's Grandstand Theater in Cooperstown.

. . .Using an on-stage jazz quintet and a cast of five principal vocalists, including Tri-Cities opera resident artists James Barbato and Matthew Edwards, "Cooperstown" explores, with the tools of opera, musical theater and jazz, professional baseball's inherent dramatic range and power . . .

Sounds nifty. It's about a nine hour drive for me, so I'll have to make up some excuse to tell Ms. Shyster why I'm leaving tomorrow morning and won't be back until late Sunday. Maybe I can pretend I'm having an affair? Somehow I think I'd get in less trouble for that than driving 550 miles to see a play about baseball.

Famous First Words?

Because I'm an Atlanta fan, every morning I get emailed the latest Braves headlines from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. This morning's email had this item, linking to an interview with the CEO of new Braves owner, Liberty Media.

No Steinbrenners in Liberty Media crowd

To be fair, the headline of the article that link actually took you to had been changed to Liberty CEO: We'll leave baseball to Braves. The interview went on to confirm the "No Steinbrenners" meme from the email, with the CEO saying that Liberty is content to stay out of the day-to-day operations of the Bravos.

While there's no reason to disbelieve that at the moment, we should remember that when Steinbrenner took over the Yankees in 1973, he promised to take a back seat too, leaving the running of the team to others. That, of course, lasted for about ten minutes.

It strains credulity to suggest that anyone could micromanage the way Steinbrenner did when he still had his fastball, and I personally doubt that Liberty will meddle in such a fashion. But Liberty -- led by its alpha-shareholder John Malone -- has a well-documented history of, well, being complicated:

Over the past 30 years, cable pioneer Malone has built, sold, and dismantled several empires. In doing so, the engineer has always favored complexity over simplicity.

Since founding Liberty in 1990, he's presided over a bewildering succession of recapitalizations and stock splits, mergers and spin-offs and distributions that seem to have amounted to a somewhat dubious feat of engineering—devising a structure that the market values at less than the sum of its parts. It is taken as a given that Malone's deals are shrewd and brilliant. But most investors have had a tough time puzzling out his logic.

What does this mean for Braves fans? Hard to say. The team's previous owner -- Time Warner -- certainly wasn't complicated in that it allowed the Braves to do anything it wanted as long as it didn't involve spending any money whatsoever. Ted Turner was batshit crazy, but that tended to work to the Braves benefit.

Based on two comments in the interview -- that the Braves deal was primarily motivated by tax considerations and that Liberty is making no assurances that they're going to hold on to the Braves for more than 4 1/2 years -- I'm inclined to believe that the hands-off promise is genuine. If anything, I can see Liberty upping the Braves payroll in an effort to lure the types of stars that would make them an attractive product that can be flipped come 2011 (c.f. the Cubs 2006-2007 offseason moves).

Whether that makes them a championship caliber team again is anyone's guess.

Mitchell is Looking in the Wrong Place

While George Mitchell looks to blow the lid off of steroid use by Orioles players who were more or less washed-up three years ago, the eighth player from the New York Mets was just suspended for juicing.

With the exception of Guillermo Mota, all of the suspended Mets players have been career minor leaguers or guys perpetually on the shuttle to Tidewater or New Orleans.

Everyone wants to talk about Barry Bonds and the record book, but the real impact of steroids in baseball is going to be felt in ten to fifteen years when former, desperate farm hands start dropping dead of heart failure in their 40s.

Baseball and the writers who cover it should stop focusing so much on what's happening on the tiny peak where the elite tread and start worrying about what's going on down at base camp.

No Fun Allowed

And thus baseball's Destro, Bob DuPuy, spake against players interacting with heckling fans during games.

Thus far this season, Cincinnati's Ken Griffey Jr. autographed an athletic supporter and threw it at a fan in Los Angeles, and Toronto's Vernon Wells threw an autographed ball with a message to a fan in Cleveland.

"It's inappropriate and won't be condoned," DuPuy said.

While it's one thing for players to get into dust-ups with hecklers, it seems to me that Griffey and Wells each turned boorish, heckling idiots into happy fans with some refreshingly self-effacing humor and by giving them one-of-a-kind collectors items. The guys Griffey and Wells allegedly taunted are going to tell their grandkids about these incidents, and it will only help the game.

If DuPuy cracks down on gestures like Griffey's and Wells' without paying attention to context and intent, he's going to turn baseball into the farce that is the NBA.

Performance Enhancing Sunflower Seeds?

Greenie-seeds?

Baseball players and truck drivers who chew sunflower seeds at work no longer have to down a cup of black coffee or a Red Bull for an extra energy jolt.

A South Dakota company is infusing sunflower seeds with caffeine and other boosters commonly found in energy drinks.

Cognitive Dissonance Watch: The St Louis Cardinals and Booze

A report about the Dodgers' free-food-for-bad-seats gambit:

The view of the ballgame from the right-field pavilion isn't exactly the best Dodger Stadium has to offer, but Bryan Collins was enjoying the evening anyway. Even before the second inning had begun, he had eaten six hot dogs. Before the side was retired, he had also consumed a bag of peanuts and several handfuls of cheese-drenched nachos.

And Mr. Collins, a lanky 16-year-old from La Cañada, Calif., didn't plan to stop there. "We'll see if my stomach can handle it," he said. Nearly a dozen of his friends were similarly engaged.

While I find the WSJ and NYT's use of formal titles for folks to be a pleasantly quaint practice, it seems to me that someone who eats six hot dogs, a bag of peanuts, and cheesy nachos before the second inning forfeits the right to be called "Mr." But that's not what interests me about this article. This is:

While teams such as the NHL's Florida Panthers and baseball's St. Louis Cardinals have tried this with cheaper seats -- at the Cardinals' Busch Stadium, inclusive packages even include beer -- these tickets still cost $60 or more.

For those of you keeping score at home, the St. Louis Cardinals -- who just had a relief pitcher die in a horrific drunk driving incident and made a big show of how responsible they are by banning beer in the clubhouse -- offers all-you-can-drink beer to fans who buy tickets in certain sections.

While I think the clubhouse bans are an empty P.R. exercise, if a team is going to go through the motions of pretending to care about alcohol abuse, wouldn't it be wise to put an end to the beer troughs in the cheap seats?

Proof that God is a Yankees Fan

Bet you didn't know this:

As a student, Jerry Falwell was a star athlete and prankster who was barred from giving his high school valedictorian's speech after he was caught using counterfeit lunch tickets. He ran with a gang of juvenile delinquents before becoming a born-again Christian at 19. He turned down an offer to play professional baseball and transferred from Lynchburg College to Baptist Bible College in Springfield, Mo.

The baseball part, not the lunch ticket thing. I searched for a while to get more info, and found this quote from Calvin Falwell -- cousin of Jerry and namesake of Calvin Falwell Field in Lynchburg, VA -- regarding the good reverend's relationship to the national past time:

"Jerry's a baseball fan. Matter of fact, the Yankees tried to get him to sign up
years ago when he was a kid. He's a good ballplayer."

Assuming this is true, that would place a Yankees offer to Falwell in 1951 or 1952. I don't think I have to tell you what the implications for history would have been if Falwell had decided to answer the Yankees' call rather than Jesus's. That's right:

Johnny Blanchard never makes the team, Bob Purkey fans Falwell in the 8th inning of game three of the 1961 World Series, and the Reds use the momentum to stage a stunning come-from-behind 7-game victory. Having won the World Series recently, Bill DeWitt feels less pressure to trade Frank Robinson before the 1966 season, and he remains a Red. Having Robinson in the fold puts the Reds over the hump in 1969. There are no Miracle Mets, Sparky Anderson isn't hired before the 1970 season, and the Big Red Machine never exists, which throws everything that has happened in baseball since the 1970s out of whack.

Oh yeah, and there's no Moral Majority either, so Jimmy Carter wins the 1980 election, but I'm guessing that doesn't change things nearly as much as having Joe Morgan stay with the Astros.

Scary stuff.

Uppity Grub

What's cookin' in San Francisco?:

The next time you find yourself in San Francisco, consider spending an evening dining outdoors, perhaps enjoying a fresh flatbread filled with salad, a Fishermen’s Wharf-style seafood sandwich or another local favorite, the 40-clove garlic chicken sandwich.

And to complete your meal, don’t forget to add a nice California red wine and a Ghirardelli hot fudge sundae.

No, we’re not talking about visiting one of San Francisco’s many nice restaurants. For these epicurean indulgences, you can take a trip to AT&T Park, home of the San Francisco Giants.

Great. But can I still get a hot dog?

Even the good old hot dog is getting a makeover. Some parks now feature fresh-toasted buns, more upscale condiments and higher-quality meat . . .

"Saaaaay . . .is that real Heinz ketchup? Oooh la la . . .

Stitch and Pitch

Purl two at RFK:

"Stitch and Pitch" games, sponsored by the National NeedleArts Association, bring knitters to Major League Baseball games -- 23 of them this season. The events are designed to promote knitting . . .

That's OK as far as it goes, but if you let the knitters in, the scrapbookers are soon to follow. From there it's a short slide to anarchy.

"I'm gonna go up there and knit and watch the people get drunk," she said. "Watching drunk people at baseball games is my hobby."

And stop lookin' at me.

Thoughts on an Old Flame

When I was 15, I had a huge crush on a girl named Mandy. Mandy was a senior and had some problems -- she drank a lot and wrecked her car too often and no one's parents trusted her -- but those were the things that made a clueless, horny teenager like me love her. Yes, she was a tad rough around the edges, but I defended her to the death because, the way I figured it, I was going to marry Mandy someday, and everyone needed to know just how amazing she was.

I finally got my chance at Mandy when I was a senior. She had been hanging around town for a couple of years, going to community college, and not really doing much with her life. We dated for three weeks. Though I had grown up enough to realize that my earlier illusions of marrying Mandy were wildly misguided -- the parents were right not to trust her -- it was a fun three weeks that made me feel like all those hours spent pathetically longing for her were not wasted.

Jack Cust is the baseball equivalent of Mandy. With all apologies to Hee Seop Choi, Roberto Petagine, Euribiel Durazo, Bobby Kietly, and Jeremy Giambi, Cust is perhaps the poster boy for stathead man-crushes. Whereas Mandy had a rockin' body that helped me to ignore her erratic behavior, Cust's minor league numbers (.900+ OPS in extensive minor league play) had me and all of the other SABRboys looking past the fact that he had no natural position on the diamond and couldn't run any faster or smarter than I could. If you asked us about him in 2001 or 2002, however, we knew that he'd be an all star if given a chance.

Though some may argue whether Cust ever got a real shot, there has been little to suggest that we were right about him. Yes, he had an.878 OPS in 73 at-bats in 2003, but it was surrounded by 71 at-bats of pure stank in four other brief call-ups. Statistics aside, he usually looked awful in a major league uniform, with his vaunted patience at the plate transformed into seeming timidity. A high-profile baserunning mishap in 2003 -- Cust fell down twice between third and home in the 12th inning, costing the Orioles the game -- is what most people think of when his name is mentioned, his pedigree for mashing the ball notwithstanding. In being judged based on what he does poorly rather than what he does well, he hasn't fared much better than any of the heirs to Rob Deer's title to King of the Three True Outcomes.

At least until now. His rampage since being signed by the A's -- six homers and fourteen RBI in seven games -- has been something to behold. Because baseball is no different than any other entertainment outlet, Cust's success will cause other teams to look for other Jack Custs. I can just see Keith Woolner rolling his eyes as some Cleveland Indians assistant GM asks him if he knows what Hee Seop Choi is doing these days or if he thinks that Petagine still has anything left in the tank.

Though I hope he continues to mash all year, my suspicion is that Cust will come back to earth hard once pitchers realize he's not some kid you can simply overpower with straight heat. Like Mandy, he has some serious flaws in his game, and I imagine once he faces some nastier stuff his considerable vulnerabilities, like Mandy's unsuitability for marriage, will present themselves.

But, also like Mandy, it sure will be a fun ride while it lasts.

I Actually Feel a Bit Sorry for Selig on This One

Dayn Perry on the quandary baseball faces regarding how to honor (or not honor) Bonds' imminent breaking of Aaron's record:

How does MLB credibly honor an accomplishment when its own internal investigation may one day undermine it? On the other hand, how do you take the head-in-sand approach when it comes to the breaking of baseball's most vaunted record? As Selig is learning, the answers to those questions are hard-won. Even worse, every answer may be the wrong one.

If there were a sensible middle ground to this issue, baseball would find it. But there's not. Ultimately, Selig must decide whether his endorsement of the moment — however languid that endorsement might be — or his snubbing of it is best for the game's image. It's up to him and his handlers to read the tea leaves properly.

It really is a lose-lose situation. I can't help but think that Barry will suffer some mysterious "injury" when he's one or two jacks short of Aaron. One that miraculously heals just as the Giants begin a long home stand.

Los Diamantes

Story about the D-Backs efforts to target the Hispanic fan base.

Given that over a quarter of the Phoenix-area population is Hispanic -- and the fact that Hispanics are rumored to, you know, be into baseball a bit -- this is something of a dog-bites-man story.

Still, the reporter (or his editor) felt it necessary to say this:

Considering the volatility of the immigration issue and controversy surrounding public use of the Spanish language in the United States, one might think the Diamondbacks’ push into the Hispanic market would be criticized in some circles.

Given that no one is quoted as being against the D-Backs marketing plan in the story, I can only assume that there is a mandate in newsrooms to inject every story -- however innocuous -- to a controversial issue, which seems kind of silly to me.

Fate is at your elbow; make yourself good while life and power are still yours

The Braves fast start is largely attributable to their revamped bullpen. Rafael Soriano, Mike Gonzales and, to a lesser degree, Tyler Yates have done much to cover for the shaky back end of the Braves' rotation and have rendered last year's late-inning breakdowns a distant memory. The Braves' opponents are finding that if they're not up by the seventh inning, they ain't gonna be up at all.

One has to wonder, however, if they can maintain the quality relief pitching all year in light of the unprecedented workloads their relievers are enduring.

At present, Rafael Soriano, Mike Gonzalez, and Tyler Yates are on pace for 88, 76, and 81 games, respectively. If Bob Wickman stays on the DL longer than anticipated, those projections could climb.

Prior to this year, Soriano's heaviest workload was 53 games, Gonzales' was 54, and Yates' was 56. While Soriano probably would have been in the 60s last year had he not been beaned in the head, all three of these guys are going to be testing the limits of their endurance this year. Things seem particularly risky for Gonzalez in light of the fact that he missed a month at the end of last year with a sore elbow, suffering a minor recurrence of it in spring training.

While there's no reason for the Braves to panic -- all three of these guys may hold up just fine -- the heavy workload their relievers have experienced intensifies Atlanta's need to go out and get another starting pitcher.

Jason Marquis Pumpkin Watch

Jason Marquis continued his totally unexpected fast start last night, pitching a gem. For the season, that brings him to 5-1, with a 1.70 ERA. This after stinking up the joint and being left off the Cards' post-season roster last year. While I have little doubt that starting today we will see columns talking about Larry Rothschild pep-talks, a change of scenery and all manner of other epiphanies, there's a pretty good argument that Marquis has simply been a lucky dog thus far:

	2007	2006	Career
K/IP	.50	.49	.60
BB/IPP	.27	.38	.38
H/IP	.63	1.13	1.02
HR/IP	.04	.18	.13

He's still striking people out at the same putrid pace he was last year, which is below his slightly less putrid career rates. He's walking slightly fewer people than last year and his career rates, but not enough to account for his dramatically improved results.

The real reason he's doing so much better, it would seem, is that he's giving up close to half the hits on balls in play that he did last year. I'm no DIPS expert, but smarter folks who are suggest that allowing fewer hits is a function of luck and defense. No one has yet to quantify luck, but the Cubs have given up way fewer errors than almost any other team so far this year.

The fewer homers allowed -- which DIPS suggests is under a pitcher's control -- seems puzzling in light of the fact that they are obviously not the result of Marquis striking more guys out. I'll leave it to smarter people than me to figure that one out (seriously, if someone has any thoughts about this, shoot me an email), but for the time being I'm skeptical that Marquis has somehow found the secret of tater prevention.

The home run caveat aside, I'm not convinced that Marquis results will continue to hold up as the season progresses, but even if they do, I'm not prepared to say that such results will be attributable to Marquis somehow "figuring it out."

Sweet Fancy Moses!

Baseball-Reference.com unveiled a redesign sometime late this afternoon. Check it out.

The front page now has current standings. And yesterday's box scores. And the top game scores from those games.

Please excuse me and every other baseball blogger for a few moments. We need to compose ourselves.

Gagne's Activation: Innocuous Roster Move, or Sabermetric Test Case?

Eric Gagne is handed back the Rangers' closer job despite coming off of, oh, eleventeen years of injuries (the latest literally being a pain in the ass) and despite the fact that his replacement, Akinori Otsuka, is pitching pretty damn well. Why? Take it away Ron Washington:

"He knows how to close a ballgame down," manager Ron Washington said before his team played the New York Yankees. "So, even though he may have been in and out, he has knowledge. You can't teach that."

Setting aside the curious suggestion that one "can't teach knowledge," what, exactly, is involved in closing a game down that isn't involved in pitching effectively in other situations? Unless they do things really differently in Texas, a pitcher is trying to get guys out whether it's in the ninth inning with a three run lead or the fifth inning down seven.

That said, how this story fits into the myth of the closer doesn't interest me all that much.

I'm more interested in this story as a test-case of both Billy Beane's influence on his former employee, Ron Washington and the extent to which Rangers' GM Jon Daniels subscribes to sabermetric principles like many of the other baby-GMs hired in recent years do.

You'll recall that in Moneyball, Washington, then an A's coach, was portrayed old-fashioned and somewhat reluctant to adopt many sabermetric strategies. This reluctance, many argue, cost him a chance to take over as A's manager when Ken Macha left. The fact that he hired Art Howe -- another man who often found himself in the doghouse for not following the Beane orthodoxy -- as his bench coach leads one to conclude that Washington is content to play things old school rather than implement the strategies to which he was exposed in Oakland.

The whole Gagne-Otsuka situation, however, presents Washington with an outstanding opportunity to exploit one of those sabermetric strategies. As Bill James has demonstrated, the use of a team's best relief pitcher protecting three-run leads in the ninth isn't efficient. In fact, using your best reliever -- your "relief ace" -- when the game is tied late, a team can substantially improve its winning percentage. Games aren't "saved" in only the ninth inning, the logic goes, and they can very easily be lost in the seventh, so a right-thinking team would do well to use it's best guy at the most critical time, and not just when there's a chance to chalk up a formal save.

Given his comments about Gagne's "knowledge," it's very possible that Washington's demotion of Otsuka in favor of Gagne is a textbook example of favoring the "proven veteran*" despite having better options available. It's also possible, however, that the move is motivated by a desire to get the seemingly better pitcher, Otsuka, into higher-leverage situations while allowing his vet to feel better about himself in the less-important closer role. We may not ever know if that's his true motivation, but perhaps some of of Washington's other moves throughout the season will give us insight into whether that's what's really going on. He couldn't have spent all that time in Oakland without some of it rubbing off on him, could he?

Daniels too has the opportunity use the Gagne-Otsuka situation as a platform to exploit sabermetric thinking. Specifically, the Billy Beane-patented "pump and dump" strategy in which Beane instructed his field manager to designate his less-than-best reliever as the "closer," allowed them to collect a healthy save total, and then traded him away for a greater return than they were probably worth by virtue of the unwarranted value teams place on the save stat. Billy Taylor and Billy Koch are two examples that spring to mind, each of whom Beane managed to dump to other teams for better players (though Beane was arguably a victim of the pump and dump, albeit a seemingly willing one, in acquiring Koch from the Blue Jays in the first place).

Unlike Washington's adoption of the Jamesian relief-ace strategy, we need only read the rumor wire to see if Daniels is trying to turn Gagne and his $6M salary into trade bait for a desperate contender by allowing him to rack up a handful of easy, one-inning saves. Though the season is still young and Texas could theoretically contend, it's certainly what I'd do if I were in his position.

Whatever happens, this is the first time in years I've cared about what's happening in Texas.

*Otsuka is four years older than Gagne, but has five fewer years of MLB experience.

Putting Rocket's Age in Perspective

Thoughts on Clemens from someone in Sea-Tac:

Clemens is older than Sparky Anderson was when he managed Cincinnati’s Big Red Machine during the 1970s, and Sparky might’ve been the most ancient looking man in a baseball uniform I’d ever seen.

Clemens is older than George Washington when he was appointed commander in chief of the Continental Army, older than Thomas Jefferson was when he originally retired to Monticello in 1781, older than Teddy Roosevelt was when he became president.

Clemens is older than Lorne Greene was during the premiere season of “Bonanza” – Greene, remember, played the father of three still-home-on-the-ranch sons pushing 30 – and older than Carol Channing when she first appeared in “Hello, Dolly!” on Broadway.

Hope for Miguel Olivo!

Seems that steroids improves walk rates!

Parents who give steroids to boys who have muscular dystrophy can expect to see their sons walk three years longer on average, according to a new study.

To analyze the long-term effects of steroids, Ohio State University researchers reviewed the medical history of 143 boys seen at the muscular dystrophy clinic there.

And here I thought they only helped improve slugging . . .

A Closer Look at the Ellen Massey Lawsuit

The story about the lawsuit filed by Ellen Massey -- the Mets fan who got her back broken by a flying fat man -- inspired what's left of the lawyer in me to wonder about her chances of success. After some moderate review of the matter, my sense is that she has a technically-valid legal claim, but one that will be pretty hard to prove.

Based on the news reports of the case, it appears as though she is going to premise her claim on the notion that the flying fat guy was over-served by Aramark, the Mets' beer vendor. It's worth noting at this point that the largest ever jury award arising out of the magical confluence of booze and sports venues came in a recent New Jersey case against Aramark and Giants stadium. There, Aramark was rung up to the tune of $105 million for selling beer to a drunken football fan who later caused an auto accident, leaving one Antonia Verni, a 2 year-old girl, paralyzed.

While that verdict was overturned on appeal, the reversal was based on some overly-emotional and irrelevant testimony that was let in at trial, and which appeared to have contributed to the inflated damage award. The central premise of the case, however, -- that a stadium beer vendor can be liable for injuries later caused by a drunken fan -- remains intact. Verni, now 9, is appealing the reversal to the New Jersey Supreme Court. But even if she loses the damages award in the Supreme Court, she is going to get a chance to prove her claim at a new trial. New York's dram shop laws are similar to New Jersey's, so it appears that, like Antonia Verni, Ellen Massey has a case.

Well, at least technically. Even if she can avoid having her case dismissed out of hand, she's going to have a tremendous proof problem that Antonio Verni never faced in that the drunk fan in the Verni case was in an accident after which his BAC was taken, establishing (a) that he was drunk at the time of the accident; and (b) that he was almost certainly visibly drunk at the time he was continuing to get beers at the Giants game.

Massey has yet to identify her fat, flying assailant. Even if she is able to, she will have no way of conclusively establishing that he was drunk back in April, rendering it a he-said, she-said situation in which plaintiffs often fair quite poorly. Even in the unlikely event that the fat man admits to being drunk, for Aramark and the Mets to be on the hook, Massey must prove that they served an obviously drunk man. Given the lack of a BAC it will be impossible to say just how drunk the guy was when he ordered his last Bud Light.

So, while it may get hairy for them for a few months, I like the Mets' and Aramark's chances of ultimate success.