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"I didn't have my good stuff going tonight," he said. "But I doubt that made a difference. I'm not a six-sided die, but mathematically I act like one and function with surprisingly little agency. Any game I pitch is just an expression of my true talent, that of my opponents and something that isn't quite what the average person means when they say 'luck' but works more or less the same way. I hope for a 90th percentile outcome every time out, but to me it's really all about sticking near my mean outcome and giving the guys a chance to win."

The always enjoyable Tim Marchman provides a mad-lib for a response to the Mets rumor mill.

"The Overmanager: Why the New York Yankees' Joe Girardi is too smart for his own good." Worth a read.

Good read about the closer-by-committee situations currently working in Atlanta and Tampa. Don't expect it anytime soon in Flushing, but I particularly liked this from the article: "As the story goes, a team that declines to slot its pitchers into rigid roles is supposed to suffer all sorts of problems, as anguished relievers find themselves unable to prepare and mentally broken by the idea of pitching with the game on the line......a pitcher's job is to get outs whenever the manager asks him to get them rather than to fulfill a certain marquee role."