Skip to main content

Is Yorvit Torre-able?

Apparently he isn't.

Forgive me if I'm not jumping up and down about the Yorvit Torrealba signing, as I'm generally resistant to change. My feeling was that if Jorge Posada wasn't signable, the next-best option was to Keep Paul Lo Duca. You'll recall that when I did an analysis of who could catch for the Mets in 2008, my ringing endorsement for Torrealba was that he was "better than Brian Schneider." And this move doesn't exactly console me for what happened at the end of the 2007 season.

Baseball-Reference.com lists Torrealba's most similar player as Jason Phillips and it looks like Torrealba is a candidate to join Phillips on the all-slow footed Mets team we drew up a couple years back. Torrealba hit into 19 double plays, struck out 73 times, and hit .201 with runners in scoring position in 396 at bats last season, so that means he's gonna kill his share of rallies. I'll put it this way: I won't be upset any time Ramon Castro draws the start.

That said, Torrealba is a Met now and he's special in his own unique way (like Hobie Landrith, who was the only Hobie in major-league history, Torrealba is the only Yorvit). I'd also like to think he's special because of something that happened on July 27, 2006.

The fourth-place Rockies were playing the first-place Padres, and trailing by two runs with two outs and nobody on against Trevor Hoffman in the ninth inning. Todd Helton singled, to keep the game going for Torrealba, who was batting sixth that day.

Normally in that matchup, I'd take Trevor Hoffman. In fact, I'd probably do so 99 times out of 100 (or, 1 out of 8, as those are Torrealba's career numbers against baseball's save king). Fortunately for the Rockies, they drew the right one. Torrealba crushed Hoffman's first pitch over the leftfield fence for a game-tying home run and the Rockies went on to win in the bottom of the 10th on Jamey Carroll's single against Scott Williamson.

I realize that it's not a lot to go on at this point, but at least it's good to know that Torrealba does have the occasional clutch knock in him. Whether he's got the knock, and the knack to succeed in New York, I guess we'll be finding out.

True Metbealbas know... Torrealba has homered more than once against one major-league pitcher. It happens to be the guy who won the NL Cy Young today (Jake Peavy, 2 HR).




Comments

Anonymous said…
Yorvit Torrealba...ruining Mets bloggers' storylines since Saturday.

Popular posts from this blog

Best Games I Know: Phillies (Updated)

  The best wins against the Phillies in Mets history …   May 5, 2022 – Mets 8, Phillies 7 The Mets score 7 runs in the 9 th inning to overcome a 7-1 deficit and win in Philadelphia.   April 29, 2022 – Mets 3, Phillies 0 Tylor Megill and 4 Mets relievers combine on the second no-hitter in franchise history.   September 22, 2016 – Mets 9, Phillies 8 (11) The Mets tie it in the 9 th on a Jose Reyes home run and win it in the 11 th on a 3-run home run by Asdrubal Cabrera.   July 17, 2016 - Mets 5, Phillies 0 Jacob deGrom pitches a one-hitter. Only hit is a single by Zach Eflin in the 5 th inning.   August 24, 2015 – Mets 16, Phillies 7 David Wright homers in his first at-bat in more than 4 months. The Mets hit a team-record 8 home runs.   July 5, 2012 – Mets 6, Phillies 5 The Mets score 2 runs with 2 outs in the bottom of the 9 th to beat Jonathan Papelbon. The winning run scores on David Wright’s bloop down the right field line.   August 13

The best Mets ejections I know

When you think of the Mets and famous ejections, I'm guessing you first think of the famous Bobby Valentine mustache game, when after Valentine got tossed, he returned to the dugout in disguise. You know it. You love it. I remember being amused when I asked Bobby V about it while we were working on Baseball Tonight, how he simply said "It worked. We won the game." (true) But the Bobby V mustache game of June 9, 1999 is one of many, many memorable Mets ejection stories. And now thanks to Retrosheet and the magic of Newspapers.com , we have a convenient means for being able to share them. Ever since Retrosheet's David Smith recently announced that the Retrosheet ejection database was posted online , I've been a kid in a candy store. I've organized the data and done some lookups of media coverage around the games that interested me post. Those newspaper accounts fill in a lot of blanks. Without further ado (and with more work to do), here are some of my findings

Walk-Offs in Movies, TV, and Other Places

Note: I'm leaving this post up through the end of the week, a) because I don't have time to pump out something new and b)because I was hoping to build a really good list of entertainment industry walk-offs...so if you're looking for something new, check back on Monday or so... Of course, if there's a major trade or move, I'll adjust and try to post something... In the meantime, click on the "Table of Contents" link as well. It has been updated. SPOILER ALERT: Read at your own risk Caught the ending of "A League of Their Own" on one of the movie channels the other day and it got me to thinking that it would be fun to compile a list of walk-offs from movies, television, and other forms of entertainment. Here's the start, and only the start, as I spent about 30 minutes or so thinking it over Help me fill in the blanks by filling out the comments section. "A League of Their Own"-- Racine beats Rockford for the All-American Girls Profess