Your Saturday morning dose of New York Mets and Major League Baseball news, notes, and links.
Meet the Mets
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Despite being officially eliminated from playoff contention last night, the Mets will not quit on the final eight games of the season. Four years ago, Terry Collins hoped the Mets turnaround would've been quicker. Ron Darling thinks that this was one of the more enjoyable years covering the team thanks to the emergence of the youth.
Jacob deGrom: NL Rookie of the Year? Jared Diamond makes the case.
Could Wilmer Flores be the Mets starting shortstop in 2015? He's doing his best on the field to campaign for the job over the past few weeks.
Wally Backman is up with the big club for the final week of the season and he broke down all of the high-level prospects he saw at Triple-A Las Vegas. Paul DePodesta talked about the Mets system as well and pointed out that it's not just dominated by pitching anymore.
In terms of the easiness of being a fan, the Mets are ranked 118th among teams in all four major sports. Not dead last, hooray!
Around the NL East
The Philliesfell to the Athletics 3-1, while the Nationalsbeat the Marlins 3-2.
Ryan Zimmerman is back for the Nats but where will he play?
Around the Majors
The Tigerstorched the Royals 10-1 behind Justin Verlander to push their lead in the AL Central to a game and a half.
Russell Martin's three-run home run off of Jonathan Broxtonpropelled the Pirates to a 4-2 victory over the Brewers.
Some baseball organizations are using neuroscience to try to rewire their hitters' brains. Neat!
Jeff Sullivan looked at the playoff team that you could've built this offseason for absolutely nothing.
The Mets aren't the only team slowly rebuilding: the Cubs are in a similar boat, except Javier Baez has really struggled in the majors so far.
Marc Normandin ate a giant sandwich called the Moby Dick, which can be found at the ballpark of the minor league Lake County Captains.
Yesterday At AA
Ugh, Chipper Jones. Matthew Callan's look back at the 1999 Mets deals with their biggest nemesis.
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