Regarding the Bechdel Test

(Don't read if you haven't seen Doctor Who at least through the episode "The Angels Take Manhattan.")

The Bechdel test has been in the news a lot recently. That's the supposed "test" for whether a movie (or, in principle, any other unit of moving-picture fiction, or any fiction I suppose) is adequately feminist/non-sexist. It has three requirements:

• That there be at least two female characters;
• That they talk, to each other; and
• That their conversation be about something other than a man.

 The test originates from this comic, by Alison Bechdel.

I like this test, basically. Certainly I agree with what I believe was the basic sentiment behind the original comic, that a world in which depictions of such conversations between two women are extremely rare or essentially nonexistent is in that regard a very bad world. And so I find very interesting this analysis from the newly relaunched FiveThirtyEight that found that movies made since 1990 which pass the test have received smaller budgets than those which fail it, and that passing movies have brought a greater return on investment than failing ones. As acknowledged by the article, the test has some problems, and can in a lot of cases break down. For instance, the movie Gravity "fails" the test, because it has precisely two real characters, one of whom, the protagonist, is female, and the other of whom is male. The female protagonist is a very strong character, but, y'know, she's up in space, all isolated and stuff. But for making broad-brush judgments against a whole bunch of movies in the aggregate, it works pretty well. We can anticipate that, on average, movies that fail the test will do a worse job of portraying good female character than ones that pass it, even if there are some exceptions on both sides.

Juan Lagares is Getting Victimized by the Mike Trout Phenomenon

Continuing on the same theme as my last post. Terry Collins gave the following explanation for why Juan Lagares is not in the lineup tonight:

"Juan is the center fielder," Collins said Friday afternoon. "We’ve got to somehow get his stroke back. He’s starting to expand the zone a little bit right now. When we get him back to where he’s taking some of those pitches, his defense is something we need, and we need very much. But we’re not scoring. So we’ve got to figure out how to get some runs."

The Mets Will Never Be Good As Long As Terry Collins Is Their Manager

Tonight the Mets play the Washington Nationals in the first game of a three-game series. They're two games behind the Nats for second place in the division (though they are themselves in fourth), so, say, sweeping the serious could be huge. Here's the lineup the team is going with tonight:

Eric Young, LF (S)
Daniel Murphy, 2B (L)
David Wright, 3B (R)
Curtis Granderson, CF (L)
Bobby Abreu, RF (L)
Lucas Duda, 1B (L)
Anthony Recker, C (R)
Ruben Tejada, SS (R)
Jon Niese, P (L)

They're lucky the guy they've got in the #9 spot is good at pitching, 'cause this is an awful lineup. It's not so much that it's awful offensively. Particularly the way Granderson hits away from Citi Field, it's more like mediocre, and could almost be good on a good day. But hooo boy the defense. I count two spots in the field, other than the one on the mound, where we've got good defensive players, and that's third base and left field. That latter is arguable, given the way Young's been misplaying balls of late. But you've then got Tejada and Murphy up the middle, who are solid enough if a bit lacking in range, Duda at first who's probably fine but nothing special, and, well, Curtis Granderson at this point in his career might be a good defensive right fielder. He might also be the third or fourth best defensive center fielder on the team. Abreu has basically no business playing the field.

Notable by their absence are Wilmer Flores and Juan Lagares. Flores was called up a few days ago to be the starting shortstop instead of Tejada. He was hitting .307/.360/.500 in AAA. Tejada is slugging .240 on the season. As for Lagares, well, he's perhaps the best defensive outfielder in all of baseball right now, and is also one of the three people on the roster right now with at least 10 plate appearances and a league-average wRC+ or better. Oh, and he's shown a minimal platoon split for his career. So he's not someone you'd want to take out of the lineup. Say, ever. Certainly you'd think he'd be in there on an essentially regular basis, with maybe the occasional day off against a really tough right-hander.

As it happens, today might be one of those days. Tanner Roark, the Nationals's starter tonight, has for his career allowed a .254/.315/.396 line to lefties, perfectly unimpressive for a pitcher, but a, well, .180/.215/.208 line to righties. He makes righties hit like a pitcher. So this would seem to be a good day to minimize the number of right-handed bats in the lineup. Sitting Chris Young, for instance, is an obvious call, since he has a huge platoon split. Both the catchers are right-handed so there's nothing you can do about that, and you're not gonna take David Wright out for anything. Arguably getting all three left-handed bats in your outfield is justifiable, although I'm honestly not sure I think, even with Roark's splits, that present-day Bobby Abreu will provide more value than Juan Lagares + not making Granderson play center. As for shortstop, well, they are both righties, but Tejada has a big platoon split and Flores a little one, so playing Tejada, who's a worse player overall, is just weird. He should only get the occasional start against a lefty, and probably not even then.

But the point isn't really today. It's that Lagares also sat out the last two days, also against right-handed pitching, in favor of an outfield of Young, Young, and Granderson. He also say out the first game at Yankee Stadium, and Flores sat out all four Subway Series games. Note that Chris Young is also right-handed. Note also that he is unambiguously a worse player than Lagares, probably on both sides of the ball right now. Note further that, had the amazing Lagares been patrolling center field last night when Alfonso Soriano doubled in the game's only run, he probably would've gotten to the ball an awful lot quicker and prevented Brian McCann from trying to score in the first place. So even with their offensive futility the Mets might not have lost the game in regulation, giving them a chance to outlast the Yankee bullpen and do something in extras.

Juan Lagares needs to play every day, or at least six days out of every seven. It's as simple as that. And yet, he keeps not playing. The only time he's been in the lineup in the last five baseball games was when the team was not only facing a left-handed starting pitcher but also had the DH spot available, allowing them to play four whole outfielders. The previous game, they also had the DH spot, but that went to Abreu, who went 0-3, and Lagares sat out while Young, Young, & Grandy got the call. This is ridiculous. So is the Flores thing. It's not even so much that lineup construction, in the sense of finding the best permutation of nine batters for nine batting order spots, has been a problem, it's that they've been picking the wrong nine guys on a daily basis. And it's been costing the team.

The bottom line is that I think well over half of the Mets losses this year have felt like they were in part on the manager. Certainly last night's was. Tonight's could well be again, depending on how Abreu and Granderson hold up in the field. And I haven't even mentioned all the shenanigans regarding his pitcher usage, which has been execrable. I think this could be a good team, honestly, if they would just deploy the players right. That shouldn't be the hard part. But it's been, jeez, like five years now, and Terry Collins has never once demonstrated that he is capable of doing that. I also don't see that much evidence that he's a great "leader of men" or whatever. For instance, right now David Wright is in a huge slump during the course of which he has started swinging at everything. You'd think a manager would be supposed to get him to stop doing that, and to be willing to take his walks if the pitchers don't want to pitch to him. That has yet to happen. And it looks like it's about attitude, because he's had a great eye at the plate his whole career.

By around the end of this season and certainly by the beginning of next one, this Mets team is going to have the talent to compete. It's gonna have a rotation featuring the likes of Matt Harvey, Noah Syndergaard, and Zack Wheeler, plus perhaps Jon Niese, Dillon Gee, Rafael Montero, or Jacob deGrom. The bullpen will feature power arms like Jenrry Mejia and Jeurys Familia, perhaps rejoined by Bobby Parnell. Cesar Puello may become a contributing outfielder. It's a team that will be loaded with promise. But if Terry Collins is still the manager, I betcha they're gonna have another disappointing, because he just won't use what he's been given right. He'll keep turning winnable games into losses. Not every one of those will be a true marginal loss, because you don't win every winnable game, but it doesn't take that many marginal losses to turn a playoff team into an also-ran.

They need someone new. (And from what I hear it shouldn't be Wally Backman either; he's been decidedly odd as their AAA manager.)