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New York Times
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Presenting the Mets' All-Quarter Century team, Queens' best of the 2000s
Editor's note: The Athletic is marking 2025 by naming an MLB All-Quarter Century Team, selected by Jayson Stark. We invited readers to take our survey and make their picks for the best players at each position since 2000, with the results announced in an upcoming story. Some of our beat writers are picking All-Quarter Century Teams for the teams they cover. Check this page to find all of our All-Quarter Century Team coverage. Advertisement The New York Mets entered the 2000s in a good place. They had just made the NLCS, losing in six games to a rival, and they were a favorite in the National League to win a pennant in 2000 (which they did). They entered 2025 in a good place. They had just made the NLCS, losing in six games to (perhaps an incipient) rival, and they are a favorite in the National League to win a pennant. Almost makes it seem that the intervening quarter-century was smooth, eh? The juxtaposition of 2025 to 2000 belies the occasional peaks and longer stretches in the valley that the franchise has experienced in that time. The Mets have endured the Bernie Madoff scandal and its consequent years of austerity, a pair of brutal late-season collapses, and a series of debilitating injuries to many of the players I'm about to single out for praise. But the team I'm about to build? It's pretty good. The left side of the infield has combined for more than 100 career wins above replacement (according to FanGraphs). The center fielder has the second-most WAR among all outfielders this century. The pitching staff, while shy on longevity, can be dominant. This is the Mets All-Quarter Century Team. Since it's been almost two decades since his last game with the Mets, you might have thought Piazza wasn't behind the plate enough this century to make this choice so easy. Well, he's caught 200 more games in the 2000s than any other Met, and Piazza isn't going to lose on production to anyone, Met or otherwise. From 2000 to 2005, Piazza hit .286/.368/.525 with 157 home runs. Honorable mention: Travis d'Arnaud Alonso has made this a simple decision, as well, putting up numbers on par with Carlos Delgado's best years for a lot longer in blue and orange. He's played almost twice as many games at first as any other Met, and he should set the franchise home run record later this season. Advertisement Honorable mentions: Delgado, Lucas Duda This is the first difficult selection, and I'm going with Murphy over Jeff McNeil's higher WAR with the Mets. And yes, it's because of about a 10-game stretch in October 2015. This is no slight to McNeil, who has made two All-Star teams and won a batting title with the Mets; he's been their best regular-season second baseman this century. But Murphy's postseason run in 2015 included homers in five straight games (many off the game's best pitchers that season). He provided all the Mets' offense in the deciding victory over the Dodgers in the NLDS — probably the best game the Mets played this century until last fall. And Murphy manned second base nearly as often as McNeil has, making his own All-Star team in 2014. Honorable mention: McNeil Here again, I'm bypassing the club's actual leader in WAR at the position (José Reyes, of course) for a different pick. Lindor's played more than 500 fewer games at short than Reyes (and 800 overall), but he's approaching the same overall value and emerged as a leader for this era of Mets baseball. Honorable mention: Reyes Does this require explanation? Wright is the best Mets player of this century and the last Met to be named team captain. He played five times more games at third than any other Met, such that there's not even a point in having an honorable mention here. (Sorry, Robin Ventura.) He also authored one of the finest individual seasons in team history in 2007, when he might have won MVP if not for the team collapsing around him. If you want to be super strict about positional alignment in the outfield, then this is a close race between Nimmo and Cliff Floyd. (Floyd played more games in left this century than Nimmo has so far.) But when you add up what Nimmo has done in all three outfield positions, he's head and shoulders above the other contenders here. Advertisement Nimmo has matured from an aw-shucks kid from Wyoming into a verifiable team leader, a guy who cried tears of joy on the field last season when the Mets clinched their first postseason series at Citi Field. By the end of his contract in 2030, he's poised to play 15 seasons in a Mets uniform — more than all but Ed Kranepool in franchise history. Honorable mention: Floyd Beltrán isn't just the center fielder for this team; he's the center fielder on the all-franchise team if we go back to 1962. Following a slow start to his Mets tenure in 2005, Beltrán was a force for the final six years of his contract. He made five All-Star teams, won three Gold Gloves, placed in the top five for the MVP in 2006 and brought back Zack Wheeler in a deadline deal in 2011. Honorable mention: Nimmo Perhaps Conforto didn't live up to all the promise he showed as a sweet-swinging rookie comfortably performing in a pennant race and the postseason in 2015. Overall, though, he had a fine Mets career that included an All-Star team in 2017 and a 30-homer season in 2019. It's unfortunate that his two best years as a Met were both cut short: 2017 by a shoulder injury and 2020 by the pandemic. Honorable mention: Curtis Granderson Picking a DH doesn't feel right for a team that didn't have one for 21 seasons this century. But let's go with the best hitter not yet on the team, a guy whose acquisition provided as big an in-season spark as an offense has ever experienced. Céspedes did, after all, hit a game-winning homer in the first home game in which the Mets ever played a DH. As with some other greats in franchise history, the memories are better if we forget how it ended. OK, so before you furrow your brow, I'm going with guys who actually came off the bench for most of their Mets tenures. Advertisement Castro ranks fourth among Mets backstops in WAR this century despite never batting more than 240 times in a season with New York. He's getting pushed here now by Luis Torrens, although so is Francisco Alvarez, so Torrens might not be a 'backup' much longer. Had Castro's fly ball to the warning track in the first inning of the final game of the 2007 regular season traveled about six more feet, he'd have supplanted Piazza on this team. Flores is a Mets icon even though he qualified for the batting title only once in Queens, in 2015. A walk-off magician, he overcame the lack of a solid defensive position to be a consistent contributor. I remember writing about him weekly when part of my first job was covering the Appalachian League and he was a 17-year-old wunderkind in Kingsport; that was literally half a lifetime ago for him. Is Chavez's catch still the most memorable Mets play of this century? (Other contenders off the top of the noggin include Piazza's home run in the first game back after Sept. 11, Bartolo Colon's home run and Pete Alonso's season-saver last fall.) He had the best year of his career in 2006, hitting better than .300 with 22 doubles while filling in often for Floyd. Smith edges out Lenny Harris and Marlon Anderson for his pinch hitting prowess. That's right, I'm not even factoring in his absurd 2020 season — which in retrospect will go down as one of the great anomalies in club history. But when pinch hitting for the Mets, Smith posted a .902 OPS with some clutch homers, most notably his unbelievable shot to end the 2019 season. Honorable mentions: Harris, Anderson, Joe McEwing, Mike Baxter, Kirk Nieuwenhuis, Scott Hairston DeGrom is as easy a choice as any on the board — a legitimate contender to be on a team picked from the entire league. His run of success from the start of the 2018 season through his injury halfway through 2021 is on par with the greatest in the sport's history. (His ERA+ over that stretch is better than the best four-season stretches by Sandy Koufax, Greg Maddux or Randy Johnson. Pedro Martínez does best deGrom with his run from 1997 through 2000.) Santana had just 3 1/2 healthy seasons as a Met, but he was among the game's aces throughout that stretch. He delivered a signature performance on the penultimate day of the 2008 season and, of course, the first no-hitter in club history. Advertisement While Leiter's most memorable start as a Met came in 1999, he was the ace of the 2000 pennant-winners and a stalwart at the top of the rotation through 2004. He did not post an ERA above 4.00 this century with the Mets. Dickey owns the fewest wins above replacement of this group, ranking way down at ninth for the club among starting pitchers. His 2012 Cy Young season, however, was an obvious bright spot, and his trade to Toronto helped spark the Mets' eventual pennant in 2015. For the last spot, I'm going with Harvey over Noah Syndergaard. Syndergaard is actually second among Mets starters in WAR this century, behind only deGrom. However, it's hard to overstate how meaningful Harvey was to Mets fans at the time of his arrival in 2012 and breakout in 2013. And Harvey was right there with deGrom as the ace of the 2015 staff — a guy who deserved Game 1 starts in the postseason (and, as I duck, the ninth inning of Game 5). Honorable mention: Syndergaard, Zack Wheeler, Tom Glavine I contemplated going strictly by bullpen roles, but decided that byzantine arguments about who the best longman of the century for the Mets was — Darren Oliver over Trevor Williams, I think — is best left for the comments. Díaz's 2022 season is the best by a Mets reliever this century, and out of this group, he's still the guy getting the nod to close. No Met has thrown more innings out of the pen this century than Familia, whose struggles in the 2015 World Series and at the end of his Mets tenure have overshadowed how good and important he was last decade. Wagner and Benitez were excellent closers who did not do their best work in the postseason, unfortunately. Reed is the best set-up man the Mets have had this century, and Lugo was for a time as useful a reliever as any in the sport (even if the Mets often labored to maximize that usage). Parnell was a solid reliever for a lot of mediocre teams, and Feliciano — or 'Perpetual Pedro,' as Gary Cohen took to calling him — felt like he got a big out every day. He appeared in 344 games over a four-year stretch, or easily more than half of New York's games. Honorable mention: Aaron Heilman, Adam Ottavino, Francisco Rodriguez And because making a lineup is fun: SS Lindor CF Beltrán C Piazza 3B Wright RF Conforto DH Céspedes 1B Alonso 2B Murphy LF Nimmo (Top photo of Jacob deGrom: Brad Penner / USA Today)
Yahoo
15-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Opinion - A ‘tofu-dreg' edifice: Most of China's official economic data is probably fake
China reported remarkable economic growth of 5.4 percent in the first quarter of 2025. Its growth is fascinating, since it far outstripped all large economies. It is also noteworthy because it comes amid China's collapsing real estate bubble, stagnant growth in its second-largest export market (Europe), negative growth in its top export market (the U.S.), falling domestic population and deflation. How did China achieve this miracle? The answer is simple — it didn't. For at least a decade, China's growth story has been a triumph of propaganda and a testament to the willingness of lazy, gullible western journalists and institutions to accept it. In truth, whether we're talking GDP, economic growth, deflation or demographics, the official Chinese data is a tofu-dreg edifice that cannot mask China's severe underlying societal problems. China's official growth statistics are reminiscent of Bernie Madoff's quarterly updates to his clients. For decades, the high-priced con artist delivered a stream of steady investment returns. Markets went up, markets went down, yet Madoff delivered with barely a hiccup. Investors and journalists thought he was a genius. Yet his very consistency was actually evidence of fraud. Likewise, the western media and financial establishment have swallowed whole the idea that China and its increasingly central-planned economy is a genius model that can do no wrong. China's claims that it hits or exceeds its growth targets over and over and over continue to be accepted at face value. Even in years where it is impossible to fake a 5 percent growth rate, China's claims remain absurd. In the COVID year of 2020, China claimed over 2.2 percent growth, even as the world economy (despite including this likely-fudged Chinese data) shrank by nearly 3 percent. Independent researchers have become wise to this fraud. Alternate measures suggest that China's economy may have declined in 2023, rather than grown by the government-targeted 5 percent. Research from the University of Chicago suggests that China's economy may be as much as 60 percent smaller than officially reported. Even if one accepts Chinese data, a portion of the reported growth is economically useless. With overbuilt infrastructure and vast swaths of empty apartment buildings, China has embraced a version of Bastiat's broken window fallacy — where any type of economic activity, including construction of useless assets, counts the same as real or useful economic activity. China and its ruling clique, the Chinese Communist Party, are continuing a long tradition of communist or socialist authoritarian nations faking economic statistics. Historian Tony Judt discussed this in his tome 'Postwar,' wherein he exposited on the bankruptcy of communist Eastern Europe, offering up decades of statistical claims later proven to be lies. Clearly, Karl Marx left out fraud as a fundamental tenet of communism. As bad as Chinese economic growth statistics are, China's population and demographic data may be worse. Although the economic data are presumed merely inflated to conceal slower growth, the population data likely conceal a demographic disaster that is gaining speed every day. Dr. Yi Fuxian of the University of Wisconsin, an expert in China's demographics and prominent critic of that country's one-child policy, has been digging into the details of China's population claims — and what he has found is not good. For starters, Yi believes that China's population is overestimated by at least 130 million — more than one-third of the U.S. population. In a recent monograph, Yi details the many discrepancies buried within China's current and past census data. For example, China requires a tuberculosis vaccine for all newborns — data that allows researchers to cross-check the reported number of births. The data matched official birth statistics in 2009 and 2010. But by 2018, the 6.21 million reported vaccination doses implied at best 9.9 million births, far less than China's claimed 15.23 million births. The 2019 and 2020 data had similar large discrepancies. In another data point, China reported 13.79 million children under the age of one in 2000. Yet the 2010 census claimed there were 14 million 10-year-olds. But the magical appearance of a quarter-million children had expanded by 2014, when the number of ninth-graders (a direct analogue to age 14) was reported as 14.26 million. At every level of China's government, there is every incentive to fake population numbers. Local governments are highly dependent on fiscal transfers from the central government. Higher populations mean more money. Yet this research is not necessary to know that something is fishy in the Chinese data. China's fertility rate fell below replacement (2.1 children per woman) in 1991 and quickly fell further to 1.522 in 1998. After 1998, the data starts to look strange. Fertility, we are to believe, stopped falling in 1998, despite ever rising wealth, education and urbanization — all factors directly correlated with lower rates of reproduction. In fact, the rate supposedly increased by more than 15 percent from its low in 1998 to 2012. This makes no sense. Not only is this rise completely counter to experiences throughout the world, it is strongly against what happened in culturally similar societies in East Asia. Furthermore, China maintained its one-child policy through 2013. A fertility rate over 1.5 implies either a majority of women were having two children or a substantial number of women were having three or more children. And natural decrease has not been balanced by immigration — according to publicly available data, China has had a net outflow of migrants every year since 1960. The gathering demographic erosion of China is not some historical curiosity. It implies a fast-aging population with less dynamism and an increasing social welfare burden. Shifting demographics removed Japan as an economic competitor to the U.S. in the 1990s, and the same dynamic is at work against China. China's average age is already higher than that of the U.S. China remains a dangerous county. American officials and President Trump must understand that opening up China to U.S. exports is not a very good trade-off. Increasing demographic and economic pressures are likely to make China more aggressive in the near-term. Auguste Comte once said; 'Demography is destiny.' For China, that destiny — aging and economic atrophy — is here, and it is a serious problem for China and the world. But determining how to handle it requires an embrace of facts over official fictions. Keith Naughton is co-founder of Silent Majority Strategies, a public and regulatory affairs consulting firm, and a former Pennsylvania political campaign consultant. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
The Hill
15-05-2025
- Business
- The Hill
A ‘tofu-dreg' edifice: Most of China's official economic data is probably fake
China reported remarkable economic growth of 5.4 percent in the first quarter of 2025. Its growth is fascinating, since it far outstripped all large economies. It is also noteworthy because it comes amid China's collapsing real estate bubble, stagnant growth in its second-largest export market (Europe), negative growth in its top export market (the U.S.), falling domestic population and deflation. How did China achieve this miracle? The answer is simple — it didn't. For at least a decade, China's growth story has been a triumph of propaganda and a testament to the willingness of lazy, gullible western journalists and institutions to accept it. In truth, whether we're talking GDP, economic growth, deflation or demographics, the official Chinese data is a tofu-dreg edifice that cannot mask China's severe underlying societal problems. China's official growth statistics are reminiscent of Bernie Madoff's quarterly updates to his clients. For decades, the high-priced con artist delivered a stream of steady investment returns. Markets went up, markets went down, yet Madoff delivered with barely a hiccup. Investors and journalists thought he was a genius. Yet his very consistency was actually evidence of fraud. Likewise, the western media and financial establishment have swallowed whole the idea that China and its increasingly central-planned economy is a genius model that can do no wrong. China's claims that it hits or exceeds its growth targets over and over and over continue to be accepted at face value. Even in years where it is impossible to fake a 5 percent growth rate, China's claims remain absurd. In the COVID year of 2020, China claimed over 2.2 percent growth, even as the world economy (despite including this likely-fudged Chinese data) shrank by nearly 3 percent. Independent researchers have become wise to this fraud. Alternate measures suggest that China's economy may have declined in 2023, rather than grown by the government-targeted 5 percent. Research from the University of Chicago suggests that China's economy may be as much as 60 percent smaller than officially reported. Even if one accepts Chinese data, a portion of the reported growth is economically useless. With overbuilt infrastructure and vast swaths of empty apartment buildings, China has embraced a version of Bastiat's broken window fallacy — where any type of economic activity, including construction of useless assets, counts the same as real or useful economic activity. China and its ruling clique, the Chinese Communist Party, are continuing a long tradition of communist or socialist authoritarian nations faking economic statistics. Historian Tony Judt discussed this in his tome 'Postwar,' wherein he exposited on the bankruptcy of communist Eastern Europe, offering up decades of statistical claims later proven to be lies. Clearly, Karl Marx left out fraud as a fundamental tenet of communism. As bad as Chinese economic growth statistics are, China's population and demographic data may be worse. Although the economic data are presumed merely inflated to conceal slower growth, the population data likely conceal a demographic disaster that is gaining speed every day. Dr. Yi Fuxian of the University of Wisconsin, an expert in China's demographics and prominent critic of that country's one-child policy, has been digging into the details of China's population claims — and what he has found is not good. For starters, Yi believes that China's population is overestimated by at least 130 million — more than one-third of the U.S. population. In a recent monograph, Yi details the many discrepancies buried within China's current and past census data. For example, China requires a tuberculosis vaccine for all newborns — data that allows researchers to cross-check the reported number of births. The data matched official birth statistics in 2009 and 2010. But by 2018, the 6.21 million reported vaccination doses implied at best 9.9 million births, far less than China's claimed 15.23 million births. The 2019 and 2020 data had similar large discrepancies. In another data point, China reported 13.79 million children under the age of one in 2000. Yet the 2010 census claimed there were 14 million 10-year-olds. But the magical appearance of a quarter-million children had expanded by 2014, when the number of ninth-graders (a direct analogue to age 14) was reported as 14.26 million. At every level of China's government, there is every incentive to fake population numbers. Local governments are highly dependent on fiscal transfers from the central government. Higher populations mean more money. Yet this research is not necessary to know that something is fishy in the Chinese data. China's fertility rate fell below replacement (2.1 children per woman) in 1991 and quickly fell further to 1.522 in 1998. After 1998, the data starts to look strange. Fertility, we are to believe, stopped falling in 1998, despite ever rising wealth, education and urbanization — all factors directly correlated with lower rates of reproduction. In fact, the rate supposedly increased by more than 15 percent from its low in 1998 to 2012. This makes no sense. Not only is this rise completely counter to experiences throughout the world, it is strongly against what happened in culturally similar societies in East Asia. Furthermore, China maintained its one-child policy through 2013. A fertility rate over 1.5 implies either a majority of women were having two children or a substantial number of women were having three or more children. And natural decrease has not been balanced by immigration — according to publicly available data, China has had a net outflow of migrants every year since 1960. The gathering demographic erosion of China is not some historical curiosity. It implies a fast-aging population with less dynamism and an increasing social welfare burden. Shifting demographics removed Japan as an economic competitor to the U.S. in the 1990s, and the same dynamic is at work against China. China's average age is already higher than that of the U.S. China remains a dangerous county. American officials and President Trump must understand that opening up China to U.S. exports is not a very good trade-off. Increasing demographic and economic pressures are likely to make China more aggressive in the near-term. Auguste Comte once said; 'Demography is destiny.' For China, that destiny — aging and economic atrophy — is here, and it is a serious problem for China and the world. But determining how to handle it requires an embrace of facts over official fictions. Keith Naughton is co-founder of Silent Majority Strategies, a public and regulatory affairs consulting firm, and a former Pennsylvania political campaign consultant.
Daily Maverick
15-05-2025
- Business
- Daily Maverick
Before you hedge, make sure you have the edge
Hedge funds, which are becoming increasingly popular in South Africa, have risks and benefits, and you need to make sure your financial adviser is suitably licensed to dispense advice on them. Question My son says we should be investing in hedge funds, as it will reduce the amount of risk in our investment portfolio. I'm a bit worried about this, as I have seen stories where people have lost all their money in scams like Bernie Madoff's hedge fund. Am I being overly cautious? Answer Hedge funds are becoming increasingly popular in South Africa, so this question will be relevant to many people. Hedge funds are different from normal investments, as they use sophisticated financial structures to generate returns or remove risk from a portfolio. They could, for example, buy options to protect the portfolio against a fall in the market or use short selling to profit from a share that is falling. They could also use mismatching in pricing to generate better fixed-interest returns. The strategies followed by these fund managers are quite technical and require a high level of expertise. The challenge for us is to determine whether these strategies can add value to our investment or whether they will be exposing it to unnecessary risks. Risk In South Africa, hedge funds are strictly controlled through an act of Parliament and are overseen by the Financial Sector Conduct Authority. The local controls are a lot stricter than those you would have in other countries. To ensure that the hedge funds do not unnecessarily expose clients' money to excessive risk, the funds need to meet one of the following criteria: The leverage limit must be less than 200% of the net asset value. In many other countries, this limit is 800%. The value at risk (VAR) must be less than 20%. For example, if a hedge fund has a VAR of 15%, it means that there is a 99% chance that you will not lose more than 15% of your investment in a month. So, when it comes to evaluating the risk of a hedge fund, you should look at these numbers (the leverage limit or the VAR). The lower the VAR, the less risky the fund is. Benefits of hedge funds Because hedge funds use different financial instruments, they often behave differently to regular investments. This can offer a level of protection, especially when the markets are very volatile. When used correctly hedge funds can reduce the risk in a portfolio and improve returns. Last month, we saw the JSE drop by 9% only to finish the month 2% in the positive. By having hedge funds in the mix, you can reduce this type of behaviour in your portfolio. Hedge funds can also produce an excellent return with a very low risk profile. As these returns are not in the form of interest, they do not trigger normal income tax. Instead, they will be taxed as capital gains. If you have a portfolio that is attracting a lot of interest income that is taxable, then you could consider adding a hedge fund to the mix to reduce this tax liability without having a material impact on the risk of the investment. Be careful Because the structures used in hedge funds require a high level of expertise to manage them, these investments are often quite expensive. Many hedge funds apply a performance fee if the portfolio outperforms a certain threshold. As a result, when you look at fee structures of investments that use hedge funds, you can see a large amount applied to investment charges. Just remember that the quoted returns are after these investment fees have been deducted. Not all financial advisers are allowed to advise on hedge funds, since this is quite a sophisticated field. Before you make any hedge fund investments, check that your financial adviser is suitably licensed to provide you with this type of advice. DM Kenny Meiring is an independent financial adviser. Contact him on 082 856 0348 or at Send your questions to [email protected]. This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R35.
Straits Times
01-05-2025
- Business
- Straits Times
Why US bonds are not risk-free
Practically every financial meltdown or crisis can be traced back to a misunderstanding of which assets are 'risk-free'. Investors think they have a risk-free asset – it could be a mortgage-backed security, shares in a Bernie Madoff fund, Greek debt – and are surprised when it turns out not to be. For the last several years, the term has been used a lot to describe one of the most widely traded securities in the world: US Treasuries. The markets for 10- and 30-year government bonds experienced more volatility this month in response to uncertainty around tariffs and the future of the world financial order. Rising yields and falling prices amid market turmoil suggest markets no longer see Treasuries as a 'safe haven' (another favourite two-word description). Treasuries, which have long held a special place in the global financial system because of their ubiquity and liquidity, may be less special in the future. Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.
