pushing the Mets’ record payroll past the $450 million mark.

To be more precise, "the payroll is projected to be $364 million with an additional $93 million in taxes."

METS 2022 STOLEN BASES
Starling Marte 18
Francisco Lindor 16
Pete Alonso 5
Jeff McNeil 4
5 tied with 3 (including James McCann, Travis Jankowski, and Terrance Gore as well as Brandon Nimmo and Mark Canha)
4 tied with 1 (Guillorme, JD Davis, Naquin, Deven Marrero)
TOTAL 62

Pham only had 8 SB in 2022, but before that had 14, 25, 15, and 25 in the previous 4 MLB 162-game seasons.

if the bigger bases and limited pickoffs make a bigger dent than expected, it's nice to have a 3rd option

That'll add some punch to the lineup.

Good depth signing, I suppose. I actually didn’t realize that Pham had an OPS+ above 100 in 2021 (granted not much above), so maybe he’s not completely toast.

There's no better place to maximize your chance of getting stabbed than NYC. Well done, Tommy.

All-Ph team

C Josh Phegley
1B JR Phillips
2B Brandon Phillips
SS Mike Phillips
3B Bubba Phillips
LF Tommy Pham
CF Adolpho Phillips
RF Tony Phillips
DH Ken Phelps
Bench: C Babe Phelps, 1B Josh Phelps, IF Andy Phillips, OF Brett Phillips
SP Deacon Phillipe
SP Tom Phoebus
SP Taylor Phillips
RP Steve Phoenix
RP David Phelps

Obviously, the Mets needed a slap hitter.

Re 6:
Honorable mention goes to Lenny Harris, who had 212 hits in 804 at bats as a PH, both records.

Actually, I think he was going for the letters PH, not pinch-hitting.

Pham's a red-ass, but solid add for a potential contender. He can usually get on base at a decent clip, and will be useful against lefties if nothing else.

Maybe we need an all consonant digraphs team to supplement the PH team. But let's be clear from the start: Dickie Thon is eligible, Frank Thomas is not.

(Inspired by Walt's google search in which he learns that "th" is not a dipthong but a digraph not that he was ever all that confident he knew what a dipthong was anyway.)

well, I'M not going to be the one to tell Walt it's actually spelled "diphthong" !

A trigraph team would have Schmidt, Schilling, and, if it's not limited to the first sound of the last name, the great Sigh Young.

Let's not forget Doug Gwosdz, traded from the digraph team to the trigraph team for a legendary pennant run.

Spelling "correctly" is for 20th century losers with too much time on their hands! Here in the go-go 21st century, we don't even bother with intelligible sentences!

There's Carl and Mike Yastrzemski, who have a quadragraph of consonants in there, though not at the beginning of the name.

Tim Tschida can umpire all these games.

Now, if you’re gonna use ph as your primary identifier, remember a negative ph (below 7) is acidic and a positive ph is trending toward alkaline.
I’d reckon Pham is on the acidic side based upon past history.