213 Miles From Shea

The Mets go out west to find themselves, or some wins. Preferably some wins. It would be nice to win again. How rude of me, Happy Matt Harvey day! Today the Mets rookie pitcher makes his first of three West Coast starts to open up his major league career, but more on that later. Harvey goes up against Wade Miley tonight out in Arizona.

Harvey, who we must be careful not to paint as the savior of the team, is coming off of a strong spring training and a mostly strong minor league year. On the season he is 7-5 with a 3.68 ERA over 20 starts for the Bisons. His main weakness this year has been his control, which leads to his walks 3.9 BB/9. Obviously, he has no official AB’s against Major League batters.

The Mets bats will get a look at Wade Miley who is 11-5 over 15 games, 16 starts with a 3.02 ERA over 113.1 innings of work. In the month of July he has pitched 19.1 innings with a 3.72 ERA and is coming off of a strong 7 IP , 1 ER performance. Earlier this year he pitched 6.0 innings against the Mets while allowed 4 ER. The Mets have the following numbers against him:

Davis 0-3
Hairston 1-3, 2B
Murphy 1-3, 2B
Tejada 0-2
Torres 2-3, 2B
Wright 1-1, 2 BB

Let’s Go Mets !

The Mets and Nationals play a day game tomorrow as the Mets try to pull themselves out of a tailspin. Yesterday the Mets had a 1-0 lead until the Nationals tied it, then exploded out to a 5-1 lead. Another pinch-hit Valdespin homer made the game 5-2, but the Mets would not pull any closer. Today Jeremy Hefner makes his first start in the absence of Johan Santana as he takes on Stephen Strasburg.

Jeremy Hefner is 1-3 on the season over 12 games and 3 starts with a 5.85 ERA over 32.1 innings. In the minors, he is 5-2 over 10 games and 9 starts with a 2.77 ERA. His last start for the Mets was against the Nationals as he picked up the loss after allowing 4 runs, 3 earned over 6 innings. The Nationals have the following numbers against Hefner:

Espinosa 1-3
Flores 0-3
Harper 0-3
LaRoche 2-3, HR
Lombardozzi 1-3
Morse 2-3

Strasburg is 10-4 on the season over 19 starts with a 2.85 ERA with 110.1 innings of work. He is 1-3 in his last five starts while pitching 26.1 innings of work posting a 4.10 ERA. His last start was rough as he allowed 4 ER over 5.1 innings. His only start against the Mets this year was a win as he held the Mets scoreless over 6 innings. The Mets have the following numbers against Stephen:

Davis 2-5
Bay 1-5, 2B
Tejada 1-5
Thole 1-3
Murphy 0-2
Wright 1-3
Torres 1-2, HR

Let’s Go Mets!

You can take the name “Florida” out of the Marlins. You can replace the color scheme. You can give them a new stadium. You can spend a lot of money on a team in the offseason.

You can do all of these things as part of a major effort to rebrand the Marlins Franchise. Not only were the Marlins supposed to be competitive this year, but they were supposed to be turning over a new leaf in their massive sell off strategy. They even traded FOR Carlos Lee a few weeks to show that they are serious this year. Buster Olney has similar sentiments.

Except things just didn’t work out and they ended up trading Anibal Sanchez, Omar Infante, Hanley Ramirez and Randy Choate over the last couple of days.

Look, I get that its a good baseball move to trade these guys, its just bizarre that after this campaign that the Marlins would be different this year, they’re the same. Now they are saddled with three large contracts and a diminishing amount of support pieces.

Finally, the other major news story over night is the Phillies and Hamels have reached a 6-year, 144 million dollar extension. Where the money comes from, who knows but the Phillies keep one of their best pitchers and further lock themselves into a future that looks similar and older to what they have now.

The Mets will try again to pull themselves together after yesterday’s loss. The Mets were able to tie up yesterday’s game and send it into extras, just in time for another bullpen meltdown. The result caused another shuffle in the pen with Beato being optioned to minor leagues and Manny Acosta to come back to the major league club after success with the Bisons. Dickey takes the mound today for the Mets as he faces Gio Gonzalez.

Dickey is 13-1 on the season with a 2.84 ERA over 19 starts and 133.1 innings of work. July has been a month to forget as Dickey has made three starts and a relief appearance pitching 20.1 innings with an ERA of 6.64. His only win, and only decision, in that stretch was against the Nationals as he allowed 4 runs, 3 earned over 7.1 innings while striking out 5. The Nationals have the following numbers against Dickey:

Zimmerman 7-24, HR
Morse 6-21, 2 2B
Espinosa 1-17
LaRoche 2-13
Lombardozzi 2-11
Bernadina 2-9
Harper 0-7

The Mets bats will get another look at Gio Gonzalez today. Gio will be looking redo from his last start against the Mets where he allowed 6 ER in 3.1 innings against the Mets. On the season, Gio is 12-5 over 19 starts and 111.0 innings with an ERA of 3.32. In his last five starts he has pitched 26.1 innings with an ERA of 5.81. The Mets have the following numbers against Gio:

Torres 4-13, 2B
Bay 0-6
Hairston 1-5, 2B
Tejada 1-5
Turner 0-5
Davis 2-2, HR
Wright 1-1, HR

Let’s Go Mets!

If you would have told me at the start of the season there was a looming Miami Marlins fire sale, I would have laughed at your face, or patted you on the shoulder in a condescending way. If you would have told me this a few weeks ago, when the Marlins acquired Carlos Lee, I still would have done both of those things.

Well hypothetical, prophet man, I owe you an apology.

It looks like there could be an impending fire sale of the Miami Marlins.

Yesterday the Marlins traded Anibal Sanchez and Omar Infante (a Mets killer) for Jacob Turner of the Tigers. There is rumors on MLB Trade Rumors that the Marlins are drawing interest for Carlos Lee, Ricky Nolasco, Josh Johnson, Hanley Ramirez, and Randy Choate. Also, they would to move Heath Bell.

I agree with the analysis of the situation that the Marlins want to keep Josh Johnson. He’s the type of player to build a team around.

A quick look at the standings shows that the experiment this year of spending a lot of money into the club house didn’t work. The Marlins solution is the same as the Florida Marlins. Trade the pieces, get new pieces and then wait a few years.

For the Mets, the only bad news here is players like Jacob Turner look to mature around the same time that the Mets talent looks to mature. For some reason, this Marlins strategy makes me more nervous than the one from last winter. I had no problem with the Marlins spending a lot of money on players that were supposed to contribute immediately and then diminish.

Personally, I don’t know if this is a good strategy or not, I’ll wait for it to play out. However if they trade Ramirez (because there is almost no chance at all that the Marlins can move Reyes), it is an interesting end to the Ramirez / Reyes journey.

Warning: with the exception of a few players, the results are not pretty.

After yesterday’s “Fire Sandy” storm on Twitter, I was curious as to the track record of a lot of the players in the bullpen, not just the ones he acquired, and how they are doing this year compared to last year. With the exception of a few performances, a good number of players are way, way off not only their recent year data, but their career data.

The Bad and Ugly:

Ramon Ramirez
2012: 4.58 ERA, 1.576 WHIP
2011: 2.62 ERA, 1.165 WHIP
Career: 3.30 ERA, 1.273 WHIP

Frank Francisco
2012: 4.97 ERA, 1.586 WHIP
2011: 3.55 ERA, 1.322 WHIP
Career: 3.82 ERA, 1.314 WHIP

Pedro Beato
2012: 10.38 ERA, 1.615 WHIP
2011: 4.30 ERA, 1.284
(Small Sample Size Alert for Beato)

Miguel Batista
2012: 4.82 ERA, 1.800 WHIP
2011: 3.60 ERA, 1.367 WHIP
Career: 4.49 ERA, 1.494 WHIP

Manny Acosta
2012: 11.86 ERA,  2.273 WHIP
2011: 3.45 ERA, 1.383 WHIP
Career: 4.24 ERA, 1.473
The Good and Promising:

Bobby Parnell
2012:  3.10 ERA, 1.279 WHIP
2011: 3.64 ERA, 1.466 WHIP
Career: 4.10 ERA, 1.489 WHIP

Jon Rauch
2012: 3.63 ERA, 1.096 WHIP
2011: 4.85 ERA, 1.346 WHIP
Career: 3.81 ERA, 1.241 WHIP

In addition to this, the Mets have had subpar performances from the following players making their major league debuts this season: Elvin Ramirez, Jeremy Hefner and Robert Carson (although Carson was only given 3.0 innings of work)

The first item that jumps at me from the above data that any Mets fan jumping on Rauch’s case needs to get off. He is playing a lot better than he projected to play at the beginning of the season, same for Parnell (except for recently).

I maintain there was no way for Sandy Alderson, or any legitimate scout to predict how bad Ramirez/Beato/Acosta would have been this summer vs their old performances. Acosta has had a good turn in the minors, so hopefully he brings it back but Ramon and Pedro have underperformed. Maybe later I’ll redo this article with Baseball Prospectus Projections.

The Mets try to undo what they did last week as they start a series with the Washington Nationals tonight. Last week the Nationals took two of three from the Mets as the Mets had two games with solid starting pitching, late offense, and “terrific” performances out of the bullpen. Chris Young gets the start for the Amazin’s tonight as he takes on Jordan Zimmermann in an exact rematch of game two from last week.

Chris Young is 2-4 on the season over 8 starts and 46.0 innings of work with an ERA of 4.11. In the month of July he has pitched 16 innings while allowing 10 ER, mostly from a 3 inning, 5 earned run performance. He had a good start in DC last time out where he allowed 2 ER over 6 innings of work. The Nationals have the following numbers against Young:

LaRoche 4-27, 2B, 2 HR
Zimmerman 5-17, 2 2B, HR
Espinosa 2-7
Morse 3-10, 2B
Harper 3-6
Lombardozzi 0-5

The Mets bats will get another crack at Jordan Zimmermann today who is 7-6 over 19 starts over 122.1 innings of work with an ERA 2.35. Jordan’s last two starts have been identical as in each start he has pitched 6 innings, allowed 4 hits and no earned runs. One of those starts was against Mets and the Mets have the following numbers against Jordan:

Wright 7-22, 2 2B, HR
Murphy 6-17, 2B, HR
Thole 4-13
Davis 3-10, 2B, HR
Duda 2-11, 2B
Bay 5-11
Tejada 0-7
Valdespin 1-1, HR

Let’s Go Mets!