213 Miles From Shea

At the beginning of the season, in terms of pitching, the strength was the bullpen and the weakness was the rotation. While we all can pretty much agree that the opposite has been true, there is one weakness of the rotation that has reared its ugly head this season: depth. The Mets pitching staff has lacked serious depth this year. It’s a far cry from 2006 when the Mets had solid starting pitchers to fall back one when injuries struck.

To focus just on the starting pitching here would be unfair. Part of the failure of the replacements falls on the bullpen (like Batista). The following pitchers have made starts for the Amazin’s so far this year:

– R.A. Dickey
– Johan Santana
– Jon Niese
– Dillon Gee
– Chris Young
– Mike Pelfrey
– Miguel Batista
– Jermey Hefner
– Chris Schwinden

At the start of the season this was the starting rotation:

– Johan Santana
– R.A. Dickey
– Jon Niese
– Mike Pelfrey
– Dillon Gee

Then Mike Pelfrey went down at around the same time as a Doubleheader. The Doubleheader was already, probably regardless of health, going to have one game started by the long man in the bullpen, Miguel Batista. It was a pretty bad start.

His start helped Chris Schwinden become the spot starter for Mike Pelfrey. When that experiment failed, the Mets tried out Jermey Hefner, which also failed. The Mets then went back to Miguel Batista until Chris Young could join the team.

Chris Young was the first replacement that seemed to stick. And things were going well until the All-Star break.

After the All-Star Break (or partially during it) the Mets lost two starting pitchers: Dillon Gee and Johan Santana. Gee is out for the season while Santana may be out for a few starts. First the Mets tried Miguel Batista again, but it hasn’t worked.

So now the Mets are heading into this week with the plan to use Hefner and Harvey. My prediction is that if Hefner fails twice AND it looks like Johan will need more time, then the Mets will bring up McHugh. If anything, it looks like the next injury to the rotation will bring in McHugh.

The Mets were really lucky in 2011. They had only 9 pitchers all season make starts for the team as Schwinden, Batista, Young made 4 starts each and Carrasco made one start. Pelfrey, Niese, Gee, Capuano and Dickey made at least 26 starts each. While this was unusual, it seems like the 2012 Mets are heading in the opposite direction with pitcher #1o making his start later this week.

I feel a little funny criticizing the Mets  for rotation depth, because they are replacing 2 starting pitchers (I don’t count Santana as a replacement, the fault for his hole in the rotation sits on the Long Man in the bullpen).

Now for some MLB statistics:

Dickey 13-1, 19 GS, 2.84 ERA, 133.1 IP
Niese 7-4, 19 GS, 3.59 ERA, 117.2 IP
Santana 6-7, 19 GS, 3.98 ERA, 110.2 IP
Gee 6-7,  17 GS, 4.10 ERA, 109.2 IP
Young 2-4, 8 GS, 4.11 ERA, 46.0 IP
Batista, 1-3, 5 GS, 30 G, 4.82 ERA, 46.2 IP
Hefner 1-3, 3 GS, 12 G, 5.85 ERA, 32.1 IP
Pelfrey 0-0, 3 GS, 2.29 ERA, 19.2 IP
Schwinden 0-1, 2 GS, 3 G, 12.46 ERA, 8.2 IP

And some MiLB statistics:

Harvey: 7-5, 20 GS, 3.68 ERA, 110.0 IP
Hefner: 5-2, 9 GS, 2.77 ERA, 61.2 IP
McHugh: 1-3, 7 GS, 4.54 ERA, 37.2 IP

The Mets look to return to the win column today as they take on the Dodgers for game three of the series. Yesterday’s game was rather “blah” so no point in recapping it. Anyway, Niese gets the start today as he takes on Nathan Eovaldi of the Dodgers:

Niese is 7-4 on the season with a 3.58 ERA over 18 starts and 110.2 innings of work. Jon rebounded really nicely in his last start as he allowed only one earned run in 7 innings of work against the Nationals (start before was 7 ER in 7 IP against the Cubs). He missed the Dodgers earlier this season but last year he faced the Dodgers twice totaling 12.2 innings allowing 6 ER. The Dodgers have the following numbers against Niese:

Uribe 0-8
Hairston 0-6
Ethier 3-6
Kemp 2-5
Loney 1-6

Nathan Eovaldi is 1-6 on the season over 9 starts and 52.0 innings of work with an ERA of 4.33. In his last 5 starts he has been 1-4 over 27.1 innings with a 6.59 ERA. One of those starts was against the Mets where he allowed 5 ER over 5.1 innings of work. The Mets have the following numbers against Eovaldi:

Davis 2-3, 2B, HR
Duda 1-3
Tejada 0-3
Torres 1-3
Murphy 1-1, 2B

Let’s Go Mets!

Former Mets fan favorite Xavier Nady was DFA’d by the Nationals today.

Nady has been on the DL since June for a wrist injury and was activated today. However, the Nationals are playing a double header and wanted to keep Lannan on the roster to start one of the games, therefore Nady had to be DFA’d.

On the season Nady is batting .157 with a .211 OBP, so he would not be a solution in an capacity right now for the Mets. Actually he may be one of the few people in the league that is hitting less than vast majority of the Mets roster. His batting average this year his a departure from previous seasons where last year he hit .248 with Arizona, and then .256 with the Cubs the year before that. Even before that he hit .286 with the Yankees.

Nady was acquired by the Mets via trade before the 2006 season for Mike Cameron. He quickly became a fan favorite, and was traded at the trade deadline to Pittsburgh for Roberto Hernandez and Oliver Perez.

If you recall, Nady was traded after Duaner Sanchez got into a Taxi Cab accident. Sanchez was a critical set-up man at the time, so the Mets went out to get more relief help. Then, when key pieces of the rotation started to get injured, Oliver Perez had to step up (and he did in the post-season at times), however that then launched the Oliver Perez era with the Mets.

The Mets suffered a disappointing loss last night as they dropped the series opener 7-6 to the Dodgers. They look to move past it this afternoon as they take on the Dodgers and Chris Capuano behind Miguel Batista. As a quick side note. Could you imagine if the rolls were reversed and the Mets were playing at 10 AM local time? Odd. Anyway…

Miguel Batista’s (and more specifically Matt Harvey’s) future role on this team depends on his start today. If he is mediocre to good, then he most likely stays for at least the rest of the month. If he is terrible, he probably forces the Mets hand to make a move. On the season Batista is 1-2 on the season over 29 games and 43.2 innings of work with an ERA of 4.33. His last outing was in DC where he allowed 2 ER against the Nationals over 0.2 innings of work. In 0.2 innings of work against the Dodgers this year, he allowed one earned run. The Dodgers have the following numbers against Batista:

Uribe 9-32, 3 2B
Abreu 12-31, 2 2B, 3B, HR
Ellis 6-23, 4 2B
Kennedy 4-17, 2B, 3B
Ethier 5-11, 2 2B, HR
Kemp 3-5

The Mets bats will get a crack at Capuano today, who is 9-5 over 19 starts and a 2.75 ERA this season. In his last two starts he has allowed 5 ER, 9 runs total, in his last 11.2 innings of work. He allowed 3 ER against the Mets last time out while he pitched 7 innings. The Mets have the following numbers against Chris:

Bay 8-21, 2 2B, 3 HR
Cedeno 3-23, 2B, 3B
Wright 6-15, 2 2B, 2 HR
Torres 1-4, 2B

Let’s Go Mets!

The Mets and Dodgers kick things off tonight as the Mets look to build off of yesterday’s win in DC. The Mets opened up the second half of baseball with five consecutive losses against the Braves and Nationals. Now they have a chance to reverse what they just did with a series against the Dodgers followed by the Nationals. Johan Santana gets the start today as he takes on Aaron Harang.

Santana is 6-6 on the season over 18 starts with an ERA of 3.59 with 107.1 innings of work. Santana will be looking to revert back to his June version of himself when he was on fire. In July he has pitched 2 games, 9.2 innings allowing 13 ER. His last good start was against the Dodgers, and it was terrific as Santana allowed no runs on 8 innings of work. The Dodgers have the following numbers against Santana:

Uribe 9-64, 4 2B, HR
Kennedy 5-24, 2B, HR
Ellis 1-19, 2B
Hairston 0-18
Rivera 2-16, 2B
Kemp 4-12
Ethier 0-6

Harang is 6-5 on the season over 18 starts with an ERA of 3.53 with 107.0 innings of work, so similar numbers to Santana. In his two starts since the All-Star break, he has allowed 4 ER over 14 innings of work. He faced the Mets earlier this season where he picked up the loss after allowing 4 earned runs, 5 total over 7 innings. The Mets have the following numbers against Harang:

Bay 17-52, 6 2B, 3B, 5 HR
Cedeno 7-23, 2B, 2 HR
Wright 11-20, 4 2B, HR
Torres 3-12
Hairston 2-10, 2B
Duda 2-7, HR
Tejada 5-8, 2 2B
Thole 7-9, 2B, HR
Murphy 3-8, 2 2B, HR

Let’s Go Mets!