213 Miles From Shea

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!

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!