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The Mets Best Reliever

July 28, 2012 - Source: Norm Hall/Getty Images North AmericaEveryone likes to toss out the Mets bullpen ERA and talk about how bad it is and call it the worst bullpen ever.  Truthfully though, the Mets do have some good relievers and they’re getting overshadowed by how bad the overall numbers look.

 

Tim Byrdak and Jon Rauch have both had pretty good years, give or take a couple of slumps, but it’s Bobby Parnell I want to talk about.   ERA is not everything, but Parnell’s is at 3.07 which certainly isn’t bad.   Parnell has actually been better than that though, he’s just been victimized by some bad luck and defense.  Four of the 19 runs scored against him are unearned.  That’s more than 20%.

 

Since Frank Francisco last pitched for the Mets, Bobby Parnell has pitched 14 innings and allowed 4 earned runs for a 2.57 ERA and a .581 OPS against with 15 strikeouts.

 

He’s holding opponents to a .354 slugging.  Luis Castillo’s career slugging was .351.  So Bobby Parnell is as likely to give up an extra base hit as Castillo was to hit one, and you may recall that didn’t happen very often.

 

He’s been victimized by the Mets not turning double plays.  The MLB average is 11% of  ground balls with a runner on lead to a double play.  The Mets only turn 6% of them for Parnell.

 

Parnell strikes out 23.4% of the batters he faces, which is well above the MLB average of 18.4%.

 

He walks 5.7% and the MLB average is 8.5%.

 

His ground ball to fly ball ratio (with line drives included in fly balls) is 1.38 compared to the league average of 0.8.

 

His first pitch strike percentage is above average, as is his swinging strike percentage.  He throws more total strikes than the average reliever and gets to a 3-0 count less often.

 

With runners on third and less than two outs the runner scores only 36% of the time against Parnell as compared to 52% league-wide.

 

So Parnell has actually executed his pitches pretty well and should be getting better results.   Games like Jordany Valdespin’s two error game at shortstop make his numbers look worse overall, and double plays not turned have hurt him, particularly because those don’t count as errors because you can’t assume the double play, and ultimately hurt his ERA.   Given his strikeout numbers and the fact that he rarely allows extra base hits and home runs, Bobby Parnell is the reliever you most want on the mound in any given high-leverage situation.

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Sixpoint Beer Expansion at Citi Field?

photo by CeetarThanks to CoreyNYC for pointing me to this tweet

 

Starting Aug 7, @sixpoint cans will be available at @citi_field_ny outside of section 139. Stop by this area & get your #craftbeer fix!

— Union Beer Dist. (@greatbrewersnyc) July 25, 2012

 

Now, as you can see by the picture, Sixpoint Sweet Action is already served at Citi Field at any of the three Craft Beer Dugouts.  These are located near the foul poles on the field level and just to the first base side of the Big Apple Brews stand in the Promenade Food Court area behind home plate.

 

The section 139 mentioned in the tweet is the last section of the left field reserved section on the field level, on the left field side of the apple.   There is already one of those beer of the world stand there that looks similar to the Craft Beer Dugout and has four taps.  So perhaps all this tweet means is an additional Dugout.  This is a poor place for it, as it’s basically on the Shake Shack line when it gets really long, but maybe getting a beer prior to getting on the Shake Shack line (even if you can no longer get Shackmeister Ale) is the perfect spot.

 

What I would love for it to be, and I doubt it would be given the location and proximity to the Big Apple Brews (distributed by Anheuser-Busch), is a stand devoted to carrying excellent local craft beer cans, starting with the half dozen or so nano-kegs (cans) that Sixpoint carries.  If they included Diesel this would match my request for a darker beer at Citi Field.

 

Unrelated to the tweet, Blue Point was supposed to have their White IPA available in cans at Citi Field, but I have had yet to see them.  I’ve seen tweets from Blue Point folk that the cans have been released recently, so hopefully they’ll start showing up at Citi Field.  The beer itself might be a little more palatable for the casual fan, as it’s not as super bitter as many associate with IPAs.  It’s a little more floraly and has some Belgian wheat beer feel to it.

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This Is When Everyone Tunes Out

Obviously the die-hards don’t tune out, but starting tomorrow most of the casual fans of the Mets will.

 

It’s a week worth of night games and one 3:15 start.   Even if 10:15 wasn’t already too late for most people to tune in to a belly-flopping Mets team, the Olympic games are on this week and provide an alternative form of entertainment…even on tape delay.  Even for more serious fans, if you’ve got a partner that isn’t a baseball fan and wants to watch the Olympics, this team isn’t exactly providing you a reason to say “but but but the Mets are on!” beyond the simple fact that watching something other than Mets baseball seems somewhat alien.

 

By the time this west coast stretch is over and the Olympics finish many fans will be drawn to the over-hyped football stories coming across in the mainstream media and will choose to root for the hope presented in teams that haven’t yet started their season over watching the Mets finish out the schedule.  In addition, the ‘regular season’ of television shows will resume soon, drawing more eyes away from the Mets.

 

This will undo much of the good work the Mets have done in terms of fan interest the last couple of months.  Just like in 2011, the fade down the stretch will lead to more disastrous predictions during the offseason and no belief in 2013.   The fans will question the amount of money the Mets have to spend, every decision will be criticized and questioned, and the Mets will again be picked for last.  Personally I think the Mets have made very good strides this season and are a lot closer than everyone thinks, but that won’t be readily apparent the way things are going.  Additionally, the lack of interest does lead to less attendance and less revenue, which means a smaller budget for 2013.

 

The Mets aren’t quite eliminated yet, it’s still pretty early in that regard, but barring something radical to capture attention, like winning 14 of 16, the Mets will soon fade into the background.

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Link: Photoshop Contest!

Randy over at Read the Apple is running a photoshop contest to win a No-Han DVD.

 

Your job is to “find” the Captain by Photoshopping him into where you think he’s gone. Use whatever means necessary to accomplish your task. MSPaints, Photoshop, heck even Instagram, just find him and send your findings to readtheapple@gmail.com by the time the Mets return home on August 7th. I will select the 5 best/funniest entries to receive a prize.

Have some fun with it.  If you don’t know about the Captain Shorts meme click through and read about it, but if you don’t know who Captain Shorts is, you’re clearly not reading the Apple enough.  My photoshop features Captain Shorts abandoning the Mets to hang with Ronald McDonald.

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Mets: Who Drives This Car?

Today in “If you don’t have anything optimistic to say, don’t say anything at all..”

 

Saw this ‘car’ in the players parking lot as I was leaving the game on Tuesday night.  Who do you think drives this one?

 

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Pictures/Fashion From Last Night’s Game

The Council of Fashion Designers of America were at Citi Field yesterday to debut their new Mets collaboration.

 

The line, which features a variety of jerseys, Henley shirts, trail jackets, tanks and t-shirts by the likes of Billy Reid, Yigal Azrouël, Rogan Gregory for Loomstate, Scott Haan and Jeff Halmos for Shipley Halmos, will be sold exclusively at Citi Field from July 24, and is available now for special pre-order at online concept store Edition01.com.

 

If you’re looking for something different in the area of Mets apparel, this might be a way to go.  I’m not really into fashion myself, and would probably stick with something from The 7 Line, but some of this was interesting looking.

 

<click below for more pictures, including game/Mets stuff>

Continue reading “Pictures/Fashion From Last Night’s Game”

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The Mets Will Still Finish Above .500

No team has ever been as bad as the Mets are playing right now.  It’s foolish to think that this stretch is more representative of the team than the previous 80 or so games that came before it, where they were playing fringe-playoff level baseball.  The Mets will turn it around soon.  Someone will get really hot with the bat, someone else (maybe the Diamondbacks) will get really poor pitching.  The randomness of baseball will fall in the Mets favor and they’ll win some of these games.

 

It might be too late, especially considering the Mets have lost five starting pitchers to injury and ineffectiveness (Schwinden, Batista, Santana, Gee, Pelfrey), to make the playoffs, but they can still have a good run the rest of the way.  You never know when a playoff spot falls into your lap.  The Tampa Bay Rays were 6.5 out at this point last year, and 9 behind the team they ultimately beat out for the spot.  Ultimately it’s about playing good baseball to keep yourself in a position to capitalize on opportunities to make the playoffs.  This is why full rebuilding mode rarely works out; by the time the team has been rebuilt, it’s full of it’s own set of maybes and what-ifs that leave you wondering if they’re good enough.  Building a baseball team is a very fluid process full of dozens of unseen pitfalls for even the smartest of general managers.

 

So if you’re one of those fans or writers that looks at winning streaks with a “This will never last” attitude, and are quick to tout preseason guesses to the Mets record whenever they struggle, pipe down.  Preseason predictions are merely something used to fill columns and pass the time while we wait for the season to start; no one should take them seriously, particularly not over a 90-100 game sample of real data.  Similarly, if you were treating this season like a rebuilding year and didn’t count the results.. pipe down.  It’s okay to have no expectations, you believe what you believe, but it doesn’t make you a better fan to stubbornly ignore the actual purpose of the season.  Playoff teams sneak up on you all the time, and the Mets had plenty of opportunity to seize a hold on one.  Just because you’ve decided that 2014 is the first year the Mets have a chance to compete and Sandy Alderson is some magical genie that will defeat all the unpredictable ups and downs of prospects, players, and injuries doesn’t mean we should ignore 2012 and 2013 and all the random excitement it brings.  These are not exhibition games.

 

The Mets will get back to their winning ways and rattle off a nice winning stretch of games.  They very well might yet  finish above .500.  It’s not even completely out of the question that they win nine of 10 games and shrink the wild card lead.  It’s not a given that the wild card teams are all going to play as well as they’ve been playing.  It’s not even a given that the Nationals will continue their 96 win pace.  That’s a lot of wins.  While things aren’t looking great now, everything’s still just a solid win streak away.

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Citi Field Needs a Beer

Whether or not you believe the season is over or if the Mets can come back from this recent slump, I think we can all agree that we need another beer to watch right?

 

I was at the game Friday night where it rained half the night and was breezy and pretty chilly.  I walked up to the Craft Beer Dugout and the first thing I thought was “A nice porter would really hit the spot right now.”  The Mets do not sell any dark beers, not even Guinness.  The closest option is probably the Leffe Brown, and that’s an import.

 

There are plenty of other cool summer evenings, and there are cold games in April, September, and maybe even in October some years.  A nice roasty porter or stout would really be a great option for those games.  Brooklyn Brewery makes a dry Irish Stout that’s very tasty, and you could even re-brand it the Daniel Murphy Stout.

 

The lack of a broad variety is park of what keeps the competitive Citi Field Beer from being a true champion. I suggest Sixpoint Diesel.

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Mets Bullpen: Worst Ever, or Just Bad?

I’m not trying to defend the bullpen, because they haven’t been great and have been giving a lot of close games away lately, but it I keep hearing people talk about how it’s the worst bullpen in the league and how horrible it is and that’s misrepresenting it a bit.  The National League league average for bullpens is 3.85 and has been a little worse, 3.98, in June and July.  The Mets are at 5.00.  That’s what makes it look really bad.

 

These seven guys in the bullpen are not fully responsible for all those numbers.  So the bullpen the Mets will have available to them tonight is not the epic failure it’s being made out to be.   Manny Acosta, with 33 runs allowed, is still tops in the National League among pitchers with no starts.  Now, you can’t discount those runs because clearly someone else would’ve given up some in that role, but it does seem worth nothing that the non-Acosta relievers are pitching to a 3.77 ERA.   The bullpen with Manny Acosta in it was posting a 5.54 ERA.  Since the last time he appeared in a game, the Mets bullpen has posted a 4.07 ERA.

 

That certainly isn’t record-setting bad.  It’s a bullpen that will close out games when you have a good starting five and an offense that can score runs.  The Mets have been struggling with consistency in those other departments lately and that’s a bigger problem than the bullpen.   Another thing in the Mets bullpen’s favor is the defense.  They don’t make a lot more errors than average, but the plays not made or double plays not turned can be problems as well.  I’m sure we all have nightmares about some of these games where the Mets gave the opposition four or five outs to work with.  Balls falling in that an average defender would catch means a higher ERA for the pitcher despite his best effort.  Sometimes it’s just bad luck, as with the hit and run last night, but other times it’s a bad read or bad positioning.

 

Of course ERA isn’t the perfect tool for evaluating relievers so it’s probably not safe to say they’ve been only a tick worse than league average lately.  They’ve allowed 33% of inherited runners to score, with or without Acosta, and that’s good for second worst in the league behind only Philadelphia.  League average is 28%.  Sometimes those runs apply to other relievers, but sometimes they’re hurting the starters ERA and don’t show up in my calculations above.

 

So while the bullpen hasn’t been great the extent to which it’s struggled has been over-stated lately.  Even the average bullpen around the league is is going to give up a run roughly ever seven outs.  That’s usually at least one run a game.