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More Pressure For a Quick Start

ike davisIt’s not just Jerry Manuel and Omar Minaya that have to worry about fast starts to the season or their jobs being in jeopardy.  The same case could be made for Jeff Francoeur,perez Daniel Murphy, and Rod Barajas.  The way Ike Davis, Fernando Martinez, and Josh Thole have been playing in a way this spring that makes you suspect they’ll be knocking at the door to Citi Field sooner rather than later.

With Reyes possibly being out some, or all, of April the pressure on the starting pitching has just doubled.  The most recent report on April suggests that he may be back closer to mid April, but that’s still a rough estimate.

We’ve known for a while that the season was going to hinge on the starting pitching.  The offense was projected to be one of the top in the league, and surely would’ve won some games on it’s own even when the pitching struggled.  With Reyes and Beltran out, they may not have that cushion for a while, but this doesn’t mean the Mets are doomed to a 9-13 type record to start the season.

The fast start is more important than ever, and if Maine, Perez, and Pelfrey can have a good month of April the Mets will still win games.  We all know they’re each capable of pitching good games.  It was expected before the season that they could definitely pitch competitively and keep us in games, but now they may be pressured to actually win the games.  Instead of quality start performances and limiting the opponents to three runs over six innings, stepping up and going seven innings and occasionally limiting the other teams to merely one or two runs becomes important to the Mets early success.

This isn’t to say the Mets lineup is useless, and that they won’t occasionally put up a crooked number, but Jose Reyes and Carlos Beltran are two of the most irreplaceable players in the game today.  The season is never won and lost in April, but if the pitching can step up and win more games than they lose, not only will it minimize the damage caused by losing Reyes and Beltran, it will set them up nicely once they return.

This post, and vibrant discussion about it, also featured on The Real Dirty Mets Blog.

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Excited for Spring, Rooting for The Mets

From Mets

20 Days until Pitchers and Catchers and Injured Players report to Port St. Lucie.   I’m excited.  To me, it’s hard not to be. It’s still Mets baseball, and no matter how you feel about the Wilpons, the front office, or the team, there are still fun games to be played this season, and fun players to watch.

Johan Santana’s due to make 33 or so starts, and every one of those games is worth watching.

Jose Reyes is reportedly healthy and is always a joy to watch play the game. He’s due to be out there on the field at least 155 games or so.

David Wright, Jeff Francoeur, and Daniel Murphy may have varied amounts of upside or talent, but all three of them play their hearts out.  You can’t ask for more out of a baseball player.  You can truly believe that these guys want to win at least as much as you want them to.

From Mets

Exciting rookies like Josh Thole, Jonathan Niese, Fernando Martinez, and maybe even Ike Davis are candidates to make appearances this year.  It’s always fun to watch homegrown guys try to break out and become major leaguers.

You may be down on Mike Pelfrey a little, but he’s going to work out to do better this year.  He’s still a young, talented, homegrown pitcher who will hopefully have a bounceback type season, and there is a good chance we see Niese come up and pitch this year.

The 2010 season won’t be won in January, it won’t be won on paper, and when April 5th comes and the Mets take the field, they’ll do so tied for first place.  This is small consolation right now, but anything can happen.  There is still time for a trade to happen for another pitcher.  It’s entirely possible that one of the Mets starters has an excellent season and pitches great to compliment Santana.  The offense isn’t bad, and it’s entirely possibly Beltran is back and healthy by May and Francoeur continues his resurgence and everyone plays well.  If some of these things happen, the Mets will be extremely competitive and rather than berate the players I think will fail I’m going to focus on rooting for them to succeed.  Isn’t that the point of being a fan?

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Manuel’s ‘ultimatum’

Manuel’s ‘ultimatum’ to the pitching staff is basically a case of buying low.

He knows they are better than this, and he also knows Redding could be pretty close to coming back and taking Livan’s spot anyway. So he makes this statement about one more time through the rotation and then there will be changes, but he’s really just stating the obvious. He’s taking a bet that the pitching will be better and/or Omar will make a change with the 5th starter. If the pitching gets better, he looks like he got them going, and if they don’t, likely a change will be happening anyway, and he can take credit for it. This is how he’s been winning people over since he’s been in charge.

Anyone watching these games can clearly see that the starting rotation is struggling, but also that they’re like to get better. Perez was reported to have not done what he was supposed to do in Spring Training while at the World Baseball Classic. So he wasn’t quite ‘ready’ when the season came. It’s now three starts later. He hasn’t looked real good, but there have been small signs between a raise in velocity to a couple of key strikeouts that could give you hope if you’re looking for it.

Maine was coming off an injury. I thought it would take him a couple of starts to get going, given the longer layoff from pitching in real games. He’s had some bad moments, but some good ones too. I suspect he’ll start giving some worthwhile performances soon.

Pelfrey is probably what I’d call the least worrisome. He had some tendinitis so they skipped a start, so he’s had even less. He really stepped it up last year, and It’ll probably take him a little while to start getting back to that point, and to adjust to any scouting adjustments made to him. He’s always shown promise, and I see no reason to think he won’t have a good year.

Livan however, might be more of an issue. Besides that Manuel routinely comes out and basically says he has no confidence in him, he doesn’t seem to have much left. He pitched well in the spring, but it looks like he’s getting by on a lot of trickery and smarts. Batters figure him out and he seems to crumble as he gets through the order a couple of times. Hopefully he can give us one more reasonable start, against the Marlins, and then maybe Redding will be available to get us a couple of good starts at least.

Another thing to note is Sheffield; he still appears to be done. We talked about how it was a win-win situation for the Mets, but it really isn’t. It took at-bats away from Church when he was hot. It’s taking at-bats away from Castillo when he’s hot by way of Tatis not having any fill-in time in the outfield and having to find him a place to play. Barring a sudden turn around, I think the Sheffield experiment should be terminated. However, Manuel is playing him again today. A day after getting swept, sitting Murphy another day. Who’s more likely to get a hit? Who’s more likely to score runs for Santana? Who’s more likely to benefit from a day in LF and will be here all year? Hint: It’s not Gary Sheffield.

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Rookies are Rosey

I’m feeling rather chipper, excuse my pun, about the state of the Mets right now. Specifically about Mike Pelfrey, and Daniel Murphy. It’s still too early to know anything about Murphy, but so far he’s looked spectacular. He may not be the greatest outfielder, but he’s not an outfielder. He’s shown the willingness and ability to play anywhere however, and if the Mets decided the best way to fill left field, for now and the future, is to keep going with the conversion process for Murphy, I’m sure he’d turn out to be more than serviceable out there.

Pelfrey has got enough major league innings under his belt now to say that he’s not a flash in the pan. Pelfrey is looking more and more like the real thing the more he pitches. The Mets organization, even without uber-conservative Peterson, wants to try to keep an eye on Pelfrey’s inning count as the latest viewpoint is that it’s important to keep the young pitchers from throwing too many innings too fast. Pelfrey is pitching too well for that. Manuel was probably thinking that he’d let Pelfrey pitch a solid six or so innings, and go to the bullpen. Pelfrey was too economical and too dominant to make a decision like that anything but stupid. With less than 100 pitches, Letting Pelfrey finish out the game for his first complete game was good for the bullpen’s stamina, Pelfrey’s confidence, the fans entertainment, and most importantly, It was good for the Mets.

Church looks like he could return soon, and where a month ago the Mets were desperate for a _second_ outfielder, now they’re trying to figure out how to have playing time for five of them…not to mention Endy, who really has been a big help, despite the horrible start he got off to. Assuming Church comes back soon, there should be enough playing time for Church, Evans, Murphy, and Tatis among the two corner outfield positions, including the possibility that some of them could give Delgado a day off. Hopefully Endy can find some playing time also, to stay sharp, and maybe Beltran can get a day off here and there, depending on the playoff race.

Everything’s coming up roses for the Mets lately.

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E. T. Phone Home

Tonight reminded me of the movie E.T., when E.T. and Elliot are both in the hospital and seem to be linked. The link is broken and Elliot begins to recover, but E.T. doesn’t, being out of his element. So went tonight.

After eight innings of baseball, the Mets were deflated by Billy Wagner giving up the game tying home run, and Chase Utley drives in the tying run in the top of the 9thin Florida for the Phillies. Things seem as bad as they could be, but then that link is broken and the Phillies to whom first place is as alien as Earth was to E.T., will soon be back where they belong.

The Marlins storm right back and set the Phillies down with a walk off grand slam. The link has been broken and it takes a little time before the Mets recover, in the bottom of the 13th, with Beltran’s sixth walk off home run of his career. Beltran’s last walk off two run home run was against those very same Phillies back on May 23rd of 2006. This was a long time ago, back when players like Steve Trachsel were still on this team,but we’ve been looking for turning points all season and maybe all the symmetry associated with this win is what they truly needed.

There was energy, determination, fight, and all sorts of good qualities during this game. Don’t forget that Castillo was on base and Beltran at the plate because of a fielding error at third base, so the Mets were capitalizing on errors too. Beltran also had a key two-run single, on a clean line drive to center, earlier in this game to start the scoring. This hit also came after an error charged to Brandon Webb allowed Castillo to reach base after Reyes got the call from the ump on a close play at first. You take what breaks you can get and do the most with them.

Team chemistry? It’s something that’s not easy to tell from the outside, but teams that don’t like each other don’t pass out papers with formulas to make the playoffs. Do you think fans could stop getting on Carlos Beltran? The guy is great, I don’t know where we’d be without him. He had a little power outage, and he had a little bit of a struggle getting runners in from scoring position lately, but so did everyone. Beltran is as vitally important to this team right now as Wright and Reyes.

Wagner’s blown save may have been a punch to the stomach as Gary Cohen said, but Carlos Beltran coughed up the disappointing start to the season and booted it out of the ballpark in the 13th.

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Ups and Downs

As harrowing as Tuesday’s game was, last night’s game was pleasant. It was basically against a minor league team, but it still counts. Oliver Perez still pitched well, and the offense still swung the bats well.

One thing it was good to see was runs in the top of the 9th to make it 13 to 0. There was no mailing it in, or signs that anyone thought ‘Hey, maybe we got enough tonight.’ Excepting Casanova, the rest of the bench and bullpen got their first appearances out of the way. Billy Wagner managed to come into a non-save situation and not pitch like me.

The news about Pedro is not good. Four to six weeks plus rehabilitation. The biggest impact this has is on Mike Pelfrey. If Pelfrey can figure out how to be consistent and pitch like he seems to be capable of, Pedro will barely be missed. We’ll see how that goes, against Glavine of all people, on Saturday. Maybe Pelfrey will make his case that it’s him that will replace Glavine’s innings from last year, and that Santana’s are just icing on the cake.

The baseball season is here, and it’s even been christened with it’s first wrinkle. You didn’t really think the entire season was going to be as easy as Monday did you?

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Angel in the Outfield

Everyone else is doing it, so why not me?

I’m actually surprised that Angel Pagan, Joe Smith, and Mike Pelfrey made the team over the veterans that have a combined age approaching infinity. I hope it they made it for themselves, and not because of injuries or failures on the part of the older options. At least now we have an Angel in the outfield as well as a Church. (And as I’ve mentioned earlier, how many variations of those headlines do you think the papers are going to use?)

I liked Gotay, but truthfully he didn’t have a lot of places to play on this team. You can argue about sign Castillo, but they did so Gotay really was only going to be a pinch hitter and he didn’t do amazingly in that role last year. However I wish they could’ve traded him for something rather than gifting him to the Braves. I wonder what it says about the Braves confidence in their guys that they felt the need to pick up Gotay though?

I think Pelfrey will turn it around, maybe Perez can give him some head-case advice.

Only about 24 hours until this is all secondary stuff to the actual baseball anyway, and I can’t wait. I’m planning to attend the Metsblog.com happy hour in the city to watch the game, even though I expect it to be a zoo. If you come, look for me. I’ll be the one in the Santana shirt. Can’t miss me.

Look for my 5th “Letters to the NL East” letter late tonight or early tomorrow, which will basically be a rallying cry for the Mets.

Oh, and if you know anyone that is looking for a single ticket to all 13 home Saturday games..send them my way, I probably don’t need to spend $300 to have a seat to put my bag on.

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Those 13 wins

I think Johan Santana can cover those 13 wins from Glavine, don’t you?

And we didn’t have to give up Pelfrey, or F-Mart. It seems to good to be true. Let’s get this contract done and hurry up and get to Spring Training.

This season is going to be sweet..

Over/Under on how long it takes someone with the Phillies to complain about the Mets having the money and advantage, salary cap, buying championships..etc?

It’s a good day to be a bartender in Philadelphia.

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I Trust Omar Minaya

“To me, it’s about quality. It’s not so much getting a guy. We will not be afraid to give our young kids a chance to pitch instead of going out there and paying a lot of money for a guy who gives a lot of innings – but they’re not quality innings. There’s a lot of demand for those guys. I’ve gotten a lot of hits on our young guys.”

This quote from Omar Minaya means a lot to me. Despite some issues I’ve had with him and some of his decisions, I’m actually pretty comfortable with him as a GM. I’m not afraid of starting the season the way the Mets are now. Pedro, El Duque, Maine, Perez, Pelfrey is fine to me. I think Pelfrey continued to grow last season, and his September was good. I think he’s a good player with confidence being one of his bigger issues last year. Maine, in my opinion, is excellent, and I’d actually lean towards him as being the 2nd starter, as little as those designations really mean anything. It’s not even so much talent, as it is that El Duque’s not going to pitch 33 starts next year, he never does. Maine could, so it makes sense to designate more starts to him before the season, as he’s more likely to meet the expectations.

Billy Wagner, among others, questions the replacement of Tom “I wouldn’t call it devasting” Glavine’s win total from last year. Number one, I don’t think Glavine is the one that’s going to match that total anyway, and number two, I think Pedro is capable of that. Even being babied, he showed me a lot last year near the end of the season, and I really feel he has a lot left. If I could put money on Pedro having a better season than Glavine, I would.

So do we need that Livan Hernandez type guy, who would be able to pitch a good amount of innings to relieve our bullpen? I still think so, but I’m not sold on overpaying these guys either. I think it can be done with what we have.

On another note of confidence in Omar Minaya, has anyone noticed how many second-hand pitchers he’s signed? He’s gotten a bunch of guys who have fallen out of favor, for almost nothing. Maybe we find that diamond in the rough with one of them, or maybe one of them really gels with how Peterson teaches. If not, it’s so easy to cut them loose, you may not even remember they were Mets.

Still over two months until spring training…

P.S. Would it kill the Mets to actually market and make John Maine and Oliver Perez Jersey’s? I want a Maine Jersey, but it requires actually getting a custom one made with 33 and Maine on the back, unless someone has seen one somewhere? I certainly haven’t.

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Brooms a Flying

Brooms Flying

I said the Mets would sweep the Braves, and now they have. Anyone that doubts that the Philly series was the exception rather than the rule needs to look again. The Mets are again four games up, on the way to being five up as I write this. Assuming the bullpen hangs on, the Mets will again be going for five wins in a row.

Another thing that we need to stop talking about is the Atlanta ‘jinx’. There is no such thing, and if there ever was, it’s over. The Braves have no more magic, no more sway over the Mets. Chipper Jones may still have the Mets number, but it’s a lost cause. The Mets are very clearly better than the Braves, are the defending champions, and hold a commanding leader over those Braves again this season. So what if the season series is seven wins to eight losses against Atlanta? They were held down and pummeled when it counted the most. This weekend was pretty much must-win for the Braves for any illusions about the division, and maybe even the playoffs.

Now everything probably won’t go as well as it has these last four days, but I think this is closer to the Mets than the Philly series was. Delgado seems to have some power back, and if he can hold on to some of that and Alou can stay healthy the Mets have something that they actually lacked for much of the season, power. Beltran was slumping a bit, and Wright’s not a pure power guy, so the Mets were often resorting to small ball and stringing together hits. There are only so many hits you can string together sometimes. Many of those games in the middle of the summer that the Mets lost would’ve been wins if the RBI singles had become three run home runs.

Pelfrey and Pedro looked good, David Wright’s making his case for 30-30, as well as MVP, Wagner finally earned a save again, and the bullpen has settled down a little.

The magic number is at 23, soon to be 21, and before you know it we’ll be pricing playoff tickets on Stubhub and hoping the Mets clinch at home on the 24th so that we can be in attendance.