Pedro Feliciano
WHIP: 1.335
Chinese Zodiac: Dragon
Pedro Feliciano is, in my opinion, one of the more overlooked Mets. His value as a lock-down, late innings left-handed specialist is immense. One of the major criticisms of Willie Randolph’s management is his use of a bullpen, and a lot of what people mean by that is his habit of using Feliciano in random situations, for varying numbers of innings. According to occasional comments made in the media by other Mets, Feliciano is kind of a character in the clubhouse, but he gets fairly little attention of his own.
Aaron Hielman
WHIP: 1.274
Chinese Zodiac: Horse
For all the changes to the Mets rotation, both contemplated and made, using Heilman as a starter was never one of them. The theory is that Heilman has more value as a good reliever than a bottom of the rotation starter. However, even though everyone has been saying that for years, Heilman still admits that he would be happier starting. I wonder if a similar change, from the rotation to the bullpen, might be in the future of Mike Pelfrey (who has “won” the 5th starter’s job while El Duque continued to work in extended spring training), who might also benefit from it.
Scott Schoeneweis
WHIP1.463
Chinese Zodiac: Ox
Schoeneweis was a horrendous last year, although he was pitching with a severed tendon in his foot. He also claims, credibly, that the steroids he took were part of legitimate medical treatment. As I promised, if he has a good year, I will write him a letter apologizing for saying bad things about him on the internet. It still irks me that he got the deal they wouldn’t give Chad Bradford.
Joe Smith
WHIP: 1.556
Chinese Zodiac: Rat
Last season, his rookie year, Smith made the camp out of spring training, did ok for a while, regressed, got sent to the minors, and then came back to the big league team near the end of the year and was fairly unimpressive. Smith’s spring also had a disappointing start, but he heated up at the end of the Grapefruit league and made the team for a second year in a row. Apparently, he bet a stake dinner with Duaner Sanchez that he (Smith) would start the year in the minors, and Duaner would make the big league club. Aside from owing Sanchez steaks, things are looking up for Smith.
Jorge Sosa
WHIP: 1.455
Chinese Zodiac: Snake
Although Heilman remains stuck in the bullpen, Sosa is still part of the conversation about the 5th starting job. Last season, with El Duque injured and Pelfery pitching badly, Sosa came roaring out of the minors and won a nice string of games as a starter, before running into problems and being moved into the bullpen. In retrospect, Sosa’s weird little dominant streak went a long way towards masking the problems of the ’07 Mets.
Billy Wagner
WHIP: 1.016
Chinese Zodiac: Pig
Oh, Billy Wagner. On paper, Wags seems like one of the best closers in the National League, and nervous as he sometimes makes me, I am guess I am still happy to have him, over most other options. This season, the major concern with Wagner is a weekly radio spot that he has agreed to do with ESPN. Everyone’s thinly disguised fear is that it is only a matter of time before he does something like call out Reyes for a lack of hustle on the air, or otherwise lands the club in controversy.
Matt Wise
WHIP: 1.261
Chinese Zodiac: Rabbit
Came from Milwaukee in the off-season, seems pretty good. I don’t have much else to say about him.
Duaner Sanchez
WHIP: 1.374
Chinese Zodiac: Rooster
After Sanchez injured his arm in a taxi cab in ’06 they put it back together with screws. If Sanchez can get back, at any point, at anything like how he was pitching before he went down, it will be an immense asset for the Mets. So far, he seems ok given the circumstances: he is beginning the year in extended spring training, might be with the club shortly.
Showing posts with label Billy Wagner. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Billy Wagner. Show all posts
Monday, March 31, 2008
Monday, September 24, 2007
Recent games
On one hand, the Mets have managed to survive any number of weird catastrophes and hang on to a two and a half game lead above the Phillies; on the other hand they seem to have chosen pretty much the worst time imaginable to slowly unlearn the game of baseball and expose the glaring, pitching-related weaknesses of the team. It’s funny, the team that we have been watching for the last week is pretty much exactly the team that we should have expected out of spring training—a rotation of question marks and old guys, neither of whom go that deep into games; a relatively -to- atrociously weak bullpen, that features Aaron Heilman as the strongest set-up man for Billy Wagner; and a potent enough offense to club their way past either of these shortcomings.
All of which becomes a lot less reassuring when you consider that the Mets have found their recent vindication against the Florida godamn Marlins who sort of seem like they are giving a presentation to their kindergarten class called “How I spent my summer on the bottom of the NL East.” People talk a lot about an obscure concept called fundamentally sound baseball, and that you need to play it, and the Marlins are a perfect example of why: whatever fundamentally sound is, the Marlins aren’t it. I’m mainly thinking of the eight unearned runs that the Mets were able to score behind Pedro. If the race stays close with Phillie, you really couldn’t ask for anything more than to close the season out against these guys, yet the Mets (chiefly the ‘pen) were still able to find ways to keep the Marlins in the games.
In the middle of all of this, Lastings Milledge went out and made himself tradable for a lot less pitching, by leaving the dugout to yell at the umps an unusually high (twice) number of times, following an ejection. You can almost say this is a good thing, since it might make them less likely to trade him in the first place, and then he might develop into a really good player, and then it will be good that they didn’t trade him. But, it is starting to get really obvious that someone needs to be traded for pitching, in fact, it seems more and more that they should have traded someone for pitching a while ago. Given that, Milledge is probably the guy to go, since they have Beltran signed to a long-term deal, Endy Chavez, perhaps Moises Alou, as well as the prospects Carlos Gomez and Francisco Martinez. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not anti-Milledge-- I want the club to keep him around, and next year he could be very important for them, since neither of the outfield prospects seem especially ready; but I am pro-pitching, and favor doing anything reasonable in the off-season to get some sort of reliable middle-inning relief.
But no one gets traded for pitching until the off-season, and the Mets have to handle the next week, and whatever might come after it, with the relievers that they have. And, we have the rest of the season (the part that wasn’t especailly important) to prove that those guys are, on occasion, capable of being effective.
All of which becomes a lot less reassuring when you consider that the Mets have found their recent vindication against the Florida godamn Marlins who sort of seem like they are giving a presentation to their kindergarten class called “How I spent my summer on the bottom of the NL East.” People talk a lot about an obscure concept called fundamentally sound baseball, and that you need to play it, and the Marlins are a perfect example of why: whatever fundamentally sound is, the Marlins aren’t it. I’m mainly thinking of the eight unearned runs that the Mets were able to score behind Pedro. If the race stays close with Phillie, you really couldn’t ask for anything more than to close the season out against these guys, yet the Mets (chiefly the ‘pen) were still able to find ways to keep the Marlins in the games.
In the middle of all of this, Lastings Milledge went out and made himself tradable for a lot less pitching, by leaving the dugout to yell at the umps an unusually high (twice) number of times, following an ejection. You can almost say this is a good thing, since it might make them less likely to trade him in the first place, and then he might develop into a really good player, and then it will be good that they didn’t trade him. But, it is starting to get really obvious that someone needs to be traded for pitching, in fact, it seems more and more that they should have traded someone for pitching a while ago. Given that, Milledge is probably the guy to go, since they have Beltran signed to a long-term deal, Endy Chavez, perhaps Moises Alou, as well as the prospects Carlos Gomez and Francisco Martinez. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not anti-Milledge-- I want the club to keep him around, and next year he could be very important for them, since neither of the outfield prospects seem especially ready; but I am pro-pitching, and favor doing anything reasonable in the off-season to get some sort of reliable middle-inning relief.
But no one gets traded for pitching until the off-season, and the Mets have to handle the next week, and whatever might come after it, with the relievers that they have. And, we have the rest of the season (the part that wasn’t especailly important) to prove that those guys are, on occasion, capable of being effective.
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
All-Star Game
bThere are players who play the game and get by largely on the strength of physical skill. Others have more cerebral games, they search for mental edges in the battle between pitcher and hitter, manipulating the count and the strike zone to their advantage.
Rare, however, is the player who is able to keep himself completely focused on the big picture, and use a mind numbing level of strategery to manipulate, not the outcome of individual games, but the course of the entire season-- such a player is Billy Wagner.
What was he thinking when he gave up the decisive two-run homer in last night’s All-Star game? He was thinking “If the Mets play a game 7 in the World Series, I want it to be Jack Kerouac-style: on the road.” Why? Well, the abysmal Scott Shcoenwise hadn’t surrendered an earned run on the road, until the most recent trip. Both Carloses hate hitting at Shea. On the whole, the Mets have a slightly higher winning percentage on the road, than they do at home. And there is speculation that Willy Randolph had a traumatic experience with a cow-bell when he was a child—and the clanging of the cow-bell man evokes a Proustian anguish of memory that impacts his in-game decision making.
So only Wagner’s cunning and guile was able to negate the runs that Reyes and Beltran had recklessly put up, and people whose first reaction was “Well, if we lose game 7 on the road, we’ll have Billy Wagner to thank for it… although chances are we’ll be thinking less about the fucking all-star game, and more about the save he just blew,” are considering the thing only on the meanest, and most rudimentary level—regretfully ignorant of the game of chess transpiring in the back-ground.
My other All-Star game observation is that the commentators seemed to be unusually un-judgmental about steroids, and particularly accepting of Barry Bonds. The sense is, and they almost discussed this openly, that they are sort of preparing for a time, not necessarily in the immediate future, when people are retired and it becomes revealed that god damn everyone in baseball was on steroids in a period that began in the ‘90s and might or might not be ending now. When this time comes, both the sports-media establishment and Major League Baseball do not want to look like complete and utter jack-asses—and want to avoid inquiries into what role the people who made money selling tickets and providing commentary on the home-run races of the ‘90s had in encouraging, implicitly or otherwise, the chemicals that made these races possible.
The baseball establishment has begun to realize that by being shrill about steroids, they are very much like a serpent devouring its own tail. At the end of the day, the only capitol in baseball is the players themselves—not only their accomplishments and records, but also the drama that they provide as human beings. If the current, anti-steroid stance is maintained, revelations of massive steroid use will serve to massively de-value this capitol; and while being moralistic about steroids was fun and sold papers, it is just dawning on them that, at the end of the day, it might put everyone, from the commissioner to the hot-dog vendors, out of a job.
Indeed, baseball is beginning to realize that some sort of re-habilitation of Barry Bonds needs to take place if he is ever going to posses the home-run record. Since Bonds was always antagonistic to the media and kind of a jerk, they thought, until recently, that they could write him off with an asterisk and be done with it. But it is becoming increasingly obvious that Bonds is a symptom of a larger culture and the asterisk placed by his name would reflect on an era of baseball as well. The only way to avoid, probably damning, judgment on the entire era, is to rehabilitate Bonds in the public’s eye: he has already promised A-Rod his support if he ever approaches the record, something that Hank Aaron has denied him; we are inundated with stories of players going to him to discuss hitting; we are shown glimpses of his relationship with Willie Mays.
Rare, however, is the player who is able to keep himself completely focused on the big picture, and use a mind numbing level of strategery to manipulate, not the outcome of individual games, but the course of the entire season-- such a player is Billy Wagner.
What was he thinking when he gave up the decisive two-run homer in last night’s All-Star game? He was thinking “If the Mets play a game 7 in the World Series, I want it to be Jack Kerouac-style: on the road.” Why? Well, the abysmal Scott Shcoenwise hadn’t surrendered an earned run on the road, until the most recent trip. Both Carloses hate hitting at Shea. On the whole, the Mets have a slightly higher winning percentage on the road, than they do at home. And there is speculation that Willy Randolph had a traumatic experience with a cow-bell when he was a child—and the clanging of the cow-bell man evokes a Proustian anguish of memory that impacts his in-game decision making.
So only Wagner’s cunning and guile was able to negate the runs that Reyes and Beltran had recklessly put up, and people whose first reaction was “Well, if we lose game 7 on the road, we’ll have Billy Wagner to thank for it… although chances are we’ll be thinking less about the fucking all-star game, and more about the save he just blew,” are considering the thing only on the meanest, and most rudimentary level—regretfully ignorant of the game of chess transpiring in the back-ground.
My other All-Star game observation is that the commentators seemed to be unusually un-judgmental about steroids, and particularly accepting of Barry Bonds. The sense is, and they almost discussed this openly, that they are sort of preparing for a time, not necessarily in the immediate future, when people are retired and it becomes revealed that god damn everyone in baseball was on steroids in a period that began in the ‘90s and might or might not be ending now. When this time comes, both the sports-media establishment and Major League Baseball do not want to look like complete and utter jack-asses—and want to avoid inquiries into what role the people who made money selling tickets and providing commentary on the home-run races of the ‘90s had in encouraging, implicitly or otherwise, the chemicals that made these races possible.
The baseball establishment has begun to realize that by being shrill about steroids, they are very much like a serpent devouring its own tail. At the end of the day, the only capitol in baseball is the players themselves—not only their accomplishments and records, but also the drama that they provide as human beings. If the current, anti-steroid stance is maintained, revelations of massive steroid use will serve to massively de-value this capitol; and while being moralistic about steroids was fun and sold papers, it is just dawning on them that, at the end of the day, it might put everyone, from the commissioner to the hot-dog vendors, out of a job.
Indeed, baseball is beginning to realize that some sort of re-habilitation of Barry Bonds needs to take place if he is ever going to posses the home-run record. Since Bonds was always antagonistic to the media and kind of a jerk, they thought, until recently, that they could write him off with an asterisk and be done with it. But it is becoming increasingly obvious that Bonds is a symptom of a larger culture and the asterisk placed by his name would reflect on an era of baseball as well. The only way to avoid, probably damning, judgment on the entire era, is to rehabilitate Bonds in the public’s eye: he has already promised A-Rod his support if he ever approaches the record, something that Hank Aaron has denied him; we are inundated with stories of players going to him to discuss hitting; we are shown glimpses of his relationship with Willie Mays.
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
Trip to Shea: 6/25
Baseball is a sort of slow game and following it diligently is a somewhat meditative process that becomes more rewarding as one’s knowledge increases, and in its final form endows one with a certain reverence for history. However, if one were ever to seriously doubt the American-ness of the sport, it would take only a very brief time at the ballpark to see that baseball is not our national pastime without cause.
The ballpark is like America. To sit in the warm summer air with several more hours of baseball ahead of you is delightful. The smell of the hotdogs and grease is delicious. The green of the field is beautiful. The feeling of unity, of shared hopes and fears with the teaming mass of fans is wonderful. There is something whimsical and mechanical about the grounds crews, like the figures on an elaborate coo coo clock. The seats all face inwards, towards one central project, yet one frequently looses the game to the antics of the fans, and the distractions and exultations to make noise that emanate from the big, neon screens. The seats are arranged in tiers, that are in fact clear demarcations of class, as the tiers correspond directly to changes in price; yet it would be somewhat uncouth (and, indeed, misleading) to form an opinion of one’s fellow fans based on how much they paid for their seats. You can’t spit without hitting someone trying to overcharge you for something that will make you fat.
The following observations are presented in approximately chronological order:
I showed up very early for the game, and paid five dollars for a wad of glossy advertising that happened to contain a score-card and the rosters. The score-keeping process was badly explained, in a poorly written, smarmy piece that uses (of all things) game 6 of the 1986 NLCS as an example. My efforts at keeping the score card ended after the third inning, when I decided that I found keeping it distracting and couldn’t find the symbol for “wandered off the bag and got caught in a run-down like a chump” which is what happened to Valentine in the first.
In many ways the high-point of the evening was watching Reyes and Carlos Gomez warm up before the game started. The energy and excitement of both young players, even as they did something as mundane as stretch out, was visible in the stands.
There were only a handful of players on the field during the national anthem, and they all stood for it, but with differing levels of attention. David Wright looked like he had wandered away from basic training. Paul Lo Duca also looked military but more like an embittered Clint Eastwood character, whose life is the army, because his wife left him, because she realized that his life was the army. Reyes and Gomez were fidgeting, and I think Delgado was talking to the trainer standing next to him out of the side of his mouth.
Lo Duca, perhaps because of his all-star election campaign and perhaps because of his recent ejection and impending suspension, was the only player whose name was regularly used as a chant (Paul—Lo—Duca, clap clap, clap clap), aside from the “ole/Jose” song.
Alcohol at the ballpark is primarily available in the form of domestic beers (Budweiser and Miller) sold in plastic bottles, that are specially designed so that the effects of getting hit with one will be minimal; one of these will set you back $7.50. I didn’t have one. In retrospect, I wish I had, if only so I could have gotten a first hand-look at the process by which they were distributed: I saw bottles in the hands of two men sitting several rows in front of me, who looked and acted very much underage—I would have imagined, however, that the carding process would be rigorous. Perhaps they had really good fakes? Back in the day, I would never have tested my fake ID in a place as well-lighted, organized and corporate as a ballpark.
Conversely, I never saw the four young men sitting in front of me with beer-bottles, but from overhearing their conversations I gathered the impression that they had been drinking. They liked to sing along with the jumbotrons, and one of them made a comment about how a sound clip of them slurring the words to “Enter the Sandman” should be put in an advertisement against teenage drinking; the fact that the guy thought that they would make “a million dollars” on that advertisement could probably be included in the commercial as well.
The primary interest of these four young fans was Billy Wagner, and they salivated whenever they posted his pitch speeds. On this night that made sense, as Wagner worked a scoreless ninth and tenth. Personally, I felt like Wags owed me that, since the last time I went to the park Reyes hit for the cycle and Wagner blew the save.
Prior to a Delgado at bat late in the games, they blasted the song “Mr. Roboto” and flashed the words “MISTER DELGADO” on the screen, along with clips of him doing impressive things. What the hell?
The picture of Keith Hernandez advertising “Just for Men” hair color that they show whenever a new pitcher is brought on (“stay in the game with Just for Men”) is one of the most atrocious pictorial representations of any human being ever. It makes him look like a combination of a used car salsmen and a terrifying, aging lounge-lizard-- which would, I guess, be a men’s hair-dye salesman.
Shawn Greene won the game with a walk-off homerun in the eleventh. The Mets piled onto the field behind home-plate and I exchanged high-fives with the four Wagner fans in front of me. The jubilation of the moment rendered irrelevant all the tawdry commercialism surrounding the ball-park. The yells of fans as we exited the stadium were louder, more vibrant, more real, than five dollar score cards and seven dollar beer.
The ballpark is like America. To sit in the warm summer air with several more hours of baseball ahead of you is delightful. The smell of the hotdogs and grease is delicious. The green of the field is beautiful. The feeling of unity, of shared hopes and fears with the teaming mass of fans is wonderful. There is something whimsical and mechanical about the grounds crews, like the figures on an elaborate coo coo clock. The seats all face inwards, towards one central project, yet one frequently looses the game to the antics of the fans, and the distractions and exultations to make noise that emanate from the big, neon screens. The seats are arranged in tiers, that are in fact clear demarcations of class, as the tiers correspond directly to changes in price; yet it would be somewhat uncouth (and, indeed, misleading) to form an opinion of one’s fellow fans based on how much they paid for their seats. You can’t spit without hitting someone trying to overcharge you for something that will make you fat.
The following observations are presented in approximately chronological order:
I showed up very early for the game, and paid five dollars for a wad of glossy advertising that happened to contain a score-card and the rosters. The score-keeping process was badly explained, in a poorly written, smarmy piece that uses (of all things) game 6 of the 1986 NLCS as an example. My efforts at keeping the score card ended after the third inning, when I decided that I found keeping it distracting and couldn’t find the symbol for “wandered off the bag and got caught in a run-down like a chump” which is what happened to Valentine in the first.
In many ways the high-point of the evening was watching Reyes and Carlos Gomez warm up before the game started. The energy and excitement of both young players, even as they did something as mundane as stretch out, was visible in the stands.
There were only a handful of players on the field during the national anthem, and they all stood for it, but with differing levels of attention. David Wright looked like he had wandered away from basic training. Paul Lo Duca also looked military but more like an embittered Clint Eastwood character, whose life is the army, because his wife left him, because she realized that his life was the army. Reyes and Gomez were fidgeting, and I think Delgado was talking to the trainer standing next to him out of the side of his mouth.
Lo Duca, perhaps because of his all-star election campaign and perhaps because of his recent ejection and impending suspension, was the only player whose name was regularly used as a chant (Paul—Lo—Duca, clap clap, clap clap), aside from the “ole/Jose” song.
Alcohol at the ballpark is primarily available in the form of domestic beers (Budweiser and Miller) sold in plastic bottles, that are specially designed so that the effects of getting hit with one will be minimal; one of these will set you back $7.50. I didn’t have one. In retrospect, I wish I had, if only so I could have gotten a first hand-look at the process by which they were distributed: I saw bottles in the hands of two men sitting several rows in front of me, who looked and acted very much underage—I would have imagined, however, that the carding process would be rigorous. Perhaps they had really good fakes? Back in the day, I would never have tested my fake ID in a place as well-lighted, organized and corporate as a ballpark.
Conversely, I never saw the four young men sitting in front of me with beer-bottles, but from overhearing their conversations I gathered the impression that they had been drinking. They liked to sing along with the jumbotrons, and one of them made a comment about how a sound clip of them slurring the words to “Enter the Sandman” should be put in an advertisement against teenage drinking; the fact that the guy thought that they would make “a million dollars” on that advertisement could probably be included in the commercial as well.
The primary interest of these four young fans was Billy Wagner, and they salivated whenever they posted his pitch speeds. On this night that made sense, as Wagner worked a scoreless ninth and tenth. Personally, I felt like Wags owed me that, since the last time I went to the park Reyes hit for the cycle and Wagner blew the save.
Prior to a Delgado at bat late in the games, they blasted the song “Mr. Roboto” and flashed the words “MISTER DELGADO” on the screen, along with clips of him doing impressive things. What the hell?
The picture of Keith Hernandez advertising “Just for Men” hair color that they show whenever a new pitcher is brought on (“stay in the game with Just for Men”) is one of the most atrocious pictorial representations of any human being ever. It makes him look like a combination of a used car salsmen and a terrifying, aging lounge-lizard-- which would, I guess, be a men’s hair-dye salesman.
Shawn Greene won the game with a walk-off homerun in the eleventh. The Mets piled onto the field behind home-plate and I exchanged high-fives with the four Wagner fans in front of me. The jubilation of the moment rendered irrelevant all the tawdry commercialism surrounding the ball-park. The yells of fans as we exited the stadium were louder, more vibrant, more real, than five dollar score cards and seven dollar beer.
Thursday, June 7, 2007
DAMN IT!
Everything about the last two games completely sucks, but last night’s game…oh man.
First off: Endy Chavez is injured, and it looks bad. Well fuck. Endy was always the Met’s ace in the hole; Endy always got them the hit, or made the play that it seemed that they didn’t quite deserve to get; Endy is about 60% of the reason that I am thinking of moving to Venezuela. Endy was what allowed the entire starting outfield to go gimpy on us without anyone really freaking out or even noticing—in fact Endy’s presence on the bench, is probably what allowed Minaya to sign an outfield of brittle old dinosaurs, without anyone seriously questioning his sanity. Moises Alou makes a hell of a lot more sense if you can bring Chavez in for defense, days off, and the inevitable periods when Alou is injured—one of which we are in right now, and which does not seem likely to end anytime soon.
And Easely came up with a bum knee before the game, marvelous…the silver lineing is that this might exactly coincide with the return of Valentin.
Way to be injured right now, Lastings Milledge: the club is so strapped for outfielders that he’d be getting playing time even if he had been collaborating with Don Imus on the hip-hop adaptation of the works of the Marquis De Sade (instead of putting a track on his website that would only offend someone who had never listened to hip-hop). But he’s injured, so we’ll probably get to see some Ricky Ledee. Awesome.
Also, screw you, Aaron Heilman. I try real hard to like you, honest. I got much sympathy for the whole ‘I want to start but they won’t let me start’ thing, that seems like a bummer. But you gotta stop losing us games. Seriously.
Casey Stengel once remarked that “good pitching will always stop good hitting and vice versa.” Right now, both his old teams are built primarily around that “vice versa,” and this season (along with, oh I don’t know, THE ENTIRE GOD DAMN HISTORY OF MAJOR LEAUGE BASEBALL) is serving to prove that this is a seriously flawed premise. The Mets are where they are because their pitching has been outstanding, through no fault of the general management. Going into the season the odds that either Maine or Perez would show themselves to be a major bum were more than decent; the fact that they have both been excellent so far (knock on wood… oh please god don’t let me jinx those poor kids) is a serious piece of luck. The hell there was any sane reason to think that Jorge Sosa was going to stroll out of the minors and be lights out, but that happened and that has been huge. Going into the season everyone said that the bullpen was the club’s weakness, but it has been outstanding and one of the club’s major strengths; at the same time, the fact that it has lost two games in a row to the Phillies (who hardly even have a bullpen) shouldn’t actually shock anyone, given the initial doubts about it.
The strength of the Mets, and the Yankees, is supposed to be their offence. Delgado, Reyes, Wright, and Beltran are supposed to be coming up with key hits, and they are not. The Mets had chances to win last night’s game and score more runs, but they did not do that. The main difference between the Mets and the Yankees is that with the former the pitching has been far better than expected and with the latter it has been far, far worse.
Billy Wagner and Paul Lo Duca have apparently been calling the team out, and saying that it is not playing with the ‘fire’ that it had last year. Perhaps. Lo Duca is the same old singles machine that he ever was (knock on wood again), so I guess that he can say whatever he wants. Wagner has also been technically brilliant, converting all of his save opportunities. He’s still either a disturbing adrenaline junky or not quite the pitcher that everyone thinks, because he makes it interesting and puts runners on base, or gives up any runs that he might have to spare. I hate to do this, but I predict Wagner’s first blown save for either tonight, or sometime on the upcoming inter-league road trip. Again, sorry. Hope I’m wrong.
First off: Endy Chavez is injured, and it looks bad. Well fuck. Endy was always the Met’s ace in the hole; Endy always got them the hit, or made the play that it seemed that they didn’t quite deserve to get; Endy is about 60% of the reason that I am thinking of moving to Venezuela. Endy was what allowed the entire starting outfield to go gimpy on us without anyone really freaking out or even noticing—in fact Endy’s presence on the bench, is probably what allowed Minaya to sign an outfield of brittle old dinosaurs, without anyone seriously questioning his sanity. Moises Alou makes a hell of a lot more sense if you can bring Chavez in for defense, days off, and the inevitable periods when Alou is injured—one of which we are in right now, and which does not seem likely to end anytime soon.
And Easely came up with a bum knee before the game, marvelous…the silver lineing is that this might exactly coincide with the return of Valentin.
Way to be injured right now, Lastings Milledge: the club is so strapped for outfielders that he’d be getting playing time even if he had been collaborating with Don Imus on the hip-hop adaptation of the works of the Marquis De Sade (instead of putting a track on his website that would only offend someone who had never listened to hip-hop). But he’s injured, so we’ll probably get to see some Ricky Ledee. Awesome.
Also, screw you, Aaron Heilman. I try real hard to like you, honest. I got much sympathy for the whole ‘I want to start but they won’t let me start’ thing, that seems like a bummer. But you gotta stop losing us games. Seriously.
Casey Stengel once remarked that “good pitching will always stop good hitting and vice versa.” Right now, both his old teams are built primarily around that “vice versa,” and this season (along with, oh I don’t know, THE ENTIRE GOD DAMN HISTORY OF MAJOR LEAUGE BASEBALL) is serving to prove that this is a seriously flawed premise. The Mets are where they are because their pitching has been outstanding, through no fault of the general management. Going into the season the odds that either Maine or Perez would show themselves to be a major bum were more than decent; the fact that they have both been excellent so far (knock on wood… oh please god don’t let me jinx those poor kids) is a serious piece of luck. The hell there was any sane reason to think that Jorge Sosa was going to stroll out of the minors and be lights out, but that happened and that has been huge. Going into the season everyone said that the bullpen was the club’s weakness, but it has been outstanding and one of the club’s major strengths; at the same time, the fact that it has lost two games in a row to the Phillies (who hardly even have a bullpen) shouldn’t actually shock anyone, given the initial doubts about it.
The strength of the Mets, and the Yankees, is supposed to be their offence. Delgado, Reyes, Wright, and Beltran are supposed to be coming up with key hits, and they are not. The Mets had chances to win last night’s game and score more runs, but they did not do that. The main difference between the Mets and the Yankees is that with the former the pitching has been far better than expected and with the latter it has been far, far worse.
Billy Wagner and Paul Lo Duca have apparently been calling the team out, and saying that it is not playing with the ‘fire’ that it had last year. Perhaps. Lo Duca is the same old singles machine that he ever was (knock on wood again), so I guess that he can say whatever he wants. Wagner has also been technically brilliant, converting all of his save opportunities. He’s still either a disturbing adrenaline junky or not quite the pitcher that everyone thinks, because he makes it interesting and puts runners on base, or gives up any runs that he might have to spare. I hate to do this, but I predict Wagner’s first blown save for either tonight, or sometime on the upcoming inter-league road trip. Again, sorry. Hope I’m wrong.
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Lastings Milledge
What I’d like, thanks for asking, is for Willie Randolph to give Lastings Milledge a start before he sends him down to New Orleans on Friday to make room for Mike Pelfry. On some level, Randolph should just do it for the fans: we seem to be generally interested in the kid and it would be nice to see him play a game or two before he gets traded off for some geriatric pitcher.
On the other hand, giving Milledge a start, and Green or Alou a day off, seems to be generally in keeping with Randolph’s philosophy, at least in regards to the relatively inexperienced members of the bullpen. A couple of times now, Randolph has drawn the ire of sports writers and fans for leaving untested relievers in the game in tight spots. The logic behind doing that, I believe, is that with their line-up and the vast majority of the season still to be played, the temporary damage done by a bad relief outing is worth risking for confidence that these relievers stand to gain from success, and the information that Randolph and Rick Peterson stand to gain from watching them compete against big league hitters in meaningful games. By a similar token, it would be valuable to see the “new, improved” Lastings Milledge in a major league game while the opportunity still presents itself.
On larger levels, Milledge poses an interesting question to the club. With super-sub Endy Chavez on the bench; Francisco Martinez and Carlos Gomez, two outfield prospects who collectively embody all the qualities of Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, and The Flash, waiting in the minors; and Beltran signed to a long term deal, there is not much long-term future for Milledge with this club. His value to the team, at this point, seems to be primarily as insurance in case Green or Alou gets injured- or someone else gets injured and they need to make a quick trade.
It all goes back to last season, when Milledge spent some time with the club and exhibited a “bad attitude.” His crimes consisted of high-fiveing fans in the stands after hitting his first home run, showing up late for a game, and a couple of mistakes in the outfield. Also, he did something during his September call-up to inspire someone to leave a note on his locker saying “Know your place, Rook.” [UPDATE: at some point over the summer it became generally accepted that the note was left by Billy Wagner]
To me, all of that seemed like a classic case of sports writers creating a story out of a series of trivial incidents merely to have something to say, something with which to fill their quota of column inches for the week. All of Milledge’s transgressions seemed in keeping with a guy who was twenty-one years old, playing his first handful of games in the majors. The club itself, at least publicly, never seemed concerned about his behavior; if there had been any better off-field story lines (Paul Lo Duca’s divorce was a little messier, Pedro Martinez took a month off to attend space camp, David Wright dating Paris Hilton) we might have never heard of Milledge as anything other than a prospect having a slightly disappointing first outing.
Opening the real can of worms, I can’t shake the feeling that the media’s perception of Milledge, a black guy, was racially charged. Milledge’s crimes, showboating and laziness, are the particular shortcomings that the media likes to subtlety associate with African-American athletes. Given the paltry evidence available to me, the problem with Milledge seems to have been constructed- and the fact that it was constructed around Milledge, and not someone else, likely has something to do with his race.
The amazing turn-around that Milledge has exhibited, losing all that weight in the off-season, exhibiting a better attitude, and working harder, seem like the natural maturation of a very young player learning the ropes and coming into his own. However, the way that it is written about, serves to emphasize his initial delinquency- which I am inclined to believe was slightly fictional in the first place. Neither Milledge’s attitude nor his performance would have had to have been very bad for a little experience and a little more maturity to have led to a significant improvement.
As for the note on his locker, it seems to me that the real question is not what he did to deserve it, but what is so weak and vulnerable about the order of the veterans that it could be threatened by a 21-year old kid, and needed to be enforced with an anonymous note.
On the other hand, giving Milledge a start, and Green or Alou a day off, seems to be generally in keeping with Randolph’s philosophy, at least in regards to the relatively inexperienced members of the bullpen. A couple of times now, Randolph has drawn the ire of sports writers and fans for leaving untested relievers in the game in tight spots. The logic behind doing that, I believe, is that with their line-up and the vast majority of the season still to be played, the temporary damage done by a bad relief outing is worth risking for confidence that these relievers stand to gain from success, and the information that Randolph and Rick Peterson stand to gain from watching them compete against big league hitters in meaningful games. By a similar token, it would be valuable to see the “new, improved” Lastings Milledge in a major league game while the opportunity still presents itself.
On larger levels, Milledge poses an interesting question to the club. With super-sub Endy Chavez on the bench; Francisco Martinez and Carlos Gomez, two outfield prospects who collectively embody all the qualities of Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, and The Flash, waiting in the minors; and Beltran signed to a long term deal, there is not much long-term future for Milledge with this club. His value to the team, at this point, seems to be primarily as insurance in case Green or Alou gets injured- or someone else gets injured and they need to make a quick trade.
It all goes back to last season, when Milledge spent some time with the club and exhibited a “bad attitude.” His crimes consisted of high-fiveing fans in the stands after hitting his first home run, showing up late for a game, and a couple of mistakes in the outfield. Also, he did something during his September call-up to inspire someone to leave a note on his locker saying “Know your place, Rook.” [UPDATE: at some point over the summer it became generally accepted that the note was left by Billy Wagner]
To me, all of that seemed like a classic case of sports writers creating a story out of a series of trivial incidents merely to have something to say, something with which to fill their quota of column inches for the week. All of Milledge’s transgressions seemed in keeping with a guy who was twenty-one years old, playing his first handful of games in the majors. The club itself, at least publicly, never seemed concerned about his behavior; if there had been any better off-field story lines (Paul Lo Duca’s divorce was a little messier, Pedro Martinez took a month off to attend space camp, David Wright dating Paris Hilton) we might have never heard of Milledge as anything other than a prospect having a slightly disappointing first outing.
Opening the real can of worms, I can’t shake the feeling that the media’s perception of Milledge, a black guy, was racially charged. Milledge’s crimes, showboating and laziness, are the particular shortcomings that the media likes to subtlety associate with African-American athletes. Given the paltry evidence available to me, the problem with Milledge seems to have been constructed- and the fact that it was constructed around Milledge, and not someone else, likely has something to do with his race.
The amazing turn-around that Milledge has exhibited, losing all that weight in the off-season, exhibiting a better attitude, and working harder, seem like the natural maturation of a very young player learning the ropes and coming into his own. However, the way that it is written about, serves to emphasize his initial delinquency- which I am inclined to believe was slightly fictional in the first place. Neither Milledge’s attitude nor his performance would have had to have been very bad for a little experience and a little more maturity to have led to a significant improvement.
As for the note on his locker, it seems to me that the real question is not what he did to deserve it, but what is so weak and vulnerable about the order of the veterans that it could be threatened by a 21-year old kid, and needed to be enforced with an anonymous note.
Thursday, March 29, 2007
Billy Wagner: a lesson for A-rod
If A-Rod ever gets bored of looking at himself in the mirror and trying to figure out which major league uniform would look best on him, he should give Billy Wagner a call- the guy is running some kind of clinic on how to be an extremely expensive, yet slightly underperforming, free agent acquisition, and still getting everyone to like you.
Billy Wagner? Underperforming? Well, mainly if you consider the fact that the guy makes more money than Mariano Rivera, and Mariano Rivera he is NOT. The way that you can tell this, is that when Rivera takes the mound, it is like Lee Van Cleef or Clint Eastwood at the end of a spaghetti Western- he projects nothing but danger and confidence; if he were still alive, the Yankees should get Sergio Leone to shoot his high-light real. When Wagner takes the mound late in games, my first instinct is to make sure that I’m not that far away from a full beer, in case he leaves me with a lot of problems to drink away- and while, during the regular season, the terror-beer was generally transformed into a celebration-beer by the end of the inning, Wagner always made it interesting, particularly in the post season when he put up a 9.53 ERA and took a loss.
In addition to scaring the shit out of Mets fans in late innings, Wagner spent some of the post-season dictating an EXCLUSIVE guest column for the New York Post to someone named “Burton Rocks.” It had very little insight into the game, but a lot of stuff like “Am I exited to be in New York on a winner? Does a one legged duck swim in circles?” It was not the paradigm of player-journalism excellence that was provided by Cliff Floyd’s blog, but it was a perfectly decent thing to kill a couple minutes of the agonizing periods when they weren’t playing baseball.
Anyway, Billy and Burton seem to have hit it off, because Wagner is getting more than his share of coverage in the Post during the pre-season, most notably in an article called “Cheats Lurk Everywhere,” in which Kevin Kernan talks to Wagner about the return of Guillermo Mota. Wagner told Kernan that cheating, looking for an edge, was a universal and eternal aspect of the game; previous iterations had included spit-balls, pine-tar, and corked bats- steroids were just the current form. Wagner said that you only had to say you were sorry if you got caught, and Kernan speculated that this was the most honest thing a ball player had ever said.
Wagner comes out of the article looking great. He claims that he is clean: “If I took steroids, I'd be a hell of a lot better. I know it. And that's why I don't have to take it. When they say, 'You know you are one of the top three closers in the game,' I don't have to take that [bleep- shit, presumably].” He is identified as a family man, and a fount of both wit and wisdom; he is eager and able to face the challenges of the big city, but still grounded enough in his humble roots that he has not lost sight of the swimming habits of one legged ducks.
The pro-Wagner attitude is pretty universal. The Post thinks that this year he will be better than he was in 2006, but no one seems to think that there is any danger of him being significantly worse- and to me this seems like a perfectly reasonable thing to worry about. The one thing that the Mets cannot stand, given the state of their bullpen, is their closer coming up unreliable- and I don’t think, particularly in the post-season, that serious unreliability is ever completely out of the picture where Wagner is concerned.
There is a huge lesson in how Wagner talks to the media, particularly in whatever relationship he has with the Post. Close games are lost by whoever you can write the best piece blaming, and by being a petulant dope, A-rod makes himself extremely blamable. By giving them a couple of columns in Spring, Wagner has saved himself a lot of pictures and puns on the back page after blown saves in the Summer. Part of it, of course, is that the urge to question Wagner can never be that strong for Mets fans: he ended the nightmare that was Braden Looper. But Wagner also projects the perfect mixture of folksy charm, positive attitude and complete confidence in his own ability to make sports writers hesitate before saying that the game was lost by the really expensive guy who gave up the game winning hit.
Billy Wagner? Underperforming? Well, mainly if you consider the fact that the guy makes more money than Mariano Rivera, and Mariano Rivera he is NOT. The way that you can tell this, is that when Rivera takes the mound, it is like Lee Van Cleef or Clint Eastwood at the end of a spaghetti Western- he projects nothing but danger and confidence; if he were still alive, the Yankees should get Sergio Leone to shoot his high-light real. When Wagner takes the mound late in games, my first instinct is to make sure that I’m not that far away from a full beer, in case he leaves me with a lot of problems to drink away- and while, during the regular season, the terror-beer was generally transformed into a celebration-beer by the end of the inning, Wagner always made it interesting, particularly in the post season when he put up a 9.53 ERA and took a loss.
In addition to scaring the shit out of Mets fans in late innings, Wagner spent some of the post-season dictating an EXCLUSIVE guest column for the New York Post to someone named “Burton Rocks.” It had very little insight into the game, but a lot of stuff like “Am I exited to be in New York on a winner? Does a one legged duck swim in circles?” It was not the paradigm of player-journalism excellence that was provided by Cliff Floyd’s blog, but it was a perfectly decent thing to kill a couple minutes of the agonizing periods when they weren’t playing baseball.
Anyway, Billy and Burton seem to have hit it off, because Wagner is getting more than his share of coverage in the Post during the pre-season, most notably in an article called “Cheats Lurk Everywhere,” in which Kevin Kernan talks to Wagner about the return of Guillermo Mota. Wagner told Kernan that cheating, looking for an edge, was a universal and eternal aspect of the game; previous iterations had included spit-balls, pine-tar, and corked bats- steroids were just the current form. Wagner said that you only had to say you were sorry if you got caught, and Kernan speculated that this was the most honest thing a ball player had ever said.
Wagner comes out of the article looking great. He claims that he is clean: “If I took steroids, I'd be a hell of a lot better. I know it. And that's why I don't have to take it. When they say, 'You know you are one of the top three closers in the game,' I don't have to take that [bleep- shit, presumably].” He is identified as a family man, and a fount of both wit and wisdom; he is eager and able to face the challenges of the big city, but still grounded enough in his humble roots that he has not lost sight of the swimming habits of one legged ducks.
The pro-Wagner attitude is pretty universal. The Post thinks that this year he will be better than he was in 2006, but no one seems to think that there is any danger of him being significantly worse- and to me this seems like a perfectly reasonable thing to worry about. The one thing that the Mets cannot stand, given the state of their bullpen, is their closer coming up unreliable- and I don’t think, particularly in the post-season, that serious unreliability is ever completely out of the picture where Wagner is concerned.
There is a huge lesson in how Wagner talks to the media, particularly in whatever relationship he has with the Post. Close games are lost by whoever you can write the best piece blaming, and by being a petulant dope, A-rod makes himself extremely blamable. By giving them a couple of columns in Spring, Wagner has saved himself a lot of pictures and puns on the back page after blown saves in the Summer. Part of it, of course, is that the urge to question Wagner can never be that strong for Mets fans: he ended the nightmare that was Braden Looper. But Wagner also projects the perfect mixture of folksy charm, positive attitude and complete confidence in his own ability to make sports writers hesitate before saying that the game was lost by the really expensive guy who gave up the game winning hit.
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