Mets 2008 Preview: Starting Pitchers

Today I’ll be previewing starting pitchers because, after the infielders, I am most sure about the composition of the rotation.

Johan Santana
Chinese Zodiac: Sheep
Career ERA: 3.22
The arrival of the second best athlete traded from a Minnesota team in the last ten months catapulted the Mets from a shaky team with questions at several positions, into favorites to compete, not only in the NL East, but also for the world championship. I spent a lot of time thinking about this and decided that you probably are better off being a basketball team with Kevin Garnett than a baseball team with Santana. The logic being that in MLB there are perhaps two or three pitchers (Beckett, C.C. Sabathia) that give you more or less what you get from Santana, where as the NBA has one other player, Tim Duncan, who gives Garnett’s combination of lock-down interior defense and solid scoring near the basket; and Duncan has been proving for years that if you surround one of these guys with the right combination of jump shooters and flopping foreign role players, you can compete for the championship until you run out of fingers for rings. Still, in much the way that a KG or a Tim Duncan can improve their team on offense and defense by controlling the paint and taking pressure of their teammates, the presence of a true ace allows for a better rested bullpen, and takes pressure off both the back of the rotation and the lineup. Fortunately, aside from the loss of KG and Johan, everything else about living in Minnesota is completely awesome.

Pedro Martinez
Chinese Zodiac: Pig
Career ERA: 2.80
How will Pedro’s surgically repaired shoulder hold up? How will he adjust to being the number two pitcher on the team? How many jack-ass articles will be written in The Post about Pedro being too greedy and egotistical to come back to the Mets in ’09? Where will Pedro pitch in ’09? And how will he cope with the feelings of remorse brought on by PETA’s letter of protest? Honestly, the outlook on all of these things is good, and the reports from camp are that Pedro is almost enjoying his secondary status. And, in much the way that Santana’s dominance takes pressure of the rest of the Mets on the field, Pedro’s eccentricity and charisma should take pressure off of them in the media. PEDRO FACT: Pedro drives a black Austin-Martin with his number “45” engraved on the hubcaps.

Oliver Perez
Chinese Zodiac: Rooster
Career ERA: 4.43
Sam’s Mets Blog favorite Oliver Perez continues on his quest for some kind of consistency in ‘08. Why can’t he just be good all the time, dammit? The neat thing about Perez is that he still holds out the possibility of transforming into an ace, although the chances of this happening seem more remote every year. I suspect the same oscillation between brilliant starts and disasters. In other news, Ollie won his salary arbitration with the club, which got him a raise of something like $ 4 million. I would really like to know how he spent the night after the arbitration hearing; I hope it involved drinking tequila with Rick Peterson.

John Maine
Chinese Zodiac: Rooster
Career ERA: 4.19
At some point during spring training, one of the Mets Notes, on Mets.com, was a bunch of bullshit about John Maine going on line for the first time in his life. My assumption is that a reporter saw Maine on a computer and Maine claimed he had never used one before as a joke-- either that, or it was a joke on the part of the reporter. With other ballplayers I might be more inclined to believe this, but Maine is presented as almost an intellectual by baseball standards, doing crossword puzzles and Soduku and occasionally speaking in full sentences. Apparently Maine and Perez have been playing pranks on each other in spring training, and I wonder if this is just fun and games or the seeds of real animosity between the two pitchers vying for #3 status.

TBD
The Old Duque (Rooster, or possibly Snake) vs. Big Pelf (Pig)debate took a turn for the terrible as both of them got lit up by the Cardinals on Sunday. Omar Minaya has apparently mentioned Nelson Figueroa (Tiger)and John Niese (Tiger) as possible alternatives. Although, El Duque and Pelfery will split another start before the season begins, I would have to think that any alternative is looking very good. As Dorothy Parker said, “When given a choice of bottom of the rotation starters, I always take the one I haven’t tried before.” Personally, I’m pulling for N-Fig.

Pitching Coaches say the Darndest Things:

“Initially, John Maine did not see himself going into the phone booth, putting on a cape and flying.”
-Rick Peterson [Italics mine]

What the Hell is Wrong with People?

According to northjersey.com, John Maine and Oliver Perez attended the Knicks game on Monday, and were booed when they were shown on the Jumbo-tron. Seriously, what the hell?
I am not that happy with the Mets at this moment. On sober reflection, my initial optimism about the Milledge trade was unfounded/insane. They gave away a guy with some up-side, for two guys with zero-upside, who don’t seem to meet any immediate needs (ok, they needed a catcher. But they’re up to the eye-balls in outfielders. And Church is an unfortunate guy to replace Shawn Greene with.)

And the not-signing Santana or some other amazing pitcher thing is pissing me off. And I wish that Schoenwise had been busted for steroids and gotten the 50-game suspension just so we wouldn’t have to watch him for the first chunk of the season.

But, at a Knicks game, there are simply too many other things to boo; and in the context of Madison Square Garden, the Mets franchise is a paradigm of winning, responsibility and success.

The Mets were a huge disappointment and ought to have made the playoffs. I try not to be a mean-spirited fan, but I can understand the urge to hold that fiasco against all the players personally. However, the Knicks are so bad that I like the Met’s chances against them in a game of basketball.

Center: Mike Pelfry—dude is 6’7”
Power Forward: Moises Alou—played hoops in high-school.
Small Forward: Carlos Gomez-- 6’4”, athletic, fast as hell.
Shooting Guard: Jose Wright/David Reyes—young, in good shape, could probably make a lay-up.
Point Guard: El Duque—extremely competitive man; a state-mandated test once revealed that he had the highest basketball IQ in Cuba.

I would bet on that team to beat the Knicks. And if I saw Maine and Perez at Madison Square Garden, I would not boo them: I would try and see if there was an extra jersey lying around and if either of them could make a jump shot.

And of all of the Mets to boo, Maine and Perez are two of the worst. Both of them were pleasant surprises in 2007. Neither was anything like an ace, but neither of them was completely terrible. They both showed tons of upside. They are fun guys to have on a baseball team that you root for, because every game they start has the possibility of being either an amazing performance or minor disaster. The fact that they both over-performed in 2007 was the only reason that the Mets got to go through the worst collapse in sports, as opposed to just spending the season in second place. And, in the face of a non-Santana ’08, they are the closest thing that Mets fans have to a reason for not being completely depressed about the state of the pitching.

Basically, if you feel so strongly about the Mets that you are booing Ollie and Maine on the jumbo-tron, you better be at the Garden because you are waiting to go to Penn Station to catch an Amtrack to Atlanta, where you are going to burn down both Turner Field and Tom Glavine’s house.

John Maine and Oliver Perez: a long day’s journey into VORP

On Baseball Prospectus, if you go to the Team Audits, you can find hitters listed by VORP. VORP is a stat that is used to try and figure out how much a player contributed to in relation to a fictitious “replacement player,” and the stat tells you how many more runs the team scored because a particular player, and not a typical minor-league call up, was at that position. David Wright lead the Mets with 81.1 runs more than a hypothetical minor-league third baseman, followed by Carlos Beltran who was responsible for 51.1 more runs than a hypothetical center fielder; unfortunately for the Mets, the hypothetical minor-league center fielder was unavailable, and they had to call up Carlos Gomez, who was last on the team with a VORP of -4.4.

The stat can be calculated to figure out the effectiveness of pitchers as pitchers—which is useful. In the following discussion I am considering the offense of pitchers, and so my comments have to be taken less as referring to what the stat says about the players and more as what the players say about the stat. Of the Mets hitters John Maine ranked an even zero, which is to say that the average minor league pitcher should have provided exactly as much offense as John Maine: not a shock since it is widely acknowledged that John Maine is a bad hitter even as pitchers go. Tom Glavine (5.2), Jorge Sosa (2.5), El Duque (.8) and Brian Lawrence (.8) all provided slightly more offense than the potential minor-league replacement. Oliver Perez had the worst VORP as a hitter of any Mets pitcher with -1.4, which I found interesting, because, while Perez’ swing is ugly, he does occasionally get his hits and the announcers talk benignly about his efforts at the plate, even going so far as alluding to using him as a pinch-hitter in extreme situations. Perez, indeed, particularly seems like a good hitter compared to Maine, who is, as I mentioned, known as a particularly bad hitting pitcher.

The table on baseball prospectus also lists the player’s batting average, on base percentage, and slugging percentage (total bases over at bats, used to get an idea of a hitter’s power). For Perez, all of these numbers are .161, which means he did not hit a lot, never walked, and only hit singles. Maine’s numbers are .109/.194/.164, which means that while he hit less frequently than Perez, he walked occasionally, and hit for a little bit of power; specifically, he walked five times and hit one homer.

Maine had a total of 6 hits, to Perez’ 9, but broke exactly even with the hypothetical minor leaguer—compared to whom Perez cost the Mets 1.4 runs (a hypothetical minor league pitcher, of course, would have allowed way more runs, 24 to be exact, than Ollie did, so the 1.4 runs that he didn’t hit don’t really matter). In the end this is just another illustration of the general point that on-base and slugging are, according to the new metrics, the major ways in which hitters can help an offense, as opposed to hitting for average. It also, I guess, makes a point about the particular ways in which hitters get to be overvalued based on average. A casual fan would have had a 30 percent better chance of seeing Oliver Perez get a hit of any sort than John Maine; indeed, if they had seen Maine’s lone homer, they probably would have developed an even worse opinion of him, since the event was so wildly celebrated in a way that made a point about its extreme unusualness. Of course, the fans were right to celebrate it: it was good for the fifty-odd points of slugging percentage that propelled Maine’s VORP to zero.

Unreasonable Speculation:

So, if the Mets make the post-season, and if everyone is healthy, the Mets will face a minor dilemma: they will have five starting pitchers when they will only use a four man rotation. So, of the five, Martinez, Glavine, El Duque Maine and Perez, one of them needs to be moved to the bullpen—any Met-ologist will point out that this was done to Sid Fernandez on the 1986 Championship Team. It is unthinkable, for reasons of ego and star power, that Glavine or Martinez would pitch in relief. In the most recent Mets Mailbag, someone asks if El Duque’s nearly legendary relief outing for the White Sox in the 2005 ALDS would make him a leading candidate for the bullpen assignment; the mailbag’s emphatic answer was no, which was kind of too bad since the first draft of this post was mainly about how the Mets should not let the 2005 ALDS tempt them into using El Duque in relief.(the White Sox put him in the ‘pen because he had an awful end of the season and they thought they had better options for starters, which is not the case of 2007 Mets) This narrows the field down to Maine and Perez.

For a lay person the question of weather Maine or Perez should work in relief is fascinating, since there is no real information of any sort to go on. In terms of success rate, they are very evenly matched: Maine’s performances tend to stick closer to some sort of mean, whereas Perez’ vary more sharply and he is more prone to both excellence and miserable failure. They have similar, brief, histories in the post season: both were very adequate in the games that they pitched for the Mets last year.

Eeven less concrete than their numbers, is the fan’s perception of a difference between the two in temperament, particularly in what is perceived as their mental/emotional state when they end up in trouble. Maine, apparently, is prone to lapses of concentration; he occasionally misplaces his pitches and gets ‘hurt by the longball.’ Perez, on the other hand, is liable to ‘get rattled’ when things don’t go his way: when balls get misplayed in the outfield or when he disagrees with the umpire about balls and strikes. Once one of these minor setbacks occurs, Perez is prone to losing his composure, and his command, and issuing walks until his composure returns or he gets taken out of the game. The generalization is that Maine hurts himself by not reacting enough to the game, the opposite of Perez, who makes trouble for himself by being too emotionally involved.

Of course, the Mets Mailbag precedes its response with the customary hedge, saying that it is far too early too discuss these things and that no one knows who will be healthy and what the situation will be if and when the time comes to make these decisions, but then says this: “I wouldn't use Perez in relief. He's too erratic for the role,” and goes on to speculate that Maine might be a serviceable short reliever, based largely on his dominance early in games—this is in fact a very good point, and Maine’s first trips through the lineup have been extremely dominant all season, and there is some kind of logic to thinking that he could repeat this dominance in relief outings.

In my expert opinion, though, the South Paw from South of the Border might have a little bit of a better psychological make-up for a relief pitcher. It is frequently said of Perez that he “wants the ball” in big games, that he wants to be out on the mound when the season is on the line. He is an adrenaline pitcher, and a component of his wildness is a taste for danger; there is something about him that reminds one of Billy Wagner, who is capable of protecting a lead of exactly 1.5 runs. The theory about Perez, that his emotional involvement in the game leads him to fall apart, works both ways: it has been known to lead him to excellence as well. The Met’s best bet might very well be to run him out in relief and hope for the best.

UPDATE: Mets fans are dopes.

Oliver Perez is why Baseball is Great

Pop Quiz: what do an incompetent Miami cab driver and an ex-stripper in a low-cut Santa dress have in common?

Answer: They are each responsible for getting the one of the two pitchers currently tied for the club lead in wins, onto the New York Mets. If Anna Benson hadn’t showed up for the Met’s Christmas Party in a skimpy Mrs. Claus outfit, the Mets would probably not have dealt her husband for Jorge Julio, in which deal the previously unknown and unimpressive John Maine was included as an after thought. And if Duaner Sanchez, the Met’s top set-up man, hadn’t injured his shoulder in a Miami taxi cab there would have been no reason to trade Xavier Nady for veteran reliever Roberto Hernandez and a once promising starter that the Pirates had given up on, named Oliver Perez.

In 2004, for the Pittsburgh Pirates, Perez had one of the most tantalizing seasons for any young pitcher, leading the Major Leagues with 10.97 strikeouts per nine innings and putting up 2.98 ERA that was good for a tie for fifth place (with the Rocket, whose recent minor league starts are NOT impressive to Pedro Martinez) in the NL. However, even prior to that season, Perez had had issues with his control and tendencies towards wildness—glaring weaknesses in his game that would never cease to haunt him. In 2005, after a loss to the Cardinals, he broke his big toe kicking a laundry cart in the dugout and spent two and a half months on the DL. He opened 2006 as the Pirates number one starter, but quickly moved from the rotation to the bullpen, to the minors. When the Mets traded Nady to the Pirates for Hernandez, Omar Minaya was probably the only person left in baseball who saw enough in Perez to demand that the Pirates throw him in.

At first for the Mets in 2006, Perez was much like he had been before, very closely resembling the little girl immortalized by the poem: ‘for when she was good/ she was very, very good/ and when she was bad, she was horrid.’ He would be lights out for innings at a stretch, only to develop un-conventional notions about the size and location of the strike zone, and walk and hit batters until the game was out of reach. When he started game 7 of the NLCS, he had compiled the worst statistics of any pitcher to pitch a game seven in the history of baseball.

But Perez was good in that game, only giving up one run in six innings, and since then he has basically been brilliant, with flashes of wildness, instead of the other way around. True, he has thrown some rotten games this year, but they have been the exception, rather than the rule. He has been evolving into something like a ‘big game pitcher,’ having his best games against ‘rivals’ like the Braves or the Yankees. Indeed, while Atlanta’s Chipper Jones has embraced the label of ‘Met Killer’ to the extent that he named his son ‘Shea’ after the stadium where he has had the most success, the Mets should start calling Ollie ‘Firewater’ (or maybe Smallpox), because he always messes up the Braves (knock on wood).

The part of the human brain that evolved from animals that would hide from their predators in trees feels deeply sorry for pitchers. They have nothing to protect them, no wall to put their backs against: man was not meant to be quite so out in the open. Few pitchers, however, manage to draw much attention to their humanity: good ones (Tom Glavine) make it seem as if they aren’t doing anything that impressive; great ones (Pedro Martinez) give the impression of having evolved into Supermen; truly bad ones (Jose Lima) can only be reviled; and we are never tempted to relate to true and deep mediocrity (Steve Trachsel), although maybe we should be.

Perez is none of that: he sits on the cusp between fantastic and abysmal. He has touched greatness, but been unable to grasp it. He is bound by superstition— when he skips over the baseline he sometimes seems delightfully exuberant and sometimes demented. The control that he lacks, that is his great weakness, is not a control over others or over outside forces; rather it is the control of his own product, his own process, and his own stuff.

Oh, Oliver! Oh, humanity!

In Which a Sacrifice is Made by the Author

I get off work at 9 on the Upper East Side on weeknights, and live in Queens, so that puts me in a little bit of a bind for night games. Normally, I follow the first bit on Gameday, and then hurry home and am able to catch the last couple innings, and that is alright. But tonight’s game had me worried, not about the outcome, which never seemed in any particular jeopardy after the Mets put up four runs against Dontrelle Willis in the first, but about he zeros that kept coming up under the Marlins hits. If I took the subway home was I going to miss precious innings of the first no-hitter in Mets history? Well, almost certainly not, and earlier I might have accepted this, and gone home as I had been planning to do, straighten out the apartment, do some writing, and go to bed early. But as I was leaving work I realized I have a blog, god dammit, and anything that I missed would be the internet’s loss as well. So, much against my inclination, I went and got a beer at Phoenix Park.

Phoenix Park is an Irish sports bar on the Upper East Side. The food is actually good, and the bartenders are friendly, but it attracts the sort of young, and much less young, professionals who like to drink to excess on the Upper East Side in the presence of sports.

When I got to the bar, Maine was pitching and there was a runner on first. The bar was nearly packed, although this was clearly unrelated to the game. I tried to find out what had happened, but everyone who was watching anything was watching the Yankees. Someone told me that the bartender was a Mets fan, but when I finally got his attention to order a beer, it was obvious that he was too overworked to have seen much.

Without any particular warning, a woman climbed up on the bar and preceded to dance- at no point was her motivation for doing this in any way clear. She was dark haired, perhaps in her thirties; she was one of a small minority of women in the bar. She undulated to the music and encouraged her meeker, more awkward blond friend to join her. I had seen her around there before, drinking with the men who, unsatisfied, were hooting for her to take off her clothes.

Although she demurred on her friend’s requests, she was encouraged into increasingly sexual positions with a column over the bar. Glassy eyed, pudgy men in suites kept coming out of the back of the bar to take pictures with their cell phones and offer encouragement. At some point the Marlin’s hit a home run off of Maine, and someone said “there goes the no hitter” and went back to watching hockey- I latter realized that the no-no had been gone since I got there. The blond climbed onto the bar and they thrust their pelvises in each other’s general vicinity.

I watched another inning while I finished my beer, and reflected that, while I spend some time in some fairly low bars in Queens, that do not have much in the way of standards regarding temperance or human behavior- this was, at least for nine o’clock on a Wednesday, something of a first. And in places where my beer would have cost me four dollars, instead of six, I would not have had to worry about running into the dancers again, and coping with mixed feelings of arousal and disgust over a burger and a pint, or listen to their male friend’s illuminating discourse on finance, relationships, and the news, while wondering under what circumstances they looked at their cell phone pictures.