Ian Fedeli

If you have followed the Mets in 2008, I probably don’t need to tell you about the bullpen. In case you haven’t, let me fill you in: It stinks.

Given my main point from part 1, you may be expecting another one-stop-shop solution from me. You may be expecting me to advocate on behalf of the man known as K-Rod, Francisco Rodriguez. In fact, the Mets are apparently already showing interest. I really like K-Rod, and I think he’s a good pitcher. But I don’t think he is the answer.

I think the Mets need a fundamental change in the way they view the bullpen. Change we can believe in. Look at the teams that made the championship series in each league this year. The most expensive closer of the bunch was Brad Lidge, who was given a contract extension midseason. And he was essentially claimed off the scrap heap (don’t try and tell me Michael Bourn and his .288 OBP was a real prize). The vast majority of the pitchers coming out of the pen for playoffs teams are young, homegrown, power arms. Jonathan Broxton, Cory Wade, Jonathan Papelbon, Justin Masterson, Ryan Madson, David Price. All of these pitchers throw the ball around 95 mph, yet all of them together probably costs less than the $10 million the Mets will pay Billy Wagner next year to not pitch.

So I want to give our young guys a chance. I think Eddie Kunz may end up being our set up man before July 2009.  Bobby Parnell looked pretty good in limited exposure. Brian Stokes? Why not! Giving these guys a chance means getting the dead weight ahead of them on the depth chart out of the way. Give away Schoeneweis to anybody who will take him, or release him. I want to believe in Duaner Sanchez, but he may never be the same after his accident. It may be time for him to go. Feliciano and Smith were dreadfully overworked, so I think they could easily bounce back and have a better year next year. Trade Strong Sad to the Rockies for Huston Street.

I’m not against signing a free agent, as long as it doesn’t cost a draft pick. The interesting name in the mix is Kerry Wood. Even though he is a Type A free agent, he was not offered arbitration by the Cubs, meaning he doesn’t cost a draft pick. That means all he costs is money, and as I said before, I don’t care about the Wilpon’s money. The same goes for Joe Beimel, who could be a nice 7th or 8th inning guy. I would sign both of these guys, as well as any Japanese pitcher who seems halfway decent.

Basically, the philosophy is this: The Bullpen is a crap shoot. With the exception of a short list of pitchers, it is very difficult to predict what you are going to get from any given guy any given year. So don’t give up your valuable human capital (draft picks) and treasure for a guy who may have arm issues, like K-Rod, a guy who hasn’t proven anything, like Fuentes, or a guy who is freaking terrible, like Trevor Hoffman*. Instead, the Mets should stock up on arms who might contribute, give the young guys a chance to prove themselves, and give short, high dollar amount contracts to lure free agents who don’t cost prospects. In the current market, under-control players with talent are valued above all else, and our strategy should be to preserve and cultivate them, not give them to the Angels or the Rockies.

*Seriously, how does a guy named TREVOR have a billion saves? Is he the least intimidating pitcher ever?

This is me rooting for the Rays as hard as I can.

I wasn’t that invested in the ALCS, although I was pulling for the Rays by nature as I’m always anti-dynasty. I wanted to see crisp baseball, and I got it with a little bit of drama thrown in. The World Series is a totally different stories.

Negative feelings: I hate the Phillies. How much do I hate the Phillies? Let me count the ways. I hate Cole Hamel’s smarmy pretty boy face. I hate Chase Utley’s slicked back hair. I hate Ryan Howard’s terrible Subway commercials. Pat Burrell haunts my dreams. I’m annoyed by Jamie Moyer’s resistance to osteoporosis. And more than anything, I hate how they are sore winners.

On to the positives. Matt Garza is a stud. So are Shields and Kazmir (…WHYWHYWHY…). This team has plenty of boppers, they play solid defense, and they are fun. Longoria, Pena, and Upton are stars. This is why people watch baseball. This team is young, wild, and strapped.

Price is very impressive. Boy, the places you can go with first round draft picks. Since he is new to the big leagues, he probably doesn’t have a great nickname yet, so I’m going to call him Peerless. Peerless Price. I AM SO ORIGINAL.

So to sum it up, this October you have a clear choice. You can go with a bunch of whiny, disrespectful strikeout machines who hate children and pancakes, or you can go with a young, unassuming upstart rockstars who play the game right and have fun.

You choose. I already have.

I know I said I’d be following up on my “If I was Omar” post with some additional posts. And they are coming. This weekend. I promise!

But first, some musing.

When did JD Drew get clutch? Maybe I just bought the rep on him.

I would give several toes, maybe even an earlobe, to have 5 starting pitchers under contract with an average age of 25 and an average ERA+ of 113 like those Tampa Bay Rays. Of course, one of those pitchers ought to be ours…

How was I so wrong about Phillies pitching? Jamie Moyer? Seriously? His ERA last year was OVER FIVE. I guess Brett Myers quit punching his wife long enough to remember how to pitch. Omar can learn a thing or two from Gillick about building a bullpen from the scrap heap.

Who else is disappointed by Britney’s new hit single? I was really expecting a lot, but the music just doesn’t back up the gyrating naked rolling around. Even a little touch of crazy to spice it up doesn’t do the job.

Try again, Brit. Try again, Rays. Boy, I need more Saturdays.

Yes, the season has only been over for like a week. Yes, the playoffs are still going on*. Yes, I have a long time before anything can even start to happen. But no, I don’t care.

* All of the LDS games I have watched have been a complete snore, BTW.

With the Mets season over, Omar and Manuel inked, and free agent lists more or less determined, it is time to start dreaming about next season. But with horific errors like the Luis Castillo signing, the Owens and Lindstrom giveaway, and his overreliance on Marlon Anderson/Damion Easley second-base/utility types at the exspense of better options, I’m going to be as helpful as I can and lay out what Omar’s strategy needs to be for him.

First, let my lay out my one wild assumption: I don’t care at all about the Wilpons’ money. They make absurd amounts of money off of  > 4 million ticket sales plus revenue from the television network they also own. So I don’t care if the payroll is higher. To their credit, the Wilpons have not shied away from spending large sums of money.

As I see it, the Mets had three major problems in 2008:

1. Starting pitchers not going deep enough into games
2. A weak bullpen that got weaker due to problem (1)
3. A dearth of timely hitting, resulting in too few comeback wins

I’ll address problem (1) in this post, and problems (2) and (3) in subsequent posts.

First of all, let me make it clear that Johan Santana is completely exempt from problem (1), pitching 243.3 innings. That is the most of his career, including his 2 other Cy Young seasons. I say other because it would be a travesty if he didn’t win the Cy Young award this year. He ended up essentially tied with Lincecum in ERA+ (164 to 163), had a lower ERA, pitched more innings, had more shutouts and more complete games, and played for a team that was expected to win more than, you know, 70 games or so. Brandon Webb does not deserve consideration; he isn’t even in the top 5 in ERA+.

No, the problem was everybody else. Santana average 6.89 innings per start. The other four starters averaged 5.79 innings per start. Mike Pelfrey actually led team ‘everybody else’ with an average of 6.27 innings per start. This average was buoyed by his excellent performances against everybody but the Marlins in the second half of the year. It is reasonable to believe that next year that average will improve further as he matures and develops. John Maine averaged 5.6 innings per start, and this has been a problem for him, even when he is pitching well. However, looking at his gamelogs over the course of the season there is a clear downward trend, perhaps attributable to his injury. Since he is under contract and going to be back next season no matter what I say (barring an unlikely trade), he gets a free pass. The worst offenders were Oliver Perez and Pedro, who averaged 5.70 and 5.45 innings per start, respectively. Luckily for the Mets, both are free agents. Omar, let them go. OP was a great find, and we would have been worse off without him. Pedro changed the culture and perception of the franchise, and all Mets fans should be grateful to him. But it is time to move on. We need to trim the pitchers that aren’t consistently putting us in a position to win and taxing our bullpen to the breaking point.

This is New York City, not Kansas City. Let’s act like it. Let’s sign the one pitcher who can fix the problem by himself. Let’s sign CC. He pitched 253 innings this year between the two leagues. He absolutely obliterated the NL. He’s a power pitcher, which coincidentally is the kind that wins in the postseason, his recent results notwithstanding. As I said before, I don’t care about Fred & Jeff’s money, but I’d tell them that he is only going to cost about 6 millions dollars a year more than Pedro cost. I’d tell them they would have a dynamic duo unrivaled in this city, or anywhere baseball. I’d tell them they would have two pillars of pitch to hold up CitiField for years to come. He averaged 7.22 innings per start in 2008, and with anything close to that in 2009, he would be as much of a lift to the Mets bullpen as any reliever you could acquire.

As for the 5th starter’s spot, I would hope that Jon Niese wins the spot in spring training. However, relying on a young unproven pitcher completely is not always a good tactic (see 2008 New York Yankees). Alternatively, they could give a short term deal to Freddy Garcia and hope that he regains his pre-surgery form. Brad Penny is intriguing put injury prone, as is Ben Sheets. Both are only getting older. Ryan Dempster would be a nice pickup, but after a career year, he isn’t going to be cheap. I however would not be in favor of giving a long term deal to any of the large number of mediocre over-30 pitchers that the old Mets used to love to sign.

I personally believe that the 5th starter spot is more important than the conventional wisdom would suggest. The bottom line is that your 5th starter will pitch almost as many games as your first starter. If you have a hodgepodge set of 5 inning soft tossers penciled in as your 5th starter, you can bet your bullpen is going to be hurting come September. Also, people inevitably get injured. If the depth of the starting rotation is already lacking, then it will more difficult to absorb the loss. I don’t feel I need statistics to prove this point. Just look at the teams that made the playoffs this year. I would argue that the one thing they all* have in common is not a powerful or consistent offense, or a high-range or consistent defense, but pitching depth. Even the Diamondbacks with their stacked front of the rotation ultimately missed they playoffs because they were not able to get quality innings out of the back of their rotation. Omar needs to restock the Mets, a team historically successful because of dominant pitching, by retooling the starting five.

* Except the Brewers. They are terrible.

That’s it for this installment. Stay tuned for Part 2: The Bullpen.

Despite the fact opening day came and went last week, nobody noticed because it was on another continent. For me, as a Mets fan, opening day is Monday, when the Mets take on the ever younger and more anonymous Marlins in Florida. Despite the insult of Kruk not picking the Mets to win the division (he picked them third!), I am getting more and more excited, reading the multitude of previews picking the Mets to do well this year. I just finished reading Rob Neyer’s “The top 50 for five years”, in which he picks his favorites to be the best players in the league over the next five years. Excitingly for me, the Mets have 3 of the top 7 players on this list, checking in with 4 overall. Only the Indians, a very good team, have more with 5. I figured out the frequency for each team to give a sense of the best teams over the next few years:

Indians 5
Mets 4
Tigers 3
Phillies 3
Yankees 3
Brewers 3
Rays 3
Diamondbacks 3
Braves 3
Twins 2
Orioles 2
Padres 2
Red Sox 2
Dodgers 2
Marlins 2
Rockies 2
Astros 1
Royals 1
Nationals 1
Cardinals 1
Rangers 1
White Sox 1
Blue Jays 0
Pirates 0
Giants 0
Cubs 0
Mariners 0
Angels 0
Athletics 0
Reds 0

Surprisingly, Josh Beckett is the only Red Sox pitcher on the list. Joba Chamberlin doesn’t manage to make the list either. None of the Rockies pitching makes the list, nor does Fausto Carmona. I suppose what I’m getting at here is I think the list is position player heavy. Nevertheless, I think it gives a pretty good indication of the relative quality and age of the teams.

Now, as the season begins, let this song bring you joy.