The Mets Bullpen: The Age and ERA game (against the Rumored New Guys)

An article by Elliot Teichman    Comments Off

Over the last week, there are four pitchers that have been attached to becoming New York Mets in the pen, Fuentes, Cordero, Cruz, and Beimel. At the same time, there are three Mets who are being shopped around; Heilman, Feliciano, and Schoenweis. The three that are being shopped are slightly older than the average player that could be possibly brought in (when you see the numbers, Schoenweis raises the aveage for the Mets trade pieces, and Codero lowers the average age of the new guys possibly coming). There is a correlation with the ERA’s. The Mets bullpen ERA have been going up over the years, and for the new guys it has been going down. Before the analysis, lets look at the numbers (age in 2009 in parenthesis and ERA’s go in order for 2008 to 2006 (2005 for Cordero)):

The Mets Old Pen:

      Heilman (30), 5.21, 3.03, 3.62
      Feliciano (32), 4.05, 3.09, 2.09
      Schoeneweis (35), 3.34, 5.03, 4.88

The Possible New Mets Pen:

      Fuentes (33), 2.73, 3.08, 3.44
      Cordero (27), 2.08, 3.36, 3.19, 1.82
      Cruz (30), 2.61, 3.10, 4.18
      Beimel (32), 2.02, 3.88, 2.96

The first that worries me about the New guys coming in that a lot of them just had a recently good year (mainly directed at Beimel, who beyond 2006, had a good number of average years). Ar the same time, we don’t need a bullpen of Cy Youngs, we need a bullpen of average to above average guys who can close out, hold onto games that the Mets are winning, tie, or still in it. When you look at that the critcized guys in the Mets pen, they are all in the middle of slides in their careers. Feliciano is the real interesting one because he put up worse numbers than last year before he came to the Mets, and then with the Mets he started off amazing, and then started to slide.

Overall, the most important thing here to me is it looks that age is not only the problem, that the actual pitchers themselves are the problem. Its not just that the Mets pen is old, its has middle age players (middle age as in between young and old, not 40), who are having problems keeping their careers sailing, and it might be time for them personally to change their scenory and work things out and time for the Mets to move beyond and look for better pen pitchers.

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