29
2009
Best Bullpen In The NL, Except For Past 2 Days
An article by Russell Zanca
Just another loss. Stop overdramatizing! Right?
Lest, I incur the wrath of amateur statisticians, let me just say the BP is fantastic, league-leading in fact, but it just so happens they’ve blown two good starting performances in two days. No need to worry, right? I mean, the BP is fixed—the first three weeks of April proved it.
Today’s 4-3 loss to the Marlins was unforgivable, and the lineup and bench are to blame, too. Why Manuel sent for Santos in that instant with the confusion and lengthy trip to the plate given bases loaded. Ugh! It all seemed symptomatic of the disarray the 2009 Mets now embody. For the record, I like Santos, and I think he has real potential to be a fine catcher, but why would you bring to the plate someone so inexperienced in so pressure-filled a situation?! Of course, he’s been hitting well, had a grand slam…spare me.
Manuel is the goat for today. Santana threw a flawless 7th. His pitch count was about 115. It was not his best game; three walks, etc. BUT…he’s the best man on the team. I know the formula is Putz and Rodriguez when the game is close and your pitcher is tired. Yeah, they make lots of $ to prove this, too. It’s only April, so why stretch Johan? Here’s why: nobody but nobody on the team—excepting JS—is in any kind of a rhythm. The Putz-ROD combination has been used so infrequently till now that neither of these guys has any kind of dominating consistency with the Mets yet. The Mets, newsflash, are playing bad baseball. So, in my humble and uniformed opinion, this is the point at which a manager approaches his ace, and says: “Johan, I sure don’t want to tire you out, but we need this game badly, and you are just about the only proven commodity on my staff thus far. Since I can’t depend on my lineup scoring again for you (not like there’s a precedent for that), I would love it if you can give us one more inning. And if you put a man on base, I’ll replace you.”
Well, maybe JS said he was finished. If he didn’t, Manuel made a huge mistake with the BP again. This was a must-win game given our problems and issues of late. I don’t see the biting, scratching, and clawing at this point that allows a manager to trust or have confidence in the team’s lesser lights—the TEAM itself!
We were managed out of this game. Wow!
Don’t worry, I’m sure there’s redemption to be had against the Phillies who stink and are playing horrible baseball. Oh, no, that’s wrong. Shoot!
About the Author: Russell Zanca
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I am so done with these idiots. Castro had two hits…Why do you pinch hit for him? Wtf Jerry. By my count you are about 40 games away from dismissal anyway. Maybe omir Santos can be our manager
I wasn’t watching the game because I’m at work, but I was following it on ESPN gamecast the whole time. Someone please tell me I missed something here, but when you have runners on 1st and 2nd in the ninth inning, no outs, and you’re down by 1, why the heck don’t you sac bunt the runners over??? I don’t care that its one of the bigger stars on the team in David Wright. Doesn’t matter who it is. You lay down the bunt and move the runners over.
Maybe I missed it and Wright tried to do that and messed it up, but it didn’t look that way. The recap shows that Wright stood their looking at a 3rd strike…again. It would have been great to see someone come through with a big hit, but you have to play safe baseball and keep yourself in the game. Especially the way this team has been playing so far this season.
Hey, is this one of those cases that they would have lost last year or would not have lost last year!?
Just a little shot there. Enjoy.
Last year at this time they would have battled back and won. Don’t believe me; just look at the records. At this time last year I am pretty sure we were something like two or three games over .500.
Definitely another disturbing difference.
Oh, I see. You’re into comparing a team to how they played the previous year at the exact same time period as the year before. That makes a lot of sense.
Of course all this is moot if I’ve got the wrong guy. But I don’t think so. Aren’t you the guy who posted earlier this year that a farily listless win against a fairly crappy team was a game thatat the Mets would have lost last year with some conclusion that we have a better team this year? If not, ignore this. If so, well, here we are a week or two later and you want our starter to go past 115 pitches to avoid the pen for some vague reason that Putz and KRod aren’t good right now but will be or something. All this sounds like no analysis at all. It’s just post-game mental maneuvering.
Hey, how many guys left on base today? Would we have done that last year? Or at least on this particular dates, so it would have to be April 29, 2008?
John,
At first I understood your question to be ingenuous. Now, I see it was an attempt to goad me. SIlly, really.
Anyway, I stand by what I said.
I do think it’s worth trying to compare the ’08 and ’09 Mets, but just like you, I have absolutely no idea where these Mets will end up. What I do know is that they’re playing a little worse now than they did in ’08 at this time.
You might be referring to my April 17th column (after beating the Brewers in the 9th). I never said there that we were better than 2008. I said, rather, that a comeback win even against a middling team was a really big victory, and the reaction of the bench showed how much the Mets wanted to win. I hoped that game was going to jumpstart 2009. I was mistaken.
We haven’t had another come from behind win like that.
You seem to have misread what I said about Putz and Rodriguez. Let me try it again: I said that I feel they have never gotten into a rhythm as set up and closer guys since joining the Mets; the whole team is out of sync; the BP, too, now–sadly. While we all know what their role is, today was a bad time to test it given our prolonged offensive swoon in late innings, especially with Santana pitching so well for the seventh. He was actually at 109 pitches. No reason the Putz-KROD thing shouldn’t be much improved, but I dispute the necessity of going to Putz today of all days. Hope that’s a little less vague for you, even if you totally disagree.
As for analytical observation or “mental maneuvering,” I’m not so sure one is not a part of the other.
Let’s Go Mets!
Let me help you here. That win that you amazingly continue to call “big” wasn’t. Take a look at what’s happened since and what happened before. Nothing big about it except what you mused into existence.
On the bullpen, pay attention to this one because it’s rife with insight. The reason the bullpen doesn’t feel in synch to you is because a bullpen means little when the rest of the team isn’t performing. But that’s no reason to abandon it when it’s needed. And, by the way, the performance of this team with the bulked up bullpen reveals how the bullpen is the least important of these 3: offense, starting pitching, bullpen. Sure, it’s important to have a bullpen if you strong elsewhere. But you need the strong elsewhere for the bullpen to matter. On the other hand, you can win with a weak — even teribble — bullpen, just not win it all. See, e.g., the Mets last year.
There is absolutely no excuse for what Manuel pulled today with pinch hitting Castro in that spot for Santos. I don’t care if Santos had gone 4 for 4 yesterday. You don’t pinch hit a righty for a righty when the guy who you’re putting up is coming in cold from the bullpen against a guy who throws 98 mph and the guy you’re hitting for has had two hits in the game. Not to mention the damage that you do to Castro’s psyche. Unless you know you’re trading him, you don’t screw with a veteran player like that. And then for Jerry to make a bad situation worse with that asinine justification in the post-game, “I wanted a guy with a shorter swing” was just ridiculous. Jerry is proving himself to be a deep thinker in name only and his moves the last couple of days out Willie Randolph.
It’s time to start thinking about Wally Backman and an overhaul of this entire coaching staff. Blow it up and start from scratch, and that includes Omar.
I agree regarding Manuel’s move to PH Santos for Castro. It smells too much of Willie Randolph going with his hunches. You can take the hunches and blow them away. They’re worthless. How about sound managing instead of mindless hunches? If this keeps up much longer, Manuel will get quickly tired of the post game interviews and having to find excuses.