Disgruntled Mets Fan

For New York Mets pitcher Nelson Figueroa, the season can’t end fast enough.

In his last start in August, Figueroa had one of the best outings of his career when he threw eight innings of one run ball while striking out ten.  Speculations were made about Figueroa’s spot in the rotation next season, as he seemed to be passing with flying colors in his 2010 audition.

September has been an unkind month to the journeyman pitcher.  He’s 0-4 with a 5.40 ERA in four starts this month, only making one “quality start”, last night against the Braves.

He hasn’t gotten much run support behind him, with the team only scoring nine runs in his four starts, but he hasn’t pitched well enough to win aside from last night.

Looking at Figueroa’s numbers, it seems his problem is a lack of a swing and miss pitch.  Even in the game where he struck out ten he only had ten swing and misses for the entire game.  Compare that to a guy like Johan Santana, who has a swing and miss change up and has produced as many as twenty swings and misses in a game.

Developing a new pitch may not be the easiest task for a 35 year old starting pitcher in the Major Leagues. Figueroa may be destined to continue his role as spot starter/minor leaguer for the rest of his career.

Analyzing the pitching of a guy like Nelson Figueroa really shows what kind of season this has been so far…  I’m running out of things to talk about.

Someone that’s not failing miserably in their audition for the 2010 roster is Daniel Murphy.

Sure his glove has been somewhat laughable at times playing his new position at first base, but his bat has come alive.

Murphy is hitting just under .300 since August, is leading the team in home runs with an embarrassing 11, and has 14 extra base hits in September alone which is good enough to be tied with Albert Pujols for the league lead.

A lot of speculation has been made about where Murphy will fit on this teams roster next season.  Whether the team decides to bring back Carlos Delgado will weigh in a lot on what happens with Murphy.

If the Mets do decide to bring back Delgado, they may want to keep Murphy as a bench player that can help give Delgado some days off while providing an insurance policy if Delgado goes down with another injury.

If the Mets decide not to bring back Delgado, keeping Murphy as the full time first baseman will mean a power position, first base, will not have a power bat.  The lack of a true clean up hitter will mean the Mets need to address the issue signing a power hitting left fielder.

Spending money on a top tier left fielder will take away from the Mets limited budget, which will result in less money to spend on a legitimate No.2 starter, which I believe should be top priority in the off season.

The one place I know we won’t see Daniel Murphy next season is in left field…

A lot of people, myself included, are giving the Mets somewhat of a pass for this abysmal season due to the $90 million on the disabled list.  It’s hard to find someone to blame (except maybe the trainers) when the team taking the field doesn’t even resemble the team that took the field at the beginning of the season.

The truth of the matter is, the Mets injuries may be just what the doctor ordered for the organization.  It may be masking a failure that was coming anyway.

The pitching staff, save for Johan Santana who was pitching through injury for half the season, has completely underachieved.

Mike Pelfrey is the only pitcher in the original starting 5 that has an ERA under 5.0, and if he continues to pitch this season there’s no guarantee it will stay that way.

The fifth starter, a spot that may not have a lot of importance on a deep staff, should have been doubly important to the Mets, who went into the season with one ace and three number three starters.

The organization addressed the problem with a trio of over-the-hill or never-was starters, Livan Hernandez, Tim Redding and Freddy Garcia.  Garcia was cut in April, Hernandez was cut this month, and Redding is now the third starter due to injury.

I know you can’t plan for this many injuries, but my point is the starting rotation was weak before the season started.

There was only a small sample of how the team would fare if all their pieces were in place this year.

Carlos Delgado went on the DL on May 11th.  The team had a .548 winning percentage with a 17-14 record.  Delgado’s bat is one the Mets haven’t been able to replace all season, as is evident by their glaring lack of power in the middle of the line up.

By extrapolating that winning percentage out to today, and the Mets would be sitting in second place with a record of 70-57.  Sure it’s better than what they’ve got now, but they’d still be trailing the Phillies.

Jose Reyes went down ten days later, but he was not exactly lighting the field on fire in his limited time before his injury.  He was only batting .279 with a .355 OBP in 36 games while swiping 11 bases.  Sure, it’s good production, but nothing to write home about.

Alex Cora’s numbers filling in at short stop were similar enough to make Reyes’ absence a little easier to deal with, and Angel Pagan’s emergence as a solid lead-off hitter made it even easier.

The Mets were able to stay somewhat competitive, staying at or around .500 ball, showing moments of greatness at times, until June 22nd.  That’s the date Carlos Beltran went on the DL.

The Mets were 35-33 at that point, but have consistently underperformed, going 22-37 since then.  Is this the fact that Beltran was such an integral part of the teams success?  Or was his injury the straw that broke the camel’s back?

His bat was on fire this season, and has been sorely missed.  He’s a true five tool player, and a nagging knee injury has threatened his career.  I hope we see him back at full strength next season, but it’s not definite.

In my humble opinion, the Mets at full strength may have made the playoffs, but they were never a championship caliber team.  They were likely not even the best team in the NL East, especially after the Phillies traded to get Cliff Lee.

The injuries are simply masking the problems that were there anyway, and may be there for years to come.

It’s been said that the Mets are on a budget for next season, so these problems may be here for a while.  One solution may be trading away some of the core players that we’ve grown to love so much in New York.  If I had to part with anyone, it would be Jose Reyes.

He’s a great defensive short stop, and a spark plug every time he takes the field, but he’s severely over rated as a lead off hitter.  Sure he steals a lot of bases, but that’s not the job of a lead off hitter, his job is purely to get on base.

Reyes has a career OBP of .337.  You don’t have to look far to find what I would consider a great lead off hitter, Derek Jeter.  Jeter has a career OBP of .387, and has put up one as high as .438.

The rest of the core, David Wright, Carlos Beltran, Johan Santana, would all retire as Mets if I had any say.

I’ve been looking forward with hope for 2010, but the truth is, we may have a lot more disappointment in our near future.

Carlos Delgado’s recent injury setback has raised a lot of questions about his future as a New York Met.

Can a National League team justify a contract for a thirty eight year old first baseman coming off a season where he barely played due to injury?  If the Mets wanted him back, will they be willing to spend the money Delgado is looking for?  Or will Carlos likely wind up signing a contract with an AL squad where he can DH until he decides to hang up his cleats?

I’m going to assume that Delgado has played his last game as a Met.

That brings us to Daniel Murphy.

I believe that Murphy has tremendous upside at the plate, even though we haven’t seen it yet.  I also think he has a lot of potential defensively as a first baseman.  Sure he’s had his moments this season.

Just a few days ago he was nowhere to be found as a double play opportunity sailed passed first base into the opposing dugout.

Remember that Murphy had never played first base before.  He’s showed great quickness and some decent instincts, but he can be overly aggressive, going after balls that aren’t his.  It’s my opinion that with time, and the hard work I’m sure Murphy is willing to put in, he can become a great first baseman.

The problem with Murphy is his lack of power.  First base is a power position.  Even in a stadium like Citi Field, where home runs may not be the answer, some power is necessary.  The lack of the long ball has a lot to do with why the Mets have not been able to overcome leads.

Needing to manufacture runs by stringing together two or three hits to get a run is not an easy way to come back.  A bloop and a bomb is still the fastest way to make up a deficit, and the Mets have been unable to do it all year.

Looking at the free agent pool for next season, there are a few options that I think the Mets should look at.

The first is Russell Branyan.

The thirty four year old left handed batter is having a decent year at the plate so far.  He’s only batting .257, but he’s hit 27 HRs and driven in 68 RBI so far.  He’s also got an OBP of .355.  He’s done a great job in the field so far, with a .989 fielding percentage, only committing ten errors in 101 games.

The only thing that worries me about Branyan is the Seattle Mariners are his ninth team in eleven seasons so far.  This is the first time he’s been a full time first baseman since 2001 though, and seems to be doing well with his opportunity.

Nick Johnson’s name was being thrown around at the trade deadline as a possible target of the Mets.  Since he’ll be a free agent at the end of the season, I’m going to assume that the Mets are going to at least take a look at him.

Johnson’s career has been one filled with injury shortened seasons, so unless the Mets are planning on hiring a new training staff (god willing), Nick might not be the way to go.  He has performed very when he’s not injured though.

In 2006 with the Washington Natinoals, Johnson hit 23 HRs and drove in 77 RBI while batting .290 with a .428 OBP.  He also drew 110 walks, the most in his career.

Since ‘06, Johnson has only played more than 100 games once, this season.  His power numbers have suspiciously dropped off, but he’s still batting .296 with an OBP of .418.

If he can stay healthy for an entire season, I think Johnson is a great option.  He’s got a career fielding percentage of .992, and has always been considered a top tier defensive player.

Adam Laroche is another option, as long as he could put the little squabble between himself and Carlos Beltran behind him.

Laroche is a solid player, and has shown some power in his career, hitting 32 home runs with the Braves in 2006.  He’s a career .271 hitter and averages 26 HRs and 89 RBI per 162 games.  Laroche is also a solid fielder, with a .995 fielding percentage through six seasons.

The Mets looking at any of these three guys would be what I would consider “moving in the right direction”.

The only problem is that signing an every day first baseman leaves Daniel Murphy out in the cold.

We all know how miserably his left field experiment failed, and I don’t think the organization would be willing to give that another try.  He’s an infielder by trade, and barring a trade, the rest of the Mets infield is in place until 2011.  He may turn into a fill in guy and a permanent pinch hitter.

I guess having an overabundance of talent is something I could get used to considering this season.

A lot has been said about David Wright’s hot and cold streaks so far this season.  It’s time to take a look at the numbers.  I’ve charted Wright’s batting average for each game as the season has moved forward.  It seems that Wright had steady growth from the 18th game of the season all the way up to the 41st, increasing his average from .271 to .362.  In the 10 games following, Wright’s average dropped a full 41 points to .321.  In that span, in his 35 at bats, Wright struck out 13 times with only 6 hits and 4 walks.  From game 52 to game 62, Wright brought his average right back up to .365, in a span where it seemed he could not be retired.  Wright had 24 hits and 7 walks in 43 at bats while only striking out 7 times during an 11 game hitting streak.  Since that streak ended, Wright has failed to get on base in 3 of the last 6 games, striking out 9 times.  One ray of hope for Wright is that he notched 3 hits in the Mets loss last night without striking out.  Maybe this slump will be a shortened version of the one he pulled himself out of after 10 games earlier this month.

Wright’s batting average has been a talking point for the Mets announcers all season.  Instead of talking about how well Wright is hitting, how about they discuss his lack of RBI?

Wright is on pace for 94 RBI this season.  Sure that’s a decent number for most players, but it’s well below the production we saw last year.  He only has 8 multi-RBI games on the season so far.  To date, Wright has been to the plate with a total of 232 runners on base and is responsible for 17%, or 39 of them scoring.  That percentage is on par with Wright’s career percentage of 18%, and is only 2 percentage points off of last years 19%, a year where Wright drove in 124 runs.  The lack of production must be coming from other areas.  Possibly a lack of base runners in front of Wright?  A lack of protection behind him?  Both are possibilities due to the injuries of Jose Reyes and Carlos Delgado.  The Mets are also not making things easy for themselves by giving up extra outs.  The team as a whole has been caught stealing 20 times, although 8 of those can be attributed to Wright himself.  They have also made 36 outs on base, be it trying to advance on a fly ball out, or trying to leg out an extra base on a hit, which is the most in the Major Leagues. These types of mistakes shorten innings, giving you less of a chance to score runs.  When your team is not hitting home runs to create instant offense, you need to manufacture runs, and running yourself out of an inning makes that a lot tougher.

I’m going to the games tonight and tomorrow.  Hopefully it doesn’t suck as much as I fear it might.  It should be fun to see Citi Field try and contain a ball off Albert Pujols’ bat.

Let’s…
Go…

Never mind

I’m disgruntled, not delusional. I understand that the Mets make shift lineup makes things difficult. I understand that there are pieces missing that are very important to the success of the team. What I don’t understand, is where the good baseball being played last week has disappeared to?  The only difference between last week and this week, is the absence of Alex Cora.

Jerry Manuel said in a post game interview that the loss of Cora might be more difficult to deal with than the loss of Carlos Delgado.  Cora was a guy you could plug into multiple positions and get a serviceable performance.  He had also taken over a leadership role filling the void left by Delgado’s absence.  All those things aside, he was also on fire at the plate, hitting .400 in 12 games in May with an OBP of .500.  His quality at bats, and quality fill in role in the infield have been sorely missed.

The Mets dropped their 3rd straight in the night cap last night, making another night of straining to stay awake to watch the game disappointing.  John Maine pitched a strong 5 innings only to have the wheels come off in the 6th with the Mets up 3-2.  Maine got Russel Martin swinging to start the inning before giving up consecutive singles to James Loney and Matt Kemp.  Casey Blake gave the Dodgers the lead with one swing of the bat blasting a 3-run home run over the left field fence on a hanging slider that looked like a pitch I could have hit out of the park.  To add insult to injury, Chad Billingsly, the opposing pitcher, came up next and singled to right on the last pitch of Maine’s night.  Ken Takahashi took over for Maine and after giving up the 5th consecutive hit of the inning, a single to Juan Pierre, Takahashi got Rafael Furcal to ground into an inning ending double play.

The Mets offense could only muster up 6 hits and 3 runs last night, 2 coming on a John Maine single in the 2nd inning and the last coming on a David Wright single in the 3rd.  The early offense had me believing the Mets were en route to a big victory, picking up where they left off offensively scoring early and often.  Unfortunately thy reverted back to their old ways, not scoring any runs after the 3rd inning.  The good news is they only made 1 error on the night, a dropped line drive by hopefully starting at 1B for a few days, Daniel Murphy.

Matt Cerone at Metsblog.com summed it up best

Murphy may or may not be a better defensive first baseman than Reed.  Who knows?  What I do know is that Reed is significantly better than Murphy on defense in left field.  So, by putting Reed at first and Murphy in left, Manuel is weakening his defense in two spots.  Whereas Murphy at first, and either Reed or Angel Pagan in left, he’s only weakening his defense in one spot, while keeping Murphy’s bat and attitude in the lineup.

I know Jerry Manuel loves to shuffle his lineup, keeping his bench players fresh, but there needs to be some stability on this team.  I understand that platooning due to injury may be necessary, but he’s doing too much.

If Murphy is capable of playing 1B, let him play.  The plan was for him to be a starter this year, and the lack of playing time is effecting his hitting.  Let Sheffield play LF if you think you need a big home run threat in the lineup (the Mets have not hit a HR in a week).  Let him play every day until he needs a day off.  Ryan Church has shown signs that he can be one of the better hitters on the team.  These mental mistakes and struggles at the plate may be caused by him not playing every day as he did at the beginning of the season, and last year before his injuries.  Jeremy Reed and Fernando Tatis are bench guys, let them come off the bench.  If someone needs a day off, you can plug either of them into first, left, or right.  Angel Pagan adds an interesting wrinkle to the mix since he’s been successful at the plate so far, but there’s really no room for him on this team right now unless he replaces Reed or Tatis.  Ramon Martinez needs to go.  He’s old, he can’t hit, and he clearly can’t play SS if Reyes’ calf starts to become a recurring problem.  Why not bring back Argenis Reyes?  He is a liability at the plate, but seemed to have very good chemestry with childhood friend Jose Reyes in the middle of the infield, and can play either position.

Anyway…

Losing streaks tend to leave a lot of room for complaining.  Hopefully the Mets can take one away tonight and get some much needed rest tomorrow before the start of the series Friday at Fenway.

Metsblog.com reports some options if Carlos Delgado’s injury requires surgery.

Francesa believes the Mets could realistically acquire Nationals 1B Nick Johnson or White Sox OF Jermaine Dye, ‘for cheap,’ or trade high-priced talent to get A’s Matt Holliday, Astros OF Carlos Lee or Padres 1B Adrian Gonzalez.

I did a secret poll of the players listed to see who everyone should want on that list and the results came back unanimous.

Adrian Gonzales…

Having Adrian Gonzales on this team would be a dream.

Adrian Gonzales…

He even fits the race standards necessary for Omar to go after him!

Adrian Gonzales…

Sorry Carlos, but you have to understand.