As I’ve been incarcerated by the moment by the last few weeks writing about how the Knicks can make some serious noise in the playoffs, I’ve unfortunately had to stare at the background of this site. And Know. Baseball season is coming. Out of the teams that can drive me to drinking of the celebratory or mournful kind, the Mets have unquestionably provided the most of the latter. In four years of college, I had what had to be the most gut wrenching sports memory of my life orchestrated by a defensive minded catcher on the Cardinals who will not be named, and two seemingly dominant teams collapse in Roman fashion. But what’s ahead this season is possibly worse; an apparent complete absence of hope. The Phillies have assembled nuclear arms faster than North Korea ever could have hoped to, and the Braves have not only returned to their “sun rising in the east” consistency, but now have a player in Heyward who is tough to hate regardless of allegiances because of his superstar potential and humility at age 22.
However, this is the spring, the only time where hope springs eternal for every team. So, as incredibly skeptical as I am about at the Mets team (and more so the franchise as a whole) I’m going to go through the team group by group, beginning with the starting pitchers, and try and find reasons that a team that finally doesn’t have preseason hype is the one to believe in.
The big name may be out, but the starting pitching is good
While there is no superstar due to Santana’s glaring absence, there are some good pitchers in the starting rotation. I think the best of the bunch could very well be Jonathon Niese. Niese had a very average year at 9-10 with a 4.20 ERA, but it was first full year in the bigs. Although Citi Field is very conducive to pitching to contact, it’s nice to have the stuff capable of missing bats, and Niese has fastball that stays in the low to mid 90’s to go with an above average cutter, and a knee buckling curve. He was unlucky last year in terms of BABIP (.335), and he definitely tired in the last two months of the season, which is to be expected of a rookie. With a decent lineup, and hopefully an improved bullpen, I don’t think it’s out of the question for Niese to win 15 games this year, or more.
I like Mike Pelfrey, but there are a few reasons that I don’t like him as much as Niese. He’s 27 at this point, and was long the jewel of the Mets minor league system, and for most of last season, he lived up to that. Because he’s a pitch to contact guy, he’s a dominant home pitcher (10-3, 2.83 ERA), and exceedingly average outside of Queens (5-6, 4.95). The biggest question I have about Pelfrey is, WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED IN JULY?! If you watched the Mets last season, Pelfrey’s July was like watching Space Jam. As talented a pitcher as there was for the first few months, an egregious all star snub, and even being mentioned as the Mets true #1 starter.
Then the best explanation I have is that the Monstars returned to earth and stole his talent. That isPelfrey’s 2010 season stats were 15-9 with a 3.66 ERA. Extracting his July Stats, he would have been 15-6, 2.58. Which of course means, he was beyond brutal in July, starting 5 games, going 0-3 with a stratospheric 10.02 ERA. It wasn’t that he was unlucky, opponents batted .429 off him during the month. He could locate his pitches, his sinkers were up in the zone, and when you saw close ups on the mound, it looked like the face of a guy who had completely lost his confidence. And regardless of how good he was the rest of the season, that July was an incredibly noticeable zit that could be magnified under the pressure Pelfrey will face as a #1 starter.
On the opposite end of the confidence spectrum is R.A. Dickey. In order to have a knuckleball, and the fastball of a pre-Angels Mel Clark, you need to have fortitude in all of its various iterations. There are a couple of downsides to Dickey: he’s 36 years old, his previous best year was in 2003 when he was 9-8 with a 5.09 ERA, and Tim Wakefield has been the only other successful knuckleballer of the past two decades.
The first two points do come with caveats. Despite the fact that Dickey is 36 years old, it’s not like he’s going to lose his stuff. He throws a knuckleball, as long as one of his fingers doesn’t fall off, he should still be able to throw it effectively well into his forties. It’s not like his arm can wear down, considering Dickey had the unique fortune of being born without the ulnar collateral ligament (the tommy john muscle). By that definition, he literally has a rubber arm. Also, to compare Dickey now, to Dickey 7 years ago is useless. He’s a completely different pitcher who only started utilizing the knuckler as his main pitch 2 or 3 years ago.
But the last point is somewhat of a worry. There’s a reason there aren’t many knuckleball pitchers on the big league stage, it’s far and away the most fickle pitch in baseball. If the wind starts blowing, if it’s too humid, if you haven’t had your daily manicure, and an incredibly deceptive pitch becomes an eminently hittable 70 mph BP fastball with the flip of a switch. Only Wakefield has been able to perfect this brand of batter hypnosis, and before him the last guy was Tom Candiotti in the 80’s. Either Dickey is the heir apparent or he isn’t, and there is no middle ground.
The last player I’ll go into here is Chris Young. The 5th spot could be a number of people (Dillon Gee, Chris Capuano, maybe the Mets mess with Mejia some more), but Young is entrenched in the 4th spot. With Young, the only question is health. He clearly has stuff, seeing as how his career ERA is 3.80. It’s safe to say that he’ll best just as effective in Citi Field as he was in Petco Park. He’s only 32, and he doesn’t get by on velocity, and is one of those pitchers why when he’s thrown five scoreless innings against your team you wonder “why can’t we hit this guy?!” But his shoulder and elbow are being held together by bubble gum and paper clips, and even though he finished the year very strong last year, his velocity was WAY down (near 83). Very simply, he’s not going to be what he was four years ago, but four years ago he was a #1 or #2 starter. He’s got three good pitches which he uses effectively, and he’s smart (Princeton grad).
The last part of this is obviously Johan, the guy who deserves better than getting injured at the end of every year. Thinking about the possibility that coming to the Mets may have cost Santana the Hall of Fame is sickening. Terry Collins said that the team will be lucky to get 12-15 starts out of him, and maybe just for once the lineup and bullpen can allow him to win more than half of those. If the Mets can hang in contention until #57 gets back, there’s no doubt in my mind that he’ll be borderline dominant down the stretch to help this team out, because that’s just something you can count on with great pitchers. When the team really needs it, they always answer the bell.
General projections:
- Ø Niese wins at least 14 games. He seemed to be getting a hang of it last season early on, then went through the regular rookie jitters before fatiguing towards the end. If the lineup is healthy, then they’ll be able to pull out 1 or 2 wins for him solely by putting some crooked numbers up on the board. I think he and Pelfrey will be the co-#1’s of the staff, with him being the more dominant at times.
- Ø I tend to lean towards the glass half empty philosophy with Young. His velocity has improved during the spring, but unless he’s the second coming of Greg Maddux, an 89-90 mph fastball isn’t going to cut it. I think he struggles out of the gate, and if he isn’t replaced by Capuano before Johan returns, he’ll be on the outside of the rotation looking in once Johan gets back in favor of either Capuano, or Gee
- Ø To expect Pelfrey to be the dominant pitcher he was in the early months of last year is a pipe dream that I’m not going to follow. However, I think while Niese is more capable of providing the sizzle in terms of strikeouts, Pelfrey has the making of a rock due to his ability to keep the ball out of the air, and the fact that he’s an inning eater. I think his ERA probably stays about the same, because he won’t have a horrible July, and he probably settles in at about 15 wins.
- Ø As I’ve said previously, predicting Dickey’s season is quite literally like predicting which way the wind will blow. He’s a smart pitcher, and an innings eater, but I think he’s in for a little bit of a reality check this year now that the National League has had a full year to scout him in what was something of a rookie year in 2010 due to the changes he made.
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