“Match Game” and Terry Collins’ Mets bullpen

When I was a kid, I loved to watch the game show “Match Game.” Because the celebrities drank while they taped the show – host Gene Rayburn would always say, “Friday’s show tends to be a little wild!” because by then they had all knocked back several shots – it had a free-wheeling vibe that was appealing, even to a tween. Inevitably, one of the questions would lead to a call and response with the audience. If you recall that – please play along here.

The Mets bullpen under Terry Collins has been SO bad
(How bad is it?)

The team’s relievers last year had a worse ERA, WHIP and OPS allowed than the starters. Here are the breakdowns:
SP – 3.83, 1.248, .711
RP – 4.65, 1.393, .725

And it’s not like 2012 was an aberration. Collins’ bullpen achieved the same pitiful sweep in 2011, too. Here are those numbers:

SP – 4.12, 1.344, .740
RP – 4.33, 1.449, .747

Meanwhile the National League relievers as a whole had a lower mark in five of these six categories over the same time period, with only 2012 WHIP being higher than the starters. Because they pitch fewer innings, relievers should be better across the board in these categories.

In the 10 years before Collins became the Mets’ manager, the team’s bullpen achieved this ugly sweep just two times. Here are the relevant numbers:

In the 30 categories in this sample, the relievers posted a worse mark than the starters eight times (the highlighted entries above) or 27% of the time. Three of those happened in 2008, when the bullpen meltdown cost the Mets a playoff berth.

For relief pitchers to be worse than starting pitchers in six consecutive categories, like they have been under Collins, is amazing in a perverted way. The probability of it happening is .000387 – which is pretty darn small. It’s less than four one-hundreds of one percent.

And in case you think that’s a cherry-picked end point, in the previous 25 years, the ugly bullpen sweep was done seven times and in the previous 42 years (dating back to the 1969 championship) it happened only 12 times. So, between 1969 and 2010, the Mets had this ugly bullpen sweep 28.6% of the time and under Collins it happens in back-to-back years.

My go-to for terrible Mets teams are the Joe Torre-led squads of my youth. In the full seasons that he managed (’78-’81) the club was 234-352 for a horrible .399 winning percentage. In a 162-game season, that winning percentage translates to a 65-97 mark. Yet despite having terrible teams, Torre had good bullpens. In the 12 categories, his bullpen outperformed his starters nine times.

In “Match Game” when the celebrities did not know an answer, other celebrities on the panel would write down a remark, fold up the card and throw it at their peer who was stuck for a reply. I think it’s safe to say that if Terry Collins was playing “Match Game” there would be no shortage of people giving him answers, since he clearly doesn’t know the correct response to the bullpen question. Hopefully he would open up the card from Torre.