With all of the talk in the offseason about Bernie Madoff, losing Jose Reyes and how much other teams in the division improved, some people think the Mets could lose 100 games this year. This seems preposterous to me. Everyone seems to forget that for over half of the season, the Mets were a 90-win type club last year.
Starting on April 21st and going through July 29th, the Mets played at a .568 clip, going 50-38. That’s 92 wins over a 162-game season. But then they traded Carlos Beltran and Daniel Murphy suffered his season-ending injury. Also, Sandy Alderson points to the trade of Francisco Rodriguez earlier in July as a key factor for the team’s slide at the end of the year.
But in my mind the biggest problem was the collapse of 4/5 of the starting rotation the last two months of the season. Here’s how the five primary starters fared by ERA, first in the 88-game stretch and then by how they did from July 30th to the end of the year:
Chris Capuano 4.05 4.62
R.A. Dickey 3.66 2.43
Dillon Gee 3.81 5.91
Jonathon Niese 3.55 6.43
Mike Pelfrey 3.80 5.16
Before we get to the bad news, let’s take a second to marvel at the stretch run by Dickey. In his final 11 games of the season, he posted 11 Quality Starts. He allowed just 15 BB and 4 HR in 74 IP and he held opposing batters to a .634 OPS. Yet somehow he managed to lose five games in this stretch. The gods owe him big time.
Outside of Dickey, the other four pitchers were significantly worse. The offense was not as productive without Beltran and Murphy but it would have taken Gehrig and Ruth in the lineup to win most days with the type of starting pitching the Mets received. The bullpen blew a few games but was it more of a problem than the meatballs being served by Messrs Capuano, Gee, Niese and Pelfrey?
That is why the Spring Training performance of Johan Santana has been so encouraging. The Mets don’t need Santana to be the guy who was so dominant for the club between 7/22/08-5/27/09, when he went 15-2 with a 1.80 ERA with 45 BB and 176 Ks in 169.2 IP. No, they just need him to put up a slightly better than league average ERA. They just need him to be the pitcher Pelfrey was from 4-21-7/29 last year.
Want some encouraging news? Here’s what the Mets SP did the last turn through the rotation in Spring Training:
3/22 – Dickey – 6.1 IP, 1 ER
3/21 – Santana – 6.0 IP, 1 ER
3/20 – Gee – 5.2 IP, 0 ER
3/18 – Pelfrey – 2.2 IP, 8 ER
3/17 – Niese 5.1 IP, 0 ER
If the Mets get this kind of pitching, we could see a repeat of the good baseball the club played from late April to late July last year.
I’ve been sayong all spring — just not eloquently enough to make it a full-blown post: if the Mets pitch, they’ll win.
Thanks for doing it for me, Brian.
Unfortunately Niese did not have it today…
Based on the little bit I’ve heard out of Spring Training, the Mets will need every bit of pitching they can muster to overcome the anemic offense.
I don’t think we can accurately judge the Mets offense when so many players have missed time. Assuming the injuries don’t carry over to the regular season, I think the team will score runs. But we all know what happens when you assume…
The Mets needed to upgrade their starting pitching over the winter but they chose not to or couldn’t afford to do so. There is still an opportunity to add a quality starter in Oswalt. A one year contract for a quality pitcher like Oswalt is minimum risk and great value. By not attempting to sign him, sends the message to the fans that the Mets don’t believe they are competitive this year. Spring yields hope and as a fan I have hope. Sign Oswalt and come July if we are out of it then trade him for a prospect. A win, win situation.