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October 1, 2007
The Week in Geek: And So It Ends
At the end of May the Mets were 34-18, sixteen games over .500 and in first place in the NL East. They went 55-55 over their final 110 games to finish the season 88-74, nine games worse than the division-winning team of 2006 and, most damaging of all, one game behind the 2007 NL East Champion Philadelphia Phillies. The Mets went 5-12 to close the season. By contrast, the Phillies went 13-4 to erase a seven-game deficit and reach the postseason for the first time since 1993. Did the better team win the division? Does it even matter? Through 161 games Baseball Prospectus pegs the Mets as a 91-70 team based on run differential and strength of schedule; the Braves an 87-74 team and the Phillies just a shade behind Atlanta. But the Phillies laugh last, leaving the Mets and Braves on the sideline to make winter plans and start thinking about 2008. Was it the worst regular season collapse in baseball history? Possibly not, but it was close, and it was probably the worst ever by a National League team. The Mets had a 99.80% likelihood of making the playoffs back on September 12, considering their seven game lead on Philly, the number of games remaining and who those games were against. That the Mets won just five of their final seventeen games was atrocious, but winning so infrequently when thirteen of those games were against the Marlins and Nationals makes their undoing historically and almost unthinkably regrettable. Who’s to blame? A lot of folks, actually. Willie Randolph failed to motivate this team to pull itself out of its recent morass and his questionable personnel decisions down the stretch left an awful lot to be desired. Omar Minaya sits atop the Mets’ baseball decision-making pyramid and he will certainly shoulder plenty of the blame for the Mets’ collapse. His inability to bolster the bullpen proved costly as the Mets’ relief corps tired as the season dragged into September. He gets plenty of credit for bringing in guys like Luis Castillo and Moises Alou, but the burden of proof in his vision for this team comes right back to him when thing turned sour. Ultimately, though, the blame falls on the players who facilitated the collapse. We can blame management all we want, but in the end we have to look at the players who were expected to step up for this team when it needed them the most but buckled like a belt when the season was on the line. No player is an island and there is plenty of blame to go around here. We can start with Jose Reyes, who was the most exciting player in the league in April and was utterly replaceable offensively from May on out. A single win in the season’s final week from Tom Glavine, the Mets’ longest-tenured player, would have been enough to push the Mets into the postseason. Instead, Tommy Tepid threw up a couple of stinkers, including Sunday’s matinee craptacular, twice putting the Mets into deep holes before they even took a turn at the plate. Glavine wasn’t alone, as Oliver Perez and Mike Pelfrey each turned in deplorable pitching performances in the past week, the most recent of which was Perez’s almost indescribable bout of suckitide against the Marlins on Friday night. The bullpen, so dependable for most of the season, struggled worst of all. Collectively, Mets’ relievers allowed 29 earned runs (34 total runs) in 47 innings over the last seventeen games of the season. Their 5.55 ERA over that span was a run-and-a-half worse than their season mark and they proved time and again that no lead was safe when the ball was in any of their inept hands. Jorge Sosa was the worst offender, coughing up eight earned runs in just seven innings of work and sabotaging his team at nearly every turn. Everyone’s whipping boy Guillermo Mota wasn’t far behind Sosa, allowing five runs in six innings. It wasn’t just the retreads costing the Mets’ games. Billy Wagner and Pedro Feliciano, cornerstones of the Mets’ dominant first-half bullpen, turned in middling efforts and ERAs above 4.75. The only reliever who managed to hold things together was Aaron Heilman, whose 1.64 ERA and 11 innings pitched were far better than anyone else on the team. What now? Nothing, yet. The Mets and their fans are going to be lamenting the bitterness of this missed opportunity for months and possibly years to come. There are plenty of changes to be made, and Omar Minaya and his staff will surely cast a wide net into free agency, the trade market and parts unknown in an effort to rebuild this team for a run at the pennant in 2008. There is still a terrific core of young players, both hitters and pitchers, that the Mets will use as a foundation for that rebuilding. Right now, though, there are far more questions than answers. Will Tom Glavine exercise his player option and return for a sixth season in New York? Will Pedro Martinez be the ace the Mets need to anchor a mostly-young starting rotation? Which Jose Reyes will show up next season? Who will play second base/left field/right field? Who will catch? What about the bullpen? The bench? It will be a long offseason of rumor-mongering and speculation, of sports talk yapping, blogger roundtables and mainstream media fluff pieces. So take a deep breath, drink a few beers and try to get a good night’s sleep, because 2008 starts now. 9 Responses to “The Week in Geek: And So It Ends”Leave a ReplyYou must be logged in to post a comment. |
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I just think the pitching staff was tired at the end. Our offense showed up on most nights, and I really can’t wait to see Lastings Milledge out there in RF everyday. I think Willie made a mistake using Shawn Greene for most of the season, especially after Milledge came back healthy and clearly showed he was a better player then Greene.
We need at least two younger arms in the pen. Maybe putting Humber in the pen as a long man, if he doesn’t start for us next year will take up one of those slots, and having Filthy back next year might be all we need, but certainly Mota has to go.
As a whole the team isn’t far off, I would like us to get younger though. I would love for them to go ahead and get Alou back for 1 more year, Start getting a replacement ready for Delgado (Mark Texeira) sounds good to me. Having that boy in the lineup behind Wright and in front of Beltran looks and sounds good, but he’s not a free agent until after 2008. We need a firstbase replacement with power not some super sub replacement. Its time to give that boy down in Double A a shot to be a backup for Delgado. (harper)
Bring back Castillo, no more then a 2 year deal with an option for a 3rd year though.
Maybe Jose Valentine can learn first base as well as second, given us a nice back up for both Castillo if re-signed and Delgado.
Great article, Eric. I don’t have any answers but this is a good time to thank you and the rest of the Geeks for pieces like this and all of your hard work this season. Thank you.
griffey, I would agree with you because I thought that Milledge had won RF in August and Willie had given it to him as well. However, Milledge once he had earned the job had a bad couple of weeks and Green started getting hot playing for Delgado and when Delgado was back in the lineup we kept Green.
Remember, Green wasn’t playing over Milledge for most of Sept. He was playing over Delagado.
I agree that the team needs to get younger. I’d honestly consider letting Alou go to get Gomez time in the outfield. Alou is a hitting machine, but his defense stinks and he’s injured all the time. Let’s get Milledge and Gomez out there and turn the speed up even faster on this team. Not sure what they’re going to do to fill catcher and second base. I don’t think I’d bring either Lo Duca or Castillo back. Both are too banged up. Again, I’d want to get younger in those positions. I would bring Castro back for sure, though, and I might consider letting him be the starter and see how it goes. His SLG was just too high this year not to give him a shot at the starting position. I’d start giving some thought to transitioning Wright to 1st base. His defense at 3rd causes a lot of problems. Since most of his errors are of the throwing variety, having him at first would help cut down on that problem. I’m not convinced that it’s time to move him yet, though. I’m not sure I want to see Delgado out there as our everyday 1st baseman…especially now with the broken hand. They guy is wearing out and he was a nonentity for much of this year. Given the $$ he’ll be earning next year, though, it will be hard not to play him.
The concern this offseason is clearly with the pitching. The Mets tried to get by this year with a Cardinal-type rotation (i.e., bunch of guys with 4-5 ERAs), but as it wound up, that just didn’t cut it in the NL East (fittingly, the team only had a winning record against the NL Central). The pen wasn’t great to begin with and that starting crew put so much pressure on them that they burned up at the end. Mets have Pedro, Ollie and Maine coming back next year. If they bring back Glavine, that’s ok, but he’s the number 5. Depending on Glavine, that leaves 1 or 2 spots to fill. I think El Duque has demonstrated in his 2 years with us that he does not have it in his body to start an entire season. If they want to bring him back, that’s fine, but it has to be as the long-man out of the pen and spot starter. Use him lightly in the beginning of the season and if he looks hot at the end, you can always drop him into the rotation. So for the remaining spots, I’d let Heilman compete with Humber and Pelfrey, and consider strongly getting Willis and letting Peterson work his magic on him. Rest of focus principally has to be on the pen. Whichever guys don’t make it into the rotation go into the pen and you build from there. I think that until Pelfrey develops some other quality pitches, he may be better suited to short work out of the pen. I’m not convinced Heilman has the mental makeup to be a high leverage inning reliever day in and day out. I’d give him a real shot at the rotation next year.
With respect to the collapse, I agree that the players shoulder most of the blame here. But as I’ve said a couple of times in prior threads, a whole lot of the blame falls on Lady Luck too. I’ve never witnessed a stretch of bad luck for a quality baseball team as bad as the last 3 weeks. There were plenty of defensive gaffes and mental mistakes, sure. But just because Wright or Reyes has a brainfart and gives the other team an extra out doesn’t mean the other team *has* to take advantage and score 3 runs. Sometimes (often, in fact) when a pitcher makes a bad pitch, the batter misses it. But that wasn’t the case over the past 3 weeks for the Mets. It just seemed like every miscue by the Mets was maximally punished. Every hittable pitch with guys on base crushed. How many 1-run games did we lose during this stretch — seemed like a ton. We scored a lot of runs, but our runs were distributed just perfectly to maximize losing it seemed — boy we sure could have used some of those 13 runs in Saturday’s game in some of the other ones (almost like an invisible baseball god was distributing our runs among the games to kill us). Sunday’s first inning was a case in point — as I said in the game thread, I don’t think Glavine was terrible — there was a funky HBP play with Ramirez purposely putting his arm out over the plate to get hit (which I swear would have been called a strike if he hadn’t deflected it with his arm) — followed by a slew of dunks and dinks by off-balance hitters. Then the inning spun out of control when Glavine hit Willis to make it a 5-0 game.
The 2007 Mets will hold a special place in our hearts, forever.
I disagree about some of the pitching comments.
Bye to Glavine, for sure. Plus, who says Glavine is willing to be a #4 or 5 starter?
No Dontrelle. Just because he kills the Mets doesn’t mean he is not on the downside of a short career. His ERA is five. No plus 5 pitchers, please.
We have enough starting pitching, I agree El Duque should go to the pen, he’d actually be awesome and he would probably like it better because dude’s getting old.
No one could hit El Duque out of the pen. Obviously, we also need to decide if Joe Smith is ever going to cut it again, and we probably need a new closer. Anyone in the system fit that bill?
I agree about giving Heilman a shot at the rotation. Ollie can stay but I predict by mid-season next year Pelfrey or Humber will be challenging his spot.
Hopefully Maine can avoid the inconsistency he was plagued with this year. We won’t soon forget 14 KOs or the April he had, but let’s not forget he was mediocre for a lot of the second half.
Oh, and someone needs to find a way to get into Jose Reyes’ head. And as much as I covet his hits, I kind of agree about letting Alou go and giving the youngster’s a shot. If we do make a big signing over the off season, it better be at 2nd base. But we all know how that turns out for this team . . . Isn’t there an Anderson Hernandez out there who can hit? Even if he’s a pesky little slap hitter like Castillo, I’m fine with that.
Do we keep Lo Duca?
No Lo Duca please. No Shawn Green. If they’re not on the team, then Willie can’t pencil them in to his awful lineup cards. I don’t see the point of Luis Castillo either, but that was Omar Minaya’s decision. I think they should work with their young talent, not to rebuild, but because guys like Milledge, Gotay, Castro (not young but younger than PLD) will simply produce a LOT more than those old creaky, crappy veterans.
Eric, Dave Sheinin of the Washington Post referenced your blog, and only your blog, in his Mets Collapse writeup in Monday’s edition of the Washington Post. Go check it out. I happened upon it while reading the paper during lunch.
I mean, like on the front cover of Section A.
Alex pointed that out to me; definitely neat. I sent Dave an e-mail thanking him for the publicity and belaboring the fact that his Nationals are now dead to me.
Oh, if someone has a copy of the paper they would like to send me, drop me a line at eric @ metsgeek . com; I will be in your debt.