As the Met bullpen has undergone heavy analysis on Metsblog in recent weeks, I thought it might be appropriate to engage in a lighthearted tribute in its honor. Today we salute the 5th worst bullpen in the majors in terms of WPA, the 7th worst in terms of WPA/LW (yes, we were far worse than we were unlucky) and the worst bullpen by far of any team that sniffed contention.

We salute Aaron Heilman, as possibly the most unclutch player amongst all Major Leaguers with significant playing time. Clutch futility alone accounted for a WPA 500% worse than that which would have been expected from his peripherals (the equivalent of transforming David Wright from a 6 win player to  -24 wins below replacement, which would be impossible for any one player even if that player was me playing every game hung over and charged with playing shortstop and batting leadoff). He was, in short, a turbo-charged losing machine. Every other anomaly of Hielman’s season is dwarfed by this astounding capacity to lose games, by any means necessary. His .327 BAbip, his 13.6% HR/FB rate, his inordinate 5.45 BB/9 rate, his 70% LOB rate, each ranging from poor to very poor, are as woefully inadequate to describe the way he incurred the wrath of God unto any game he touched as Darwinian evolution is inadequate to explain the existence of Katie Couric.

For fun with small sample sizes, we could note that Ricardo Rincón surrendered twice as many line drives as ground balls, or that Nelson Figueroa posted a BAbip of .396 (which is actually a point in his favor). If we want to reminisce about Willie Randolph, just consider that Jorge Sosa, with his ERA of 7.06, his FIP of 5.95, and his WHIP of 1.89 was on pace to lead all Met relievers in appearances until he was finally released, a strategy about as inexplicable as Dentyne’s introduction of the excre-mint.  If you’re into contemplating the bizarre, you can contemplate that in spite of Sosa’s spectacular ineptitude and low innings totals, he came in fourth on the list of Met relievers in WPA, in a virtual tie with…hold your breath…third place Billy Wagner.  I would imagine that Charlie Manuel is doing his best to dig Sosa out, since he leads the world in unstatistical numbers. He improved his numbers by 300% through sheer “Know-how-to-gut-it-out-get-outs-when-you-need-them-and-winness”.

But back to business.

No one can behold a Scott Schoeneweis performance without asking himself: “Is he good, or just lucky?”. The answer: he’s lucky, posting an FIP-ERA differential of 1.69 to trail all Met relievers in that category, mainly due to his high LOB% of 81.4 and low BABIP of .275. The funny thing is that Schoeneweis’ futility comes from only two weaknesses: a poor K/BB ratio (1.48 in 2008) and a terrible lefty/righty split. To me, it is obviously Schoenewies who should be the odd man out when the Mets trim their redundancy of LOOGYs, as Feliciano was equally effective against lefties in 2008 even though he was arguably as unlucky as Schoeneweis was lucky. Schoeneweis has been very poor against righties for his entire career; nonetheless, Jerry Manuel determined that he was the best candidate on his team for being a two way man, adding to the steadily mounting evidence that Manuel’s relation to Willie Randolph is similar to James Buchanan’s relation to George W. Bush. (Forgive me for delving into politics, but incidentally, I agree with the conclusion drawn by Harper’s about Bush topping Buchanan for the distinction of last place. While Buchanan’s tenure was marginally more disastrous even than the Met bullpen–since it lead to a Civil War in which 1/5th of all males aged 16 to 40 died–Buchanan inherited an immense crisis and a nation barreling toward war, and responded with mere ineptitude. Bush inherited a period of peace and surpluses, and through a combination of ineptitude, corruption, and spectacular vileness led it into a into a juncture of all-out crisis.) Anyway, Feliciano’s splits were very modest in 2004, 2007, and especially his career year of 2006. (Those who say that 2006 was the sole exception to a career of poor performance against righties have it exactly backwards. It is 2008 that is the exception to a career of solid numbers against righties and utter dominion of lefties.) Schoeneweis could be dumped on an unsuspecting victim if sold for what he is–an effective LOOGY–if enough of his contract were subsidized. Hell, if you subsidized all of it, you might be able to find a true sucker from whom you can coax a B prospect or an underrated salary dump for him. Nonetheless, all things considered, Schoeneweis’ career invites the the infamous Colbert inquiry: Is he a great pitcher, or the greatest ever?

The distinction of most useless reliever goes to Luis Ayala, not because he’s fantastically horrid, but because he serves no purpose. He’s not really a long man, dominates no side of the plate, and is too ineffective to be a short man. It’s no shame, in the big picture, to be a mediocre AAA pitcher.

Now, if you’ll pardon my getting serious for a moment.

I have already discussed the enigma of Feliciano’s 2008 season. But here’s another enigma. Is Nelson Figueroa an effective long man–or even 7th inning guy–or a redundant ROOGY? We know he’s not a starter. He posted the worst numbers against left-handers of any Met (.371/.446/.529), but then again posted good overall stats as a reliever (3.00 ERA/3.67 FIP), which is somewhat perplexing because he was not used as a ROOGY in his relief role, nearly always pitching full innings, and often multiple innings. Figueroa has posted solid numbers as a reliever throughout his career, and terrible numbers against lefties, despite never really being used as a ROOGY. Curiouser and curiouser. My advice: check his numbers against left-handed hitters the first time through the batting order. I suspect that an answer lies there, although if he were even marginally effective against lefties the first time through the order, that would mean that the second time through the order he must have turned the average lefty into Barry Bonds on steroids.
I’d take a chance with Figueroa as a long man, with 7th inning upside, as he’s a low-risk acquisition and he was only moderately lucky this year.

Is anyone feeling good about Eddie Kunz? Good numbers in AA/Shelled in AAA, the Majors (okay, it was only 2 innings), and the AFL. Extreme ground ball pitcher, good strikeout totals (especially for a sinkerballer), and pretty decent K/BB ratio. Kunz is a Ray of Hope guy, thanks mainly to low home run rates and good K totals. Parnell?  A 95 mph fastball and good ground ball rates have not translated to success in any level of the minors beyond the New York Penn League, thanks mostly to poor K/BB ratios (1.6 in AA) and meh K rates (.7 in AA). We have 2 faint rays of young relief hope in our bullpen.

So this concludes my salute to the suicide bombers in our bullpen.  If they have taught us anything, it is that suicide is not at all painless, although we can be confident that it will bring on many changes nonetheless.