Monthly Monday MLB Report Card: New York Mets

On the first Monday of each month we roll out our Monthly MLB Report Card (forever to be known as MMLBRC) for the Mets, Phillies and Yankees. We’ll check in early each week from here on out with short posts to quickly take the pulse of each team, but think of the MMLBRC as an in depth physical (anal probing not included). Truthfully, a month is probably too small of a sample size to make overarching claims like we will attempt to, but dammit, you want content! So rather than write well-reasoned quarterly updates, we’ll make rash decisions based on far too little data. Last, but not least: The Amazins. Enjoy!

*Note: we know, today’s Tuesday and not Monday. But we’ve been a little busy over the past few weeks, so deal with it.

Given the backdrop of last September (no need to go any more in depth), we all knew the Mets were going to be under a particularly powerful microscope early this season. All the cliche buzzwords would be thrown around by the media — do they play with “fire”; are they “hustling”. I could go on, but basically all the “intangibles” that rank 498th through 511th on the Importance of Winning Baseball Games scale would be brought into question if the team got off to anything other than a firecracker-hot start.

So, we find the Mets at 16-14 and tied for first in the loss column. Of course, the press reaction (and many fans as well): Hide the women and children, fire Willie and Omar, tear it down and start from scratch. Certainly that’s a fair judgment (sarcasm) made on 30 games in which:

1. Randolph didn’t have the expected regular lineup on the field until game twenty-freaking-nine. Angel Pagan did a terrific job early in the year filling in for Moises Alou. Then, reality set in. A platoon of Pagan and Endy Chavez was not going to cut it. Brian Schneider missed time with a staph infection of his left thumb, which, thanks to Ramon Castro taking a page from Alou’s book of rehabbing, meant Raul Casanova and one of the too-many-to-remember-their-first-names Molina’s had to work behind the dish.
2. The players that have been healthy, have opened the season in slumps. Both Carlos’ have struggled mightily, as has Jose Reyes. Really, the only two reliable bats thus far have been David Wright and Ryan Church, who has been the player of the month for the Mets. Now that the lineup appears stable (as I perform a dance to the gods that Alou doesn’t tear his ACL trying to pee on his hands in a post-game shower), we should see better run production. Willie finally seems content leaving Church in the two spot, and with Alou hitting fifth it drops Delgado and his sluggish bat to sixth. While we need to see more out of Delgado, he has hit the ball better within the last week, which is encouraging. Beltran has always been a streaky hitter, so he’ll get hot at some point. Reyes is a bit of a concern as his swoon has been over a prolonged stretch, dating back to last year.

While we disagree with the apocalyptic tone of the media and many fans, we do have legitimate concerns about this team, particularly in the pitching department–an area that figured to be a position of strength coming into the year:

1. Aside from Johan Santana, the starters have not gone deep enough into games. John Maine and Oliver Perez are the two that especially disappoint me. Both have averaged just over five innings pitched per start, a number that is far too low for pitchers who should be the Mets number two and three starters with Pedro injured. Neither have posted terrible numbers thus far, although Ollie has self-combusted in his last two starts, but the problem is they throw far too many pitches to get their outs. Hence, they’re normally over 100 pitches through five or six innings, and that often ties Willie’s hands in going to the pen. Which brings us to…
2. Ugh. The bane of my existence is that moment when Willie walks to the mound, signals for a reliever, and the bullpen door flies open. It’s like playing Russian roulette every night. Maybe Joe Smith has it tonight. Maybe Jorge Sosa gets the job done. But, sure enough, that’s the night Scott Schoeneweis spits the bit. And, I don’t mean to single out Schoe here. The point is, the names are interchangeable at this point. It’s not a matter of if, but a matter of when with everyone except Pedro Feliciano, Billy Wagner and to some extent Duaner Sanchez, who’s been very good except for a couple of appearances since his return. The biggest repeat offender: none other than Aaron Heilman. Relief pitching is so fickle to begin with — one year a guy is dominant, the next he gets into more jams than Roger Clemens gets into fifteen year-olds. And that seems to be what has happened with Heilman, because in 2005 and 2006 he was fantastic.
3. We’d be remiss to mention the bullpen’s problems and not put some of the blame on Willie. As acknowledged, many nights he finds himself having to go to the pen. Our issue is not that he goes to the pen early, but rather what he does once he calls in a reliever. If a relief pitcher comes in and has a quick, easy inning, we would prefer Willie to send him out there for the next inning more often than he does. Too often, Willie burns through four and five relievers in a game. Using that many relievers increases the chances that one of the pitchers won’t “have it” that night. Go back to the Russian roulette example. If you pull the trigger three times, you only have to dodge three bullets. Pulling it four times increases the chances there’s a bullet in one of those chambers.

The next two weeks are important for the Mets. With the lineup finally healthy, and seven of the next nine at home against the Reds and Nationals, the schedule sets up for a hot streak heading into the Subway Series’ first installment of 2008 at Yankee Stadium.