While manager Jerry Manuel went north to watch Jon Niese face the Astros Sunday, Figueroa started against a college team at a half-empty Tradition Field. The biggest applause for Figueroa came when he struck out Anthony Toth to end the third inning, and it wasn’t entirely for him.
As part of an in-game promotion, one section in the stands won free tacos as a result of the strikeout. Figueroa laughed and pointed to the crowd.
“No disrespect to the batter,” he said, “but tacos are good.”
You’re damned right they are.
Figueroa appears to be on something of a press tour of late, with lengthy features on him popping up in just about every local paper. It seems the going story — or at least the story he’s putting out — is that if he doesn’t make the Major League Mets, he’ll refuse his assignment to Buffalo and sign a lucrative deal with a Japanese team.
It makes sense for a player of Figueroa’s age — especially one with a family — to want to shore himself up financially before his career ends, and so good for Figueroa for being honest about it.
Still, I’ve got to figure at least some of the sentiment comes from feeling just a bit jilted by the club he grew up rooting for, since the Mets don’t appear to be giving him the time of day after a stellar year in Buffalo and a solid performance down the stretch in 2009.
And it is perplexing how the Mets could seem so willing to let Figueroa, almost certainly their best in-house insurance option for the starting rotation, leave the organization.
If Jon Niese cracks the rotation out of Spring Training, the Mets will enter the season with four starting pitchers coming off injury-plagued 2009 seasons. The fifth, Mike Pelfrey, plans to throw more breaking balls than ever before.
And yet Figueroa, a rubber-armed craftsman capable of eating innings in the back of the rotation, could very well be pitching thousands of miles away when the Mets inevitably need a fill-in starter.
Francisco Rodriguez, Pedro Feliciano, Ryota Igarashi and Kiko Calero are likely locks to start the season in the Mets’ bullpen, and probably should be.
The Mets appear to want to keep Fernando Nieve in the Major League relief corps as well. He’s out of options, and though he has yet to show he can get batters out as effectively as Figueroa, the club likes his upside and praises his versatility.
So that’s five. That leaves some combination of Jenrry Mejia, Hisanori Takahashi, Bobby Parnell, Sean Green and Figueroa for the two remaining bullpen spots, assuming the Mets carry seven relievers.
Mejia, as discussed many, many times, should not be any where near the Major League bullpen when the season starts. He may be, but he shouldn’t be.
Takahashi has been dominant in Grapefruit League play — even better than Mejia, really: 8 1/3 innings, 4 hits, 0 ER, 10 Ks, 1 walk. I’m skeptical, of course, like I am of all Spring Training stats, especially since Takahashi is a deceptive pitcher most hitters stateside have never seen before.
Both Parnell and Green have options and could be sent to Triple-A Buffalo. Adam Rubin reported yesterday that the Mets would be less likely to demote Green because he’s owed nearly a million dollars — a hilarious failure to understand sunk cost that set me into a tizzy in a post I’ve since deleted because the moves haven’t actually happened yet.
Assuming, for the sake of this argument, Takahashi has earned a role in the bullpen, the Mets can keep Figueroa around by sending both Green and Parnell down and sending Mejia to Binghamton to start games.
It wouldn’t make sense if it was clear that doing so would create a significantly worse Major League bullpen at the season’s outset, but it won’t.
The bullpen — and indeed, the entire pitching staff — is a fluid thing, especially early in the year. The Mets, with so many injury risks, should take caution to hang onto all their chips.
Tedquarters 
Have we stopped to consider that the Mets just may have an unhealthy gambling problem? Every damn player has to have an “upside” before they get the time of day.
Your solution makes so much sense that there’s no way it’s what the Mets will do.
This was my exact thought. If the mets did something that made perfect sense, I’m pretty sure it would tear a hole in the space-time continuum.
Wouldn’t your goal be more readily accomplished by making Takahashi the fifth starter rather than Niese? Then you can keep Parnell’s power arm in the major league pen and send only Green down, which makes a certain amount of sense since Green might need more work on his new delivery.
Green’s stuff did not look to impressive to me Friday night when I saw him for the first time pitching with his new, extreme side-armed delivery.
But, I have to say, Tejada looked pretty good Friday. He drove a Kevin Slowey fastball deep into the gap for a double, and his arm looked strong on the double-plays they turned. He may be a low-ceiling prospect, but he looks like a major league player to me. Mark me impressed.
As a 35 year old who at age 26 couldn’t for whatever reason beat out Omar Daal or Armando Reynoso, at age 27 couldn’t for whatever reason beat out Dave Coggin, Amaury Telemaco or Bruce Chen, as a 28 year old couldn’t for whatever reason beat out Ruben Quevedo, Jamey Wright or Nick Neugebauer, as a 29 year old couldn’t beat out Josh Fogg, Jeff D’Amico or Solomon Torres, and as a 30 year old still couldn’t beat out Josh Fogg nor could he beat out Ryan Vogelsong, the fact that he’s even still on the periphery of consideration now by any major league team a year removed from 29 of them refusing to sign him as a free agent is a miracle that he should learn to better appreciate.
You’re right, of course. We need to keep such a “loss” in perspective. It was not that long ago when I was upset over losing Matt Ginter.
But, Figgy is clearly a better pitcher now than he was in the past. He has pretty good breaking stuff, and great command. He knows how to pitch and could be a competent, low-ceiling fifth starter and a very competent long-man/emergency starter.
It’s really incredible this team will just let Figgy walk away. No one’s saying he’s Tom Seaver, but he’s a nice, cheap fifth starter/backup plan.
I guarantee at some point this season the Mets will start a pitcher who’s demonstrably worse than Figgy.
Bullpen should be: “K”-Rod, Calero, Feliciano, Igarashi, Takahashi, Green, Lefty TBD (Beimel if they were smart)
That would give you three righties, a couple lefties and a longman in Takahashi.
Fifth starter would be Figgy. When Maine and/or Perez inevitably go down, you have Niese and/or Takahashi waiting.
If Niese, Nieve, or Takahashi is better than Figueroa, than one of those three should be the fifth starter rather than Figueroa.
The fact that we might lose Figueroa if he doesn’t make the staff shouldn’t make the difference. We might lose Nieve as well if he doesn’t make the staff. Nieve at least showed last year that you has good stuff. I like Figueroa as the proverbial long man/emergency starter, but he has never had a consistent quality stretch in the major leagues as a starter. All the great minor-league and ST stretches don’t mean much so long as that is true.
The Mets prefer Niese to make it because they seem him as a member of the rotation long-term, and he clearly has a lot more promise than Figueroa. I don’t think the Mets should send people down solely because they have options, if they stand a better chance of helping the Mets than the guy without options.
Figgy also stands a better chance of helping the mets given the high risk of the rest of the rotation. if sending him down means losing him than we’re hurting ourselves when inevitable we’ll have someone much worse than Figgy filling in when someone goes down or is under performing.
I think Jon Niese’s development is the most important consideration for the Mets here, and at 23 years old, is showing that there’s not much more he can do in the Minors. So I’d have Niese as the fifth starter, and put Figueroa in the bullpen by demoting Parnell and Green. Parnell and Green haven’t earned their spots, plus they have options, so as an earlier comment pointed out, this solution makes too much sense.
Does anyone wonder if Figgy is so good, why Japan is his only other option? Why aren’t we talking about him getting claimed on waivers by another team? Better yet, why did no team offer him a contract last season when he became a free agent?
Maybe its because he just isn’t that good. He is a AAAA pitcher – good for insurance, but easily replaceable by the likes of the RA Dickey’s of the world.
That’s the kind of attitude that has led to Brian Lawrence, Philip Humber, Jose Lima and Jeremi Gonzalez starting games for us.
As for why no one wants him, I’m not sure. Most good teams have five better starters, most bad teams don’t have a need for a 35-year-old journeyman. Some GMs are dumb (like ours). The important thing is he fits our team (which is somewhere between good and bad).
All four of the potential No. 5 starters are very comparable right now. Obviously Niese has the most potential, but as of today, they’re pretty similar. So why would you do anything to risk losing one of those guys when you have a shaky rotation at best with performance and health question marks after Johan.
There are easy ways to keep all four, but the Mets insist on pretending Figgy doesn’t exist — just like they’re doing with Chris Carter and Nick Evans.
You hit the nail on the head, Ryan.
A team with as many question marks in the starting rotation as the Mets should really be working to build depth in AAA. If Mejia and Niese make the team, the Mets may very well lose Figueroa, Nieve and Misch. None of them are all-stars to be sure, but who exactly does that leave in AAA if/when Maine’s arm falls off or Ollie gets carted off in a straight jacket? Even Josh Fogg is gone!
If any of the old guys we keep aren’t getting the job done, we’ll still have the youngs available to take over, only they’ll have a little more experience.
The Chris Carter thing is really perplexing. You’d think after what we gave up to trade for him, the chance at two first rounders, they’d be falling over themselves to hype him up. Instead they’re falling over themselves to give the spot to a retread instead.
Batting Averages:
Jacobs (.174) + Murphy (.133) + Catalanotto (.100) = .407
Carter = .444 (not counting the 3 for 3 yesterday against Mich.)
There’s no way Carter wins the starting 1B job, but they can’t seriously keep Jacobs on the bench over him….can they?
Ted, so what you are saying is if the mets were to due such a promotion at citifield every fifth day and they by some miracle let him pitch for them, he would lead the league in tacos won for sections, lead the league in strike outs, and have 15 or more wins. Sounds good to me, because after all tacos are good.
Who doesn’t love a good taco?