All of a sudden, the Mets are making believers out of even the most skeptical fans. Their offense is picking up steam and all talk of how they can’t hit in the clutch has evaporated into the ether. They play great defense and run the bases well. Their starters go deep in games and their bullpen holds leads.
And everywhere, there is youth. Gone is so much of the roster filler that mucked up the Mets’ bench and lineup at the season’s outset, replaced by useful young talent meeting or exceeding expectations. The team has somewhat regularly trotted out an infield of homegrown players averaging 24 1/4 years old, two of them already established stars at 27. After seasons of dark clouds and doubt, rays of hope shine everywhere. It’s damn near thrilling to watch, especially when they win 10 of 11. Puppydogs and daffodils.
Then they bring in Jenrry Mejia.
Unlike fellow rookies Ike Davis and Ruben Tejada, Mejia does not fill an important role for the Mets. He throws mop-up innings, like the ones he pitched last night with a five-run lead and Sunday with an eight-run advantage in Baltimore. On average, he has entered games in the lowest leverage situations of any reliever on the active roster. At 20 years old and with an electric arm scouts rave about, Jenrry Mejia is the bottom man on the Mets’ bullpen totem pole.
All along, the Mets have suggested Mejia’s future is starting games. There is not nearly enough evidence to show he is a better long-term fit for a relief role than in the rotation. It is difficult to believe any team values even a great setup man more than a good starter, and none should: Starting pitching is among the most precious commodities in baseball. And it’s not like the Mets are overwhelmed with it.
So there are several lapses in logic here. When the Mets added Mejia to their roster before Opening Day, he was heralded as a potential “eighth-inning guy” and dominant bullpen ace.
Many — myself included — doubted that the difference between a great reliever and a replacement one could provide more value to the team than a promising young pitcher working on his secondary stuff in the Minors, but at least the motivation was clear. The Mets’ desperate manager and desperate general manager, reportedly on reprieve after a season plagued by injuries, wanted to win at all costs. If that meant hindering the development of their top pitching prospect, they were on board, even if most fans weren’t. Wins are wins and pitching prospects are fickle.
As of last night, Jerry Manuel doesn’t even trust Mejia to work out of a jam of his own devising with a five-run lead. Even if Mejia could help the team win additional games, the manager has no confidence that he can do so. Mejia offers no significant benefit, only cost. Manuel must work to find regular innings for a 20-year-old prospect who could easily be pitching regularly in Binghamton, making himself better instead of struggling to succeed at the game’s highest level.
Who was it that prevented Minaya from making myopic decisions this offseason and stopped a man with a win-now ultimatum from dealing prospects for established Major Leaguers? There must have been a check in place, someone with an eye toward the future insisting Minaya be reasonable. Where is that person now?
Is Mejia selling advertisements, putting asses in seats or improving TV ratings? No. Only winning baseball can, and right now the Mets have no shortage of that. If anything, Mejia’s continued presence on the roster serves only to remind fans of the team’s recent history of logical failures and desperate decisions short on foresight.
As a Mets fan, I want my enthusiasm to be untempered and my optimism unbridled. I want to believe unequivocally, to get up out of my chair and open the window and yell, “Let’s go Mets,” like the man says. And nights like last night, with all those young players fueling wins and runs and hope, I’m really tempted to.
And then they bring in Jenrry Mejia.
Tedquarters 
I agree he should be sent down, but I think if learns to throws strikes he is best suited to be a reliever.
With electric unhittable stuff that he potentially has (if he can throw strikes), he can potentially be an excellent closer.
To me, I just don’t see him racking up innings as a starter and then in five years have his arm fall off, so to speak.
And F-Rod is clearly, CLEARLY, at the end of his shelf life.
Based on what is he not going to be able to rack up innings? Most scouts actually said despite seeming small he had a much bigger frame to add weight than guys like Pedro and could possibly develop into something of an innings eater, except one of those innings eaters who doesn’t simultaneously suck.
I never understand where these people come from: “I see him as a top reliever, I just don’t think he can start!” What in the world are you basing this assessment on? Your lengthy experience not being a major league scout? Kid has little record of note as a starter OR reliever that any useful projections can be made. Thats why we need to see consistent outings if only to figure out what we have in this kid!
It’s probably the fact his fastball has a nasty cutting action on it. So obviously, he’s gonna be the next Mariano. No question.
Forget worrying about relievers, Ted, or more youthful pitchers for that matter. What the Mets need now is Pedro!! Bring him on; watch enthusiasm grow even stronger and ticket sales soar!!!
Ugh I want no part of him. Paid out 4 yrs worth of money for 1.5 years worth of production, and then get to hear him moan about “how he’s done the Mets wrong” but we gotta pay up if we want him to play!
I wish a beat-writer would ask them point blank: if he’s a future starter and he’s not going to have an important bullpen role this year, why is he here? Then again, I think I can figure out the answer. Something abstract about him learning from being in the big leagues.
The problem, it seems, is that the Mets’ beat writers generally agree with keeping him in the bullpen.
As far as I can tell, there are 9 people on the planet who wanted Mejia in the pen this season. And 6 of them are members of the media covering the Mets. Unfortunately, one of them is our manager.
Cousin Ted,
I couldn’t agree more. This is why I’m troubled by the hot streak the team is on — it somehow validates the fly-by-the-pants, no-long-range-plan “leadership” that Omar and Jerry are employing.
Instead of getting this kid valuable innings in the minors where he might develop into something special, they seem to be like, “Yeah, well, this is sort of working because we’re sort of winning and Meija languishing in the bullpen isn’t making a difference, so there’s no need to fix it.”
Yeah my biggest fear is we’ll finish above .500, but Jerry’s managing will cost us just enough games to prevent a play-off berth. So we’ll be stuck with at least another year of the “braintrust”, if not a multi-year Jerry extension, and we won’t even get October baseball to look forward too.
I don’t think that’s a fair assessment at all.
I have been impressed, and pleasantly surprised, with the fact that Omar HAS focused on the long term well being of the team by not trading any significant prospects over the past couple of years. With his job seemingly on the line, it would have been very easy to look for short term fixes. And to Omar’s credit, that has never happened.
Other than Mejia, I don’t know how you can complain about any of the decisions the Mets have made this year.
Because all the other decisions had a fair bit of luck attached to them. Mejia is the one no-brainer decision that looks inexplicably worse day by day!
I’m not sure that’s really long-term as much as what you’d expect from an average gm at this point.
Boom. There it is. Good job TB.
(And thank you for saying Binghamton.)
There is not nearly enough evidence to show he is a better long-term fit for a relief role than in the rotation.
In fairness, there’s no evidence that he’s a better fit in the rotation than as a reliever as well. And the most successful relievers are often failed starters.
That being said, I have yet to see a practical argument for keeping Mejia around. I get the argument in principle (even if I don’t agree with it), but what’s transpiring with Mejia these days doesn’t support that argument one iota.
But, like Ted said, starters are a much more valuable commodity in baseball than relievers.
Finding a guy to fill a bullpen spot is much easier than finding a solid starting pitcher.
You shouldn’t need an argument that there’s no evidence to show he’s not better off in the rotation. The fact that there’s no evidence is the problem.
Bingo. That’s pretty much where I was going with that comment.
The most successful relievers are failed starters, but Meija hasn’t failed yet. And there’s zero evidence at this point that he will fail. Coming into the season nearly every scout/prospect guru had him as an A-/B+, or 5 star depending on their ranking system, STARTING PROSPECT, and most of them said despite his small size his mechanics were clean enough and his frame was big enough that there wasn’t much reason to think he wouldn’t be able to handle a starting work load. The only concern was the development of his breaking balls and off-speed pitches, and all we’ve done is further hinder those things and make it even harder for him to succeed by putting him in the bullpen. It’s self-fulfilling prophecy 101.
Let me start by saying that at this point, I think Mejia should go down and work on starting, but something that should be considered is his innings total.
He only threw 94 inning last year, a career high. I would doubt the Mets would want him throwing much more than say 120-130 innings this year. If he would have been a starter all year in the minors, he’d likey blow by that by mid-late summer.
Having him throw this 30 or so innings in the bigs, then sending him down in the next week or so would still likely allow him to get another 15 or so starts in the minors, at 6 IP per start would be another 90 or so innings, taking him to 120, add on that he’d likely be a september callup, and get a few more innings, and he’d be right at the limit you’d think the Mets would want to push him too.
So at the end of the day, I just dont think this will hurt his deelopement all that much. He gets a taste of the bigs, gains some confidence, then goes back and works in the minors, instead of the other way around.
I think its just different ways to get o the same place.
The ideal fit would have been the opposite. Let him stretch himself out in the minors for the beginning part of the season, and then come up in September to get some major league innings in the bullpen.
And even that is based on his success as a starter in AA/AAA.
its called a pitch count.
thats the thing about the minors… you dont care about the outcome, so you can pull a guy after 5 innings and its not a big deal.
You are missing the point….. work is work,,, wether you count it by pitches or innings or whatever you want. Point is, Mejia was going to be limited this year in the amount of work he was going to get.
You are right, he could have gotten 30 starts in the minors this year, and picthed 4 innings in each to reach 120 innings, or he could pitched 2 months in the bigs and get 30 innings then go to theminors the 2nd half and pitch 6 IP per start and get the same amount of work.
Point is, like I said, the work was limited. The concepted of ‘wasting’ him in the majors really isnt true, since he likely had an overall workload limit this season (regardless of how you spread it), and even if he was sent down in the near future, he’ll still likely end up reaching is full workload by the end of the year anyway.
it’s not really work.
in the minors because game wins don’t matter as much pitching 5 innings at a time he’d learn to pace himself and have to mix up his pitches way more facing the same batters multiple times.
In the bullpen in the majors he basically throws 90% fastballs, 10% change ups and can come out throwing heat. He’s not learning how to pace his velocity to maintain through 5 innings of work and or how to mix up pitches every plate appearance when you see a batter 2-3 times in a game, never mind his breaking balls have gotten almost no work.
Not to mention considering he’s been relegated to a mop up role how much confidence has he actually gained?
I agree, if hes in mop up duty he should be in the minors, like I said in my original post. I just think the concept of all this ‘wasted time’ is a little bit overblown, due to the limit they will likely have on his workload anyway.
All I’m saying is that at the end of the day, He’ll likely get close to if not the same amount of work in, and any less would probably be offset by the valuabel experience he was getting in the majors, even for a short period of time, which I dont think should be disclounted.
Ted, you touch on a good point that I made in an AA thread. If Manuel doesn’t trust Meijia to work through 2 walks with a 5 run lead, then he just doesn’t trust him as a major leaguer. He is so scared of this guy allowing a few runs and hurting his confidence. He’s scared to have him fail in big situations. You can’t have a guy in a bullpen and treat him with kid gloves. It’s clearly not working. It’s really a sad shame that this is happening.