Jerry Manuel said after last night’s game that Fernando Nieve has not “hit a wall,” citing the fact that the frequently used pitcher’s velocity has been about the same all season long.

Before we filmed the Baseball Show yesterday, Bob Ojeda and I talked about Nieve, and Bob suggested that though Nieve’s velocity is the same, it looks as if his fastball has flattened out. Bob said that could be because it requires more effort from Nieve to throw the fastball so hard, and so he gives up movement on the pitch.

Sorting through PitchF/X data is certainly not my area of expertise, but I figured I’d take a crack at it to see if there was data to back up what Jerry and Bob were saying. And since Nieve seemed so effective early in the season and has struggled so mightily of late, I hoped to note something that would explain what happened.

For all the graphs below, I only used games in which Nieve threw at least 15 pitches. That’s reasonably arbitrary, I realize, and 15 pitches is still a very small sample. But I figured that would be a decent enough way to sort out what noise might result from a five-pitch outing.

Plus, you know, I don’t have all day, and Nieve pitches a whole lot. That’s sort of the whole thing.

All the data came from BrooksBaseball.net and Baseball-Reference.com, two sites with tons and tons of data.

OK, first Nieve’s average fastball velocity:

There’s some fluctuation there, as would be expected, but it appears both Bob and Jerry are right: Nieve’s fastball has not slowed down this season. If anything, he’s been throwing it a bit harder of late.

Now the movement on that fastball:

The most interesting thing here? Those two data points in mid-April that appear to be outliers in both horizontal and vertical break are the two games Nieve pitched in Colorado. I’m sure someone has done way more research into it, but it’s a pretty funny statistical anecdote to see the way (I presume) the air there affects the break on pitches.

As for Bob’s point about Nieve’s fastball? I’m not sure, but it certainly looks plausible from the chart. The vertical movement has remained reasonably steady through the season, but the horizontal movement — the cutting action — on the pitch has lessened somewhat steadily. On April 9 the average v-break was at -7.79, and it held around there on April 17 and April 27. In his outings on May 13, 16 and 19, Nieve’s average horizontal break was at -4.62, -5.55 and -5.27.

Is that significant? I really have no idea, but it certainly looks so. Maybe someone with more pitchF/X knowledge than I have can help us out here.

And really, I have no way of knowing if the decreased movement is due to overuse or just Nieve not throwing his fastball effectively. Since he’s been used so frequently (and warmed up and not used pretty frequently, too), I’d bet on the former.

But one thing I noticed that seems both clear and reasonably significant is that Nieve has almost entirely stopped throwing his slider. PitchF/X isn’t perfect at identifying pitches, but check this out:

That’s particularly telling because, according to Fangraphs, the slider has been Nieve’s most effective pitch this season. I’m not sure if he’s not throwing it because he’s sore or if his coaches or catchers have talked him out of it — and again, we’re dealing with a lot of small numbers here. In either case, it seems a reasonable enough indicator that something actually has changed for Nieve since his effective start to the season.

Seriously, though: Last night, in the top of the ninth inning, Jerry Manuel decided to pinch-hit Gary Matthews Jr. and his .457 OPS for Chris Carter, the team’s No. 3 hitter in the game. Manuel did this because he hoped Matthews could bunt Luis Castillo into scoring position.

Castillo got into scoring position all by himself thanks to Billy Wagner’s wild pitch. But even with Castillo on second and even after Matthews, against all odds, worked the count to 3-1, Manuel still wanted him bunting. Why? Well, duh: Because Matthews hasn’t been swinging the bat well.

Which is exactly why he shouldn’t be pinch-hitting for the No. 3 hitter in the top of the ninth in a tie game.

Nevermind that Carter probably shouldn’t have been the No. 3 hitter. This space is not for ripping Chris Carter, one of the few Mets ripping the ball recently. And nevermind that Wagner is a southpaw and Carter hits lefthanded; Wagner has demonstrated almost no platoon advantage in his career and Carter’s, in the minors, was small. Small enough that he’s still almost certainly a better hitter against lefties than Gary Matthews Jr. Heck, if Manuel was so dead set on having a righty up against Wagner, he probably would have been better off sending Carter up to bat on the wrong side of the plate than Matthews and his .457 OPS.

Nevermind that. Mind why a manager would want to sacrifice bunt a decent runner to third base when there are no outs in the inning. (And the top of an inning, no less, with a bullpen far from guaranteed to shut the Braves out in the bottom half.)

To set up the sac fly, I guess. But why give up one of your most valuable commodities — outs — to put a runner on third for David Wright, with all his well-documented recent struggles to make contact?

Of course, Manuel didn’t trust Matthews to swing away, and he initially had Matthews in the game for his ability to bunt Castillo into scoring position. That’s a much more defensible strategy, if still a frustrating one. And probably the manager didn’t want to “show up” his player by pinch-hitting for him in the middle of an at-bat. Instead he just showed him up by not letting him swing on a 3-1 count with a runner on second.

Whatever. Whatever, whatever.

Manuel is managing with his back to the wall or his head on the chopping block or whatever other convenient metaphor you want to use to say, “in serious jeopardy of losing his damn job.” And apparently, when desperate to win games, Manuel will tell his players to bunt in every remotely feasible situation.

Manuel seems like a genuinely good guy. The players appear to enjoy playing for him. The media likes him too — after all, after Willie Randolph, it’s refreshing to cover a manager who will explain his thinking in clearer terms than just, “going with my guys” and “grindin’.”

But if the Mets are going to can Manuel eventually, they should just, you know, do it. Not for any nebulous issues of leadership, not because David Wright now seems to strike out constantly, not because Manuel’s big “throw strikes” philosophy from Spring Training has the team leading the Majors in walks. No manager in the world should be expected to convince Oliver Perez to reliably throw the ball over the plate.

Manuel is too often failing his team in the real, measurable, tactical aspects of managing. Ironically, in his urgency to win games, he is helping the team lose them: Overtaxing his relievers, relying way too heavily on platoon splits, and of course, bunting incessantly.

It was an interesting and memorable scene this afternoon in the visiting clubhouse at Turner Field. After Jeff Wilpon, Omar Minaya and John Ricco closed the door to Jerry Manuel’s office, a crowd of reporters retreated to the other end of the room, and settled in to stare at the white brick wall that separated us from team brass….

Several hours after that, the Mets won a baseball game. A good game, actually, with clutch pitching from Mike Pelfrey, who just has that ace look to him most of the time this year, the way he stands on the mound and establishes a rhythm and pace for the entire game.

Afterwards, the Mets made clear that they were oblivious to most of the drama. They weren’t lying or feeding us clichés. This stuff matters way more to media and fan-types than it does to the guys on the roster.

– Andy Martino, Surfing the Mets.

Martino nails it here. The Mets’ decision-makers met, and then the Mets beat the Braves. The Mets did not beat the Braves because their decision-makers met. The Mets beat the Braves because even the worst baseball teams still win 1/3 of their games, and because Mike Pelfrey had a good game and Pedro Feliciano managed to wiggle his way out of a jam.

On Twitter last night, it was pretty baffling to see how eager people were to make post hoc ergo propter hoc arguments off a single game. It’s one game! And, for like the millionth time, to suggest that the Mets were somehow trying harder because they knew their manager was under the gun is to imply that professional baseball players aren’t trying really, really hard all the damn time.