Last night, Astros manager Brad Mills moved lefty reliever Wesley Wright to right field so he could bring in a righty to face Troy Tulowitzki then bring Wright back on to face Todd Helton. It worked. I am a big fan of this move, if only for novelty’s sake. How’s Tim Byrdak’s range?
Things have been falling right for Bruce Chen lately and now he’s getting a lot of praise for it despite being just about exactly the same pitcher he has always been. I’m all for it. I think I speak for all of us when I say, “C’mon Chen!”
Incidentally, with three more wins, Chen will surpass Ramiro Mendoza to become to third-winningest Panamanian pitcher of all time.
I don’t have the stomach to take on the annual discussion of the Phillies’ impressive grit and the Mets’ lack thereof. And I imagine it’s clear to anyone conscious that the 2011 Phillies are simply a much better team than the Mets and it has way more to do with their ridiculous cavalcade of All-Star starting pitchers than it does their tenacity.
Remember that as recently as a few weeks ago, before they lost two of their best players on the same day, these same Mets were being hailed as “plucky” or “scrappy” or whatever term people wanted to use to stand in for “having a good offense that doesn’t hit home runs.”
Anyway, that’s besides the point. The point is, as frustrating as a couple of lopsided losses to the Phillies can be to watch, they don’t make all that much of a difference. The Phillies are 83-44. This whole season is a lopsided loss to the Phillies. The Mets need to spend the rest of 2011 doing what they can to better prepare themselves to compete next year, and if that means shouldering a few brutal beatdowns, so be it.
So with that in mind, a few suggestions for things the Mets might as well try:
1) Lucas Duda in right field every day: This is the most obvious of the three, and one I’ve hit on before. The Dude played right last night so it appears this might be happening. He hasn’t looked great out there so far, but a handful of games are far too few for a solid assessment. And on a team that needs power, Duda’s bat is too good to bury on the bench or in Triple-A. Opening 2012 with Duda and Jason Bay in the outfield corners would put a lot of pressure on Angel Pagan (or whoever else is playing center), but Duda’s not about to replace Ike Davis at first base.
Out of curiosity, though: How long do you keep playing Jason Bay every day and hoping he turns it around? Not a rhetorical question. I get that he’s still owed a lot of money, but can the Mets really open next season with a left fielder coming off two seasons like Bay has had? They probably will. More on this will likely follow this offseason.
2) Put Chris Schwinden in the rotation for the rest of the season: Schwinden hasn’t been great in Triple-A since a hot start, notching a 4.95 ERA in seven outings since the All-Star break. But much like Dillon Gee before him, Schwinden has maintained a solid strikeout-to-walk ratio across his Minor League career. He’s unlikely to be better than a back-of-the-rotation guy at best, but since Schwinden could feasibly compete for a starting Major League job in the spring the Mets might as well see how he fares against better competition.
With Jon Niese heading to the disabled list and a Monday double-header looming, Schwinden seems likely to get called up for at least a start. But no sense stopping there; once Niese comes back, Chris Capuano could move to the bullpen while the Mets take a longer look at Schwinden. Even if Schwinden doesn’t slot in to the Major League rotation next year, he could prove a worthwhile middle-innings reliever. He can apparently throw strikes, which gives him a leg up on many of the guys in the current bullpen.
3) Call up Reese Havens: Though he’s again hitting in Double-A, Havens is probably not ready for prime time thanks to all the games he’s missed due to injury. But the Mets are going to need to add him to the 40-man roster this offseason anyway, and with Justin Turner banged up, it’d be nice to see someone more interesting than Willie Harris taking starts at second base.
This one’s more selfish than anything, I suppose — as a fan, it’d be nice to have a new young player to watch at the Major League level. And with Jose Reyes on the verge of return, Ruben Tejada can take those opportunities at second base. Plus calling up Havens gives Terry Collins another young player who’ll need at-bats. There are only so many of those to go around, especially for right-hand hitting second basemen.
But before I talk myself out of this: Havens is 24 now so he’s no baby, he’s healthy and hitting in Double-A, and if he’s going to be in the mix come Spring Training, then, well, hey. Ike Davis and Taylor Buchholz are both still on the 15-day DL so there are ways to make room for Havens on the 40-man roster now.
OK, that one’s not as obvious, helpful or likely as the other two. But I couldn’t exactly make a list of two things the Mets should try, especially if they’re two things the Mets might already be trying.
Via Boing Boing comes this from the Virginia Tech geology department: “East of the Rockies, an earthquake can be felt over an area as much as ten times larger than a similar magnitude earthquake on the west coast.”
So that explains that. My first earthquake, for what it’s worth. And I started a new medication yesterday so my first thought was, “Well this is a weird side effect.” Then everyone else was all, “what the hell was that?”
We haven’t really been successful in the past at getting defensive touchdowns. So you might see more of that.
OK, yeah, I’m on board for that. It’s going to take a neat trick from Revis to convince more quarterbacks to throw his way so he can pick off their passes and return them for touchdowns, but at this point I wouldn’t put it past him.
With two outs in the eighth inning Monday, Holliday began trotting in from left field as starter Chris Carpenter prepared to make a pitch. Holliday was grimacing and tugging at his right ear, as if he had just been stung by a hornet. Close. A moth had flown into his ear and become lodged there, fluttering around, buzzing and wiggling in his ear canal.
Holliday was removed from the game and taken to a dark room, where the Cardinals’ trainers hoped they could lure the moth out of the ear with a bright light. When that didn’t work, trainer Greg Hauck grabbed some tweezers and prepared for a real-life game of Operation. According to a club official who spoke with Hauck, the Cardinals head trainer had pulled a moth out of an ear before in his career, back in the minor leagues.
– Derrick Goold, STLToday.com.
Wait a minute, that has happened more than once?
In my opinion, I think the whole situation with Carlos Beltran is affecting players on the team in a mental way. The team needed a bat, traded for a slugger, and has seen absolutely no results. That situation can be pretty disheartening for anyone.
– Derrick Williams, Yahoo! Contributing Reporter.
Oh Derrick Williams, you move me.
The last two years, my wife and I have maintained a vegetable garden. Last summer we sort of half-assed it, just clearing a portion of the overgrown flowerbed in our backyard and planting a handful of seedlings. This year we went all-in: We pulled out all the weeds and planted a variety of tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers and herbs in organized rows running the width of our backyard.
It’s a tremendously satisfying pursuit, but one that requires way more patience than my media-addled mind was prepared for. In early June — just a couple of weeks after we planted the seedlings — I found myself often standing in the backyard examining the plants, as if my gaze might help them bear fruit months before they naturally should.
But no matter how excited I was then for the crop of vegetables I am now enjoying, I never threw out the vegetables that were already in my fridge. That would be crazy; the growing vegetables weren’t ripe yet, I had no idea which plants would ultimately produce produce, and the vegetables in my fridge were no less tasty or nutritious because of the ones that were growing in the backyard.
This is a metaphor, and one I’ve already extended too long. The point is this: The Mets should not non-tender Angel Pagan this offseason.
Pagan is a useful player, even in this down year. He plays a good center field, he can hit a bit, and he runs the bases well. He has struggled some with injuries and slumps in 2012, but he was pretty much the best player on the team last year.
He’s not the type of player you let walk away over a couple million dollars unless you have a damn solid plan for replacing him. He is the pepper you already have, and the only good reason you’d get rid of that pepper is if you had several already ripe on the vine outside and no more space in the fridge (or whatever pepper-storage container you want to use to stand in for payroll here).
I mentioned this on Twitter yesterday (without the vegetable stuff) and got several responses with suggestions for whom the Mets could find to play center field as effectively as Pagan for less than the roughly $5 million Pagan will likely earn in arbitration. The names: Coco Crisp, Johnny Damon, Kirk Nieuwenhuis and Matt den Dekker.
Of those four, only Crisp is a viable Major League center fielder at this point. And Crisp is essentially a slightly worse, slightly older version of Pagan that is likely to be slightly more expensive. He only represents an upgrade if you like change for the sake of change. More on that in a bit.
As for Nieuwenhuis and den Dekker: The former has been out since June with a shoulder injury and the latter has two months of experience above Double-A. Neither is considered a huge prospect, but both have hit pretty well in the Minors despite frequent strikeouts. Neither is in any way fit to be inked in to a center-field job for the 2012 Mets.
Again: Playing in the Major Leagues is much harder than playing in the Minors. Last night the Mets faced Cliff Lee for the second time this season. They have faced Roy Halladay twice, Tim Lincecum twice and Clayton Kershaw twice. From Little League on, the best players at every level advance to the next one, until the very best reach the Majors and find there’s nowhere else to go. A hitter is unlikely to ever see a pitcher of that caliber in Triple-A, and if he does, it’s for one game.
Maybe Nieuwenhuis shows up in Port St. Lucie and hits the way he did in Buffalo in the two months before he got hurt, and covers enough ground in the outfield to quiet concerns about his range. Maybe he gets sent to Triple-A to start the season and beats the hell out of International League pitching again, and all of a sudden the Mets have one of them good problems on their hands. Maybe all that happens.
But Mets fans should understand by now that teams can’t bank on maybes. The point of fostering depth in the organization — or part of the point, at least — is that it gives a team flexibility to upgrade at the positions that can be most easily upgraded with available players, rather than forcing it to spend the offseason filling holes. If you have viable Major Leaguers everywhere, you can go out and compete for the best free agent instead of the best free agent that plays the position at which you have no one else.
I suspect the Mets fans eager to run Pagan and Mike Pelfrey out of town mostly want to watch different players than the ones they’ve seen on losing Mets ballclubs since Citi Field opened in 2009. And the Mets have been playing a frustrating breed of crappy baseball these last few weeks, so people get antsy and angry and start yelling for change.
But listen: The change you’re seeking has already been made.
The new front office in Flushing appears dedicated to developing the depth the team has lacked these last few seasons, to signing draft picks overslot and improving the farm system, to maximizing the 25-man roster. Not every one of Sandy Alderson’s decisions has worked out, of course, but the process almost always seems to be the right one. That, combined with the financial flexibility afforded by this huge market, should eventually pay off.
It’s just going to take some time.
For better or worse (mostly for better), I’m not long for the suburbs. More on that will likely follow once I hit the point at which moving and the moving process dominates my life, but for now, here’s a sandwich I made and ate at home in Westchester yesterday:
That’s smoked chicken with barbecue sauce, pickles and mariachi peppers. The roll is what Shop-Rite calls ciabatta, though it was way softer than most breads I’ve had with that name.
We had a package of chicken thighs in the freezer that I wanted to get rid of, so I thawed it out and smoked them over a mix of oak and cherry wood chunks. Before they were finished, I brushed on some store-bought, mustard-based barbecue sauce to give ’em a little bit of a glaze. When they were done I sliced them up to better distribute them across the roll.
The pickles I made from cucumbers from our garden a few weeks ago. They have aged well.
The peppers also came from the backyard. I chose the mariachi variety over the others we have because a) they’re really good — sweet, flavorful and a touch spicy, b) they’re the crunchiest of the peppers at my disposal and I wanted to give the sandwich some more texture, and c) apparently they are about the highest-yielding vegetable imaginable and I have to find something to do with all these mariachi peppers.
The sandwich was delicious. The chicken was moist with a strong but not overpowering smoke flavor. The sauce, pickles and peppers added the right balance of sweet and tangy flavors and crunchy texture. The bread was merely passable, but did nothing to detract from the sandwich at large.
I have spent a good deal of my free time the past couple of years endeavoring cooking projects enabled by the outdoor space we have for smoking meat and growing vegetables. Since we’re unlikely to find a place with a backyard in Manhattan, I imagine I’ll have to give up homemade sandwiches like this one.
It’s for better, like I said — there’ll be a shorter commute, way more things to do, places to eat that are open after 9 p.m., and sidewalks. But I figure I should spend the next few months making the best food I can with the equipment I will soon no longer have at my disposal.
Mike Pelfrey, Mets closer?
This almost certainly will not happen, but it was a possibility within the past week, when some team officials suggested converting Pelfrey to that role next season. The discussions went far enough that Pelfrey was included in them.
“Would you be willing to be the closer next year?” Terry Collins asked the pitcher, according to someone who was briefed on, but did not witness or participate in, the conversation.
– Andy Martino, N.Y. Daily News.
Interesting. Of course, since we’re getting the news at least third-hand, there’s some chance this has been telephoned to death and Collins actually asked Pelfrey, “Is it thrilling to see the toaster in here?”
But assuming the conversation actually went down the way the article says it did, it’s a thought worth considering. Many Mets fans won’t believe this, but Pelfrey could very well make for a solid closer. Not only is that role overrated, but starters’ stats tend to improve dramatically when they move to bullpen roles. A pitcher like Pelfrey with a limited arsenal could likely dial up his fastball a notch and rely less on his shaky secondary pitches if he were used in shorter stints.
Except — and as Martino suggests later in the article — Pelfrey’s biggest value to the Mets lies in his durability, and his ability to throw 200 league-average innings every season probably helps the Mets’ bullpen as much as his presence would.
And of course, the first time closer-Pelf allowed a bloop single and a game-tying home run, armchair psychologists everywhere would rush to diagnose his obvious lack of the much-lauded closer mentality.
I covered this a few weeks ago: Unless Sandy Alderson suddenly and miraculously finds a whole host of healthy dudes ready to start games in the Majors by next season, Mets fans should probably prepare for another season with Mike Pelfrey in the rotation. Yes, he’s boring to watch on his best nights and woefully frustrating on his worst, and no, he hasn’t magically started pitching like an ace since the Mets made him their Opening Day starter in 2011.
He’s a guy, and the Mets’ rotation needs guys. Best-case scenario, midway through next season the Mets have four starters throwing better than Pelfrey and Jeurys Familia or Matt Harvey banging down the door from Triple-A, and they can try Pelfrey in the bullpen then. From here, though, it doesn’t seem likely the Mets will have five healthy guys better than Pelfrey to open 2012 in the big-league rotation.
Tedquarters 