No help in sight
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- December
- 11
The Mets held their annual holiday party today at Shea Stadium. The kids came away happy, but no arm is heading this way.
“We’re still talking, but if we have to go with what we have we would’t feel bad about that,” GM Omar Minaya said of his rotation.
That’s a rotation of vets Pedro Martinez and Orlando Hernandez, both with durability issues; John Maine and Oliver Perez, both of whom will be asked to duplicate career years; and unproven Mike Pelfrey, Phil Humber and Kevin Mulvey, or whomever they can pick off the scrap heap, as the fifth starter.
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on Tuesday, December 11th, 2007 at 1:33 pm by John Delcos.
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I will take issue with the comment on Perez and maine. Aaron rowand had a career year, meaning he had established a normal performance level and was past his prime years, and then put up an abnormally good year (out of the norm). Key is, you wouldn’t expect a career year to be repeated.
OP and JM are both young, developing talents that are just reaching prime years, and are still on the upswing of their careers. So I would actually expect them to improve on their good but erratic 2007 seasons, and be better and more consistant.
bedard is a good example of a guy with talent that took a few years to put it together. Even with him, 2005 was his best year so far, but far from his “career” year. Now, 2007 might have been that!
Also, I wouldn’t be adverse tothem going with what they got. Probably not the safest option for getting to the WS, but every year deson’t have to be win it all or bust. Sometimes, you are developing talent to go on a sustained run of success.
Worked for the Braves in the early 90’s!
Even if the “big 3” of aces (not that I personally include Haren as one) don’t come to Shea, I have faith that Omar will add at least 1 more good to potentially very good starter for next years rotation.
JD – As I have been saying for a few weeks now.
By the way what is your take on our interest in the Japanese pitcher and what kind of a pitcher do you think he will be next year?
and besides, i thought perez’s career year was in 2004?
stick, you wrote
“Probably not the safest option for getting to the WS”
Be realistic, it is more like …”Probably not the safest option for getting to the playoffs”
2 old guys who get hurt, two yound guys w/one good season.
You shouldn’t expect a WS or even a playoff.
Let’s look at the numbers again.
Most stats people would say you need 65 wins from your starters to get to 90 wins total
Pedro 10-13 wins
El 8-12
OP 12-18
Maine 12-18
5th guy 7-10
Not enough to realistically win 90 games. Not enough to be sure you make the playoffs.
I am a little tired of the media putting down the Mets because we have not done anything. I will join the crowd at the end of January if nothing happens. The truth is all the slugs on the pitching market are still available. They all have dreams or should I say delusions of the big deal. That worked real well for LoDuca and his agent. Opening day is March 31 not
December 31.
Sloppy will you still let me join the “Fire Omar” bandwagon if I want to join at that time.
Actually, what is most annoying is trading away Milz when tthe team is an non-admittal, but in reality rebuilding phase and we have to rebuild with mediocre veterans because of a plan that really is no plan in the Mets FO.
What would make this worse.
1. Getting more garbage to start like Minaya’s been doing since 2006.
2. Keeping El Duque in the roatation.
Both would allow Minaya to jerk his prospects around, sending them up and down which he seems to love to do but would impede their progress and devalue them on the market like he did with Milz and Bell.
I’d be much happier not making the playoffs knowing we had some kids with futures beside David and Jose, than to not make the playoffs knowing Omar was making panic move after panic move. It is time for a GM with a strategy.
devalue Heath Bell? Did you watch him pitch for the Mets? He did get his shot and was at best inconsistent.
Mets not getting a number 1 pitcher??? I for one am totally shocked!!! LOL
I really really hope we don’t have to have Pelfrey begin 08 as a starter.
I’d much prefer to see him as a 7th inning guy for now the way
Twins did with Santanna and Liriano and NYY did with Joba.
I really wished Willie used Pelfrey in that way in August .
Last I checked Pelfrey didn’t have a 99 MPH fastball.
Last I checked Pelfrey didn’t have a 99 MPH fastball.
neither does santana
oh and pelfrey hits 96, 97.
keep checking though.
You mean that the nearly-crippled second baseman we signed for four years this off-season, the empty tank first basemen… and the left-hand pinchhitter and third-string catcher we got for our best prospect aren’t going to carry us on to glory?
You mean that Omar Minaya signing guys he likes and guys he knows and guys he thinks are good chemistry guys instead of… you know… players with talent isn’t going to save the day?
Blah. Just blah, man.
I’m going to agree with stick’s first comment…career years? how can you call this a career year for Maine when he is 26 yrs old and this was really his first full season in the major leagues. man i guess you don’t really have much confidence in the 10-15 years he has left in his career to call this his career year. this statement is open for some criticism, but i’m gonna go ahead and say that john maine has ace stuff and could very well be the ace of this staff one day. but that is just my opinion.
Same thing really goes for OP…same age, and he really only had one other full season in the bigs. that ‘04 season with the pirates when he was lights out. 230 k’s and a sub-3 ERA. yur gonnna call ‘07 his career year? See that’s the problem with the Mets organization, and more-so the fans (and this is coming from a die hard met fan) is that you’re so quick to judge players and write them off without giving them time. the alex rodriguezes and the johan santanas are few and far bewteen. you can’t draft a 22 yr old on June 6th and expect him to be a stud major leaguer on June 7th. Lastings Milledge is 22 yrs old and never got more than 180 at bats in the majors, when most kids his age are playing college baseball for crying out loud, and everyone gave up and said he’s crap. it just boggles my mind. and if you even extrapolate his numbers to a full season, it’s actually a really good year for a 22yr old. although we got a solid defensive catcher and a good right fielder for him, i think we’re really going to regret that trade one day. maybe even next year.
ok just doing some venting, sorry
would love responses…
96/97 for Pelfrey? Which Mike Pelfrey have you been watching?
I think the point about Maine and Perez is that we shouldn’t just assume that they will both perform to the same level as they did last year. For both of them their performances last year were pleasant surprises.
I agree totally about Milledge. I think the ownership ordered Omar to get rid of him. If not then Omar really doesn’t understand player development with respect to age. I was livid about the Milledge trade. Its really discouraging when you think management is squandering the team’s talent. I was really looking forward to Milledge this year.
pelfrey tops out at 96, 97. (look it up like you did santana)
i didnt say he throws that hard consistently like zumaya.
Mets management is in total denial about what happend last season. They feel like they had the best team, and the collapse was an aberration. They are intent with coming back with the exact same team (with the two Washington stiffs) and try it again. They will find out the hard way that this team is no more than an 85 win team.
Deezo: Pelfrey does not consistently throw 96/97 MPH, if he did he would be more valuable. He might throw that pitch once or twice a game if he is lucky.
Livan Hernandez would help this staff, but I would rather have him start in place of his brother and have his brother coming out of the pen. I am not saying that he is our answer, just could add some help. I still think we need a solid ace on this staff.
I don’t think our situation is as bad as some do as Sanchez can help our pen tremendously. I know that he is coming back from being under the knife, but he was flat out amazing for us before the accident, even at 90% he is better than Mota.
I guess where I am less happy with things is the fact that nobody values our prospects but us. I hope that everybody else is wrong, but it doesn’t look good.
I was hoping for a great year, now I am just hoping that we don’t give away our future and still have a bad year. I would rather rebuild.
Todd:
Its worse than Mets management being in denial. They don’t care. They have Citi Field and don’t need a competitivie team to fill the place in 2009-2010 no matter how bad the club gets.
hollywood josh :
I agree with that. I am a 20 year season ticket holder awaiting my bill. They have sliced $ 20 million off the payroll by subtracting Glavine, Green and Mota. I am willing to bet they get a nice fat increase. They will be printing money this year with an increase, and the payroll going down $ 20 million.
one point about Santana, and how much he can really help.
John lists all these potential disasters in the rotation (2 old guys that have been hurt, can the young guys stay solid? And how bad they will be if not. Plus of course the infamous #5 young guy.
Well, Santana certainly should be an upgrade over the #5 guy, but if Pedro and Duque get hurt, or OP or Maine struggle, the team is still going to be hurting, even with Johan.
Heck, it is possible that the #5 guy next year could be the anchor of the staff!
But just as important, if they actually do trade 4 pitchers + gomez + whatever, they will really be thin in the rotation. If Duque and/or Pedro go down, you are probably back to lima time. And if ALou goes down, get ready for Ricky Ledee FT.
stick:
We will have Lima time no matter what happens with Santana. Omar loves the garbage heap and when he finds his rare jewell in encourages him to live there another couple years. He would sign/call up any Lima/Lawrence rather than give a kid a chance.
Wow – What amazes me is the total lack of hope for this team. This is the same core team. If they hadn’t had that collapse would the talk still be the same.
What do you guys see out there that Omar could have done differently? Where are these miracle moves that he could have done that would have proven that they are intent with mediocrity?
There is nothing out there right now.
Two years ago we would have been more than happy with JM, OP, PM, OH, and either of the kids manning the 5th spot. Now what dire straights we are in, Oh My God!!!
If you can get an ace do it. If not I am happy to go after the east with this rotation until something better comes along.
Does anyone really think that they are happy with what they have? And don’t want to improve? It takes two to tango and no one is just giving away ballplayers anymore. Colorado showed what can happen to anyone and all GMs have dreams of being more than the minor league suppliers for the big market teams.
If you can’t say what you would have done different with the exception of the LM trade than why criticize? What move would you have made? I don’t see any teams making a lot of movement with the exception of Florida and Detroit. C’mon be the stand-in GM and say what you would have done.
“Wow – What amazes me is the total lack of hope for this team. This is the same core team. If they hadn’t had that collapse would the talk still be the same.”
Yes, that is exactly the problem. You cannot have the biggest collapse in baseball history, and come back with the exact same team. They needed to change the core badly. All they will be reminded of now by media and fans is the collapse. Wait until spring training. Instead of having some new players, the old players will constantly be asked about the collapse. The few other teams that had collapses like that (‘64 Phillies and ‘78 Red Sox) all went away and were never heard from for years. The Mets are courting disaster by not making changes. They should have forced themselves even if it meant trading a player you did not want to.
Just remember this. The Mets were 15 games over .550 after 50 games last year, and then under .500 for the last 110 games. Yes, 110 games. This team is dead for next year as presently consituted. Whether you care to admit it, or not.
Todd –
we’re not coming back with the same team…we have a new right fielder, a new (better) catcher, a healthy pedro for the whole year (hopefully), and castillo to start the year, and i’m only assuming delgado had the year he had because of his wrist and elbow which has had time to heal so he will most likely have a better year, because he can’t have a worse one. we have a healthy duaner, or so everyone says. we have no mota. and even if duaner isn’t what he was in ‘06 he will be better than mota. wright is a superstar who will constantly get better for the next 4 or 5 years. reyes will have a better year cause i don’t think he is capable of a worse one.
so while the core is still basically the same, it is a very different team, i think for the better. the only question mark will be if maine and perez can repeat, or even get better. if they can, than the mets are a force to be reckoned with in ‘08.