Of all the Met starters, nobody personifies the woes of the bullpen more than Johan Santana, who has had six leads blown. That’s 15 wins by now with a perfect pen.
Let’s forget about working nine innings for now. The game isn’t played that way anymore. A quality start, which is really about mediocrity, is six innings. A solid start should be seven innings, and Santana has gone that far 14 times, and worked into the seventh two other times.
Sure, you always want more, but he’s given the Mets what they expected when they signed him.
We have Santana, John Maine and Oliver Perez for the series.
During the pregame manager Jerry Manuel suggested he might use Maine, Perez and Mike Pelfrey out of the bullpen between starts. It was a concept he rejected a couple of weeks ago. It sure was interesting to see the expression on the reliever’s faces when we asked the starters about this.
Maybe this is Manuel’s way of lighting a fire under the collective butt of his pen.
6 Comments
When I see a pitcher go 9 innings nowadays all I can say is, “Shamwow!”
Man I forgot how much I hate the camera angles at this ballpark. AWFUL!
JD,
I beg to differ. A 6 inning quality start gets you a pepto bismol moment.
Part of the pen’s problem is they are over worked. I don’t think they are as bad as they have shown the past week. But as they say it’s deja vu all over again.
Think back 365 days. We are in the same boat. The pen has imploded after a reasonable first half.
What this team really needs is a pitcher who can give up one or 2 runs over three innings who can pitch every 3 days or so. That way the ‘starters’ and I use that term very loosely can get paid $15mil a year to give you a quality start – read one half of a game – so that you can pitch someone else the other half.
I just had a thought. Perhaps the position players can play one half a game because they get tired after the 6th inning so you have to replace all 9 guys on the team. In the meantime everyone gets paid their standard rate…
After all they do it in football don’t they?
dave
I often wonder what Santana thinks about the Mets these days. He’s been undercut so often.
Interesting game in Boston. Red Sox scored 10 in the first but are now losing 15-14. Can you hear the booing at Shea if the Mets blew a 10-run lead?-JD
An ace doesn’t go out and give up 2 runs in the first inning when he was staked to a 2 run lead. Santana is a good pitcher but he’s no ace. Yes the Mets have blown leads for him but he’s also blown his share of leads.