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While none of this comes as a surprise it doesn't make it hurt any less to read it, or contemplate it.
For a fun game see if you can find my own editiorial commentary hidden within!
[url=http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/08/sports/baseball/08mets.html?fta=y:qyx5cl94]That Awful Mets Bullpen May Return Intact[/url:qyx5cl94]
By ALAN SCHWARZ
Published: November 7, 2008
Most witnesses of the Mets’ bullpen meltdown last season, those who can still see crucial victories squandered night after September night, would probably just as soon not see the names responsible for another missed postseason — Heilman, Schoeneweis, Ayala, Feliciano — ever take the mound at Citi Field.
Justified as these fans may be in wanting a completely rebuilt bullpen, they should not hold their breath, or at least as much as they did during the playoff race. Early signs indicate that the Mets’ relief corps could resemble last year’s more than any sadist would recommend.
“You’re not going to just trade people for the sake of trading people,” Mets General Manager Omar Minaya said at the just-concluded general managers’ meetings. “It’s not that easy. It’s got to make sense.”
The only reliever sure not to be around in April is the injured closer Billy Wagner, whose elbow surgery will sideline him for most, if not all, of 2009. Wagner’s arm problems kept him from pitching after Aug. 2, forcing already suspect relievers into greater responsibility down the stretch, with disastrous results.
In the season’s last two weeks, the Mets’ bullpen blew a slew of leads and wheezed to a 5.63 earned run average, with Manager Jerry Manuel often trotting out several relievers just to get two or three outs. The Mets went 5-8 and finished one game behind the Milwaukee Brewers for the National League wild card.
Starting over is tricky. Almost all of the Mets’ other primary relievers are under the team’s contractual control for 2009. Aaron Heilman, Duaner Sánchez and Pedro Feliciano are still short of service time for free agency and could go to arbitration; Joe Smith and Bobby Parnell are renewable for low salaries; the contract of the left-hander Scott Schoeneweis has one year remaining. The only free agent is Luis Ayala, the stopgap closer acquired from Washington in mid-August and a pitcher who failed in several key moments down the stretch.
As accessories to the Mets’ 2008 disaster, those relievers will probably be difficult to trade, particularly if the Mets are looking for something of value in return.
“Nobody’s trading relievers because a lot of teams are looking for relievers,” Minaya said.
The biggest splash the Mets could make would be to outbid other clubs for the free-agent closer Francisco Rodríguez, who broke the single-season save record with 62 last season for the Los Angeles Angels. Some executives believe that spending top dollar on closers can be unnecessary, because any number of pitchers can do the job.
But Rodríguez is only 26, has proved his postseason mettle and would instantly reduce the load on all the Mets relievers preceding him in the game.
Brian Fuentes, another free-agent closer, formerly with the Colorado Rockies, is the only other marquee talent available for purchase. J. J. Putz, the closer for the rebuilding Seattle Mariners, may be available via trade.
“New York can be tougher than other markets,” Minaya said, referring to the school of thought that closers can be found through experimentation among hard-throwing setup men or even failed starters. “You have to be mentally tough. I’ve taken Chad Cordero and put him out there and he’s done the job. But that was in Montreal, not New York.”
Predicting any reliever’s performance through statistics can be a general manager’s toughest challenge. Earned run average is virtually meaningless for individual relievers because the inherited runners they allow to score are charged to the previous pitcher. Some clubs prefer to look at the percentage of inherited runners who score; others find greater predictive value in the rate at which balls are hit hard.
But the small workload of most relievers, 60 or 70 innings, is a meager data set that encourages random fluctuations. And because managers decide when and how a reliever is used, against specific batters and in certain situations, all those statistics can be meaningless when the pitcher starts being deployed differently by another manager.
The Cleveland Indians have ridden the bullpen roller coaster harder than any team. They had the American League’s best relief E.R.A. in 2005 (2.80), a poor one in 2006 (4.66), a good one in 2007 (3.73) and then last season they slipped to 5.11, the second worst in the league.
“We figured that in odd years we’d be pretty good and in even years we’d be terrible,” Indians General Manager Mark Shapiro said. He said the key to building a successful bullpen was to begin by designating one pitcher as the closer and then having several others who could function in a variety of roles.
“I think the key is to have flexibility and to not have a lot of guys with contracts you can’t move,” Shapiro said. “Things are not going to turn out the way you want them to turn out. There’s not a lot of predictability.”
He added: “The guys that are the best get abused or overused, 70 or 80 games and warming up 100 times. For most guys that aren’t freaks of nature, there’s some lag effect the following year. The same concept works on the flip side — guys that are bad one year might get underused and might be able to bounce back the next year.”
The Tampa Bay Rays reached the 2008 World Series thanks in large part to seemingly minor trades for relievers Grant Balfour, J. P. Howell, Chad Bradford and others. Good scouting can help the Mets identify undervalued arms this off-season.
But if the trade market has dried up, the only new relievers the Mets could open with next year are a free-agent closer and another middle reliever, like the free agent Joe Beimel, formerly of the Los Angeles Dodgers. Minaya said that Parnell’s role could expand, and that he was willing to wait until spring training to see how his bullpen comes together.
“Bullpen guys, they come into camp and you ride the hot hand,” Minaya said. “We may have our guys. They are cunts but we're already paying them. Aaron Heilman, for the past few years, he was one of the better eighth-inning guys out there. It goes hot and cold. Duaner Sánchez is one injury removed from being a guy. Do we have a closer per se? No, we don’t have a guy. But we have other guys. It’s all a matter of coming back and having good years.”
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