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The Mets Can't Hit For Shit

Elster88 Jul 26 2005 09:48 PM

Did everybody finally figure out that Delgado would be more useful to this team than Minky? Or are some still hung up on how much his sparkling defense has meant to this team? One left handed power bat in the middle of this lineup? How useful would that crap be? On edit: My link to Elster's picture on the UMDB appears to be shut down. Are you blocking them from being linked Yancy? I understand completely if you are, I can always find one somewhere else if need be.

metirish Jul 26 2005 09:53 PM

Delgado wold have been great,IIRC the Mets made an offer and he chose the Marlins instead, Omar did make a competitive offer right?, but I know what you are saying, we are missing a bat, Floyd would be a great 5 hitter in a perfect line-up.

Benjamin Grimm Jul 27 2005 04:08 AM

The mug shot photos periodically shift addresses. You can relink to the photo, but when the next shift happens, you'll revert to the logo again.

Rotblatt Jul 27 2005 06:07 AM

I think I was the biggest Mientky proponent, but even I never said that I'd rather have Mientkiewicz's glove than Delgado's bat. I said, after we had failed to sign Delgado, that because Mientkiewicz was relatively inexpensive, had been a solid offensive producer not that long ago, and had a great glove, he was a smart risk to take, particularly when all we gave up was a lower-level prospect like Blade. I also said that the money by passing on Delgado would allow us to make a deal for someone should Mientkiewicz not pan out. Had Mientkiewicz been able to reproduce his 2001 or 2003 seasons offensively, which I thought was possible, he might have been nearly as valuable as Delgado, taking defense into consideration. In retrospect, I look like a retarded monkey, but really, all we lost out on was Blade, who last I heard was struggling in the Sox farm system. Remember, Delgado's contract is expensive and it's long and he clearly didn't want to come here . . . Anyway, Mientkiewicz's OPS is only .040 behind Beltran's, and isn't that the real problem here? We banked on at least a .900 OPS plus a swath of stolen bases from Beltran and instead got .758 and 5 SB. Our problems at 1B and 2B don't loom nearly as large if Beltran is doing what we paid him to do. And as I keep saying, we have options to fill those gaps in AAA. Lambin, Hernandez & Valent are all doing well in AAA right now and all have more upside than Cairo or Mientkiewicz. Let's try them out and hope Beltran can do his thing . . .

Benjamin Grimm Jul 27 2005 06:13 AM

Put me down as in favor of promoting Anderson Hernandez and installing him at second base. I think Johnny, in another thread, wondered why the Mets haven't done so yet. My guess is they might be waiting until August 1; there might be a deal or two that's on the table, and they might want to wait until the dust settles after the trade deadline before giving Anderson the job. For example, why give him the job today if Jeff Kent might be taking it from him on Saturday?

seawolf17 Jul 27 2005 06:25 AM

Yancy Street Gang wrote: Put me down as in favor of promoting Anderson Hernandez and installing him at second base. I think Johnny, in another thread, wondered why the Mets haven't done so yet. My guess is they might be waiting until August 1; there might be a deal or two that's on the table, and they might want to wait until the dust settles after the trade deadline before giving Anderson the job. For example, why give him the job today if Jeff Kent might be taking it from him on Saturday? Anderson Hernandez isn't even on the 40. I'm not saying they can't make room for him (I only count 39 guys on the mets.com roster), but it's not so easy as just calling him up. They might need that spot to protect someone else.

Elster88 Jul 27 2005 12:18 PM

="Rotblatt"]I think I was the biggest Mientky proponent, but even I never said that I'd rather have Mientkiewicz's glove than Delgado's bat. I said, after we had failed to sign Delgado, that because Mientkiewicz was relatively inexpensive, had been a solid offensive producer not that long ago, and had a great glove, he was a smart risk to take, particularly when all we gave up was a lower-level prospect like Blade. I also said that the money by passing on Delgado would allow us to make a deal for someone should Mientkiewicz not pan out. Had Mientkiewicz been able to reproduce his 2001 or 2003 seasons offensively, which I thought was possible, he might have been nearly as valuable as Delgado, taking defense into consideration. In retrospect, I look like a retarded monkey, but really, all we lost out on was Blade, who last I heard was struggling in the Sox farm system. Remember, Delgado's contract is expensive and it's long and he clearly didn't want to come here . . . Anyway, Mientkiewicz's OPS is only .040 behind Beltran's, and isn't that the real problem here? We banked on at least a .900 OPS plus a swath of stolen bases from Beltran and instead got .758 and 5 SB. Our problems at 1B and 2B don't loom nearly as large if Beltran is doing what we paid him to do. And as I keep saying, we have options to fill those gaps in AAA. Lambin, Hernandez & Valent are all doing well in AAA right now and all have more upside than Cairo or Mientkiewicz. Let's try them out and hope Beltran can do his thing . . . I couldn't remember who or what anyone said specifically. Just lashing out at the world in general as the Mets put up 3-spots in Colorado.

Edgy DC Jul 27 2005 12:31 PM

For what it's worth, last I checked, Blade was doing worse in A ball than Mientkiewicz was doing in the bigs.

Willets Point Jul 27 2005 12:43 PM

Randolph is now sending up Cairo to pinch-hit for Shit. Wait! The home plate umpire is now signaling to Randolph. Looks like Shit has to bat himself... Randolph is fuming ... but we're getting verification from the rule book .. Yes, the Mets can't hit for Shit!

Elster88 Jul 27 2005 12:46 PM

Cute. OE: Ugh, I have to be Mike Scott for 20 posts.

Edgy DC Jul 27 2005 12:50 PM

We're archiving all your posts so we can send them to the commissioner.

Johnny Dickshot Jul 27 2005 12:56 PM

I thought Beltran was coming out his funk but he sure as hell didn't look like it last night.

Vic Sage Jul 27 2005 04:03 PM

I don't think the difference between our CF production and that of the league avg CF production is our problem, regardless of our expectations or Beltran's paycheck. Our problem on offense is the difference between our 1b and 2b production and the league average production at those positions. As i said at the time of the great Minky debates, there was little reason to expect Minky to hit much more than his career average, given his age, coming to a new league, playing at Shea, and limited playing time in 04. And, as i said, if a .760 OPS is the production we're going to get at 1b...well, we are good and truly fucked, and i don't care how gold his glove is. The fact that he's hitting at a .710 clip only exacerbates the problem.

Rotblatt Jul 27 2005 09:02 PM

]I don't think the difference between our CF production and that of the league avg CF production is our problem, regardless of our expectations or Beltran's paycheck. So Beltran's not a problem for us if he continues to hit like an average CF? That just doesn't make any sense--it's like saying that Randy Johnson isn't a problem for the Yankees because he's still around league average for a pitcher. Our offense was designed around Beltran's bat--he's why we could take a chance on Mientkiewicz. He's why we moved Cameron, who's been superior to Beltran in every facet of the game this year, to right. Sure, Mientkiewcz has underperformed, but Beltran's .170 OPS points below where he was last year. That's just crazy, and it IS a big problem for us, regardless of how he compares to the average CF. Do you seriously not see that? ]And, as i said, if a .760 OPS is the production we're going to get at 1b...well, we are good and truly fucked, and i don't care how gold his glove is. The fact that he's hitting at a .710 clip only exacerbates the problem. And yet, here we are at the end of July and we're not well and truly fucked, so I guess this whole offensive production thing is more difficult to figure out than you thought.

Elster88 Jul 27 2005 09:04 PM

I agree with you on Beltran. When your marquee guy isn't hitting, and you have no one else picking up the slack, you've got problems.

Johnny Dickshot Jul 27 2005 09:40 PM

Well, there's a lot to be said for league average players. Maybe if we expected it to continue you could think about replacoing Beltran in the order. but Vic's point was that Beltran isn't underperforming among CFs quite to the degree that Minky is missing the boat among first basemen. MLB CFers by VORP 1. Andruw Jones 45.3 14. Carlos Beltran 15 MLB 1Bmen by VORP 1. Derek Lee 80.7 44. Doug Mientkiewicz 1

Edgy DC Jul 27 2005 10:01 PM

Beltran being average is more disappointing, sure. It's just a lot easier to improve by replacing a player who is performing terribly relative to his peers in the league than to replace a guy who is performing average.

Rotblatt Jul 28 2005 05:43 AM

I'm not saying we should replace Beltran, I'm saying that he's a big problem for us. Just because there's no solution to it doesn't make it a nonissue. I mean, if Manny or Ortiz were putting up league average OF numbers, wouldn't that be a bigger problem for the Sox than Bellhorn underperforming at the same time? They believed they could carry Bellhorn, Mueller and Millar because the rest of their offense was so good. We decided to carry Mientkiewicz for the same reason--although clearly we're operatnig on a different scale. And I totaly agree that Dougie & 2B are problems too, but I don't think either by themselves is a bigger problem than Beltran. It just so happens that there's something we can do about them, which when you think about it, makes it that much less of an issue than Beltran. I mean, we have two guys in AAA who play second and who are tearing up we can play at 2B and we've got Valent looking back on track as well. Or we can try and trade for someone, since we have room on our payroll. All we can do with Beltran is play him and hope he becomes the player he's been the past two or three years. I don't understand why we're giving Beltran a pass ain favor of targeting our role players . . .

Johnny Dickshot Jul 28 2005 05:50 AM

]They believed they could carry Bellhorn, Mueller and Millar because the rest of their offense was so good. We decided to carry Mientkiewicz for the same reason. That's not so. We got Mientkiewicz because we couldn't get a much, much better offensive player in Delgado, and we crossed our fingers and justified it because we figured the rest of the offense would be strong. If we felt the team was strong enough as constituted offensively we would not have targeted Delgado in the first place. Likewise, the Sox did the best they could with Millar -- and Mueller and Bellhorn weren't give-ups.

Rotblatt Jul 28 2005 06:27 AM

]That's not so. We got Mientkiewicz because we couldn't get a much, much better offensive player in Delgado, and we crossed our fingers and justified it because we figured the rest of the offense would be strong. If we felt the team was strong enough as constituted offensively we would not have targeted Delgado in the first place. Likewise, the Sox did the best they could with Millar -- and Mueller and Bellhorn weren't give-ups. Well, duh. Of course both teams wanted better players but neither bent over backwards to acquire them. If we didn't have Beltran, don't you think we'd have done whatever it took to land Delgado? Signing Beltran and having Floyd, Wright, Reyes and Piazza made taking a risk on Mientkiewicz possible, much like Ortiz, Manny, Tek and Damon allow Boston to carry Bellhorn and his .689 OPS, not to mention Mueller's .774 and Millar's .755.

Johnny Dickshot Jul 28 2005 08:17 AM

This is getting kind of stupid. The point remains that Beltran, no matter how far off from "expected" performance, is performing at a better level relative to players at his position than is Mientkiewicz, no matter how far off from HIS expected level. While having a guy whose wildly beating the average obviously helps an entire offense, it doesn't do anything for the guy who's barely better than replacement value and is underperforming half the backup first basemen in the league. What would help the Mets more: Getting league-leading performance from Beltran in CF and continuing to get below average work at 1B and 2B, or continuing to get relative average+ production from Beltran while boosting 1B and 2B to "league average" production?

Benjamin Grimm Jul 28 2005 08:33 AM

I'm not sure which would be more helpful, but it's probably the latter because we're talking about two positions instead of one. But if the question is which should be easier to accomplish: replacing Beltran with a more productive superstar or putting average players at first and second base, it's certainly the latter.

Edgy DC Jul 28 2005 08:36 AM

Bring me the head of Placido Polanco! And the glove and arms and legs and torso and neck please.

Rotblatt Jul 28 2005 09:06 AM

I think we're on completely different wavelengths here. You're coming from the practical end: "What improvements can we make" and I'm coming from the historical end: "Whose lack of performance had a bigger impact on our season so far." The answer to your question is obviously the one you've put forth--2B & 1B are the areas we can improve on. The answer to my question is less obvious, IMO. I think looking at what we could reasonably have predicted from their seasons and comparing that with what we've gotten so far is a good way of finding the answer. On those terms, I'm suggesting that Beltran's underperformance has hurt us more than the relatively predictable (at least for smarty-pants like Norrin) underperformance of Mientkiewicz and Matsui/Cairo. As I mentioned before, there's nothing we can do about it except maybe give Beltran a couple days off and keep our fingers crossed, but I think it's interesting to discuss--especially since Beltran's going to be a Met for a long, long time . . .

Rotblatt Jul 28 2005 09:17 AM

I guess my other point is that the Beltran problem is more troubling than the 2B/1B, since there's nothing we can do about it. Mientkeiwicz & Cairo are replaceable parts and we can do all sorts of things to upgrade there. With Beltran, we can't do anything substantive because of his past performance--he could break out at any moment, after all. Not to mention his contract and high profile. But the thought that he might continue to underperform scares the shit out of me.

Johnny Dickshot Jul 28 2005 09:28 AM

Me too. I'm not in favor of tearing down the team or anything but I think if we just got average production out of first and second we'd be in very good shape even if Beltran didn't become the best CF in the league.

metirish Jul 28 2005 09:37 AM

Bring Diaz up and stick him at first, would it be wise to thrust him into a new position with the team in a race for the WC and division.

Johnny Dickshot Jul 28 2005 09:46 AM

That might work. By the way, did Mientkiewicz' outburst last night get any ink today? He obviously looked like a guy showing frustration with more than just a borderline strike call (which upon review, coulda gone either way) and I doubt it helped his cause to stay in the lineup on balance. I wouldn't doubt he was also lashing out at being benched vs. a lefty in the thin air and seeing his replacement make a critical error; at being the subject of trade rumors for the second straight summer, etc etc. Basically I think he sees he's losing a fight for his career. Now, he'd probably make a good enough backup for a lot of teams but you get the feeling that team won't play its home games at Shea.

Benjamin Grimm Jul 28 2005 09:49 AM

]I think we're on completely different wavelengths here. You're coming from the practical end: "What improvements can we make" and I'm coming from the historical end: "Whose lack of performance had a bigger impact on our season so far." I share Johnny's wavelength. I think it's too early to do a postmortem on the season. Let's get us a 1B and/or a 2B and see if the games stay meaningful for another month or two.

metirish Jul 28 2005 09:51 AM

Good point Johnny, and with Anderson swinging a hot bat WWSB might start playing him more at first, although yesterday on the 'FAN Willie said in a perfect world Anderson would be coming of the bench in big spots as a PH and not starting everyday.Still he's earning more playing time.

Edgy DC Jul 28 2005 10:02 AM

I'd rather give extra at-bats to Anderson at second. Woodward and Offerman can take on lefties at first if Randolph wants help for Mietkiewicz. I'm down with Valent and Diaz also.

Rotblatt Jul 28 2005 10:02 AM

I didn't see the game, but Gary & Howie made it sound like Mientkiewicz was kind of off the handle there . . . I would still really like to see Dougie come around, but at this point, if we can upgrade, we should do it. And it looks to me like Valent, if not Diaz, would be an upgrade over him. Diaz would allow us to do a lefty/righty platoon, although Mientkiewicz has been uncharacteristically better against lefties this year (normally it's an even split), but who knows how his defense is . . . FYI, are Dougie's splits for June & July: June 44 AB, .250 AVG/.327 OBP/.477 SLG/.804 OPS July 30 AB, .267/.313/.533/.846 OPS The strange part is his high SLG and low OBP--that's not really vintage Mientkiewicz and that makes me wonder if his decent numbers the last two months are an abberation.

Johnny Dickshot Jul 28 2005 10:22 AM

Minky, who looked at strike 2 right down Broadway, started with the walk-trot on a pitch with good movement just hitting (or just missing) the high and outside edges. At first glance I’d have said Ball 4 too. He jawed immediately and into the dugout throughout Zambrano’s AB (at one point they showed WWSB with a “I wish he’d just STFU, we’ve scored 6 runs this inning and this stuff is embarrassing us” look on his face; and Angel Hernandez glancing back toward the dugout) and after Zambrano made the third out and they broke for a commercal, Minky was on the field resuming the argument on his way back to the field, with WWSB doing all he could to get between them.

ABG Jul 28 2005 10:32 AM

I think it may make sense for us to start looking at Aubrey Huff. From Metsblog.com: At 11:45 AM EDT, ESPN’s Jayson Stark updated his Stark Report by saying that a) “the Mets have given the Devil Rays a long list of players they'd be willing to move,” and b), according to officials of two teams that have spoken with Tampa Bay, “Huff will absolutely, positively, 100-percent-definitely get traded.”… Two sources catch my eye. That's all's i'm sayin'.

seawolf17 Jul 28 2005 10:35 AM

I'd like Aubrey Huff. (Hell, I've been trying all season to deal for him in my fantasy league, but his owner won't budge.) He's having an off year, but he's 28 years old, and look at these season-average numbers: Seasonal Averages (per 162 games played) YEARS G AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB SO SB CS AVG OBP SLG OPS 4.19 162 616 83 179 35 2 26 92 49 86 5 3 .291 .345 .482 .827

MFS62 Jul 28 2005 10:51 AM

I like his bat. But from what I've read about Huff, he is not a good defender at first, and that is why he was moved to the corner outfield spots. But if Cammy gets traded, Huff would be a nice addition to fill Mike's right field spot. Later

ABG Jul 28 2005 11:32 AM

MFS62 wrote: I like his bat. But from what I've read about Huff, he is not a good defender at first, and that is why he was moved to the corner outfield spots. But if Cammy gets traded, Huff would be a nice addition to fill Mike's right field spot. Later Huff was actually moved off of third for defense. I don't know much about his 1b abilities though.

Rotblatt Jul 28 2005 11:54 AM

I like Huff. Or at least, I like his numbers outside of this year, having not seen him play much. I've no idea about his defense, but I wouldn't mind seeing him on our squad. Even if 2003 was his career year, getting mid .800's in OPS out of our 1B--or RF--is pretty solid. TB is supposed to be difficult to deal with, though, and I'd worry about getting raked over the coals in the process. On the other hand, they need starting pitching, and we have some to spare. I'd reckon Seo or Heilman would be pretty attractive to them, although we'd have to include a top prospect as well. Petit or Milledge would be too much, IMO, but I wouldn't be surprised if that's what it took to get him. This is why I prefer trading our vets for prospects--the price for solid vets always seems waaay too rich for my blood. Unless his name is Adam Dunn, in which case, count me in.

MFS62 Jul 29 2005 06:56 PM Same Shit, Different Day

Didn't want to open up another thread. Its around 9PM on Friday. (No, I'm not leading into a Billy Joel song, so relax) One met farm team has been rained out. I've seen the scores of every other team in the organization (Mets through Brooklyn). NONE OF THEM has scored more than two runs, and two teams (I forget , maybe three?) are being shut out. This had been an epidemic in the organization for several years. Why can't they fix this problem? I don't care if the have to fire every scout and batting coach in the organization. FIX IT! Later