No Respect

By Taryn “The Coop” Cooper
Posted Tuesday, July 24, 2007

Last week, on My Summer Family, I answered a column written by Dayn Perry of Fox Sports who focused on playoff contending teams and what they should focus on as far as trading deadlines.

No surprise to this Mets fan, but Perry’s suggestion for the Mets to strengthen their line up was – gasp! – more starting pitching.

My question to Perry is – dude, do you even WATCH the same games I do? Or is there some kind of transmission problem from our satellites to Mars?

So suddenly it hit me.

The Mets pitching staff is the Rodney Dangerfield of pitching staff…in all of baseball.

Now, let’s look at the Mets performance since June 1, which is when what I (and mostly, everyone I know) call the “June Swoon.” The team went from exciting and dominant to stale and unwatchable in a New York Minute or month to be more apt. At May 31, 2007, the team was 34-18. Compared to June 30, 2007, where they finished 46-33. Ugh.

Talk about reality smacking you in the face. From a fan perspective, at least.

On the surface though, the Mets were only outscored by their opponent 119-106. But of course, that doesn’t detract from the fact that they lost many many more games than they won.

So if it’s not the offense that was truly running them into the ground, certainly it must be the pitching, right?

Not so fast there, Pat Sajak.

According to Baseball Reference, the Mets are currently ranking THIRD in league ERA with 3.90, behind pitching staffs anchored by the likes of Peavy, Young and Maddux (aka San Diego) and the Cubs (I’m still trying to figure that one out). I’m sure some of those stats are skewed by the bullpen. So take those statistics with a grain of salt for now.

But let’s take a look at the big starting five. Tom “Mr. 300” Glavine and El Duque, Jorge “The Lovely Surprise” Sosa and of course, the franchise future in John Maine and Oliver Perez. Ollie is currently leading the team in ERA with a 3.00, with John Maine slightly behind him with 3.07. Tom Glavine is a bit high this year with 4.51, but El Duque is right in line with the young guys, with a 3.14. Jorge Sosa is right where you’d expect him to be, with a 4.36 ERA.

Now of course, I know many of you don’t take ERAs or even wins or losses all that seriously to gauge a pitcher’s strength. So to counterpoint, since in the month of June, the Mets were only outscored by 13 runs in the month, we could theoretically argue that pitching has KEPT them in games. In fact, I remember a few games we fans would lament that so-and-so pitched “well enough to win.”

But currently, while the ERA and the pitching appears to be solid, stats wise…the offense not so much. The team average is .268…Not TOO bad on paper, but ranking #9 in the league. For an offensive juggernaut (well, they are supposed to be anyway), that doesn’t seem to enthralling.

One of our every day starters is hitting above .300, and that’s Jose Reyes (.304, to be exact). Ironically, Moises Alou was hitting .318 when he went down for the long stretch. David Wright is also up there, with a .298 average.

I guess my point is that while Reyes and Wright are the faces and future of the organization, they cannot carry a team by themselves.

Case and point: Carlos “Laverne” Delgado and Carlos “Shirley” Beltran. Laverne and Shirley are hitting .251 and .268 respectively. Since Willie Randolph refuses to believe they should be batting elsewhere in the line up (like #8 and #9, respectively), lots of ground into double plays and hitting into the shift take place.

My point of all that is – if we are depending on two young and sort-of-green guys in Reyes and Wright, when the team is chock full of veterans known for their bats, that’s a bit of a problem, wouldn’t you think? The team may have turned a corner there in LA, but we won’t know till they beat up on last place Pirates and Nats.

Big picture wise – one could argue (as one did on My Summer Family) that there is no such thing as TOO much pitching. Point taken, but I just don’t see what trading away future guys like Lastings Milledge, Carlos Gomez or Ruben Gotay would prove. That the Mets rely on MORE aging veterans? Isn’t that what got them into the mess they did in June?

But let’s get real with ourselves for a minute. If there is one thing we Mets fans from professional and objective standpoints do agree with, it’s this: that trotting John Maine, Oliver Perez, Tom Glavine, El Duque or even Jorge Sosa out there every fifth night, we feel confident that the Mets can win. However, scoring one run against the other team’s two will not win games.

But I guess as Dayn Perry has evidenced, names like Maine or Perez or Glavine or Hernandez don’t exactly instill fear in other teams. Sure their names aren’t Peavy or Oswalt or Halladay or Haren… but maybe taking a look at one of the top league ERAs will give them their due respect.

But now it’s up to the bats to turn on and support their local pitchers.

And when that happens, as it says on Rodney Dangerfield’s tombstone – there goes the neighborhood.

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