Tom Brennan - SUBS AND SCRUBS - RELIEF PITCHERS EDITION

Tom Brennan - SUBS AND SCRUBS - RELIEF PITCHERS EDITION

Last Saturday, I laid out how, in 2018, the Mets offensive player subs and scrubs (those on the fringe of the 25 man squad, who are nonetheless needed to perform competently for the Mets to be successful), were anything but.

The subs and scrubs listed in that article compiled nearly 1,100 at bats in 2018 (20% of the team's at bats), and hit a combined .198.  The stuff (chuckle, chuckle) that championship teams are made of.

Today, I take a similar look at the bullpen's subs and scrubs.

The pen, starting last season, was comprised of Jeurys Familia, Anthony Swarzak, Hansel Robles, Jerry Blevins, Seth Lugo, Robert Gsellman, and AJ Ramos.

Familia got hurt, then traded...Swarzak was hurt and ineffective virtually all season...Robles was a home run hitter's delight before he moved on...and AJ Ramos broke down early on.  So, the Mets needed viable reinforcements for the pen from the Subs and Scrubs section in Aisle 9.   How did those replacement parts do?

Paul Sewald was the first arm to be tapped, and he was horrific...0-7, 6.07 ERA in 56 innings, with 2 of 4 saves.  

There were many other substandard subs - let's see which did well, which did almost OK, and which had that smell of limburger cheese:  

1) Did well - by my count, one:

Daniel Zamora - 9 innings, 3 runs, 16 Ks.  A diamond in the rough?  Looks like it.

2) Did almost OK in their major league transition - two such fellows:

Drew Smith and Tyler Bashlor - combined 1 and 4 record, 0 for 2 in saves.  That part's not good, but in 60 innings, the duo allowed a decent 26 earned runs.

3) Guys (count 'em - ten) who stunk in more than very limited innings - or gave up a ton of runs in just a few innings:

Chris Beck, Bobby Wahl, Jacob Rhame, Tim Peterson, Chris Flexen, Corey Oswalt, Gerson Bautista, Budd Baumann, Jose Reyes, and Matt Harvey - those not-so-terrific ten threw 104 pen innings and allowed a remarkable 100 earned runs.   Nice ERA there, huh?    

How does a team win a division with that?  I asked the 1927 Bronx Bombers and, to a man, they said they had no idea.

4) Marginal arms (at least in 2018) who pitched too few innings to conclude much - four such fellas:

PJ Conlon, Scott Copeland, Drew Gagnon, and Eric Hanhold - 13 IP, 7 earned runs.

Simply put, there needs to be bullpen better fall-back strategies than that.  The collectively underperforming pen must have cost the Mets 15-20 more games than MLB's best Astros pen.   And a lot of that was due to the struggles of the subs and scrubs.

So, Brodie, minimize category # 3 above as much as possible - or this team in 2019 may turn into # 2 (not the category).

This week and last week:  the offensive and bullpen subs and scrubs were quite substandard.  Above-standard teams are the ones who play playoff baseball.

Next week:  How did the starter subs and scrubs do in 2018?