Part of the job of anyone in a management capacity is
planning and part of it is to take corrective action when the best laid plans
don’t unfold as had been expected. When
Brodie Van Wagenen spent his off-season fortifying the roster, bullpen issues
were front and center.
He added the AL
Saves leader in Edwin Diaz, left handed (albeit erratic) Justin Wilson and
brought back former closer Jeurys Familia.
In addition he signed a few folks to minor league contracts that looked
like more than the average depth deals, including former All Star Hector
Santiago and fellow lefty Luis Avilan.
Well, anyone who has had the misfortune of watching the
games this season has seen that nearly every one of these moves has blown up in
the team’s face.
Diaz has had his
awesome moments but lately he's succumbed to the same malady plaguing the rest of the staff when it comes to blowing games. Justin Wilson has not “garonteed” anything
but more time on the sidelines to eat crawfish.
Jeurys Familia is being told to rub dirt on his Bennett Lesion. Luis Avilan is just now beginning a rehab
assignment. Only Hector Santiago
remained healthy, though highly ineffective.
Just how bad has the pen been? Well, I suggest you keep an airsick bag
nearby before reading any further as the club not surprisingly leads the league
in blown saves.
Some of these issues are
the manager’s doing by stubbornly refusing to insert his closer in
game-on-the-line situations unless they coincidentally happen to occur when he would
qualify to get a save. More of it,
however, is the result of poor execution by the pitchers themselves. Both the pitching coach and bullpen coach
were made ceremonial scapegoats for the ineptitude.
First, let’s look at the current bullpen. After Edwin Diaz you have Seth Lugo and
Robert Gsellman, two pitchers with maddening inconsistency (and in Lugo’s case,
a duct-taped arm). On the surface that’s
not too bad a start, but then it gets real ugly real fast.
The next group includes former starter Chris
Flexen, swingman Wilmer Font, recently pounded Brooks Pounders, a guy making me
yearn for his traded resource, Kevin Plawecki’s mound savvy, Walker Lockett,
and the last hope for anything worthwhile from the great selloff of 2017,
Stephen Nogosek.
Others who have served their time in the bullpen purgatory
include Tim Peterson, Jacob Rhame, Corey Oswalt, Daniel Zamora, Paul Sewald,
Tyler Bashlor and Ryan O’Rourke.
Collectively this group has contributed a lot of gasoline when asked to
put out fires. They have logged in
aggregate over 72 innings, provided a devilishly bad ERA of 6.66 and staked the
opposition to nearly 2 runners per inning pitched.
Now the primary group of relievers must be decidedly better,
right? Well, compared to the has-beens
in group 2, perhaps. Compared to other
teams and probably it’s understandable why the pen is such a mess. They have a collective ERA of 4.90 and a 1.39
WHIP over a total of 162 innings.
About
the only saving grace has been the relatively speaking low number of walks
compared to the dispatched-to-the-minors set.
They have yielded about 3.67 per 9 innings, not great but not the stuff
of bad legends, either. The others –
ouch! That demoted group has provided
the opposition with 6.4 walks per 9 IP.
Now that octogenarian Phil Regan is on board as pitching
coach and Ricky Bones is back in the bullpen will things change? Thus far the answer is a resounding no, but
it’s only been about a week. The problem
isn’t the coaches as much as it is the front office who thinks that guys with
career ERAs of 6.09 and 8.93 (Font and Pounders respectively) are the
collective answer.
Then when they pitch
to ERAs of 5.26 and 9.00, no one should be surprised, particularly
the folks in the front office. Please
let the selloff begin. It’s about the
only thing that will sustain interest in this season other than Pete Alonso’s
homers, Jeff McNeil’s batting average and Jacob deGrom’s starts.
7 comments:
Has Phil Regan been fired yet?
Chris Flexen could be the lone bright spot, as perhaps he will turn from a terrible starter into an effective reliever.
The Mets have a kid in the DSL, Antonio Villalba, who has allowed no earned runs and just 5 hits in 18 innings. I'd immediately promote him 8 levels to the Mets...how much worse could he be?
As Seinfeld's Elaine once said: I am without speech which is an understatement and after watching SNY's Thursday night lineup I was really surprised Brodie escaped criticism for the most part as they laid blame the organization and poor old MC....WHAT!!! its ALL on BVW and no one else he bought the groceries and there rotten but in these days of lets not offend anyone the spin has gotten out of control. Does anyone here think they'll now do the right thing or continue to sell us on "were still in the WC race" nonsense because next year's team has to be the priority now or as Spike Lee would say Do The Right Thing Brodie...PLEASE.
Gary - time to sell - wisely. Atlanta, Yanks, Phils before the break.
I'd say sell but doubt they will bring back worthwhile returns.
The organization needs to have a plan from top to bottom. They need to go with a style of play and stick with it. They need to start valuing defense at all levels in the organization. Find a young player's best position and then have him learn the position and excel on it. Take your best core players and put them at their best positions and build around them. Don't go out and find two mid-30 year olds that play the same position as your best player, stick the best player in the outfield. We all could go on and on.
NEVER sell to the Broncies or a division rival, unless they seriously overpay. Which I'm sure they won't.
How would anyone here feel if we did a salary dump at the end of April of Frazier and Vargas (as many wanted) and they made their comebacks in Philly, Atlanta, or the Bronx?
That depends on the returns in the deals. We can't answer that without knowing who was coming back to the Mets. This time it's not Sandy Alderson and his "throw enough crap at the wall and see what sticks" approach to salary dumps. Quantity doesn't equal quality.
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