Mourning the Blacksheep

Every family has a member that is slightly odd. One that doesn't quite fit in. The Mets family is no different. From the day he first took the mound in a Mets uniform, Mike Pelfrey seemed a little odd. Teammates noticed it. Media members noticed it. Fans noticed it.

He seemed to have a love/hate relationship with those fans. He has been a player the fans have loved to hate; the perfect object to spew all of their fanhood frustrations upon. Over the past few years, fans have called radio shows to complain about every start, posted repeatedly on message boards of how much he "sucks" and booed mercilessly with every pitch.

He has been the focus of all our deepest venting. How strange is it, then, that when he went down to injury last week that those same fans and media members now refer to him as "irreplaceable"? Since the inevitable departure of Ollie Perez at the beginning of Spring Training last season, Mike Pelfrey has been the lone symbol to the fans of everything they don't like about this franchise.

Last season, they had the chance to trade him and avoid the pay raise he would be due this past offseason. Instead, they kept him and paid him the extra money to avoid arbitration. As a direct result, they have nothing to show for losing him to season ending surgery and a possible free agency looming when he recovers. Pelfrey may have thrown his last pitch as a New York Met.

That fact has sunken into the collective conscience of the fans and they are certainly taking the loss with sadness and grieving. With a career ERA of 4.36 and a 50-54 record, it's hard to imagine why. Has he had a good start to this season? Yes.  Does that warrant a period of mourning by the Mets family? Not really.

The fact is he is the player that Mets fans rip on for being hit or miss but those same fans will never allow a fan of another team to speak ill of him. They think "he may be a black sheep in this family, but he's our black sheep!". They stand by him through thick and thin. That is what fans do.

Now that he is on the mend, they finally realize his value; he eats up innings. He's had four consecutive seasons with 184 or more innings pitched. Two of them for more than 200 innings pitched. Now that the oddball in the family is on his way to the hospital, we all stop to consider what role he played in this family. He was the one that was always there; rain or shine, blowout or close game.

Though he seemed to only be consistent through inconsistency, he was, in fact, there for his starts. Whether those starts were something left to be desired or not, is a different story. There in was where his trade value laid last season. Many fans were calling for his head on the trade block.

Now that he is injured and may never pitch for them again, it is evident that the fans had a soft spot in their hearts for him after all. He may have been the hand-licking, shrink-seeing square peg that was left chained up in the basement and let out occasionally, but dammit, he was OURS.

Let this be a lesson to us as fans. Let's appreciate these athletes while we have them on our team. You never know when we'll overpay for one, fail to trade them at the opportune time and see them go down to season ending injury never to pitch for us again.

As we mourn the season loss of Big Pelf, remember, it could be worse; we could sign Ollie again.

Mets: Chuck James, Adam Rubin, Oliver Perez, Team Value

If Chuck James sounds familiar, that’s because you remember him as a pitcher on the Braves. Chuck James was signed to a minor league contract this offseason by the Mets and is next in line with Jeremy Hefner on the outside looking in for a spot in the rotation this season. As already described in an earlier post, the Mets rotation is probably set right now, with Santana’s mark being the current question mark. Both Hefner and James could step in for the next available role, so who ever performs better in the spring will get the spot. Chuck debuted with the Braves in 2005. He had a very successful 2006 season where he posted a 3.78 ERA in 116 innings of work. His 2006 season was OK, his ERA was good at 4.24, but he allowed a lot of homers (32) over 161 innings of work. 2008 was a bad season for James as he bounced around from the minors and the majors, while posting a 8.10 ERA in the majors. During the 2010 offseason, the Nationals signed him to a minor league deal, where he recorded his second straight season without making it back to the majors. The next offseason he signed with the Twins, where he spent time in the minors and the majors:  http://www.213milesfromshea.com/2012/01/18/get-to-know-a-mets-minor-league-player-chuck-james/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

One writer I've continued to follow is Adam Rubin of ESPN. His tweets are almost exclusively news. He rarely traffics in rumor or editorializing. His tweets generally lack the negative cast of many colleagues. In general, he seemed to exemplify the unglamorous aspects of what a reporter is supposed to do. That's why I was so blown away by a series of tweets he unleashed last night. The tweets were not only uncharacteristically emotional, but also full of mushroom-cloud details about the idiocy and incompetence the Mets displayed with regard to medical treatment of injured players, most of which had never appeared before in any forum. The tweets raised some huge questions about what gets reported when, and why. http://www.amazinavenue.com/2012/1/18/2715337/call-the-doctor

Mariners signed LHP Oliver Perez to a minor league contract. The deal includes an invitation to major league spring training. Perez showed some signs of life last year at Double-A Harrisburg, registering a 3.09 ERA and 58/27 K/BB ratio in 75 2/3 innings, but he's highly unlikely to land a spot on the Mariners' Opening Day roster.  http://www.rotoworld.com/headlines/mlb/348083/baseball-headlines?r=1

It's not that the Mets aren't a valuable commodity in fact Forbes ranked them the 44th most valuable sports team which puts them #5 amongst baseball teams ( Yanks, BSox, Dodgers, Cubs).  It seems that they're cash broke and their revenue flow wasn't constructed properly.  So even if they aren't squirreling money away for a settlement or supporting their struggling real estate entities through the Mets, if the Wilpon's stay they are constructed to be cash broke. Most teams will rank their sources of cash revenues, in order of TV, naming rights/sponsorship/merchandising and then attendance/concessions.  But just like the team maybe valuable, so is the TV station, we've all heard that SNY in it's own right is a very appealing commodity but that doesn't mean it's earning the team cash flow. Apparently the way the Wilpon's set up the contracts regarding SNY they won't receive TV revenue shares from the league the way most teams get much need infusions of cash, while the stock value of the network goes up the cash flow doesn't  http://networkedblogs.com/sTHLz

Jeurys Familia, Niuman Romero, Angel Cuan, Oliver Perez, Danny Muno

Jeurys Familia:


7-16-11: - Familia was placed on the DL with a “shoulder impingement”, which is a big word for tendinitis. He’s missed his last two starts and I guess the best thing is to shut him down for awhile. This could be the perfect time to transfer Darin Gorski and see how he does with AA batting.


Niuman Romero:


7-16-11: - The Mets signed Romero and assigned him to Binghamton. This speaks volumes of Reese Havens not being ready to be activated. Plays both second base and short. Played 5-years in Cleveland organization then 2010-2011 for Boston. Basically has been a .250 lifetime minor leaguer with absolutely no pop. Non-prospect fill-in.


Angel Cuan:


7-16-11: - My follower “Hobie” will be thrilled to see I’m bumping Angel up again on my “The Keepers” list. Frankly, if you go and watch him pitch, you really don’t see anything that stands out. That being said, he just wins ballgames, whether he’s a reliever or part of the rotation. Angel went 6.0 Friday night, giving up one run and raising his Sand Gnats record to 8-1, 3.28. Sort of the Latin Dillon Gee.


Oliver Perez:


2002-2010 (Mets/Pirates/Padres) - The last fifteen years have not been kind to left-handed starters named Perez. There was Carlos. There was Odalis, who went from promising to pathetic. And then there was Oliver, who for a moment seemed like the most auspicious Pirate prospect in a decade, only to forget how to throw strikes, get traded to New York for Xavier Nady, remember how to throw strikes again, sign a huge extension, forget how to throw strikes again, and finally suffer the embarrassment of being deemed too bad to play for the Mets despite being owed $12 million. In 2009 and 2010 Perez walked 100 batters and allowed 85 earned runs in 112.1 innings - http://deadspin.com/5820622/the-100-worst-baseball-players-of-all-time-a-celebration-part-2  


Danny Muno:


7-14-11: - http://www.amazinavenue.com/2011/7/11/2270752/mets-minors-road-report-binghamton-7-9-brooklyn-7-10  - I really liked the Muno pick at the time, but he’s not quite as polished as you might think for a guy with his profile. He looked a little overmatched early, getting frozen on a backdoor slider, and then watching a 93 mph fastball on the outside corner for his 2 Ks. He did draw two walks, but it’s tough to tell how much credit to give Muno, and how much to give to the quite wild Tigers pitching staff. He did a nice job in the ninth going back up the box for a single, though it was against a right-handed sidearmer. He also proceeded to get caught stealing by a good five feet, to erase himself as the tying run. Speed is not really his calling card, though it was a good throw from the Tigers catcher. Defensively, he is just not a short stop. He simply doesn’t have the arm for the position. The ball just sort of floats out of his hand with none of the zing you see from a Jose Reyes. Frankly, his arm’s not even as good as Eckstein’s. He bounced a couple throws, one dug out by Frenzel, one leading to an error, but even just watching him in infield warm-ups, you can see the arm is lacking. He’s a 2B in the end, not that we didn’t know that. The bigger issue is he might be stuck there, and he really needs to be able to play multiple positions to have a big league career, as he profiles more like a Reggie Willits type.