Musings
On this episode of the Amazing Metscast, I discuss Jose Fernandez, Asdrubal Cabrera, Jay Bruce, Noah Syndergaard and more.
You can listen by clicking here.
Happy Wild Card Clinching Day!
Back on September 25, 2004, everyone was reminded how the bottom division clubs love to play spoiler, and how the teams that seemingly have nothing to play for are the most dangerous of all.
Entering the final week of the regular season, the reigning National League Central Division Champs, the Dusty Baker led Chicago Cubs, had a two game lead in the Wild Card standings and a fairly easy schedule in front of them to close it out. First, it was the 90 loss Mets followed by the 90 loss Reds, and then finally a Braves team that would have clinched and have nothing to play for in the final week of the season.
That 2004 Mets team simply wasn’t good. It was a mixture of players like Mike Piazza, who was past his prime, and players like David Wright, who were not quite ready to become the stars they would eventually become. They were lead by a manager in Art Howe, who had become a lame duck manager that was going to be fired at the end of the season. However, that didn’t mean that 2004 Mets team didn’t have anything to play for in the final days of the regular season.
Naturally, you would have expected the Cubs to roll over this Mets team because the Cubs had everything to play for, and this Mets team was playing out the string. That certainly seemed true as the Cubs carried a 3-0 lead into the bottom of the ninth against the Mets. At that point, the Mets who had something to play for began to go to work. Eric Valent and Jason Phillips, both of whom were trying to show they could be everyday major league players drew walks against Ryan Dempster necessitating Dusty Baker to bring on his closer LaTroy Hawkins. Hawkins was rudely greeted by Chicago native, Victor Diaz, who was a Cubs fan growing up.
The Mets had acquired Diaz in 2003 in the Jeromy Burnitz trade. The Mets organization was understandably excited about player that was nicknamed “Baby Manny” after Manny Ramirez. On this day, Diaz would show everyone how he got that nickname as he launced a game tying three run opposite field homer off Hawkins. In the bottom of the 11th, the Mets would again shock the Cubs when Craig Brazell, an interesting power hitting first base prospect, hit a walk off home run against Kent Merker.
That Mets win would begin a Cubs downward spiral that saw them finish the year 2-7 and two games behind the Giants for the Wild Card. The Cubs were beat by a group of Mets players that still had something to play for in what was a lost Mets season. This is a good reminder for a Mets team heading into Philadelphia to face what could be a dangerous Phillies team.
The Phillies are already talking tough with catcher Cameron Rupp saying, “his is the last time all these guys in this clubhouse will be together. Just go out and finish hard. A lot can happen in four days. We can ruin somebody else’s season.” (Philly.com).
The Phillies have the right mindset showing they can be a dangerous team this weekend. They’re going to start young pitchers with something to prove in Alec Asher and Jerod Eickoff. They have Ryan Howard who continuously hits long home runs against the Mets. They even have Tyler Goeddel, who would probably love to stick it to his older brother Erik Goeddel. Lastly, the Phillies have a manger in Peter Mackanin, who is trying to make a case that he should continue to be the Phillies manager.
Believe it or not, the Phillies have lot to play for this weekend. The Mets cannot take them lightly. Starting with Bartolo Colon, the Mets have to go out there and just crush what Rupp has indicated could be a feisty Phillies team. The Mets are better, and they just need to take care of business. If they don’t, they may fall victim to their own Diaz and Brazell homers, and they still could find themselves on the outside looking in come this postseason.
Last night, Yadier Molina hit a game winning walk-off double scoring Matt Carpenter from first base to keep the Cardinals Wild Card hopes alive and well. There was just one teensy little problem. The umpires blew the call. Molina’s double hopped the bench and hit the back wall meaning the umpires should have ruled it a ground rule double and ordered Carpenter to go back to third base. Now, this is exactly the type of play that should be reversed on replay. It wasn’t, and we learned about a number of issues related to replay.
Understandably, the Major League Replay Rule states, “A challenge to a play that ends the game must be invoked immediately upon the conclusion of the play, and both Clubs shall remain in their dugouts until the Replay Official issues his decision.”
Makes sense, doesn’t it? If the play is going to end the game, why do you need to wait to hear from your team’s replay official to challenge the play? You shouldn’t. If your team is definitively going to lose on that play, you, as the manager, have to get out there and challenge the play. There is no disincentive for asking for the replay in that spot. It is managerial malpractice not to immediately ask for replay in that spot.
As an aside, with the replay rule, we have lost some of the fire and brimstone fans loved from their managers. When there was a bad call like that, before the play was over, you would see managers like Earl Weaver and Lou Piniella, jumping out from the dugout and hopping mad. They knew the play was wrong, and the umpires were going to have to hear about it IMMEDIATELY! Now, with replay, managers are more timid and reserved. They can’t just act out of pure emotion. They have to be measured and get word from their replay team as to whether or not a challenge would be successful.
But that’s the culture that has been created, and that’s exactly what Bryan Price was doing in that situation. Like Pavlov’s Dog, his inclination on a play that was questionable was to reach for the phone rather than pop out of the dugout. It was regrettable because, under the rules, he needed to challenge the play immediately. He didn’t, and by the time he figured out he should challenge, the umpires had already left the field. Keep in mind, the umpires left the field, thereby making the call stand and ending the game, despite getting the call wrong on the field. At the end of the day, the timing aspect of the replay rules were subservient to the spirit of the replay rules, which is to get the call right so a bad call doesn’t change the outcome of the game.
When the spirit of the rule is violated by a technicality of the rule, it is time to seek out solutions on how to balance the two. Here, the solution is simple. Since a challenge for the last play of the game is required to be immediate, why not just automatically review the final play of every game?
On the Molina play, the replay officials could have been reviewing the play right away, and they could have alerted the umpires that the call should have been overturned. The call would have been right, and a game that had far reaching implications in the National League Wild Card race wouldn’t have been decided on a technicality. Again, the purpose of replay is to get the call right, not to get the call right only if it is challenged by a certain time.
In fact, like the NFL with touchdowns and turnovers, the immediate replay rule should be further expanded. Major League Baseball should institute an automatic replay on every home run and end of game situation. Like the NFL, the home plate umpire can be given a buzzer that goes off alerting them to the fact that the play is under review sending the umpires to the the phones. If done properly, this will actually reduce the amount of time wasted on replays. If done properly, the calls will be right rather than subjecting everyone to hand-wringing over whether the challenge was actually done in a timely fashion.
By the way, it will also save managers like Price, and Terry Collins from earlier in the season, from having egg on their faces when they didn’t challenge a call that automatically ended the game.
When I first heard about the show Pitch, I have to admit I was rooting for the show to succeed. I’m a baseball junkie, and I like everything about baseball. While I don’t have an overt interest in the sport’s popularity, anything that helps increase the profile of the sport and draws more fans to it is a good thing. When I found out Zack Morris was going to star in the show, I really wanted the show to succeed. After hearing some negative reviews, I watched the first episode with some trepidation.
For starters, let’s note that this show has a greater chance to succeed because it is on Fox. Due to Fox’s relationship with MLB, you get to have more bells and whistles than other shows. Additionally, with their Fox Sports Network personalities, you get to have real sports talkers offer sports opinions like they would on their own shows. It’s also called cross-promotion. Right off the bat, we get snippets from Colin Cowherd and Katie Nolan giving their monologues about Ginny Baker (Kylie Bunbury). Reactions to her first start would be woven through the show.
With it being on Fox, you also get John Buck and John Smoltz announcing her first ever game. One thing I noted, aside from Buck’s and Smoltz’s reactions being really forced, wasthis seemed like an unusually subdued Fox coverage of the game. As someone who watches baseball incessantly, I was expecting to see Kevin Burkhardt leading MLB Whiparound with Frank Thomas and Dontrelle Willis. I expected to see Ken Rosenthal with a pink bowtie (fundraising for breast cancer) interviewing the manager Al Luongo (Dan Lauria) or the All Star catcher, face of the franchise Mike Lawson (Mark-Paul Gosselaar). I understand this is a TV show, but if you want the hardcore fan like me to buy it as a baseball show, these are the bells and whistles that are expected. In reality, this show isn’t for the diehard baseball fan. This show really uses baseball and having the first female in a men’s professional sport as a vehicle to draw people to watch a drama.
That really became clear when you saw Baker throw her first pitch. Her pitching ability was vastly similar to Tony Danza in Angels in the Outfield or Gary Busey in Rookie of the Year; that is, it wasn’t good. The difference between those movies and this series was the baseball is supposed to be believable. With her rotation, it just wasn’t.
You can normally brush that aside, but they really went out of their way to make it believable. There was Fox rolling out Buck and Smoltz to do the broadcast. There was a scene with her father telling her she needed to learn the screwball because no woman could compete with men without learning a trick pitch. Most baseball fans would have assumed a woman would need to throw a knuckleball, but having watched John Franco‘s career, I could buy a woman succeeding in the majors with a screwball. What I couldn’t buy was someone with her pitching motion succeeding in the major leagues.
That means that ultimately this show is going to rise or fall as a drama. That was a mixed bag.
Instead of an agent, we see Baker going with a publicist (played by Ali Larter) over a superagent like a Scott Boras. First off, this was another hit to the credibility of the show. Secondly, the interactions Larter had with team brass and the like seemed slightly over the top. As did the flirting between her and the general manager (Mark Consuelos).
Where the show settled in was the baseball interactions. There was a funny exchange with Lawson regarding whether or not a teammate can slap her on the butt like they would any other teammate. There was the team owner giving Baker the number 43 because it was one higher than Jackie Robinson‘s 42. There was the discussion among the manager and the front office about this being a sideshow. There was also the discussion in the clubhouse about not letting Baker’s call-up be a distraction and letting the team go out there and win some games. Finally, there was the Bull Durham type moment between Baker and Lawson on the mound in her second start. Overall, while the baseball part of the show failed, the talk surrounding the baseball played worked well.
Where the show truly worked was the interactions between Baker and her father (Michael Beach). Like most Dads, he wants to see his son become a professional athlete. With him having failed in the minors as a pitcher, he wants his son to be a big leaguer. When he quickly realizes his son doesn’t have it, he pours all of his attention into making his daughter a major league pitcher. You see flashbacks with him fighting to get her a shot and with him driving her to become a better athlete. Watching the show reminded me of the interactions Mike Piazza described having with his dad growing up in his autobiography Long Shot.
In sum, Pitch worked as a drama using baseball as a vehicle so long as you did not have to watch any of the baseball being played. Ultimately, while I was disappointed with different aspects of the show, there was enough there to justify tuning in for the second episode. Hopefully, it will go as well as Baker’s second effort did against the Giants.
With the Mets off tonight, it might be a good opportunity to catch Pitch as its second episode airs tonight at 9:00 on Fox.
Tonight marks Seth Lugo‘s last start in what has been an already incredible season for him. More than any other pitcher in the Mets organization, it was unlikely that Lugo would find himself in this position.
After 14 starts and a 6.93 ERA for AAA Las Vegas, the Mets organization decided Lugo should not be a starting pitcher. It was certainly understandable. The Mets major league team was flush with young starting pitching with Matt Harvey, Jacob deGrom, Noah Syndergaard, and Steven Matz. Zack Wheeler was supposed to join them soon as he was rehabbing from Tommy John surgery. If the Mets needed a spot starter, there was Logan Verrett, who did the job quite admirably last year, and Sean Gilmartin, who pitched well in the majors last season. When you also consider the Mets had well regarded pitching prospects in Gabriel Ynoa and Robert Gsellman, it was seemingly time to move Lugo to the bullpen. At 26 years old, it was probably his best chance to make it to the majors.
Lo and behold, that’s exactly how he would make it to the bigs. In his first major league appearance, he unleashed what was then the best curveball ever thrown in the Statcast Era. The pitch fooled Anthony Rizzo, a player who finished in the top four in MVP voting last year, is a three time All Star, and is hitting .305/.395/.579 with 23 homers and 72 RBI off right-handed pitching. Right then and there Lugo not only showed that his curveball may be the best pitch in the entire Mets system, but that he belongs in the major leagues.
Lugo would continue to show he was a major leauger in his next nine appearances. In those appearances, he pitched 17.0 innings with a 2.65 ERA and a 0.941 WHIP. In those appearances, he limited batters to a .185/.273/.222 batting line.
Then disaster struck – not to Lugo, but to the Mets starting rotation. With Lugo pitching well out of the bullpen, he soon found himself in the one place no one thought he was ever going to be. The starting rotation. In his first start, Lugo was much better than anyone ever imagined pitching 6.2 innings against the Giants. He was able to be economical with his pitches thereby allowing him to go deep into the game despite it being his first start in two months.
From there, Lugo has shown he belongs in the rotation. In Lugo’s seven starts, he is 4-1 with a 2.59 ERA and a 1.104 WHIP. When there are runners in scoring position, Lugo has shown the ability to bear down (some would call it luck) adding a few extra MPH to his fastball and relying a little more heavily on a curveball that generates both swings and misses as well as groundballs. As a result, batters are only hitting .163/.259/.233 off of him in those situations.
That’s where Lugo finds himself on his last start of the regular season. He’s taking the mound against the Marlins in the hopes of dropping the Mets magic number to clinch one of the Wild Card spots from four to three or two. He’s also making his case that he should pitch the Wild Card Game in the event Syndergaard has to pitch in the regular season finale on Sunday. He’s also making the case he should be the third starter over Gsellman this postseason.
He’s also making the case that he belongs in the long term plans of the New York Mets. He’s already done a terrific job of doing that so far. Another strong start here and a good postseason, it’ll be a guarantee.
Last season, on the eve of September, Sandy Alderson went out and obtained Addison Reed from the Arizona Diamondbacks. Up until that point in the season, Reed was having a poor year that included a demotion to AAA. In his 38 appearances with the Diamondbacks, he was 2-2 with a 4.20 ERA and a 1.500 WHIP while only striking out 7.5 batters per nine innings. When Reed joined the Mets, he became a much different pitcher. In his 17 September appearances, he was 1-1 with a 1.17 ERA, a 1.043 WHIP, and a 10.0 K/9. With that, Reed locked down the seventh inning a Mets team and bullpen that would go all the way to the World Series.
Fernando Salas could be this year’s version of Addison Reed.
Like Reed, Alderson went out and got Salas right before the waiver trade deadline. Similar to Reed, Alderson pounced on a reliever with a good track record, had some closing experience, and was having a down year. In Salas’ 58 appearances with the Angels, he was 3-6 with a 4.47 ERA and a 1.260 WHIP. Now, he had been pitching better in August, but he still had a 3.48 ERA for the month. That’s a nice reliever to have, but that’s not the lockdown seventh inning reliever a team with World Series aspirations needs.
Well, like Reed the year before, Salas has become a better pitcher with the Mets. In his 14 appearances with the Mets, Salas has a sterling 1.88 ERA and a 0.628 WHIP. He has gone from striking out 7.2 batters per nine innings to striking out 9.4 batters per nine innings with the Mets. Salas is maintaining this high level with the Mets despite his throwing the fifth most innings in all of baseball in the month of September.
What is interesting bout Salas’ turnaround is that his stuff hasn’t changed all that much from the Angels to the Mets. He is getting slightly more movement, but it’s not so appreciable that he would become a completely different pitcher. He still rarely uses his slider, and he uses his changeup as an out pitch. Looking at these numbers, you would expect a regression. However, there is something different Salas is doing that is not indicated here that gives you hope this tremendous stretch is for real. He’s throwing strikes.
Salas went from walking 3.0 batters per nine innings this year with the Angels to not walking anyone with the Mets. The reason is Salas is throwing more strikes. He’s getting into the games, establishing his fastball quickly, and he is pounding the zone.
A large part of this is Salas making a concerted effort to throw more strikes. Another part of the reason is the difference between the Mets catchers and the Angels catchers. Again, Travis d’Arnaud has shown himself to be one of the better pitch framers in all of baseball. Rene Rivera is also having a better season in that respect than he has had in year’s past. As for the Angels catchers Carlos Perez and Jeff Bandy, they have not been good pitch framers at all this season. The difference between the two sets of catchers is a big one. It is the difference between falling behind early in the count allowing you to set up a batter for a strikeout to trying to get a pitch over so you don’t issue a free pass. It is the difference between a called strike three and a batter getting a free pass.
Overall, Salas has been the beneficiary of the Mets catchers exceptional pitch framing. The Mets have been the beneficiaries of Salas’ pitching. With him, the Mets have a pitcher that has allowed them to ease off the overworked Reed and Jeurys Familia down the stretch. With him, the Mets have a terrific 7-8-9 trio to close out important games.
Editor’s Note: this was first published on Mets Merized Online.