Rick Porcello
Last night, Corey Oswalt was thrust into action, and well, he was terrible. In addition to allowing two inherited runners from Rick Porcello to score, he allowed five runs over four innings. He was sent down after that poor performance.
Looking at Oswalt’s career, it’s difficult to say last night was surprising. After all, over the last two years, he has made 12 starts and seven relief appearances with uninspiring results. Overall, he was 3-4 with a 6.43 ERA and 1.458 WHIP.
There’s nothing there which would suggest last night was a fluke. In fact, last night wasn’t a fluke. Really, last night was a microcosm of why Oswalt has struggled so mightily in his Major League career.
Even if the Mets would not officially confirm it, Oswalt was slated to be the Mets fifth starter. He was supposed to be preparing for a Tuesday start against the Boston Red Sox.
Instead, Oswalt was rushing to warm up to relieve and bail out Porcello. Luis Rojas could have used an actual relief pitcher to get the Mets out of the inning and then switch to Oswalt. He also could’ve gone to Paul Sewald, who has experience entering a game with runner on and giving the Mets multiple innings.
Instead, Oswalt was rushed to warm up and again put in a position to fail. This has been the story of Oswalt’s brief MLB career.
We have seen Oswalt flown cross country and make relief appearances on fewer than three days rest. We’ve seen him sit for weeks unused. He’d been shuttled back-and-forth between Triple-A and the majors and shuffled between the rotation and bullpen.
No pitcher can develop, thrive, and succeed under these circumstances. It’s simply bizarre the Mets continue to do this with Oswalt and expect different results. If this was any team other than the Mets, you’d be shocked a team would treat a prospect this way.
When you look at his career, he really only had one almost normal stretch of starts in the Majors. From July 4 – August 16, he made seven starts (plus an additional one in Triple-A), and he was 2-1 with a 4.26 ERA while averaging 5.1 innings per start.
When you take out his first poor start, which came on the heels of his being unused for over a week, Oswalt was 2-1 with a 4.24 ERA while averaging 5.2 innings per start.
No, these are not great numbers. However, these numbers show the then 24 year old rookie had the ability to pitch at the Major League level. With some time to develop, he could’ve improved and maybe emerged to be more than the fifth starter he appeared to be.
Maybe not. Fact is, we don’t and can’t know. The biggest reason why is the Mets absolutely refuse to put Oswalt in a position where he can succeed. Somehow that includes this year for a team with no starting pitching depth. It’s just ponderous.
Hopefully, at some point someone will present Oswalt with a chance to succeed. When he gets that chance, he may well prove everyone who says he can’t succeed wrong, very wrong. For that to happen, it may have to happen with a different organization, one who believes in helping all of their pitchers succeed.
Zack Wheeler desperately wanted to stay with the Mets. Brodie Van Wagenen wasn’t interested, and he went so far as to say what Wheeler signed for with the Phillies didn’t match how the Mets valued him.
Why be magnanimous about a very good pitcher who time and again made it clear he wanted to be a Met? Why avoid giving a starter in your division bulletin board material? Those are questions for another day.
The overarching question is what was Brodie thinking? He really signed Rick Porcello and Michael Wacha instead of Wheeler. In Porcello’s first start, we saw it for the mistake it was.
Porcello wasn’t good, but he wasn’t quite as bad as his final line seemed.
The Braves got to Porcello with two in the first, and he escaped trouble in the second by getting Ronald Acuna to hit into an inning ending double play. If you had any hopes that meant his sinker was working, they’d be quickly dashed.
It began with Jeff McNeil making an error allowing Ozzie Albies to reach safely. Then, with the Mets apparently being deathly afraid of Freddie Freeman (with good reason), Porcello walked him. Then disaster struck.
Marcell Ozuna doubled to put the Braves up 3-1, and Matt Adams walked. At that point, the Mets were still in it. Then, J.D. Davis completely misplayed what was a routine play for a left fielder into a two RBI double for Dansby Swanson.
Doubles By Dansby™️#ForTheA pic.twitter.com/X7oF1bUArA
— Atlanta Braves (@Braves) July 27, 2020
Instead of it being 4-1 with one out, it was 5-1 with no outs and runners on second and third. With that, Porcello’s night was done, and the Mets night was effectively over.
Corey Oswalt was thrust into a relief role instead of preparing for a start against the Red Sox. Again, he was put in a position to fail, and he did. He’d allow inherited runners to score along with a few of his own. On the bright side, he ate four innings saving the pen a bit.
When all was said and done, it was 14-1 Braves with the only Mets run being driven in by ninth place hitter Brandon Nimmo. Nimmo batted ninth because of the left-handed starter Sean Newcomb.
Newcomb was terrible in his own right, but he was bailed out by an overly aggressive Mets lineup. This is the same lineup which was assembled due to their bats while punting defense. They punted defense with a starter with a low strike out rate and is coming off a season where he had the worst ERA in the AL.
You can point a lot of fingers tonight. No matter where you point them, make sure you point them at the GM. This is exactly how he designed the team, and it failed like anyone else could’ve predicted.
Game Notes: Tomas Nido started over Wilson Ramos. He scored on the Nimmo double. Davis is 1-for-10 on the season.
With Noah Syndergaard and Marcus Stroman going down, the Mets need a fifth starter. Whenever the Mets need a starter, the debate once again turns to whether Seth Lugo should be put back in the rotation.
Certainly, you can understand the impetus. Lugo was a revelation in the rotation in 2016, and without him in the rotation, the Mets very likely miss the postseason. We also saw him back that up by being the ace for Puerto Rico in the 2017 World Baseball Classic.
We know Lugo can start, and we know he can be extremely good in the rotation. We also know Lugo is one of, if not the best, reliever in baseball. It’s extremely difficult to part with that.
The Mets starting pitching and bullpen injuries make it even tougher to remove Lugo from the bullpen.
At the moment, the Mets rotation only has three reliable starters in deGrom, Steven Matz, and Rick Porcello. While reliable, past deGrom, that’s not a lot of innings.
In 2019, Matz averaged 5.1 innings per start. Things improved in the second half when he moved to the middle of the runner. After that, he did average 5.2 innings per start. That’s still under 6.0, but he did make strides towards at least being a six inning pitcher.
Porcello also averaged 5.1 innings per start. That was after averaging 5.2 innings per start the previous year. Looking at his career, Porcello’s innings have declined in each of the last three years. That’s a bad trend for a pitcher the Mets need to be an innings eater.
That means two of the Mets three best pitchers don’t consistently pitch at least six innings. That leaves the bullpen getting 10-11 outs during their starts. That should prove to be a break compared to the fourth and fifth spots.
Last year, Michael Wacha averaged just 4.2 innings per start. Over the final three months of the season, he pitched into the fifth just three times over 11 starts. In his career, he’s never averaged more than 5.2 innings per start. This is from the fourth starter.
After that, the Mets are stuck going to Corey Oswalt, David Peterson, or bullpenning it. The young starters can’t be relied upon to consistently go deep into games. That puts a further burden on the pen, and that gets worse with planned bullpen games.
Further compounding a bullpen game is the lack of people who can go multiple innings consistently. Robert Gsellman was that guy, but he’s injured. Effectively speaking, that leaves Lugo as the only reliever who can consistently give the Mets multiple innings out of the pen.
That goes to another point. The Mets rotation isn’t the only part of this staff beset with injuries. Brad Brach and Jared Hughes will begin the year on the IL.
Really, a lot of the Mets bullpen is a question mark. Can Edwin Diaz and Jeurys Familia rebound from bad 2019 seasons? Will Justin Wilson‘s elbow hold up? Can Dellin Betances return to his dominant pre-injury form?
There’s just far too many questions in the bullpen and far too few innings in the rotation. Asking any bullpen to have to cover 10-12+ outs four out of ever five days is a monumental ask. It’s even worse with few off days.
Fact is, at the moment, the Mets need Lugo in the pen. He’s really the Mets only option who can pitch multiple innings. He’s the best reliever on the team.
Really, Lugo is the best option out of the pen. At a time when the Mets need the bullpen to take on a tough workload due to the schedule, they should have Lugo at the ready to get those innings as it’s not coming from another reliever.
Overall, Lugo may be the best option for fifth starter. He’s also the best reliever the Mets have. They need him out otherwise. In any event, Lugo is where he belongs – in that bullpen.
When Brodie Van Wagenen took over as the Mets General Manager, he was gifted an organization with great pitching depth. It was more than just reigning Cy Young winner Jacob deGrom. It was a rotation so deep, Steven Matz was a fifth starter.
Behind them was an upcoming group of starters at or near top 100 rankings. Of note, Justin Dunn and Anthony Kay were first round picks putting it together and putting themselves in a position to be Major League ready starters sooner rather than later. Notably, both made their Major League debuts last year.
Now, Matz has gone from fifth starter to the Mets second starter, and the Mets rotation currently goes just three deep. How the Mets got here is purely on Van Wagenen’s shoulders.
Some of this was Van Wagenen’s hubris. He was all too willing to trade top prospects close to the Majors and continue with thin pitching depth. It was something the Mets got away with last year with Mickey Callaway who seemed to have a knack for keeping starters healthy. Of course, Van Wagenen couldn’t wait to fire him.
On the top prospects Van Wagenen traded away, he was all too cavalier about it. In fact, he said he was comfortable doing so because he was confident he’d draft well.
Brodie Van Wagenen said he had this aggressive draft strategy in mind when he traded away prospects.
Story: https://t.co/XL9KOUpj0f
— Tim Healey (@timbhealey) June 30, 2020
Now, Van Wagenen has done well with the drafts. However, it needs to be noted, especially now, Matthew Allan, Josh Wolf, and J.T. Ginn are nowhere near being ready to help this team win now.
Speaking of win-now, the Mets just let Zack Wheeler go to the Phillies even though Wheeler wanted to stay and would’ve signed at a discount. Instead, he signed that discounted deal with the Phillies. To make matters worse, Van Wagenen went out of his way to slight and further motivate Wheeler.
Van Wagenen’s master plan was to instead sign Rick Porcello and Michael Wacha. Porcello is coming off a year where he had the worst ERA in the AL. Wacha has a bum shoulder and a three year decline in FIP, BB/9, K/9, and K/BB.
Again, Van Wagenen’s plan was to dismantle the Mets group of aces and near aces with Major League ready first round picks and replace that with well below average starters in the name of . . . depth. While it’s a sick joke, it wasn’t intended to be funny.
Sure, you can argue injuries hit this rotation. Noah Syndergaard needing Tommy John couldn’t be foreseen. Marcus Stroman tearing his hamstring was bad luck. Conversely, that’s exactly why you hold onto your starting pitching depth, and it’s why you hold onto your top end starters instead of letting them go to a division rival.
These problems have been compounded by the bullpen injuries. This means the Mets are down to three viable starters and no one to fill-in those middle innings when the dubious fourth and fifth starters can’t go deep into games.
However, Van Wagenen will tell us it’s alright because he built depth (he didn’t), and he had a draft strategy (leaving the team with no real MLB ready starters in the minors). Suddenly, the Mets went from a team so needed a couple of tweaks to be a true World Series contender to a team who may now just be the fourth best in the division.
If the Mets fall short this year, make no mistake, it’s all on Van Wagenen and his complete and utter short-sightedness on how he has handled the Mets pitching depth.
Rick Porcello and Dereck Rodriguez had a pitcher’s duel, and for a moment it looked like Robinson Cano‘s first inning RBI single scoring Michael Conforto was going to be all the runs the Mets would score.
For a while that was enough, at least until Dellin Betances allowed a two run homer to Mike Yastrzemski in the eighth. However, the Mets would not lose as Pete Alonso homered off Reyes Moronta with two outs in the ninth.
The Giants had two on with one out in the 12th, but Robert Gsellman would get out of the jam. He’d then become the winning pitcher when Alonso hit a two run homer off Shaun Anderson in the 13th.
That lead grew to 5-2 when on the very next pitch Conforto would homer. That would be the final score with Edwin Diaz recording the save.
Pete Alonso hit a first inning opposite field two run homer off Jon Lester, but Rick Porcello was unable to hold onto that lead.
The big blow was a Willson Contreras three run homer in the fourth which gave the Cubs a 4-2 lead. That lead wouldn’t last long as the Mets tied it in the sixth.
The Mets had the bases loaded with no outs. Yoenis Cespedes drove in the first run with a sacrifice fly. Wilson Ramos tied the score with an RBI single putting runners at the corners with one out. Dominic Smith hit what could’ve been a go-ahead sacrifice fly, but the Cubs nailed Alonso at the plate.
Jeurys Familia wound up taking the loss with his allowing a three run homer to Jason Heyward in the seventh.
The Mets came close with Michael Conforto hitting a two run homer in the ninth off Craig Kimbrel. The Mets couldn’t push another run across, and they would lose 7-6.
The Cardinals put up two first inning runs on a Paul Goldschmidt homer against Rick Porcello. That’s all Porcello and the Mets bullpen would allow on the day.
The Mets dented that Cardinals lead with Porcello helping his own cause hitting a fourth inning sacrifice fly to score Wilson Ramos.
The Mets would take a 4-2 lead with a three run sixth. The first two runs came off a Brandon Nimmo two run homer. Later in the inning, after J.D. Davis failed to deliver in an RBI opportunity, Jeff McNeil hit an RBI single scoring Amed Rosario.
Porcello picked up the win, and Miles Mikolas suffered the loss. After a scoreless ninth, Edwin Diaz earned a save.
The Mets we’re leading 2-0 with Robinson Cano and Pete Alonso homering, but they couldn’t hold the lead after Rick Porcello allowed four runs in the fourth.
The Mets got a run back in the fifth when Alonso broke for third on a Patrick Corbin wild pitch with him scoring as Kurt Suzuki threw the ball into left.
When Sean Dolittle came on for the save in the ninth, he had the same issues against the Mets he usually does. Jake Marisnick tied the game on a sacrifice fly, and Alonso hit the go-ahead RBI single.
Seth Lugo earned the win, and Edwin Diaz picked up the save in the Mets come from behind 5-4 win.
With Robinson Cano homering and Rick Porcello dealing, the Mets were tied 1-1 with the Dodgers heading into the seventh.
Amed Rosario broke the tie with an RBI single. The Mets couldn’t build off that 2-1 lead after J.D. Davis failed to deliver in the RBI situation.
Dominic Smith would in the eighth hitting a three run homer. That put the Mets ahead 5-1, and that would be the final score with Robert Gsellman picking up the win in relief.
This was not the Mets day. It was 6-0 before the Mets scored a run, and the Braves scored in five of eight innings in their 13-2 drubbing of the Mets.
Rick Porcello took the loss after allowing six runs over 3.2 innings. Michael Conforto knocked in the Mets only two runs with a sixth inning two run homer.