Tuesday, March 16, 2004
2004 New York Mets Preview, Part Two: The Arms
The Mets spent the offseason talking about building a team better suited to their ballpark and improving a pitching staff that allowed 4.7 runs per game (10th in the National League) by putting guys behind them more capable of catching the ball. While they undoubtedly succeeded in acquiring some talented defenders, the more direct approach might have been to acquire some better pitchers. But the combination of enormous contracts and relative recent effectiveness left the team with only one open spot in the starting rotation. They decided to call that spot the fifth spot and find a bunch of guys who'd work cheap to compete for it while the first four spots in the rotation remained filled by four guys most likely to pitch like number three starters. While this strategy won't do much for the team's chances this year, it will soon leave some spots in the rotation to be filled by the various promising youngsters currently making their way through the minor league system.
The only significant change to the team's pitching staff likely to pay immediate dividends is the hiring of Rick Peterson as pitching guru/coach. His track record of keeping young pitchers healthy while they develop into star major leaguers is the most exciting part about his arrival. But it also seems like the Mets' veteran pitchers are giving him a chance, which might help the team's aging core of starters cheat their decline phase for another year. Still, Shea Stadium is likely to be devoid of anything resembling a true ace until the one they call Kazmir doth descend from up on high to lead the wandering Metropolitans out of the darkness and into the promised land. For now the Mets will have to settle for a group mostly composed of guys fairly described as old and getting older. Finding reasons to be optimistic about this pitching staff means coming up with creative excuses for why the top three guys will stave off the aging process for another year. So let's get on with that.
#1: Tom Glavine
Yeah, I don't understand it either. In spite of pretty clearly pitching like the fourth most valuable starter on the team last year, Tom Glavine was named the opening day starter, against the Braves of all teams. Glavine started off last year by getting rocked by the Cubs on opening day and never really recovered. His ERA jumped more than a run and a half from 2002 as his strikeout rate dropped and his hit rate went up. And while these changes can easily be attributed to the inevitable decline of a thirty-seven year old control pitcher, Glavine's numbers also reveal some rather curious splits. His status as his former team's bitch has been pretty well documented, as he posted an ERA over ten in twenty innings over the course of four starts against Atlanta. And while those numbers aren't terribly hard to explain given the small sample size and the fact that the Braves had the best offense in the league, Glavine's performance at home was more inexplicable.
Glavine pitched almost identical numbers of innings at home and on the road in 2003 (91 1/3 at home, 92 on the road) and despite the fact that "home" was pitcher-friendly Shea Stadium, his home/road splits read like his jersey had "Colorado" written across the front. He gave up 23 more hits, one more home run and ten more walks at home, while striking out eight fewer batters, giving him an ERA of 5.22 at home and 3.82 on the road. Glavine himself put the blame for this discrepancy on the robotic shoulders of the QuesTec system, while pretty much everyone else thought it was about time the Tom Glavine Personal Strike Zone was abolished. Whether or not the machine actually turned strikes into balls for Glavine at home is questionable, but it seems pretty clear that he at least thought that was the case, which may very well have affected the way he pitched after a while. The idea that QuesTec got inside his head doesn't really do much to explain away his pathetic opening day start, but he did come back in his next home start to get a win against the Expos with a fine five strikeout, zero walk, one run performance over five and two-thirds innings. It wasn't until near the end of April that his performance at Shea started rolling back downhill.
The keys to Glavine bouncing back in 2004 will be to slay his QuesTec demons and learn to pitch against his former team without completely falling apart. Improving his performance against the Braves shouldn't be so hard now that they've lost some of their most potent offensive weapons of a year ago in guys like Javy Lopez and Gary Sheffield. Whether he can learn to pitch at Shea Stadium remains a question mark, but given the history of the park, I find it hard to believe that we'll see a repeat of his backwards split from 2003. I don't see Glavine ever regaining the ace-like form the Mets are paying him for, but I also don't think he's done quite yet, and I expect him to pitch like a solid middle of the rotation starter this year.
#2: Steve Trachsel
Art Howe announced that Trachsel would get the season's second start to split up the lefties at the top of the rotation and inadvertently stumbled into rewarding the team's most consistent and valuable pitcher of a year ago. Trachsel won 16 games with a 3.78 ERA as both his strikeout rate and walk rate were down from the year before. He is thirty-three years old, so we can't expect much improvement out of him from here on out, but he's still got several years on the true old timers of this rotation and has been very consistent over the last three years since a trip to the minors got him straightened out. He should provide more or less the same production this year as he has in the last few and perhaps the improved defense will even make him look superficially a little better. Last year was the first year since he started three games in 1993 that his ground ball to fly ball ratio was under one (0.85). If that continues, Mike Cameron could be his new best friend.
Whether he continues to be effective or not, though, this is probably the last year we'll see Steve Trachsel in a Mets uniform. His contract is up after this season and with Glavine and Leiter set to be well compensated to pitch into 2005, the team is going to have to find some way to open up some spots in this rotation for the young talent coming up through the organization. Pitchers like Grant Roberts and Aaron Heilman, or even the Matt Petersons and Bob Keppels of the system, should be ready to step into the major league rotation come 2005 and Trachsel seems to be the one who'll have to get out of their way. If the Mets aren't in it around the trading deadline, I expect him to find his way to a team that fancies itself a contender.
#3: Al Leiter
Leiter started out last year talking about pitching more like Tom Glavine, working both sides of the plate and such. This strategy left him with a 5.57 ERA at the end of June, but an 8-5 record thanks to some luck and some support. He went on the DL at the beginning of July with an inflamed right knee and came back pitching like himself. He only posted a record of 7-4 in the last three months of the season, but his ERA over that period dropped all the way down to 2.15. His strikeout rate went up a little bit form 6.59 per nine innings to 7.14, his walk rate went from the absolutely frightening 5.85 per nine to the only moderately scary 3.33 and his home run rate went from 1.02 per nine in the first half to 0.44 in the second as he didn't give up a single home run in eight starts in the months of July and August.
His tremendous rebound notwithstanding, Leiter is still thirty-eight years old, his walk rate was still up and his strikeout rate down from the previous year. He did a great job adjusting last year to post that excellent second half and his apparent willingness to work with Rick Peterson should only help him make sure those gains stick, but he still needs to cut down on the walks to really be the pitcher the Mets need him to be and that may be a tall order. I don't think Leiter's a candidate for the kind of rapid thirty-eighth year decline that his first half of 2003 seemed to foreshadow, but there isn't much chance of him putting up anything like the 2.47 ERA he posted in 1998, either. He should be another solid but not dominating starting pitcher in this rotation.
#4: Jae Weong Seo
Seo was almost the anti-Leiter last year, as he started off hot and after cementing himself in the rotation started to make a case for himself as a Rookie Of The Year candidate. He put up a 3.09 ERA in the first three months of the season thanks to good control (1.74 walks per nine innings) and an ability to keep the ball in the park (0.48 home runs per nine). In the second half of the season he increased his strikeout rate from 4.73 to 5.80, but his walk and home run rates went with it and he wound up with ERAs of 6.61 and 5.34 in July and August, respectively. He bounced back somewhat in September, posting his best ERA for any month, 1.71, which looks good even when you notice that he gave up almost as many unearned runs, five, as he did earned runs, six.
At twenty-seven, there's probably not a whole lot more to Seo than what we saw last year. If he could put together the strikeout rates he posted in July (6.61) and September (6.25) with the walk rates he posted in the first half (1.74) and August (1.97) and the home run rates he posted in the first half (0.48) and September (0.85), he could have himself one heck of a season. That's probably asking too much, but Seo should continue to be a cheap but effective middle of the rotation guy for the Mets while the old guys are phased out in favor of the younger, more promising arms still on their way up.
#5: Grant Roberts or Aaron Heilman or Scott Erickson or Tyler Yates
In 2003, six pitchers other than Glavine, Trachsel, Leiter and Seo started a game for the New York Mets, and David Cone's 6.50 ERA was the lowest posted by any of them. So while the contenders for the open spot in the rotation don't look too intimidating, the Mets have a real opportunity to improve their pitching staff by just getting something around league average performance from one of these guys. It's too early to say for sure which one of them will wind up in the fifth spot, as they all seem to be holding their own in spring training thus far. But it seems pretty likely that all of these guys will be pitching for the Mets in the near or not so near future.
Roberts is out of options, so even if he fails to win a spot in the rotation, he'll be in the major league bullpen. For the third year in a row, Roberts gave the Mets part of a pretty good year out of the bullpen in 2003, posting a 3.79 ERA in nineteen innings over the course of eighteen appearances after recovering from a bout of tendonitis in his pitching shoulder. Roberts is twenty-six years old so now seems like it should be the time for him to fulfill his promise as a starter. He should be a useful member of the pitching staff whether he starts out in the rotation or not.
Heilman, the former 2001 first round pick out of Notre Dame, never quite got over the hump at AAA Norfolk in 2003. But he got called up at midseason anyway and got pounded, giving up 13 home runs and 41 walks in 65 1/3 innings while striking out 51, for an ERA of 6.75. Heilman seems to really be taking to Rick Peterson's instruction and given his minor league track record, he should be expected to bounce back and be a solid major league pitcher before too long. He may not start the season in the majors, but he should be back up to stay before the season's over, particularly if one of the veterans opens up a spot in the rotation by getting injured or traded. The twenty-five year old should become another cheap, solid middle of the rotation starter in the coming years.
Erickson may get the most chances to impress out of this group, because if he starts the season in the rotation and pitches well, he'll make tempting trade bait come July. There's not much in his recent past to suggest that he'll be a very effective starter at the major league level, but so far his spring training seems to be going well. I'd say he's more likely to help out the team by fetching something useful in a trade than by pitching well into September.
The twenty-six year old Yates went from reliever to starter last year and posted ERAs around four at three different minor league levels. He's the least likely of these four, in my opinion, to earn the fifth spot coming out of spring training, and the least likely to excel in it were he to earn it.
Bullpen: Braden Looper, David Weathers, Mike Stanton, John Franco, Dan Wheeler and friends
As I said when he was signed, new closer Braden Looper isn't likely to be a better pitcher than the guy he's replacing, or even the best pitcher in this bullpen. But it's a good idea for the Mets to label everyone in the bullpen with a specific role, thus decreasing the number of important decisions Art Howe has to make over the course of a game. Let Looper pitch when the Mets have a three run lead in the ninth, let Weathers pitch in more high-leverage situations and a let Franco cheer them on from a comfortable seat.
I think Stanton's got a decent shot of bouncing back to usefulness, as a lot of his decline last year can be attributed to a slight increase in his walk rate and a huge increase in his home run rate which was really just the result of him giving up two more home runs than he had in each of the previous two years while pitching a lot fewer innings. If he's ineffective again this year, he probably won't pitch too many innings and all he'll be is a drain on the Mets' payroll. If he can cut down on the home runs, he'll be a nice, if seriously overpaid, bonus.
Wheeler had a pretty solid season in his first year with the Mets, posting a 3.71 ERA in 51 innings, striking out 35 and walking 17. Hopefully he'll get to start the season in New York and work some important innings as the season progresses. Cheap, effective guys like Wheeler are the reason you don't give Mike Stanton nine million dollars over three years.
Scott Strickland will be back walking too many batters at some point this season, and guys like Orber Moreno and Royce Ring should do a decent job rounding out the bullpen. This group has a couple of veterans in Franco and Stanton who aren't going anywhere even if they pitch terribly and a closer who's unlikely to be of much value unless he can rack up enough saves to fetch something more useful in a trade. Otherwise, the 'pen features several reasonably priced solid pitchers who should do a good job for the team this year.
The pitching staff, like the Mets' offense, is probably at least a year away from being anything special. The guys at the top of the rotation are even further on the wrong side of thirty than Cliff Floyd, Mike Cameron and Mike Piazza and while none of them have troubling histories of serious injury, neither Tom Glavine nor Al Leiter is likely to pitch like the ace he's being paid to be. The youth movement on this side of the ball will really get going in earnest this year, but the guys who'll be showing up in the big show before the end of this year are probably more innings-eater than savior. Still, there's a talented group of kids on its way up through the organization, and with Rick Peterson on board, the team has a good chance of being able to turn that young talent into the next playoff-caliber pitching staff at Shea.
The top young hitting prospects in the system are beginning to make their way toward and into the big show and the pitchers aren't too far behind. Jason Phillips, Jose Reyes and Jae Weong Seo should be joined by Aaron Heilman and Grant Roberts as important parts of the major league roster this year. The next wave of hitters, guys like David Wright, Victor Diaz and Justin Huber, should be accompanied by starting pitchers like Scott Kazmir and Matt Peterson before too long, putting an exciting, competitive young team on the field at Shea Stadium in the years to come. And if any Mets fans are uncomfortable pinning all the hopes on the shoulders of a twenty year old lefty who hasn't even pitched 150 professional innings, just think of it as pinning all your hopes on Rick Peterson. It'll make you feel better.
As for the here and now, the National League East is the Phillies' to lose, and the Mets as they're currently constituted don't have a serious shot at challenging them. The Marlins should come back down to earth a bit and the Braves' run at the top really should be over, dammit. And if the Mets can't beat the Expos this year, then something has gone seriously wrong. So, for my final prediction, I will pick the Mets to go 82-80 and finish in third place in the NL East. ¶ joe | 6:20 PM |
The Mets spent the offseason talking about building a team better suited to their ballpark and improving a pitching staff that allowed 4.7 runs per game (10th in the National League) by putting guys behind them more capable of catching the ball. While they undoubtedly succeeded in acquiring some talented defenders, the more direct approach might have been to acquire some better pitchers. But the combination of enormous contracts and relative recent effectiveness left the team with only one open spot in the starting rotation. They decided to call that spot the fifth spot and find a bunch of guys who'd work cheap to compete for it while the first four spots in the rotation remained filled by four guys most likely to pitch like number three starters. While this strategy won't do much for the team's chances this year, it will soon leave some spots in the rotation to be filled by the various promising youngsters currently making their way through the minor league system.
The only significant change to the team's pitching staff likely to pay immediate dividends is the hiring of Rick Peterson as pitching guru/coach. His track record of keeping young pitchers healthy while they develop into star major leaguers is the most exciting part about his arrival. But it also seems like the Mets' veteran pitchers are giving him a chance, which might help the team's aging core of starters cheat their decline phase for another year. Still, Shea Stadium is likely to be devoid of anything resembling a true ace until the one they call Kazmir doth descend from up on high to lead the wandering Metropolitans out of the darkness and into the promised land. For now the Mets will have to settle for a group mostly composed of guys fairly described as old and getting older. Finding reasons to be optimistic about this pitching staff means coming up with creative excuses for why the top three guys will stave off the aging process for another year. So let's get on with that.
#1: Tom Glavine
Yeah, I don't understand it either. In spite of pretty clearly pitching like the fourth most valuable starter on the team last year, Tom Glavine was named the opening day starter, against the Braves of all teams. Glavine started off last year by getting rocked by the Cubs on opening day and never really recovered. His ERA jumped more than a run and a half from 2002 as his strikeout rate dropped and his hit rate went up. And while these changes can easily be attributed to the inevitable decline of a thirty-seven year old control pitcher, Glavine's numbers also reveal some rather curious splits. His status as his former team's bitch has been pretty well documented, as he posted an ERA over ten in twenty innings over the course of four starts against Atlanta. And while those numbers aren't terribly hard to explain given the small sample size and the fact that the Braves had the best offense in the league, Glavine's performance at home was more inexplicable.
Glavine pitched almost identical numbers of innings at home and on the road in 2003 (91 1/3 at home, 92 on the road) and despite the fact that "home" was pitcher-friendly Shea Stadium, his home/road splits read like his jersey had "Colorado" written across the front. He gave up 23 more hits, one more home run and ten more walks at home, while striking out eight fewer batters, giving him an ERA of 5.22 at home and 3.82 on the road. Glavine himself put the blame for this discrepancy on the robotic shoulders of the QuesTec system, while pretty much everyone else thought it was about time the Tom Glavine Personal Strike Zone was abolished. Whether or not the machine actually turned strikes into balls for Glavine at home is questionable, but it seems pretty clear that he at least thought that was the case, which may very well have affected the way he pitched after a while. The idea that QuesTec got inside his head doesn't really do much to explain away his pathetic opening day start, but he did come back in his next home start to get a win against the Expos with a fine five strikeout, zero walk, one run performance over five and two-thirds innings. It wasn't until near the end of April that his performance at Shea started rolling back downhill.
The keys to Glavine bouncing back in 2004 will be to slay his QuesTec demons and learn to pitch against his former team without completely falling apart. Improving his performance against the Braves shouldn't be so hard now that they've lost some of their most potent offensive weapons of a year ago in guys like Javy Lopez and Gary Sheffield. Whether he can learn to pitch at Shea Stadium remains a question mark, but given the history of the park, I find it hard to believe that we'll see a repeat of his backwards split from 2003. I don't see Glavine ever regaining the ace-like form the Mets are paying him for, but I also don't think he's done quite yet, and I expect him to pitch like a solid middle of the rotation starter this year.
#2: Steve Trachsel
Art Howe announced that Trachsel would get the season's second start to split up the lefties at the top of the rotation and inadvertently stumbled into rewarding the team's most consistent and valuable pitcher of a year ago. Trachsel won 16 games with a 3.78 ERA as both his strikeout rate and walk rate were down from the year before. He is thirty-three years old, so we can't expect much improvement out of him from here on out, but he's still got several years on the true old timers of this rotation and has been very consistent over the last three years since a trip to the minors got him straightened out. He should provide more or less the same production this year as he has in the last few and perhaps the improved defense will even make him look superficially a little better. Last year was the first year since he started three games in 1993 that his ground ball to fly ball ratio was under one (0.85). If that continues, Mike Cameron could be his new best friend.
Whether he continues to be effective or not, though, this is probably the last year we'll see Steve Trachsel in a Mets uniform. His contract is up after this season and with Glavine and Leiter set to be well compensated to pitch into 2005, the team is going to have to find some way to open up some spots in this rotation for the young talent coming up through the organization. Pitchers like Grant Roberts and Aaron Heilman, or even the Matt Petersons and Bob Keppels of the system, should be ready to step into the major league rotation come 2005 and Trachsel seems to be the one who'll have to get out of their way. If the Mets aren't in it around the trading deadline, I expect him to find his way to a team that fancies itself a contender.
#3: Al Leiter
Leiter started out last year talking about pitching more like Tom Glavine, working both sides of the plate and such. This strategy left him with a 5.57 ERA at the end of June, but an 8-5 record thanks to some luck and some support. He went on the DL at the beginning of July with an inflamed right knee and came back pitching like himself. He only posted a record of 7-4 in the last three months of the season, but his ERA over that period dropped all the way down to 2.15. His strikeout rate went up a little bit form 6.59 per nine innings to 7.14, his walk rate went from the absolutely frightening 5.85 per nine to the only moderately scary 3.33 and his home run rate went from 1.02 per nine in the first half to 0.44 in the second as he didn't give up a single home run in eight starts in the months of July and August.
His tremendous rebound notwithstanding, Leiter is still thirty-eight years old, his walk rate was still up and his strikeout rate down from the previous year. He did a great job adjusting last year to post that excellent second half and his apparent willingness to work with Rick Peterson should only help him make sure those gains stick, but he still needs to cut down on the walks to really be the pitcher the Mets need him to be and that may be a tall order. I don't think Leiter's a candidate for the kind of rapid thirty-eighth year decline that his first half of 2003 seemed to foreshadow, but there isn't much chance of him putting up anything like the 2.47 ERA he posted in 1998, either. He should be another solid but not dominating starting pitcher in this rotation.
#4: Jae Weong Seo
Seo was almost the anti-Leiter last year, as he started off hot and after cementing himself in the rotation started to make a case for himself as a Rookie Of The Year candidate. He put up a 3.09 ERA in the first three months of the season thanks to good control (1.74 walks per nine innings) and an ability to keep the ball in the park (0.48 home runs per nine). In the second half of the season he increased his strikeout rate from 4.73 to 5.80, but his walk and home run rates went with it and he wound up with ERAs of 6.61 and 5.34 in July and August, respectively. He bounced back somewhat in September, posting his best ERA for any month, 1.71, which looks good even when you notice that he gave up almost as many unearned runs, five, as he did earned runs, six.
At twenty-seven, there's probably not a whole lot more to Seo than what we saw last year. If he could put together the strikeout rates he posted in July (6.61) and September (6.25) with the walk rates he posted in the first half (1.74) and August (1.97) and the home run rates he posted in the first half (0.48) and September (0.85), he could have himself one heck of a season. That's probably asking too much, but Seo should continue to be a cheap but effective middle of the rotation guy for the Mets while the old guys are phased out in favor of the younger, more promising arms still on their way up.
#5: Grant Roberts or Aaron Heilman or Scott Erickson or Tyler Yates
In 2003, six pitchers other than Glavine, Trachsel, Leiter and Seo started a game for the New York Mets, and David Cone's 6.50 ERA was the lowest posted by any of them. So while the contenders for the open spot in the rotation don't look too intimidating, the Mets have a real opportunity to improve their pitching staff by just getting something around league average performance from one of these guys. It's too early to say for sure which one of them will wind up in the fifth spot, as they all seem to be holding their own in spring training thus far. But it seems pretty likely that all of these guys will be pitching for the Mets in the near or not so near future.
Roberts is out of options, so even if he fails to win a spot in the rotation, he'll be in the major league bullpen. For the third year in a row, Roberts gave the Mets part of a pretty good year out of the bullpen in 2003, posting a 3.79 ERA in nineteen innings over the course of eighteen appearances after recovering from a bout of tendonitis in his pitching shoulder. Roberts is twenty-six years old so now seems like it should be the time for him to fulfill his promise as a starter. He should be a useful member of the pitching staff whether he starts out in the rotation or not.
Heilman, the former 2001 first round pick out of Notre Dame, never quite got over the hump at AAA Norfolk in 2003. But he got called up at midseason anyway and got pounded, giving up 13 home runs and 41 walks in 65 1/3 innings while striking out 51, for an ERA of 6.75. Heilman seems to really be taking to Rick Peterson's instruction and given his minor league track record, he should be expected to bounce back and be a solid major league pitcher before too long. He may not start the season in the majors, but he should be back up to stay before the season's over, particularly if one of the veterans opens up a spot in the rotation by getting injured or traded. The twenty-five year old should become another cheap, solid middle of the rotation starter in the coming years.
Erickson may get the most chances to impress out of this group, because if he starts the season in the rotation and pitches well, he'll make tempting trade bait come July. There's not much in his recent past to suggest that he'll be a very effective starter at the major league level, but so far his spring training seems to be going well. I'd say he's more likely to help out the team by fetching something useful in a trade than by pitching well into September.
The twenty-six year old Yates went from reliever to starter last year and posted ERAs around four at three different minor league levels. He's the least likely of these four, in my opinion, to earn the fifth spot coming out of spring training, and the least likely to excel in it were he to earn it.
Bullpen: Braden Looper, David Weathers, Mike Stanton, John Franco, Dan Wheeler and friends
As I said when he was signed, new closer Braden Looper isn't likely to be a better pitcher than the guy he's replacing, or even the best pitcher in this bullpen. But it's a good idea for the Mets to label everyone in the bullpen with a specific role, thus decreasing the number of important decisions Art Howe has to make over the course of a game. Let Looper pitch when the Mets have a three run lead in the ninth, let Weathers pitch in more high-leverage situations and a let Franco cheer them on from a comfortable seat.
I think Stanton's got a decent shot of bouncing back to usefulness, as a lot of his decline last year can be attributed to a slight increase in his walk rate and a huge increase in his home run rate which was really just the result of him giving up two more home runs than he had in each of the previous two years while pitching a lot fewer innings. If he's ineffective again this year, he probably won't pitch too many innings and all he'll be is a drain on the Mets' payroll. If he can cut down on the home runs, he'll be a nice, if seriously overpaid, bonus.
Wheeler had a pretty solid season in his first year with the Mets, posting a 3.71 ERA in 51 innings, striking out 35 and walking 17. Hopefully he'll get to start the season in New York and work some important innings as the season progresses. Cheap, effective guys like Wheeler are the reason you don't give Mike Stanton nine million dollars over three years.
Scott Strickland will be back walking too many batters at some point this season, and guys like Orber Moreno and Royce Ring should do a decent job rounding out the bullpen. This group has a couple of veterans in Franco and Stanton who aren't going anywhere even if they pitch terribly and a closer who's unlikely to be of much value unless he can rack up enough saves to fetch something more useful in a trade. Otherwise, the 'pen features several reasonably priced solid pitchers who should do a good job for the team this year.
The pitching staff, like the Mets' offense, is probably at least a year away from being anything special. The guys at the top of the rotation are even further on the wrong side of thirty than Cliff Floyd, Mike Cameron and Mike Piazza and while none of them have troubling histories of serious injury, neither Tom Glavine nor Al Leiter is likely to pitch like the ace he's being paid to be. The youth movement on this side of the ball will really get going in earnest this year, but the guys who'll be showing up in the big show before the end of this year are probably more innings-eater than savior. Still, there's a talented group of kids on its way up through the organization, and with Rick Peterson on board, the team has a good chance of being able to turn that young talent into the next playoff-caliber pitching staff at Shea.
The top young hitting prospects in the system are beginning to make their way toward and into the big show and the pitchers aren't too far behind. Jason Phillips, Jose Reyes and Jae Weong Seo should be joined by Aaron Heilman and Grant Roberts as important parts of the major league roster this year. The next wave of hitters, guys like David Wright, Victor Diaz and Justin Huber, should be accompanied by starting pitchers like Scott Kazmir and Matt Peterson before too long, putting an exciting, competitive young team on the field at Shea Stadium in the years to come. And if any Mets fans are uncomfortable pinning all the hopes on the shoulders of a twenty year old lefty who hasn't even pitched 150 professional innings, just think of it as pinning all your hopes on Rick Peterson. It'll make you feel better.
As for the here and now, the National League East is the Phillies' to lose, and the Mets as they're currently constituted don't have a serious shot at challenging them. The Marlins should come back down to earth a bit and the Braves' run at the top really should be over, dammit. And if the Mets can't beat the Expos this year, then something has gone seriously wrong. So, for my final prediction, I will pick the Mets to go 82-80 and finish in third place in the NL East. ¶ joe | 6:20 PM |
