Tuesday, June 21, 2005
It was the best of times, it was the blurst of times
The Mets have sent Kazuo Matsui to the disabled list and Mike DeJean to the unemployment line only to replace them with Dae-Sung Koo and Gerald Williams. Dumping DeJean is a no brainer, as he's been absolutely horrid this year and his terrible performance has been pretty well in line with his career numbers. Aside from 21 1/3 excellent innings with the Mets in 2004, he hasn't been any good since 2002. So there's no real reason to chalk his 25 2/3 innings of 6.31 ERA this year up as a fluke. He's allowed 36 hits, including three home runs. He's struck out seventeen batters. And he's walked eighteen. And while that last part could be interpreted as him angling for a spot in the starting rotation, it's more likely that he just stinks.
And while I remain one of the crazy few who think that Matsui's performance this year (.234 /.284/.321) isn't representative of his true ability level, a couple of weeks off might do him and the team some good. Or at least it could if he wasn't joining Miguel Cairo and Jeff Keppinger on the DL. The Mets are left with Chris Woodward and Marlon Anderson to play second base. And while those guys have OBPs of .360 and .361, respectively, thus far this season, neither has shown much power and it's hard to believe either will keep his batting average above .300 playing every day.
As for the returning Mets, I'm not ready to throw Koo under the bus quite yet. True, he hasn't been much good this year--5.65 ERA, 15 K, 10 BB in 14 1/3 innings--but unlike DeJean, this is his only major league experience and I'm not sure fourteen innings are quite enough to draw a conclusion about him. Sure, he wasn't exactly dominant in his last two seasons in Japan either, but I don't think he's as obviously a lost cause as DeJean.
And then there's Williams. What is there to say? Last year he hit .233/.277/.419 when Art Howe saw fit to give him 129 at bats. And now he's thirty-eight years old. Gerald Williams shouldn't be within two time zones of the Mets' major league roster and the fact that Omar Minaya thinks otherwise does a pretty good job of negating any good will he deserves as a result of the DeJean move. ¶ joe | 6:29 PM |
The Mets have sent Kazuo Matsui to the disabled list and Mike DeJean to the unemployment line only to replace them with Dae-Sung Koo and Gerald Williams. Dumping DeJean is a no brainer, as he's been absolutely horrid this year and his terrible performance has been pretty well in line with his career numbers. Aside from 21 1/3 excellent innings with the Mets in 2004, he hasn't been any good since 2002. So there's no real reason to chalk his 25 2/3 innings of 6.31 ERA this year up as a fluke. He's allowed 36 hits, including three home runs. He's struck out seventeen batters. And he's walked eighteen. And while that last part could be interpreted as him angling for a spot in the starting rotation, it's more likely that he just stinks.
And while I remain one of the crazy few who think that Matsui's performance this year (.234 /.284/.321) isn't representative of his true ability level, a couple of weeks off might do him and the team some good. Or at least it could if he wasn't joining Miguel Cairo and Jeff Keppinger on the DL. The Mets are left with Chris Woodward and Marlon Anderson to play second base. And while those guys have OBPs of .360 and .361, respectively, thus far this season, neither has shown much power and it's hard to believe either will keep his batting average above .300 playing every day.
As for the returning Mets, I'm not ready to throw Koo under the bus quite yet. True, he hasn't been much good this year--5.65 ERA, 15 K, 10 BB in 14 1/3 innings--but unlike DeJean, this is his only major league experience and I'm not sure fourteen innings are quite enough to draw a conclusion about him. Sure, he wasn't exactly dominant in his last two seasons in Japan either, but I don't think he's as obviously a lost cause as DeJean.
And then there's Williams. What is there to say? Last year he hit .233/.277/.419 when Art Howe saw fit to give him 129 at bats. And now he's thirty-eight years old. Gerald Williams shouldn't be within two time zones of the Mets' major league roster and the fact that Omar Minaya thinks otherwise does a pretty good job of negating any good will he deserves as a result of the DeJean move. ¶ joe | 6:29 PM |
