All You Need to Know: No Reason Niese Can't Finish His Game
The Recap: Phillies 7, Mets 5
It continues to baffle us all how Major League managers continue to manage towards the weakest part of their teams by definition: the bullpen. The Mets had total control of this game with an effective Jon Niese on the mound until Jerry went "by the manual" and pulled his strong starter for no reason other than he was "supposed" to hand the game over to his bullpen. Once again, we see the ridiculous and totally irrelevant "pitch count" cost a team a victory in what most Mets fans would consider a "big game" against a hated divisional rival.
THE GOOD: To be totally honest, I expected a 1-2-3 ninth inning for the Mets after their disastrous 8th frame when the Phillies put up a 6-spot. That's what they always seem to do when the opposition steps all over them and leaves them for dead like an animal carcass on the highway. But they actually made it a game with a 3-run comeback that (of course) fell short.
Not surprisingly, slumping David Wright struck out to start the ninth as expected (please, do not put ANY pressure on this guy or bad things will happen), but career minor league home run leader Mike Hessman totally blasted a 3-run 400-footer to at least make the impending game-ending strikeout of Jose Feliciano at the hands of Brad Lidge interesting. But as we mentioned in an earlier post, excitement is for losers and there's no such thing as a moral victory or a loveable loser anymore in the days of the high-priced ballplayer. Fans expect results!
And just to recap the last Braves series, I would say the good part is that the team actually overachieved by at least winning one game to avoid being swept. Boy it feels good to beat the Braves! How pathetic is that team where they can't even humiliate this Mets team 3 times?
THE BAD: Let's run through this basic fallacy one more time so Jerry Manuel and every other Tony LaRussa wannabe major league manager finally gets it. The bullpen is the weakest part of ANY major league baseball team, by definition. Here's the simple reason why: if you're a bullpen pitcher, you're not good enough to start, and you're not good enough to close. Period. On EVERY TEAM! Therefore, your WORST pitchers on your team (and the weakest part of your team for that matter) are in your bullpen. Why manage toward that end?
Can you imagine in football, having your quarterback go the entire game, playing well, leading on the scoreboard, then all of a sudden the coach decides, "eh, we got a good start out of Elway... let's bring in Brooks Bollinger to finish the last 3 minutes"?!?!
"You know... Kobe's been playing great today. He's done enough... let's sit him for the final 2 minutes and maybe the bench can win the game for us,"
"Tiger, great effort. You did all you can. But we're going to put Barkley in to play your last 3 holes of the tournament."
Can you see how ridiculous this is? Yet it is EXACTLY what has become the norm for baseball. Doesn't anyone realize this? Now pay strict attention for the next point because it's really going to throw you for a loop:
The pitch count stat is completely and totally I-R-R-E-L-E-V-A-N-T. It is. It's made up. Completely made up. We've said this over and over again and you better believe it because quite frankly, it's actually the CAUSE of more injuries to pitchers than not (and certainly is the prime reason why teams that have strong solid pitchers pitching great tend to lose ballgames in the late innings - like last night's Met game for instance.)
Interesting how the human body can't throw more than 100 pitches, huh? 100 pitches. How convenient of a round number is that? Not 80, or 90, or 115, or whatever, but 100 is the limit to "save a pitchers" arm. That should give you the first clue that's it's made up from nothing. Yet you see examples all over baseball of how babying a pitcher endangers them far more often (as there are more pitchers on the disabled list or hurt now than at any point in the history of the game!).
See what babying a pitcher does to Stephan Strassberg? He's been pitch-counted his entire professional career... and he's hurt. How's the pitch count doing with John Maine... or Kerry Wood... or Ben Sheets... or Brandon Webb... or Josh Beckett... or (well, you get the point - I can go on and on).
The simple fact is this: if a pitcher is predisposed to get hurt, he'll get hurt - whether he throws 70 pitches or 170 pitches. Everyone points to Billy Martin's A's team 30 years ago as the poster staff for pitchers who supposedly all got burned out by throwing excessive innings. No one looks at the countless other staffs before and after where pitchers wouldn't LET their managers take them out of a game for fear of being labeled "soft".
Take out Bob Gibson, Steve Carlton, Tom Seaver, Jack Morris, et al because of a ridiculous pitch-count? Please! We need to stop the theory of the bullpen "owning" the late innings of a ballgame. When did this crazy "starter goes 6, automatically go to your 7th inning guy, who gives way to the 8th inning set-up guy, for the ninth inning closer" start? - and why do managers buy into it when it clearly does not work?!?! The bullpen is the worst part of your team! Why trust them to decide a game?
Why would you trust putting someone from the bullpen (who may not "have-it" that day - you don't know when you put him into a game) when you KNOW your starter's doing the job and still going strong. A bad starting pitcher is still better than your best middle reliever.
Taking last night's game as an example, here's all you need to know: Jon Niese was pitching well and if the Mets kept him in the game to finish it, they would have won. Simple. Case closed. A bad, tired, wild, awkward, 100-pitch throwing, hungover, and migrained debilitated Jon Niese is still better than a fresh Bobby Parnell. That's just the way it is.
The bad news is that until major league managers start "getting it" regarding this pitch count, you'll see teams with strong starters continue to lose games they had in the bag in the late innings. Yesterday's game should easily have been a victory for the Mets if logical heads prevailed.
THE UGLY: Did you hear Omar Minaya's job is safe for all of 2011? How many times did you cost your company over $36 million in bad contracts and kept your job? How many times did you sit behind your desk and do nothing (as Omar did while every other GM was trying to benefit their teams at the trading deadline) and kept your job? How many times did you embarrass your company with ridiculous press conferences and publicly throw people under the bus and kept your job?
Now all that may be fine and dandy if you're the Wilponzi's and not care about who's running the show for you, but nothing can be uglier than the Knick's James Dolan's decision to rehire the man who ran his franchise into the ground a few short years ago (I thought this was a joke when I first heard it reported). It's really ugly when you can find owners that are more pathetic than Fred and his son Paris.
It continues to baffle us all how Major League managers continue to manage towards the weakest part of their teams by definition: the bullpen. The Mets had total control of this game with an effective Jon Niese on the mound until Jerry went "by the manual" and pulled his strong starter for no reason other than he was "supposed" to hand the game over to his bullpen. Once again, we see the ridiculous and totally irrelevant "pitch count" cost a team a victory in what most Mets fans would consider a "big game" against a hated divisional rival.
THE GOOD: To be totally honest, I expected a 1-2-3 ninth inning for the Mets after their disastrous 8th frame when the Phillies put up a 6-spot. That's what they always seem to do when the opposition steps all over them and leaves them for dead like an animal carcass on the highway. But they actually made it a game with a 3-run comeback that (of course) fell short.Not surprisingly, slumping David Wright struck out to start the ninth as expected (please, do not put ANY pressure on this guy or bad things will happen), but career minor league home run leader Mike Hessman totally blasted a 3-run 400-footer to at least make the impending game-ending strikeout of Jose Feliciano at the hands of Brad Lidge interesting. But as we mentioned in an earlier post, excitement is for losers and there's no such thing as a moral victory or a loveable loser anymore in the days of the high-priced ballplayer. Fans expect results!
And just to recap the last Braves series, I would say the good part is that the team actually overachieved by at least winning one game to avoid being swept. Boy it feels good to beat the Braves! How pathetic is that team where they can't even humiliate this Mets team 3 times?
THE BAD: Let's run through this basic fallacy one more time so Jerry Manuel and every other Tony LaRussa wannabe major league manager finally gets it. The bullpen is the weakest part of ANY major league baseball team, by definition. Here's the simple reason why: if you're a bullpen pitcher, you're not good enough to start, and you're not good enough to close. Period. On EVERY TEAM! Therefore, your WORST pitchers on your team (and the weakest part of your team for that matter) are in your bullpen. Why manage toward that end?
Can you imagine in football, having your quarterback go the entire game, playing well, leading on the scoreboard, then all of a sudden the coach decides, "eh, we got a good start out of Elway... let's bring in Brooks Bollinger to finish the last 3 minutes"?!?!
"You know... Kobe's been playing great today. He's done enough... let's sit him for the final 2 minutes and maybe the bench can win the game for us,"
"Tiger, great effort. You did all you can. But we're going to put Barkley in to play your last 3 holes of the tournament."
Can you see how ridiculous this is? Yet it is EXACTLY what has become the norm for baseball. Doesn't anyone realize this? Now pay strict attention for the next point because it's really going to throw you for a loop:
The pitch count stat is completely and totally I-R-R-E-L-E-V-A-N-T. It is. It's made up. Completely made up. We've said this over and over again and you better believe it because quite frankly, it's actually the CAUSE of more injuries to pitchers than not (and certainly is the prime reason why teams that have strong solid pitchers pitching great tend to lose ballgames in the late innings - like last night's Met game for instance.)
Interesting how the human body can't throw more than 100 pitches, huh? 100 pitches. How convenient of a round number is that? Not 80, or 90, or 115, or whatever, but 100 is the limit to "save a pitchers" arm. That should give you the first clue that's it's made up from nothing. Yet you see examples all over baseball of how babying a pitcher endangers them far more often (as there are more pitchers on the disabled list or hurt now than at any point in the history of the game!).
See what babying a pitcher does to Stephan Strassberg? He's been pitch-counted his entire professional career... and he's hurt. How's the pitch count doing with John Maine... or Kerry Wood... or Ben Sheets... or Brandon Webb... or Josh Beckett... or (well, you get the point - I can go on and on).
The simple fact is this: if a pitcher is predisposed to get hurt, he'll get hurt - whether he throws 70 pitches or 170 pitches. Everyone points to Billy Martin's A's team 30 years ago as the poster staff for pitchers who supposedly all got burned out by throwing excessive innings. No one looks at the countless other staffs before and after where pitchers wouldn't LET their managers take them out of a game for fear of being labeled "soft".
Take out Bob Gibson, Steve Carlton, Tom Seaver, Jack Morris, et al because of a ridiculous pitch-count? Please! We need to stop the theory of the bullpen "owning" the late innings of a ballgame. When did this crazy "starter goes 6, automatically go to your 7th inning guy, who gives way to the 8th inning set-up guy, for the ninth inning closer" start? - and why do managers buy into it when it clearly does not work?!?! The bullpen is the worst part of your team! Why trust them to decide a game?
Why would you trust putting someone from the bullpen (who may not "have-it" that day - you don't know when you put him into a game) when you KNOW your starter's doing the job and still going strong. A bad starting pitcher is still better than your best middle reliever.
Taking last night's game as an example, here's all you need to know: Jon Niese was pitching well and if the Mets kept him in the game to finish it, they would have won. Simple. Case closed. A bad, tired, wild, awkward, 100-pitch throwing, hungover, and migrained debilitated Jon Niese is still better than a fresh Bobby Parnell. That's just the way it is.
The bad news is that until major league managers start "getting it" regarding this pitch count, you'll see teams with strong starters continue to lose games they had in the bag in the late innings. Yesterday's game should easily have been a victory for the Mets if logical heads prevailed.
THE UGLY: Did you hear Omar Minaya's job is safe for all of 2011? How many times did you cost your company over $36 million in bad contracts and kept your job? How many times did you sit behind your desk and do nothing (as Omar did while every other GM was trying to benefit their teams at the trading deadline) and kept your job? How many times did you embarrass your company with ridiculous press conferences and publicly throw people under the bus and kept your job?
Now all that may be fine and dandy if you're the Wilponzi's and not care about who's running the show for you, but nothing can be uglier than the Knick's James Dolan's decision to rehire the man who ran his franchise into the ground a few short years ago (I thought this was a joke when I first heard it reported). It's really ugly when you can find owners that are more pathetic than Fred and his son Paris.
posted by Mets Fan Club @ 10:42 AM
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