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An anonymous reader of MetsBlog sent in an e-mail, asking:
“Can I get an explanation on why when Oliver Perez gets two outs and looks like he might get through the inning, Willie takes him out. That’s gotta make Perez feel awful that Willie takes him out like that right after he gets two outs! Last
year, if Tom Glavine had the same exact game going, willie definitely keeps him in there for the final out, he cant say he treats his player the same…Also I need an explanation as to why Willie won’t give Heilman and Sosa a rest…they can’t pitch every game.”
…i think it’s fairly obvious at this point that willie would rather push a player through a slump than sit him down…i don’t like this philosophy, and i sense most fans agree…as i said the other day, like with Carlos Delgado, it may help to just take a breather and have them clear their minds…
…heilman’s problem, though, isn’t rest, from what i understand…it’s that he is over-using his change-up, not keeping his fastball down and he’s not using his slider enough…i mean, he threw a 96–mph fastball last night, which is impressive, but it was four feet off the plate, which is not impressive…
…willie clearly believes that by running him out there, heilman will get it together…the thing is, while i may not know a better approach, i think it’s safe to say that this one being used by willie is not working…
…as for perez…i guess you and i were watching two different games…perez was coming totally apart on the mound…and this isn’t the first time that this has happened…it’s actually becoming a habit with him…he’s staked to a lead, cruising, he walks a batter and then all hell breaks loose…i actually give willie credit for pulling him…the problem is that this occurs so early in the game, relief pitchers then have to be married beyond a point when they should be removed from the game…i mean, if a starting pitcher starts to implode in the seventh, instead, Scott Schoeneweis can pitch to one batter, instead of needing him to pitch a full inning or two, and so on, and so maybe Jorge Sosa and heilman can actually get some rest…
…notice how this is rarely a problem when Johan Santana pitches…not just because santana has great stuff, but because he commands the game in a way that gets him and his team in a position to play from their strengths - even if he does not have his best stuff…this is not to say that John Maine, Oliver Perez, etc, must go out and win Cy Youngs, it means they need to command their innings better so to give willie more options and to allow the bullpen more breathing room to do what it does best…
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Matt, actually, Perez is a roller coaster, not just in games, but in innings. If you were going to pull him then not why when he had 1st and 2nd and no outs? Why let him get 2 outs and THEN pull him? He got 2 outs and maybe he gets the hitter to make a mistake. You, yourself say “…i think it’s fairly obvious at this point that willie would rather push a player through a slump than sit him down”…why not with Perez in that inning. Why show no confidence in his ability to get out of it? Its not the first time…he has never shown confidence in Perez, who has good stuff, but keeps going to Heilman and Sosa who are on the verge of a “tired arm”.
I have no idea. I guess there is some magical pivot point for Willie that none of us get, me included, which is why we all get so frustrated with the way he handles the bullpen.
I have given up trying to understand - as I have written about before.
I have no interest in trying to read minds, and predict coin flips, which is what Bullpen Analysis has become these days - not just for the Mets, by the way, but with all teams.
Do yourself a favor and read other team blogs. They are all essentially having the exact same discussion.
This is what it is to watch a major-league bullpen, regardless of who is pitching and who is calling the shots.
Get used to it, because no personnel or managerial change will make it stop.
I think you are spot on in your analysis, Matt.
I am no defender of Willie but what can he do in that situation?
Ollie has more than a track record of collapsing, seemingly out of nowhere, and if he gets left in and Milledge hits a hr willie would be burned in effigy.
What I do not understand is how Rick cannot get inside Ollie’s head. That seems to be one riddle he cannot solve.
Ollie was battling through it for 2 innings at that point. He was ONE OUT away from finishing the inning. He just got an easy groundout the last batter he faced. No need to pull him there.
If he stayed in and gave up the lead at that point, I would have understood. You can’t keep going to the pen in the 6th … especially Heilman … who has been used the most in the league, and not effective at all.
I don’t disagree with you…
I did not necessarily agree that willie should have pulled him, all i am saying is that had ollie given up the grandslam then willie would have been criticized for not getting him out of there.
Also, I thought that willie demoting heilman in a backhanded way might have lit a fire in his a**, but clearly it did not.
Yeah I know … lots of people would have second guessed it if that were the case.
It just seems that whenever there is a decision to be made, Willie chooses the worst choice of 3.
Lol…you are right about that.
If you really look at this team can anyone really think that they are better than a .500 team?
They are the oldest team in the league, injury prone, they lack depth, their manager is a yankee, they run the team like the yankees did between ‘01-’06…
they do have some awesome talent and wright is turning into a consistent mvp candidate (hasn’t seen too many pitches since Philly), but is it enough to get 90+ wins?
Right now … they’re not that good. They have a lot of problems that need to be addressed … and not ignored.
“their manager is a yankee”
I love you you threw that in.
its funny that people think the mets are a .500 team but all you have to do is win 9 more games than you lose and your a 90 win Division winning team. Every team is going to have their ups and downs so you have to be patient. Its a marathon and all the Mets need is another 5 game winning streak and to win a couple series 2-1 and they’ll be 9 games above .500 and on the pace for 90 wins.
Actually you cant finish an odd number above .500 in a 162 games can you? Plus 8 games over would be 85 wins right?
I think he meant .500 as in winning nine more than 81 games.
yes thank you I meant 81-81 is .500 you only have to win 9 of those 81 loses to finish with 90 wins. A 90 win team will lose 72 games and still be considered the Division champ. To win 90 games the Mets just have to finish 79-62 so strap in ladies and gentlemen, we still have 62 loses to suffer thru!
i agree Matt. We better get used to these kinds of things happening all season long. And we better start getting behind our players, because if we don’t, who will?
Matt One Simple Question.. WHERE WAS JOE SMITH?
He was overused last year and was lost for the second half of the season, lets not have that happen again! Where is Wise so we can send Sosa down to AAA or even send Heilman down until he can get his crap together.
I know this is the wrong way to handle this but maybe this is frustration talking.
I would not pull O.P. until he gets 7 innings out of it. Outcome be damned. Its only the first month of the season and he is already burning the bullpen out. Your bull pen is struggling and the starters need to put their shoulders to the wheel and pick up the slack.
I think we may see the starters going an extra inning this week. There is an off day on Thursday, so starting with Figueroa’s start on Sunday we may see 6.1-7 full innings out of our starters. They’ll have one extra day of rest, so their fragile arms will be able to take the stress of the extra 9 pitches.
What is this world coming to when a guy on the brink of free agency and will almost certainly get a big pay day, can’t get through 6 innings. Conspiracy theory #1: maybe the Mets are trying to sabotage his free agency (sarcasm).
haha sabotage his free agency- love it. if OP continues at this rate, even scott boras wont be able to get him a fat pay check.
i agree with you coolpapabell. I think that sometimes you gotta take a loss on the chin like Wakefield did for the Sox in the playoffs in ‘04 when he pitched a complete game loss, and gave up like 9 runs, but gave their bullpen a much needed rest. It is only our first lost to Washington, and I’d have liked to see Perez pitch deep into the seventh maybe even the eighth. And who cares if he would have given up ten runs? we are not going to go 18-0 vs any divisional team. There is such thing as a productive loss, and although i am usually a defender of willie, I would disagree with his decision to pull Perez last night.
Aaron Heilman is a psychological mess. He is the product of a situation that the Mets created. They have totally mishandled him.
Baseball players are not robots. You can only force a guy to do something he doesn’t want to do for so long … it only takes you so far. He knows there is no end in sight since he’s under the teams control for a couple more years and it’s having an obvious psychological effect on him. You can just see it.
The Mets had 2 options:
1) Give him a chance to start in the past 2 seasons, and address the bullpen accordingly. They had 2 off seasons to do this.
2) TRADE HIM. They had 2 off seasons to do this. In 06 he had value. In 07 he had less value. Now … his value is plummeting. They should have just traded him while they could have turned him into something good via trade.
Now they, and we, have to deal with the situation that they created. Terrible job by the Mets all around.
They should free Aaron Heilman, but I agree with Ron Darling. They should put him in blowout games so he can start refining those other pitches he has. They are on to his little change-up game. He needs to uses his other pitches. Additionally, if he wants to be a starter, he is going to need them.
What are these “blow-out” games you speak of?
he is the reason for the blowout games
He and Jorge “Hanging Slider ” Sosa.
I call him “Salami Sosa”.
If Jorge Sosa pitches to Jorge Posada and Posada takes him deep…what would John Sterling say?
Totally agree. I feel his confidence is gone because he was never given the chance to start while they were sending out the likes of Lima, Gonzalez, Williams, & Co.
I think its at the point where he doesn’t care anymore…I think he’s gone when he gets the chance. Is this his last year or next?
I definitely don’t think he’s doing it on purpose … I think it’s a subconscious thing. The problem for him is I’m pretty sure he’s under control until 2010 or 2011. He’s stuck and he knows it … there is nothing he can do about it.
The Mets have done both him, and the team a tremendous disservice.
I really think they need to look into moving him, and I would think that he would still have value. He’s shown he can be a solid reliever, and hell, someone out there might think that he can start too. We’ve got arms that can replace him, so maybe we can get a decent prospect for him.
Then again, I’ve had fantasies about blowing the team up Florida Marlin style and starting completely over with Wright, Reyes, Santana, and Maine, so what do I know? Knee-jerk? Probably, but it makes me feel better after games like last night’s.
I agree with you … they can still get something for him … but what could they have gotten for him 2 years ago? That’s the whole thing. They could have gotten so much more for him then, but it was more important for the Mets to impose their will on him.
I think at this point, they really have to trade him.
Would you rather have Manny Ramirez in left field (for Milledge) or Brian Schneider and Ryan Church?
Taking nothing away from Schneider and Chuch, but Manny would have looked pretty good there for the past 2 years.
Never mind the fact that, like Arod this past offseason, Manny was never truly available to the Mets.
Just a little fantasy cooked up by us fans like the whole “Billy Beane likes Milledge” comments which Beane only said when Milledge was drafted by the Mets in 2003 and never repeated.
Manny