Matthew Cerrone

Relief Pitcher: Heilman asks to be a Starter
By Matthew Cerrone - Nov 21, 2008 9:20 am

In a report for Newsday, David Lennon details a phone call made from Aaron Heilman to Omar Minaya, during which Heilman once again asked that he be a starting pitcher.

“We talked and he expressed himself,” Lennon quotes Minaya as saying.  “He told me that he’d like the opportunity to start. But my job is to make sure I do what’s in the best interest of the team, and we still see him in the bullpen.”

Last night on SNY’s Mets Hot Stove, SI.com’s Jon Heyman again referenced Heilman’s ‘high-back elbow,’ which Mets officials believe could lead to injury if he throws more than 100 innings in a season, similar to Mark Prior.

In other words, according to Heyman, the Mets are looking out for Heilman’s health…by keeping him in the bullpen.

That said, the Rockies and D’Backs, among other teams, still believe that he can be starting pitcher, Heyman wrote in his blog for SI.com in early November.

i still get the sense heilman will be traded for a relief pitcher, who has experience as a closer…to the Mets, it would be swapping out relievers…to the team getting heilman, they would be swapping a reliever for a starter…so, it makes sense on both sides, especially heilman’s, who would get a much-needed change of scenery and the opportunity to start, which he has earned

By the way, to watch clips from last night’s Mets Hot Stove show, courtesy of SNY, click here.

166 Responses to “Relief Pitcher: Heilman asks to be a Starter”

  1. This obviosuly is no surprise at all…
    tell me something I don’t know

  2. Prismo says:

    For the life of me I still cannot understand why Heilman was never given a real shot at being a starter. It almost seems like Omar is keeping him in the bullpen to spite him, not that he would have a reason to…

    • Nate W. says:

      1) Tommy John, He’ll likely need it sometime in the next 200-500 IP.
      2) $ - starters earn a lot more in arbitration, Heilman could have a decent year as a starter then spend the next two blowing out his elbow and rehabing his elbow.

      • Necciai27 says:

        I agree with Nate, especially on point number one.

        Heilman’s mechanics, specifically his arm action, are extremely risky. A lot of relievers (i.e. Billy Wagner, B.J. Ryan, Joel Zumaya, Huston Street) tend to get away with arm actions that a starter never could. When said starters do have risky arm actions, they’re usually either more on the borderline (i.e. Josh Beckett, Jon Lester, John Smoltz, Oliver Perez) or simply considered so talented that they can’t afford to be put in the bullpen their whole careers (Francisco Liriano, Brandon Morrow, Max Scherzer). Then there are the guys who are seemingly injured about every other year. A.J. Burnett, Anthony Reyes, Mark Prior, Kerry Wood, Ian Kennedy, Chris Carpenter, etc. (although I admit the latter two have more to do with arm timing problems vs. the kind of arm action Heilman has). You’d basically be turning Heilman into one of these guys if you moved him into the rotation. Oh, and you’d be suddenly upping his workload per game and workload per year into a danger zone, considering his mechanics.

        He’d likely experience problems with shoulder impingment as well as problems with his elbow. The latter would be of extreme concern to me, especially considering how much Aaron has had tendinitis in his elbow over the past three years. That’s a BIG red flag. Another thing to consider is just how much Aaron would be throwing his slider. The slider isn’t bad when you combine it with good mechanics, but it is somewhat tough on a pitcher’s UCL (i.e. the ligament that gets replaced in Tommy John surgery) and when a pitcher with injurious mechanics throws it enough, it actually becomes a potential cause of injury. That’s why you had Peterson deleting the slider from Heilman’s repertoire for so long.

        The irony of course is that Rick Peterson got Heilman back to pitching with the mechanics he used in Notre Dame. The starts he made throwing straight over the top vs. sidearm were with a completely different, less risky arm action and one that frankly Heilman wasn’t very good with. But once Peterson had gotten Heilman back to his old windup and by virtue of that, old arm action, he realized what an injury risk it would present. Since a relief pitcher throws a lot fewer innings and ultimately disperses his pitches more evenly over the course of a season, Aaron was converted into a reliever. And the rest is history.

        • iamatwork says:

          Oliver Perez actually has pretty good mechanics. He seems to flap but that’s because his arm whips in a way - he isn’t throwing across his body as much as others do (like Prior). But Prior and Wood are bad examples, Dusty Baker ruined them.

        • rustyjr says:

          like girardi ruining olsen and jobba ?

        • Nate W. says:

          Thanks for the insightful detail that I didnt have the time (or insight) to expound earlier…

          Oliver Perez’s mechanics were rescued by Petersen. The baseball think factory did a video breakdown of his resurection. His velocity has to do with an extreeme shoulder load and not over exertion of the elbow of shoulder. Think touching your elbows together behind your back.

          I of the belief that Heilman was allowed to return to his poor mechanics because he couldnt figure out how to pitch with his good mechanics. Sometime after being drafted someone in the Mets player development team correctly changed his mechanics so he could develop as a healthy effective pitcher. At some point he just couldnt develop enough to get big league hitters out, so they let him go back to the poor, but more effective mechanics and started touting him as Don Drysdale 2.0… But they were really concerned about the injury potential.

  3. Dirtysanchez says:

    Im not a medical person to know how accurate that is but if that is the case..he has got to go. Heilman cannot succeed as a relief pitcher anymore and the atmosphere in ny will be vicious regarding heilman. I think it would be best for omar to trade him if this elbow thing has weight. Let some other team experiment since it seems the mets are unwilling to. Lets just hope we get something in return that is valuable.

  4. Alban says:

    We’ve all been held back from doing what we really want at some point in life.

    At this point, I really just want to see him succeed, even if it’s for some other team. I know this is metsblog and all, and we’re supposed to be rah rah Mets all the time… but I do feel for the guy and I want him to get his shot.

    Somewhere in all of this, there is a Disney movie to be made.

  5. Xavier22 says:

    For the love of all that is holy Omar just set Heilman free already! Clearly he wants to be a starter, so trade him to a team that wants him rather than keeping him (and us) miserable as a reliever.

  6. oleosmirf says:

    if the Mets could trade Heilman, Kunz and Evans for Street that would be a great move.

    Sign Lowe and K-Rod, and give an incentive laden deal to Pedro or Penny or Mulder for the 5th SP or sign Jason Marquis.

    Trade castillo for anything and go get Freddie Sanchez and that is a great offseason

  7. Number57 says: