Haters of Victor Zambrano should beware; his exile to the Mets’ bullpen is only temporary, more a product of the fact that Steve Trachsel is physically incapable of warming up quickly enough to serve as a reliever than of anything else. The maddeningly wild Zambrano will almost certainly be part of the 2006 Mets rotation – not entirely a bad thing, as 200-inning starters capable of posting an above average ERA are a lot rarer than you might think, and are always worth keeping around, no matter how ugly their pitching style.

Zambrano’s new job as a reliever does raise one question, though – might he actually be an asset out of the pen? At least in theory, it seems like a good fit. Whatever else he lacks, the man certainly has good stuff, and his 94-mph sinker and decent slider seem like the sort of offerings that might allow him to be outright dominant if he were able to focus on just getting three hitters out. Alas, I fear it is not so.

The first bit of evidence is that Zambrano doesn’t do any better the first time through the lineup than he does the second and third. This year, batters have hit .277 BA/.357 OBA/.411 SLG against him in the first through third innings, and .254/.346/.391 in the fourth through sixth. More damningly, the line is .369/.451/.485 in the first inning, which is just brutal.

This is a bit surprising, as I would have guessed precisely the opposite – in my estimation, Zambrano’s problems come when he relies too heavily on his off-speed stuff, which most pitchers begin to do as they face batters for the second and third times in a game. That is why there are numbers, though, to correct our unsupported conclusions, and in this case the numbers aren’t good for the notion of Victor Zambrano as a relief ace in waiting.

Perhaps even worse for this idea is a examination of Zambrano’s performance in his 74 career relief appearances. The “wild” category in the accompanying chart simply refers to the number of walks, hit batsmen, and wild pitches per nine innings; Zambrano’s startlingly bad control is registered in more ways than just in his high walk rate.

When one compares his numbers as a reliever to his numbers this year as a starter, a few things stick out. The first is that Zambrano is giving up a lot fewer home runs than he used to – enough to knock his ERA down by nearly a run. Part of the that improvement is due to better pitching, and part is due to a move from the American League to Shea Stadium.

Equally interesting, though, is the fact that Zambrano’s control hasn’t really gotten all that much better since he joined the Mets last season. He’s walking and plunking fewer hitters, and throwing fewer wild pitches, but it seems to be coming at the cost of striking out fewer hitters, since the ratio of strikeouts to events of wildness is unchanged. That’s not good. The object is to increase the good and decrease the bad, not to decrease them both in equal proportion.

The upshot of all of this is that I’m utterly unconvinced Zambrano has much of a shot at being even useful to the Mets during the stretch run. His virtues right now are durability and not giving up home runs, which are fine ones for a starter, but not so impressive for a short reliever, especially one so wild and with such a low strikeout rate, great stuff or no.

Could Zambrano be useful out of the bullpen? I suppose so, in the sense that anyone with the talent to be a starter in the majors can get hot for a month and help his team out. Maybe he’ll be struck with a bolt of lightning, or fall off an exercise bike onto his pitching elbow only to find he’s developed Greg Maddux-like control.

More likely, though, is that he is what he is: A pitcher who can’t find the plate and never will. Taking a bit off his fastball has improved its accuracy and made him less prone to the longball, but at the cost of striking hitters out – not necessarily a good tradeoff. If he went back to throwing everything as hard as he can, he’d strike more hitters out but also hit the backstop more.

If he could just throw the ball to the catcher’s mitt, he’d undoubtedly do so. It’s a good thing to have him around in case of injury, or in case a starter gets knocked out early in a game, but it looks like in the late innings, the Mets are going to have to go with what they have.