Mets Have a Backup Plan for the Backup Plan
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
At least as much as the next man, I’ve taken it as a given that the Mets, having not signed or traded for the sort of durable starter they needed over the winter, will enter spring training facing a mounting catastrophe. Their powerful lineup is being matched to a starting rotation consisting of the elderly Tom Glavine, four wishes, and a great deal of hoping.
The feeling deepened after the Mets announced at the end of January that Dave Williams, one of the unimpressive veterans who had been expected to vie for a job, had had surgery to repair a herniated disc in his neck and would be out for several months. Obviously this was not because of any great expectations attached to Williams, but because the Mets’ strategy seems to be one of attrition — throw a variety of fringe veterans, green rookies, and former stars looking for a last paycheck on the hill in March and see what you have come April. The fewer bodies you have to throw on the mound, the less the odds of this already dubious strategy working, and thus every bit of news about something like Williams’s injury or the arm problems prospect Philip Humber had in the Arizona Fall League contributes to the looming sense of dread surrounding the team’s mound corps.
Actually looking over the pitchers the Mets have on hand, though, I don’t see much reason for concern. Everyone takes things as givens and surrenders to looming senses of dread, but doing so with no reason is silly. All credit to general manager Omar Minaya for not being silly.
Two points are important here. The first is that the Mets did not have a good rotation last year; the starters’ ERA was 4.67, eighth in the league and an especially unimpressive figure for a team playing so many games in the pitcher’s parks of the National League East. The second is that the Mets actually have plenty of good starters on hand.
Atop the rotation will be Tom Glavine, good for his usual 200 excellent innings. The nominal no. 2 starter should be Orlando Hernandez, who was not only very effective for the Mets last year but more durable than he seemed, averaging just under 6 innings a start. Past them are John Maine, Oliver Perez, and Mike Pelfrey, three young pitchers who all showed just enough last year to raise expectations that they might blossom this year, and have track records just sketchy enough to raise expectations that they might all fail spectacularly.
Kicking around the fringes of the rotation will be Humber, who seems a decent bet to get the kind of midseason call-up Pelfrey got last year, and could conceivably crack the rotation out of spring training in the right circumstances; Williams; Pedro Martinez, who claims he’ll be ready sooner than anyone expects after recovering from shoulder surgery, and the undead. In the fine tradition of David Cone’s final year and Jose Lima’s 2006, the Mets will bring Chan Ho Park and Aaron Sele to spring training. Park, who’s actually on the 40-man roster, hasn’t had anything approaching a passable year since 2001. Last year’s tolerablelooking 4.81 ERA was run up while pitching his home games in San Diego’s pitcher-friendly park, and he somehow gave up 20 home runs in 136.2 innings. Sele will be brought to camp in a red box with a glass panel and a hammer.
If your standard is the 1986 Mets, this doesn’t pass muster. If your standard is, as it should be, “good enough to win 95 games,” this crew is fine. Glavine is an acceptable rotation anchor; Maine and Pelfrey look right now like league-average starters with decent chances to be a bit better than that; Perez looks like he could win a Cy Young, fall out of organized baseball, or putter along as a submediocrity, and Hernandez will probably pitch 120 or so decent innings before hurting something. With the likes of Humber and Park around, the club will have tolerable, woundstanching options should anyone not pitch well.
The rotation is at least as good as, and probably better than, what the Mets had last year, when they were the best team in the league. Perez doesn’t have to win a Cy Young Award; he has to replace Martinez, who threw 132.2 innings with a 4.48 ERA last year. Pelfrey doesn’t have to be Kevin Brown; if he can manage a 4.90 ERA in 164.2 innings, he’ll be an improvement on Steve Trachsel.
What’s impressive, though, is that this group, while perhaps not representing a sure improvement on last year’s in terms of quality, represents a great improvement in terms of potential. If Maine, Perez, and Pelfrey all harness their stuff and master the intricacies of the game to their best abilities, the Mets will have a trio of cheap young starters to match any in the league, and a potent young core. That’s likely not going to happen, but giving the ball to pitchers who won’t pitch any worse than a Trachsel-type, but might pitch much better, is a very good idea. Is the potential for disaster there? Of course, it always is. In the Mets’ case, they have the right pitchers showing up to camp tomorrow, they’re not asking too much of them, and they have some backup plans. You can’t ask for much more.
