Timing Right for Mets’ Starters To Gain Upper Hand

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.

The New York Sun

It’s tempting to overplay the significance of the three-game set between the Mets and Philadelphia that starts tonight at Shea. While these are key games for the Mets, who enter tonight’s game just a game and a half behind the Phillies for the wild-card lead, there is a lot of baseball yet to be played.


Should they sweep their rivals, it still won’t be time for anyone in Flushing to start printing playoff tickets. Should the Mets be swept, it won’t knock them out of the race.


Still, this is a wonderful opportunity for the Mets to seize the high ground heading into the stretch. Jae Seo, Pedro Martinez, and Tom Glavine – the three starters for the series – have combined for a 1.64 ERA in 88 1/3 innings since Seo was called up from the minors on August 6.


If they get that kind of work out of their starters over the next few days, they can win even if an offense that has gone completely cold, scoring only six runs over the last four games, stays that way.


There is hope for the Mets offense, in that Phillies’ pitchers aren’t exactly imposing. Rookie Robinson Tejeda starts tonight, and while he sports an impressive 3.20 ERA this year, a more telling statistic might be his strikeout-to-walk ratio of 70-to-48.


Patience is always a virtue, but Tejeda is more prone than most pitchers to beating himself with the walk. Given that he’s only allowed four home runs in 79 2/3 innings, the Mets will do well tonight to focus on waiting him out and playing some little ball.


Considering how well Seo is pitching, they’re not going to need to score a lot of runs to win.


Neither Brett Myers nor Jon Lieber is much more worrisome. Myers is an excellent young pitcher, a future ace, but his August ERA is 5.01 and, aside from a complete game in which he gave up one run to Pittsburgh, he’s been awful in all his starts this month. Chances are he’s hit the wall that many young pitchers hit at this point in a six-month season. Lieber, by contrast, has pitched very well this month in all but one start, but remains the solid but eminently hittable pitcher he was for the Yankees last year.


Assuming that the Mets’ pitchers hold down the potent Philly lineup and that the hitters can make a somewhat better showing than they did over the weekend, the turning points in these games are likely to happen in the late innings.


This is the area that should terrify Mets rooters; it’s one thing to expect Martinez to hold down a fearsome middle of the order, and another thing to expect Braden Looper to do so. The problem for the Mets is that most of the Phillies’ offensive strength is tied up in four hitters: Chase Utley, Bobby Abreu, Pat Burrell, and Ryan Howard.


For reasons no man can possibly explain, manager Charlie Manuel writes them out in that order when filling out his lineup card, bunching together Utley and Abreu, both of whom hit from the left side of the plate, and Burrell and Howard, who hit from the right.


Most teams view this as manna from base ball heaven. When confronted with a crucial situation, all a manager has to do is signal to the pen for a trusty lefty situational reliever, watch him set down Utley and Abreu, and then bring in a righty.


Mets skipper Willie Randolph, though, doesn’t have a single lefty in his bullpen right now, and has shown little inclination to use Aaron Heilman – who’s actually somewhat more effective against lefties – in that kind of situational role.


Compounding the problem is that closer Looper is genuinely awful against left-handed hitters, allowing them a .932 OPS this year, mainly because his sinker tails down and in to the traditional lefty power zone. This isn’t an insuperable problem, but it does point out what might be the Mets’ two main weaknesses.


The first is that while they are fairly deep, that depth is concentrated in a few areas, like scrub second basemen and quality starters, leaving the team without, say, a quality power bat off the bench or a good lefty one-out pitcher. The utility of such players is easily overstated, but they can make the difference between a championship-caliber squad and one hanging around the fringes of a race.


The second is that while Randolph has been genuinely impressive in many areas during his rookie year as a manager, he hasn’t shown himself to be particularly imaginative in covering for some of his weak areas. These games are important – enough so that Heilman should get the call in a save situation that depends on shutting down Abreu and Utley. There’s no chance of that happening – if the game comes down to getting those two outs, Looper’s going to have the ball.


Unfortunately for the Mets, no matter how much one doesn’t want to overstate the importance of these games, it’s quite possible that in such a situation, Looper could be holding the team’s playoff chances in his hands.


The New York Sun

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