The Best Laid Plans
I’m going to assume that the line-up that the Mets ran out last night was not the one that Omar Minaya was counting on to lead his team to the top of the NL East. Here’s the team that they put on the field, as well as their ZIPS projected wOBA for the rest of the season:
Pagan, CF, .312 woBA
Castillo, 2B, .324 wOBA
Wright, 3B, .415 wOBA
Sheffield, LF, .343 wOBA
Tatis, 1B, .334 wOBA
Martinez, RF, .308 wOBA
Santos, C, .273 wOBA
Martinez, SS, .263 wOBA
Wright is great, Sheffield is hitting like its 1999 instead of 2009, and Castillo and Tatis are useful role player, but that is a line-up that badly misses Jose Reyes and Carlos Beltran, not to mention Carlos Delgado, Daniel Murphy, and Ryan Church.
Of course, they were playing the Washington Generals Nationals, so they racked up a fairly easy win anyway. But against an actual major league team, that’s not a line-up that is going to score many runs.
Fernando Martinez is a really good young talent, but he’s not ready to produce at a level that a contending team needs from a corner outfielder. Pagan is a decent reserve outfielder, but you don’t want him playing with any regularity. Santos and Martinez are not major league players.
The Mets stand a half game behind the first place Phillies, and they’ve learned the last few years that the margin between first and second place can be microscopic. They aren’t in a position to be punting winnable games, and while Reyes and Beltran will get healthy again relatively soon, the team needs better back-up plans. They can’t be caught running out a line-up like this too often.
Trading season is just about to kick off. I’d suggest that the Mets should be at the front of the line.
Dave is the Managing Editor of FanGraphs.
I have said it everywhere I can, including here. This team has been over rated by a lot. The rotation has no depth and the lineup is very thin. The bullpen does have swing and miss guys but they are being used far to often in the early going. I am very confident they miss the playoffs again and I think Minya needs to see the exit.
Mets upcoming schedule: Washington, 3 vs Florida, 4 vs Pittsburgh, 3 vs Washington.
The mets pitching staff has been in shambles for years now. Going back to when pedro and glavine where supposed to be the anchors, their last year together with the mets, the mets were barely > .500 in their starts. The pitching staff has been getting by on “smoke and mirros” for years now but its not like anyone else in the division has a great rotation. The thing thats killing the mets this year is their terrible defense and poor fundamentals, yet they are still right at the top of the NL East.
The mets dont really have any “chips”, besides fmart, to trade away so I dont think they will be making any major moves this year.
Ha, you should have seen the lineup that the Twins threw out there against Boston the other day. Mauer had the day off, Crede had a sore hand, and Span was sick. Besides being a horrible offensive lineup, they had Brian Buscher playing third and Delmon Young against a team that hits it to the left side a ton.
Lowe:3.48
Vazquez:2.65
Jurgiens:3.74
Kawakami:4.13
All pretty good FIP’s if you ask me
Does this mean they’ll be making a hard play for Ben Sheets come mid June?
No draft pick compensation. No prospects required. A contract based on 1/2 season’s worth with at most an option for 2010?
That “actual major league team” line was pretty funny.
Cora will be back within the week, Beltran on Friday and if not for Jerry Manuel’s crush on Santos’ short stroke Ramon Castro would be in the lineup much more often. The pitching is doing well now that Perez is in AAA and I believe if they only gave Niese a few turns they would see he is a good pitcher.
well, how good should their line- up look with 5 opening day starters hurt? And that is an easy dig at the nats and their staff, but pitching won those games, and last I looked guzman, Johnson, dunn, Zimmerman and willingham weren’t playing too badly, nor was dukes before he went down, albeit guzman is over his head (although he has been over it before, so where should he be) and willingham has a low average.
What team looks good losing 5 opening day starters? I suppose of the wilpons hadn’t lost a bundle to bernie madoff they could have signed Hudson and dunn, but they usually draw the line somewhere anyway.
Anthony – Cora isn’t a major league starter either. I don’t understand the Santos > Castro at all, though
I’m not really sure what they can do, though; the problem is that if Reyes and Beltran are gone for significant lengths of time, they might as well punt the season anyway, so there isn’t much point in giving up significant resources to get solid backups. A major-league-caliber-backup SS/2B would be nice, and I also wish they had signed Dunn, but a Murphy/Tatis platoon at 1B shouldn’t be atrocious
It’s certainly to the Mets’ credit that they have Tatis and Sheff to fall back on. They would really be in bad shape without them. (Although Sheff’s glove is brutal). That being said, with Philly’s pitching problems and Atlanta’s hitting problems, they are in a very winnable division. But, they don’t have a lot on the farm to trade away and if they have a choice between adding depth to enable them to fill in for injured starters and starting pitching, they have to go for starting pitching. Any team, outside of Tampa, would look bad without five starters on offense. Yeah, I have to agree with Eric, if they are without Reyes and Beltran long term, they won’t win, so why trade away the future for an unattainable goal? Beltran, Reyes, Wright, and Santana all (baring anyone having lied about their age) have a number of years left before they begin to decline markedly. It’s not like the Mets’ window for winning a championship is closing this year.
Wright has 3 home runs and is on pace for 13. He is also on pace for 140 Ks. How is this great?
actually he is on pace for 176 Ks. That is worse than Dunn and Howard. So his BA is due for a super fall if he keeps that up. Wright is very mediocre this season, but lucky. I know he is on my Fantasy Team!