Ah, victory. I don't know what to say. The Mets are awesome. What's more, the young players I said weren't ready for the major leagues are doing well. Daniel Murphy is hitting .404/.491/.617 in 18 games and Nick Evans is hitting .306/.333/.444 in August. Certainly I think both players are performing over their heads a little bit, and it remains to be seen whether either is viable as a starter or even a major league bench player in the long term. But while it lasts, I'm glad for the youthful energy and upside.
Met starters have a 2.92 ERA in August with a 2:1 K:BB ratio. This after a 3.24 ERA in August with a 2.7:1 K:BB ratio. That's tremendous, and it's why the Mets keep winning.
Damion Easley (.192/.263/.250 in August) is making me long for the return of Luis Castillo.
Glorified reliever Billy Wagner is certainly missed, but as long as Met starters keep up their good work, his absence won't be much of a problem. Aaron Heilman is the next-best reliever, despite his bad won-less record and high ERA. Duaner Sanchez is also good. I predict that both of these pitchers, and Pedro Feliciano from the other side, will experience a September resurgence. Meanwhile, Al Reyes and Luis Ayala should provide some near-league average depth.
The Mets are in great, great position to make the playoffs. Ryan Church, who has been great when not out with concussion-related stuff, is due to return tonight. His line is a tremendous .307/.370/.512. The Mets have been missing his bat even with an unlikely .297/.360/.485 in 253 plate appearances from Fernando Tatis. He can't keep that up, and Church is coming back at just the right time to give Tatis a break and make the best use of the respective abilities of each.
Meanwhile, Lastings Milledge is hitting a paltry .261/.325/.405. While it doesn't look like it, the seeds of progress are there, including increased plate discipline and maturity. While I sort-of admitted in the past that Lastings needed a full year to get off the ground, I also thought it was possible he could break out this year. That wasn't the case. But watch out: at 23 years old, Lastings is far from his peak.
Thursday, August 21, 2008
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7 comments:
hey, c'mon. you were gonna bet me that milledge would OPS higher than church this year. and i backed out.
BP thinks ayala has been the worst reliever in the majors this year.
Hmm, Manuel as impossible as it may seem, seems to be worse at lineup construction than Willie. Manuel bats his very weakest hitter 2nd virtually all the time. Note that I am not saying he bats one of his weakest hitters most of the time. Nope. His absolute and unambiguously weakest hitter (Argenis Reyes now that Marlon Anderson seems gone for good) virtually always bats 2nd when he plays.
And furthermore, Willie didn't have a credible 4th hitting option as Manuel has with Delgado--for the time being at least. If Delgado can credibly bat cleanup the rest of the way, there is no excuse not to bat Beltran 2nd, Church 5th, and 2nd base 8th. Manuel in this regard, has been doing less with more resources.
its hard to pick on a team at the top of their respective division...
i got in an argument with my mother in law over how well torre has done as manager in LA this year and her argument was that they were in first place. mine was that they were .500 in the worst division in baseball.
my point being i guess you have to take the temperature based on the environment. if the mets are going to win in this NL east then how can fans really piss and moan?
teams have been successful forever despite obvious inefficiences... what's to stop the mets this year?
For the season, Church played in about half the games Milledge did, the first 50 of which he was smoking hot. Now, no one can say this with certainty, but if he had been healthy the last two months, Church's line from games 51-100 would have been closer to his projected line, and I think both players would have had similar stats by year's end.
In 30 games since coming off the DL, Lastings's line is .300/.360/.515, not too far off from Churchy's first 50 games.
You sir, have hitched your wagon to the wrong horse. 'Midge cannot compare to the awesomeness of Nick Evans. Nick Evans will devour your children in broad daylight.
The trade to the Nationals was the best thing that could have happened to Lastings. Can you imagine how awful it would have been for Lastings to struggle like he did the first 4 months this year in New York? The media & fans would be killing him. He's so much better off playing in Washington.
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