Tuesday, March 13, 2007

Alay Soler...

...we hardly knew ye, and now we never will with the Metties releasing you. What little time we had together was too long anyway. As we predicted last season, when he had that atrocity of an outing at Yankees stadium while Minaya was at the game, we knew he would be buried so deep in the minors it would be years before he would resurface again, if ever.

6 comments:

Fredo said...

Pelfrey and Maine are both pitching ERAs of 0.00 with 5 IP so far this spring.

Glavine
Duque
Maine
Perez
Pelfrey

That's looking our rotation before the return of Soul Glo.

SheaHeyKid said...

I'd predict Perez will be gone once Pedro gets back. I think Maine will be a good #3 (and certainly a great #4), and Pelfrey will have more confidence this year to throw first-pitch strikes instead of balls all around the plate leading to walks. I just see Perez as that worst type of player - the guy who has shown flashes of such great potential you hate to give up on him, but all he ever does is disappoint. Hopefully I'm proven wrong, if he has another '04-like year the Mets will be unstoppable.

dark commenteer said...

This must have been some kind of mistake where Minaya actually meant to release Humber or Pelfrey--after all, Soler IS Cuban...

On an interesting side note, MLB07 The Show for PS2 is out and the game ranks the Mets pitching staff at 8th strongest without Pedro on the active roster...hmmm.

SheaHeyKid said...

If pelfrey can produce, and maine builds on last year, i think our rotation for regular season is ok (certainly good enough for NL anyway). You have to be concerned about age of glavine and el duque (as well as his notorious lack of focus during regular season) kicking in at some point though.

That said, I think if you look at our rotation just for playoffs, it should be good enough. I'll take Pedro, Glavine, El Duque, + Maine or Pelfrey.

On another note, what do you guys think about the talk of moving lo duca from #2 to #7 and slotting wright into 2-hole? I think it's dumb. First, given how weak the Mets 7-8-9 bats are, you are taking a TON of RBIs off the table for one of your top RBI guys if you move Wright to #2 slot. Second, the argument I read somewhere that LoDuca should have had more RBIs in #2 slot with Reyes leading off is also crap. For one thing, Reyes was only in scoring position 111 times (64 SBs + 30 2Bs + 17 3Bs). LoDuca's 49 RBIs give him a .441 avg in that slot. Now, that ignores other possible RBIs that LoDuca should have had assuming more than just Reyes on base. But as I mentioned earlier, who else was on base??? As best I can recall, the Mets rarely had 7-8-9 guys on base when LoDuca was batting, so I really don't think he had a lot of RBI opportunities squandered.

His split stats back that up. With runners on, BA = .321. Runner on 1B only (.345), runner on 2B only (.408), and runner on 3B only (.364). The only weird stat he had that was poor was his avg. with runners on 1st and 2nd (.040), where he went 1 for 25. But otherwise, I'd be hard pressed to say he did a poor job driving in Reyes. In fact, it seems like every time Reyes was on base LoDuca came through with a big hit.

SheaHeyKid said...

Just when you go and talk smack about a guy...

Oliver Perez shut down Boston's big hitters in an impressive outing Thursday night, striking out David Ortiz and Manny Ramirez twice each during the New York Mets' 4-1 victory.

Perez, who appears close to securing a spot in New York's rotation, fanned nine batters in five scoreless innings. He allowed three hits and walked none.

Fredo said...

SHK- in response to your question:

Reyes Reyes
Wright LoDuca
Beltran Beltran
Delgado Delgado
Alou Wright
Green/L.M. Green/Milledge LoDuca Alou
Valentin Valentin

I like LoDuca at the top of the lineup. His patience and bat control make him more valuable there than a mere singles hitter. So.. you get more out of Duke and more RBI opportunities for the big guys. I think it would be helpful to get Wright more AB's, but I'm scared of messing with Beltran. The 3 spot seemed to agree with him.