1. What's the deal with Heilman? Is he just sucking big time this year, or is part of it related to the fact that he is the most used reliever in baseball? (A stat which Willie apparently "didn't know" when it was brought to his attention the other day.)
2. What's the deal with Mets starters and only lasting 5 innings? To be honest, I think part of this is Willie's fault. He has made it clear that his style is that his starters only need to go 5 or 6 innings, and then they can expect the pen to take over. I wonder what would happen if before a game Willie said to Perez or Pelfrey, I don't care how many runs you've given up, I don't care how many pitches you've thrown, you are lasting 7 innings in this game no matter what. It is time to stop coddling these guys and start demanding more out of them. By setting the bar so low you are not forcing them to figure out how to pitch more effectively. Perez has not gotten past the 6th inning in any of his starts this year. That is flat unacceptable, and a huge drain on the bullpen. I think it is up to Willie to throw down the gauntlet and challenge his starters to step up and anticipate that they will be expected to throw at least 7 innings every game. Otherwise nothing changes, and we'll be in the same place at the end of this year as last year: a depleted bullpen.
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Tough series against the braves this weekend, drawing both hudson and smoltz and somehow they don't draw Santana.
If we don't win pelf's game tonight it could be a long weekend...
Fortunately, me and Mrs. SHK are off starting tomorrow morning for a week vacation to the carribean, so it's all sunny for us!
These guys are pitch counted. I can't recall the last time I saw a Mets pitcher pulled after 5 with a low pitch count. They're pulled after 5 because they've already thrown 100 pitches and have been marginally effective, and their turn in the lineup is up.
Nice work Pagan. Since I've turned tonight's game on, he's:
1) struck out looking w/ 2 outs, leaving the bases loaded.
2) made a horrible throw on a short fly to left, in which he had a great chance to throw out Matt Diaz and end the inning. Instead, the 2nd Braves run.
3) horribly misplayed Franceour's fly to deep left. Instead of the third out of the 5th on a ball that could have been caught, it was the tying run for Los Bravos.
Well, yesterday's game another case in point.
Maine: 5 IP, 100 pitches.
As DC was reminding me yesterday, Greg Maddux used to manage complete game shutouts in 85 pitches. It really makes your head spin.
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