(even the promise of a postgame Half Life reunion wasn’t enough to cheer up David Wright and Cliff Floyd.
If I’m gonna spend much of the day quoting myself, I might as well keep it up.
From CSTB, July 8, 2005
Braden Looper pitched a perfect 9th inning for his 19th save in 22 opportunities. Now might be a good time for me to admit that Looper™s handful of meltdowns, all of ˜em morale killers at the time, aren™t nearly as plentiful as those of say, Keith Foulke, and in fairness, he is not the biggest reason the Mets are merely a .500 team.
And to be honest, he’s one of several reasons. An inconsistent offense helmed by free swingers (Reyes), under achievers (Beltran) and the rapidly aging (Piazza). Middle relievers that have stretches of brilliance followed by utter futility, Aaron Heilman followed one of his finest performances two days ago with one of his worst tonight. Errors by the usually dependable Miguel Cairo and Cliff Floyd (a dark horse candidate for a Gold Glove in left field prior to this evening) handed the game over to Pittsburgh, though much credit has to go to Tiki Redman for his two run single in the 9th off Looper, having fouled off 6 pitches with a 2-2 count and 2 outs.
This was without question the worst loss of the season for New York. Opening Day’s defeat to Cincinnati obviously comes to mind, but while that disaster could be laid squarely at Looper’s feet, this capitulation was a team effort in every sense of the word.
Lost amidst the wreckage was a superlative performance by the much maligned Victor Zambrano, who is making a case of late, for deserving the spot in the rotation that many of us would’ve rather seen Heilman or Jae Seo occupy. In Zambrano’s last 11 starts (71.2 IP, 39 K’s, 33 BB) his ERA is a stingy 2.76. But that is slim consolation considering the way Heilman and Looper were unable to retire hitters who’d struggle to make the 25 man roster of other clubs not named the Royals or Devil Rays.
With the break looming in two days, there is nothing deceptive about the Mets’ won-loss record. With the presence of Floyd and Pedro Martinez, they are just good enough to hang in the wild card race a while longer — as are several other flawed NL clubs. Their bullpen is far from the league’s worst, but not nearly a finished product either. Defensively, the miscues seem less frequent than those of 2004’s squad, but only slightly less so. Contributions from any number of role players have been greater that we were accustomed to in the Joe McEwing Era, but there are too many square pegs being plugged into round holes. After a season in which Mike Piazza and Jason Philips combined to shoot their own “How Not To Play 1B” DVD, the loss of Doug Mientkiewicz means that Jose Offerman and Marlon Anderson are given too many opportunities (in the former’s case any number greater than zero is too many) to screw up.
I could take this entry, insert Phillies players names in place of Mets players and it would be pretty accurate in assessing the Phillies. To any Phillies fans reading this, I would suggest if you want to see Billy Wagner pitch for the Phillies one last time, do it soon.
There does seem to be a weird kinship between the Mets and the Phils in that both clubs have rosters that look overwhelmingly better than the teams above them in the standings — I think even the Mets with Offerman at 1B and Cairo at 2B seems (different than “is”) better than any team that’s running Baerga and Wil Cordero out there every night — and consistently play with maddening inconsistency.
Last night’s Mets loss was, to my mind, absolutely the worst loss of the season. The ESPN game blown to the Yanks felt worse, but last night was really a terrible loss, coming as it did after three big wins in DC. I don’t know that there’s much to say about it beyond GC’s sage analysis, but that awful ninth inning especially really brought home to me the one biggest weakness of Looper as a closer — beyond, you know, general “suck” issues. He doesn’t strike anyone out — he has 13 in 35 innings. He’s got good stuff and seems to have good guts and he’s not overly tentative, but batters always put the ball in play against him. That’s the advantage of bringing in a strikeout closer with the bases loaded, or a first-and-second situation — there’s less of a chance of a seeing-eye grounder or well placed dunker. It’d be great if the Mets could call a Wagnerian (like the Ring Cycle Wagner, not that chump in Philly) strikeout artist out of the bullpen, but even though they can’t, I was still hoping that they’d signal for Roberto Hernandez (who does strike guys out) or Heath Bell (who does, although he also gives up homers) against Redman/Cota/Whatever Other Minimum Salary was sent up there. Just because Looper is the closer doesn’t mean there aren’t pitchers who might be better suited for certain situations. This was a pretty shitty way to learn that lesson.
While indeed horrible, last night’s loss was so utterly ridiculous as to contain much comedic value. Not so much a stomach punch heartbreaker (a’la the Reds game), but more like a ‘what the fuck?’ Hopefully they’ll look back on it in a few months and laugh.
Right at the start of the inning, my buddy said that it was pointless putting Heilman in at that point because they were alrady up by four runs at that point, and anything less than a 1-2-3 inning would just stand to screw up his confidence. Not sure about that line of reasoning, but I guess it makes sense in retrospect. Seems to me like a 4-run lead in the ninth against Pittsburgh would’ve been an ideal Danny Graves spot. I hope the latter isn’t reduced to strictly a mop-up guy role. He looked good his last time out.
David,
you nailed it with Looper, much the way the disbelievers did with Braden’s personal savior. Though the “pitch-to-contact” version of closing doesn’t bug me so much if anyone can actually catch a ball.
I’m not sure I’d agree that the Philies or the Mets rosters look better than that of the underachieving Marlins. If the Fish played in a market where anyone gave a fuck, McKeon would’ve been burnt (in effigy or in person) a long time ago.
David- As far as the weird kinship between then two teams currently duking it out for 4th place in the NL East, here are a few parallels: Poorly disciplined free swinging low OBA batters as leadoff men (Reyes/Rollins…Reyes seems to be slowly learning, but Rollins has been spoiled from years as Larry Bowas pet), (once) marquee players in career decline in the 4-5 spot (Piazza/Thome) and their steady consistent young .900+ OPS batter buried in the 6-7 hole (Wright/Utley). Gerard, true about the Marlins, they were pretty heavily favored this season and where would they be w/o the gimme wins vs TB?.