3 posts tagged “houston astros”

After a 3-game sweep at the hands of NL East rivals and current division leaders Philadelphia Phillies over the July 4 weekend, it's time to call it. The season for the 2009 New York Mets is basically over.

Understand that unlike a lot of Met fans, I'm not the whining complaining blame & flame-throwing type. I don't fault any one person for the failure of the 2009 New York Mets. I don't beat drums about firing everyone in the front office, or demanding that they trade away part of "the core." I'm generally pretty optimistic when it comes to all things baseball. But I'm also realistic.

And the reality has finally set in for this team. It's not Jerry Manuel's fault. It's not Omar Minaya's fault. It's not Fred and Jeff Wilpon's fault.

It's the fault of overwhelming injuries to a multitude of players.

Injuries are the great unequalizer in sports. It's what makes fantasy sports such a tough game to win. You can draft the best players in any fantasy sports league, but if your #1, #2 and #3 picks go down for an extended period of time, you're going to have a very tough time of winning your fantasy league. Now translate that to REAL sports, and you've got a serious problem.

The 2009 New York Mets have lost a lot of players this season to injury. Some minor, many major. Oliver Perez was first to fall. To some, that's not a big deal. But then Carlos Delgado went down with a hip injury. Then Jose Reyes's calf and hamstring. Then JJ Putz with his elbow. Then the oft-injured starting pitcher John Maine and his shoulder.

But the biggest loss on top of all of the others that had already accumulated, was Carlos Beltran and the debilitating and painful bone bruise on his right knee.

There were periods of time in which the Mets were also without starters Ryan Church (RF), Brian Schneider (C), and backup utility man Alex Cora (SS/2B). There's a revolving door/platoon in LF once the Daniel Murphy outfield experiment ended. Fernando Tatis is not hitting at even close to the pace he was in 2008, and the backup players (Alex Cora, Gary Sheffield) are being worn down by playing nearly every day.

David Wright has become a very streaky and inconsistent hitter who has lost his power swing. Despite being the only major Met starter to remain healthy all season, he is going to have a career year in most strikeouts at his current pace, and his final BA could end up being .260 or .350, depending on what streak he ends the 2009 season on. But even assuming the best for David Wright, he's one player. Even Albert Pujols has a superior supporting cast surrounding him.

There are some Met fans who want to blame GM Omar Minaya for not providing a better set of backup players, forgetting that backup players are just that. Backups.

They're the guys who alternate in to give the others rest on a Sunday day game after a Saturday night game, and occasionally a couple of them can fill in for extended periods of time over the course of a season when needed. But when your backup players get hurt, and then you're calling up minor league players to fill-in for THEM before they are ready to produce at an MLB level a la Fernando (K-Mart) Martinez, Nick Evans, Argenis Reyes, etc. it's an unplanned recipe for disaster.

There are some Met fans who want to blame GM Omar Minaya for not having already traded for another offensive player, like an Aubrey Huff, Mark DeRosa or Matt Holliday. The three major problems with these concepts is that one player alone isn't going to turn the Mets around. The second is that despite the simplistic belief of many a baseball fan no matter which team they support, other GMs have to actually agree to the trades. The third is that Minaya has gone on record stating he wasn't willing to mortgage the future prospects of the franchise for short-term solutions. A very wise decision. However, the pill of potentially giving up on 2009 to have a shot at legitimately competing in 2010 and 2011 is proving to be a tough one to swallow.

The indisputable facts are this:

• Through 81 games, the halfway-point of a MLB season, the New York Mets have gone 39-42. They are 3 games under .500, and 4.5 games behind the Phillies.
  
• Last year, the 2008 Mets were 40-41 at the halfway point, 3 games behind the Phillies. They went 59-32 over the 2nd half of the season, which was still a game short of the NL wild card. And that's a team that didn't have nearly the number of injury problems that the 2009 team has endured.
  
• There are SEVEN teams currently ahead of them (Giants, Rockies, Brewers, Cubs, Marlins, Reds, Astros) in the wild card race, with Atlanta just a half-game behind the Mets in both the NL East and wild card race.The Mets are 5.5 games behind current wild card leading San Francisco Giants.
  
• Since June 1, the team has went 11-21, which would only be slightly palatable had they not gone 9-12 in April. Even though the team went 19-9 in May, things started to slide when June came, and went to hell in a handbasket once Beltran went on the DL (5-9 since June 22), including series sweeps against the Yankees and Phillies.

The Mets have their next 6 at home going into the All-Star Break. 3 against the Dodgers, owners of the best record in baseball, and the Cincinnati Reds. Figure the Mets go 3-3 over that span, losing the series to the Dodgers, winning the series against the Reds.

After the All-Star break, the Mets go on the road for 4 against Atlanta, 3 against Washington, 3 against Houston. If this were truly the 2009 Mets with all their healthy starters in the lineup, it would not be absurd to expect them to win 8-9 of those 10 games.

But without those starting players in the lineup and the team's inability to score runs at a consistent pace, the more likely outcome of that 10-game roadtrip is 4-6.

The Mets will finish up July with a 4-game set at home against the Colorado Rockies, and a 4-game set that extends into August (1 game in July) against the dying Arizona Diamondbacks. Over those 5 games, I'll give the Mets a 3-2 record.

Taking into account all the series remaining in the month, that would bring the Mets to a July finish of 12-14, and a total record of 49-53 through 102 games played.

For the New York Mets to actually have a reasonable shot of winning the NL East or even the wildcard, they'd have to amass at least 88-90 wins by season's end at the bare minimum.

In a perfect world, you get back all your healthy players PLUS Billy Wagner in the bullpen by August 1, 2009. Maybe you already have some of then back already. But the Mets would then need to go around 39-14 over the rest of the season, and pray that other teams in the NL East encounter troubles of their own. While that's not impossible, it's certainly not very probable. Keep in mind that this is also assuming that the team doesn't suffer any additional injuries to major players.

Whether the Mets should be buyers, sellers, or neither at the end of July will ultimately be determined how the team plays their next 21 games. Will they still be in the race? Will they be completely out of it? Will they barely be hanging on? And can GM Omar Minaya afford to publicly wave the white flag at the risk of lost ticket sales and other revenues at Met home games in August and September, and depending on what moves he makes, 2010?

Only time will tell, but you can put this one in the books. The 2009 Mets will not make the postseason because they've gone too many games without their horses. By the time the cavalry comes back, it will be too late.

I really hope to be proven wrong, but this time, I highly doubt it.

Go Angels.

Every year, MLB begins their All-Star game balloting near the end of April, which is far too early. I advocate for voting only after June 1, as you simply cannot elect players to the All-Star game based on less than one month of baseball.

The New York Mets are not off to a good start.

None of the starting pitchers except for Johan Santana are pitching with any semblance of consistency.

With the exception of a winning start over San Diego on April 15, Oliver Perez has been absolutely terrible.

The jury is still out on Mike Pelfrey and John Maine, and Livan Hernandez has so far only been able to pitch well against the Marlins and no one else. As it is, the expectations for Livan Hernandez are quite low.

While Frankie Rodriguez has not blown any saves yet, and he will, JJ Putz and Sean Green have not held leads during the last two games of the series against the Florida Marlins at CitiField. While these things are bound to happen, you don't want to see them happen two games in a row.

David Wright is off to a very bad start, and he's whiffing at a record pace for him. Slow starts are one thing, but striking out like you're Ryan Howard is another. On the other hand, you can see that his numbers for the month of April 2009 are still better than his start to April 2007, with only the strikeouts being the major increase.
April 2005: 17 strikeouts in 76 ABs, 23 games, .303 / .418 / .539
April 2006: 13 strikeouts in 89 ABs, 24 games. .303 / .377 / .584
April 2007: 23 strikeouts in 90 ABs. 24 games. .244 / .370 / .311
April 2008: 16 strikeouts in 96 ABs. 26 games. .281 / .417 / .531 (one game on March 31, 2008 also included)
April 2009: 27 strikeouts in 82 ABs. 21 games. .280 / .372 / .390

The highest amount of strikeouts David Wright has ever had in a single month was May 2006, when he struck out 29 times, but in 27 games and 110 ABs. He still remained far more productive during that period though, hitting .336 / .408 / .500.

However, slow starts do not rule out a team's ability to get to the posteason come October.

Here are the 21-game records of the World Series teams (both winner and loser) dating back to 2000. I use 21 as the benchmark since that's how many games the Mets have played in the 2009 season as of April 30.

(Teams with below .500 records after 21 games are bolded and italicized.)
2000: New York Yankees (14-7) and New York Mets (14-7)
2001: Arizona Diamondbacks (11-10) and New York Yankees (11-10)
2002: Anaheim Angels (7-14) and San Francisco Giants (13-8)
2003: Florida Marlins (10-11) and New York Yankees (18-3)
2004: Boston Red Sox (15-6) and St. Louis Cardinals (10-11)
2005: Chicago White Sox (16-5) and Houston Astros (8-13)
2006: St. Louis Cardinals (14-7) and Detroit Tigers (13-8)
2007: Boston Red Sox (14-7) and Colorado Rockies (8-13)
2008: Philadelphia Phillies (11-10) and Tampa Bay Rays (10-11)

The 2009 Mets are 9-12 after 21 games.

Is it better to have a strong start than not? Absolutely.
Can teams come back from slow April starts to win the World Series or make the postseason? Absolutely, although you might have to settle for the Wild Card (2002 Angels, 2003 Florida, 2005 Houston, 2007 Colorado,)

It's also important to remember that you can have the best regular season record over the course of a season, and not even make the World Series. Just ask Lou Piniella and his 2001 Seattle Mariners with their 116-46 record. They lost the ALCS to the Yankees in just 5 games. Or last year's Los Angeles Angels that ran away with the AL West crown and an MLB season-best record of 100-62, only to lose to Boston in the ALDS (again... grrrr!) in 4 games.

Can a strong April be absolutely worthless when it comes to the end result in September? Look no further than the 2008 Arizona Diamondbacks, who were 15-6 after their first 21 games, only to end up in 2nd place in the NL West when the season ended. Conversely, the Los Angeles Dodgers started 2008 9-12, and ended up winning the NL West division. The Oakland A's were 12-9 after their first 21 in 2008, and finished the season well below .500 at 75-86.

There's no shortage of examples on both sides of the coin. So when people panic about their team in April if they're not off to a 20+ win month, it's generally unwarranted. Of course, if you're a Washington Nationals fan, you can safely throw in the towel.

The Mets do have cause for concern, and they're going to need to kick things into high gear over the month of May if they want to compete for the NL East crown or the NL Wild Card. With 16 of 29 games against NL East teams in May, the Mets are going to need to win as many of those games as possible to get back into this race.