Baseball Thread VI

Just making sure that stays in place.

 

And that steal of home yesterday shouldn't count, since it came against a borderline tubby rookie pitcher whose delivery to home plate needs to be measured with an hourglass.

Orlando Cabrera: King of the soft steals of home!!!    ;D   <--------not as big a dickhead as spnited!!!

 

I got nothing against Orlando Cabrera...even if his OBP, after reaching safely in 60 straight games, is .360

 

You can get off your knees now

 

Having ballots start up in April with "vote early, vote often" was a bad idea. MLB put Big Papi and his 21 ABs at first base, but leaving Jim Thome off the ballot at the same position was a mistake.

But that's what happens when you vote early, vote often. Mistakes can happen.

 

This may be a first for us -- an open apology to BYH. I snickered when you referred to the Mets as frauds. Well, what I saw last night against 2-7 Paul Maholm looked very much like ... frauds. I'll post this now before they play and make me look foolish, but for the past two weeks, the Mets have looked dreadful. If the Phillies had anything at all, they'd catch them. Either way, it's a first-round elimination in the playoffs. There, I've said it.

 

Yeah, it's been disheartening lately, but I'm not ready to call them frauds -- yet. To me, it's all about Pedro. If he gets healthy again, the Mets are clearly the class of the NL. If not, trouble. Unless, that is, Minaya can find them a first-rate starter somewhere. Either way, it's time to start looking at putting Heilman into the rotation. He hasn't been all that great in the 'pen and part of the problem may be that his heart just isn't in it. He wants to start, the Mets need a starter, so give him a shot.

Yeah, the Mets could go one round and out in October, but with the dreck that's in the NL, I still like their chances for the Series.

 

It's Independence Day. Baseball on July 4 ... it doesn't get any more American than that.

So why is ESP-fuckin-N showing a hot dog eating contest and poker instead?

I ask for ... nay, I demand that an asteroid obliterate Bristol, Conn., immediately. It's the only way to make sure that nobody at ESPN survives.

 

The reason Heilman is struggling in the pen -- and why he'll never be an effective starter -- is that he is a two-pitch pitcher who doesn't really have an out pitch.
A fastball and a change-up get you only so far. He has never developed an effective curve ball or slider.
As for part of the problem being his heart not being in it, there have always been questions about how much heart Heilman actually has.

I did see a story this morning in the NY Times specualting that with 8 games in 7 days and Pedro questionable, Pelfrey might get called up this weekend. It might just be time to give him a 2-3 week audition before the July 31 non-waiver trade deadline.

 

Buster Olney sums it up pretty well right here:

Nobody is going to catch the Mets in the NL East. Philadelphia is bogged down in Brett Myers hell, 11 games out of first, and club executives probably will spend the next 28 days deciding whether it makes sense to dump Bobby Abreu's salary now or in the winter. The Florida Marlins have been an amazing story, but the trademark of young teams is inconsistent; they won't have enough to make up the 11½ deficit.

The Braves looked like Scarlett's horse from "Gone With The Wind", foaming at the mouth, ready to drop at any second; they're 13½ games out. And the Nationals are in garage sale mode, with general manager Jim Bowden effectively holding out Alfonso Soriano and Jose Guillen and saying, "Make me your best offer."

No, the Mets will win the division; they'll make the playoffs. And they also have a serious problem.

Pedro Martinez has a bad hip, as Anthony McCarron writes, and will miss at least one scheduled start. This cannot be a surprise to anyone who watched Pedro pitch in June, when he never looked right and went 2-3 with a 6.23 ERA. His velocity dropped, but more importantly, his remarkable control seemed to wane.

Look, maybe he'll bounce back after a stint on the disabled list. But the Mets really can't know what to expect. What they do know is that problems gradually wore on Pedro last year, and he basically was shut down for the last couple of weeks, working five innings after Sept. 16, and this year, the Mets have every reason to hope and to believe that they can play into the last week of October. This is an excellent team, regardless of how they struggled against the Red Sox and Yankees the last week.

But the fragility of their starting pitching has the potential to be a serious problem, the kind of issue that might take them down in the first week of the playoffs. Tom Glavine should start the All-Star Game, Steve Trachsel always battles and Orlando Hernandez will give them the occasional strong outing, as he did Friday. But now Pedro has issues, and Alay Soler is getting beat up -- over his last three starts, he's allowed 25 hits and 19 earned runs in just 12 innings.

If the Mets would be satisfied with making the playoffs and rolling the dice, then they're already in good shape. But that's not the case: The organization has constructed this team with the intention of making the run at the club's first championship since 1986. So the Mets need help in their rotation.

Their first option should be to weigh the progress of Mike Pelfrey, the former first-round pick who gradually has improved in the minors. If the Mets call him up this week, they have a chance to see him in three or four starts before the trade deadline, to assess whether he can be an impact rookie, or if he's just not ready for that kind of responsibility.

Their second option: A trade. And right now, because of how the interleague games played out -- virtually all of the NL teams got whacked at the same rate -- there are very few teams out there looking to trade. The Cubs and Pirates are really the only teams in the NL Central and NL West who would be classified as sellers (although Cubs GM Jim Hendry says he's not doing a fire sale). There just isn't a lot of trade talk going on. "My phone hasn't rung in days," said an AL general manager last week.

Oh, sure, there are a few names out there. Mets general manager Omar Minaya knows Livan Hernandez, and while it would be kind of a fun thing to see Hernandez reunited with El Duque on the same team, the numbers for the Washington ace are nothing less than appalling: 137 hits and 47 walks in 117 innings, with opponents batting .302. He is 6-8 with a 5.46 ERA.

Kip Wells of the Pirates would be an enormous gamble. Scott Elarton, a proven veteran, might make some sense, but he's not the dominating sort who will hammer playoff teams, if that's what Minaya wants to hold out for. The Marlins keep saying Dontrelle Willis is not available, which means the Mets would have to make an offer Florida can't refuse -- Lastings Milledge, in all likelihood -- to even open the discussion.

You can get Barry Zito, who just got picked for another All-Star team, but he's a rental. The Mets would have to pay top value in a trade offer, and then hope they could re-sign Zito before he heads off to free agency in the fall.

Spoke with several scouts in the last six weeks about Pelfrey, and they don't think he's close to being a solid major-league pitcher at this juncture. But it never hurts to try: Call him up, and give him a shot.

And if it doesn't work out, the Mets aggressively should pursue the best pitcher available, and be prepared to pay a steep price that might wound their future a bit. The 2006 Mets have most of the elements necessary to win a World Series, if Pedro Martinez is right.

If he's not right, they need a good solid replacement. The Mets' executives would kick themselves if they came all this way and then got knocked out in the first round of the playoffs because of a trade they didn't make.

 

The Cubs won't have a fire sale because they have nothing to sell. If the trade market stays cold, they'd be wise to try to pick up a player or two, except that they have nothing in the minors to offer in return.