3 Up And 3 Down August 7-14

3 Up

• Bobby Parnell
• Billy Wagner
• Anderson Hernandez

Today Bobby Parnell went 6 shutout innings, notching his first major league win as a ,

walking none, and striking out seven on 80 pitches, which is quite effecient, throwing 61 of them for strikes. In the sixth inning h

e looked tired, but was able to get through it without any runs allowed, and at one point had stricken out four consecutive batters, and was as poised and intimidating as Johan Santana or Roy Halladay, which for the young converted reliever Bobby Parnell is a good sign, he did a good job of scattering the only three hits he allowed, all of them came in different innings, so the Giants never got started, so they could not get on a roll, which is another young Mets starter's issue (cough Mike Pelfrey cough). He is developing his secondary pitches that are not fastballs because he is starting, so even if he ends up back in the bullpen it will be good for his development.

Billy Wagner has thrown 4 innings at St Lucie, allowing one baserunner, and striking out 6, and walking none, he has allowed one hit, dominating the hitters and looking good the whole way, and he is projected to be with the team and availible for Jerry Manual for Sunday's game, which has to be a record for speediest recovery from Tommy John surgery, as it will be about 11 months frmo the surgery, and he will be availible to pitch, Jerry has said he will use him as a lefty specialist at first, and then stretch him out. We should try to get him to Type-A free agent status so we can get two picks for him, which would end up giving us in effect, 3 first rounders, and considering the last time we had a first rounder was 2008, and we did not have one in 07, or 05, it would be a great thing for our farm system if we could add 3 first rounders to it.

He played just three games for us this week, after being acquired from Washington for Greg Veloz, but he was our hottest hitter. He had eleven PAs, reached base 6 times, on two walks and four hits, including two multi hit games, and has been another one of those small bright spots us Mets fans need to keep us from watching Jets preseason games, he played good defense, not giving up anything, and had a .444/.545/.556 line for the week. His BABIP was .800, and the reason his batting average was so low was because of his four strike outs for the week, but that is only a minor problem. He was acquired from Washingon for a lesser version of himself, almost Anderson Hernandez 0.0, because Veloz has less plate discipline...

3 Down

• David Wright
• Jeff Francoeur
• Mike Pelfrey

David Wright had a bad week, and truly is having the oddest .320 season ever, as he will have a career high in Ks by a long shot.

The honeymoon is over.

Send him down?

Could Parnell Start?

With Niese going down today, the Mets need to get creative with the starting pitching, as they do not have anyone left to call up, and are running out of healthy starters.

Minor League History

Untill last year Bobby Parnell was a starter, starting with Brooklyn in 2005, making it to Double-A in 2007 with a WHIP .1 higher than his career average of 1.3, so he struggled at first, and was sent down, his second time up he was .2 higher than his career average, and started 2008 at Binghampton, where he would get back down to his career average, and then in 2008 with a horrible bullpen and Parnell on the 40-man they called him up in September and used him in some critical spots out of the bullpen which slowed his growth as a starter, and when he started this year in the bullpen he added something that we did not have last year, a hard thrower at the back end of the bullpen.

One problem presented is that he would have to stretch out his inning so he could not start, but then again he pitched 3 today, and he could throw an 80 pitch bullpen session sometime between now and when Niese's next start would have been, and then limit him to just 80 pitches, or hopefully about 4-5 innings of work, or just shift the rotation so we give him an extra day or two.

If he were to do this it would be pretty impressive, as other pitchers have tried and failed, like Jonathon Papelbon.

Should We Go After Kazmir?

News is that the Rays are shopping Scott Kazmir to try and cut payroll so they can make a big move, and they called the Mets.

Kazmir owns hte Rays/Devil Rays record books in about every major pitching stat, and was as we know, was infamously traded to the Devil Rays in 2004 for Victor Zambrano, when the Mets front office had the false idea that they had a shot at the playoffs. Now we can undo that past mistake, and might be able to do it cheaply. When a team is attpempting to dump salary they will trade players for a lot less value than they could get, and maybe we could get him for Jonathon Niese or Ruben Tejeda?

Many have questioned his make-up this year, but I do not think that there is any significant problem there, and it is just a reason for the Rays to tell their fans they are trading the best pitcher in franchise history.

He is 5-6 this year with a 6.22 ERA, which is not very good, and his BABIP is right around his career norm at .315 (his career average is .318), so it means he is not getting unlucky, but he is not getting lucky, which troubles me, but I looked deeper and found hope. He has a BB/9 ratio of 4.31, which is only a little above his career average of 4.18, and his K/9 is 7.99, which is down from his career average, and is why he has struggled, so if Kazmir can get more balls his softly in play, or less balls in play he will improve.

One Thing To Say

Hearing about the whole Bernazzard debacle, fire everyone, hire Paul Depodesta as GM, Keith Law as assistant GM, and farm director should be some guy from Baseball America...

What To Expect From Pedro

The Phillies signed Pedro, and in a few weeks he will be at the big league level, what can we expect from him?

Last season for the first time in his career he finished with a record under .500, at 5-6, and had an ERA of 5.61, the worst for him ever. He has said he was pitching hurt all of last year, but in 2007 was he? Well he has similar stats. In 2007 he was 3-1, and in 2006 he was 9-8, both years he spent time injured, so when he started to get hurt he started to decline.

The following graphs I am about to show you are from http://fangraphs.com/ .

As you can see, it shows his line drive, groundball, and fly ball percentage from every year in his career, and it shows that his fly ball percentage actually went down the last two seasons. and that his groundball percentage has gone up, which for an old pitcher who is trying to figure out how to pitch more precisely and play to contact, and not for the strike out is a good thing no? So why did Pedro get hammered? There was a slight raise in his line drive percentage, and those tend to be base hits, but it is not a substantial raise, and it definitely is not the answer to why he was so ineffective last year.

(Note: the blue line in the graph is league average)Next I want to look at his ratio statistics, his K/BB ratio in 2005, his last completed effective season was 4.43, which led the league, and is

great, but in 2006 it fell to 3.51, and in 07 which was a small sample size it was 4.57, so because of the small sample size it does not mean much, and in 08 it was 1.98, which is bad for a pitcher who allows 21% of his balls put in play to be line drives, which unless are right at a fielder, are not likely to be caught. As you can see it was great, at times, it was literally off the charts, but in

2008 it came crashing down to league average, which

means more balls in play, so more line drives...

So with more balls in play being line drive, one very important pitching stat is bound to go up, BABIP, his career BABIP was .282, in 2007 it was .384 and in 08 it was .327, which is a benefit of the increased amount of line drives. This means that the high BABIP is not because of him getting unlucky because of a bad defense, it is because of the fact more balls were being put in play, and more line drives. He will be pitching in Citizens Bank Park, with a Ballpark Factor of .999 for runs, for HR it has a 1.064, and his fly ball percentage is 35 percent, so with those 35 percent that are on the warning track at Shea, or Citifield, are gone at Citizens Bank.

So expect Pedro to be ineffective, more so than in 08 and 07.

Live Chat 7-14

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