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

Live Chat Tommrow At Noon ET

Come by at noon tommorow to chat with me about anything Mets or baseball.

Should We Give Livan The Boot?

Many are calling for Jon Niese to take the spot of Livan Hernandez in the Mets rotation, but I say the reason he has been so effective is because of bad luck.

Livan Hernandez in his last 2 starts has allowed 7 ER and 8 ER which is always with any pitcher a cause of concern, but when it is a guy who had been doing well all season, it started to trouble me, why did Livan stop being effective, so I looked into it. The last 2 seasons his BABIP was higher tan his career, which means that he had been getting unlucky, meaning either slow, or bad defense behind was contributing to his high ERA, and more runs allowed. His career BABIP is .311, the last two seasons, it was .347 and this year it was .333, which means that the Mets defense is catching up to balls that Washington, Florida, and San Francisco did, causing him to allow more earned runs, not to mention he faced Philadelphia and Los Angeles, two of the best offenses in baseball.

So why his BABIP higher is lets look. The Mets according to Baseball Prospectus allow the runner to be safe in 30.8% of the time there is a batted ball, which is not good. Furthermore, Wright has struggled, we have had people playing positions they should not be (ex= Fernando Tatis at SS, or Jeremy Reed at 1B).

So I say give Livan a break, and leave him in the rotation.

Top 25 Mets Prospects (1)

I will rate the Mets prospects based on how well I think they will do in the Majors. Niese and F-Mart DO count, I will do one a day for the next 25 days, and this will not be my only post of each day.

Number 1

I believe the Mets prospect that will have the most major league success in his career will be Wilmer Flores. He can hit, and proves it all the time, at the tender age of 17, the Mets have to be careful with him, as we do not want to rush him, or hurt him. In 302 PAs this season in Savannah, he has 2 home runs and 23 RBIs, with a .280/.319/.353 line, which is underwhelming, but it shows a lot that he can hold his own at the age of 17 at Single-A.

His Best Tool

He can hit, flat out hit, like no prospect of the Mets I can remember seeing since Murphy, or maybe even better, he knows what he is doing at the plate, and can develop into a good MLB hitter.

His grade? A

Other Reactions

You already know what I think of the trade, but here are some other reactions, which seem to be quite contrary. (Note: he will bat 5th tonight and play right field, while wearing the number 12.)

Matthew Cerronne says it "doesn't matter", but also adds that he thinks it plays into an overall plan.

Mets Merized (I do not agree) says this means F-Mart and others could be on the way out.

Mets Minor League Blog hates the trade.

Metstradamus rants about it as promised, although he hated the original Church trade, and the Delgado trade.

Andrew Vazzano over at TheRopolitans (who will be on Mets Weekly today), says that the Mets " got a 5 years younger Church".

Eddie D'Anna says that he will give Francoeur a chance.

Braves Blast has there take on it.

Analyzing Francoeur

So when we traded Church for Francoeur, many people saw it as two indetical players, I say Francoeur is better.

Many people say Church has an even arm to Francoeur, but I say Francoeur has a better arm. A stat Baseball Reference uses is called kills, and holds, which says if you throw a runner out its a kill, if he holds its a hold. Francoeur has 4 kills, while Church has 1, evermore, Francoeur scares runners, with 28 holds, to Church's 28, so it is even.

Offensively Church has a better line. Francoeur has more upside, that is all I can say on that. Also Francoeur is more durable.

Breaking News: Mets Trade Church For Franceour

Update 6:47

New line-up Pagan, Cora, Murphy, Wright, Reed, Tatis, Schneider, A. Reyes, Nieve

Update: 6:44

Cash was also sent to ATL

Man am I gonna have trouble spelling Francoeur, or however you spell it.

He is hitting .250/.282/.352 Church: .282/.332/.275

Why Pagan Will Be Huge

Today the Mets sent down Nick Evans to make room for Angel Pagan, who has been very good for the Mets over the last two seasons when healthy.

He has hit .275 in 08, and .333 in 09, driving in a combined 16 runs, and compiling OBPs of .346, and .429, he has stolen 4 bases both years, and still has not been caught as a Met, which makes him a great leadoff hitter, which is something the Mets have not had since Reyes went down. He has a line this year of .333/.429/.405 and the rest of the league would have compiled a .264/.338/.417, which means that even though his Slugging Percentage is down, being a leadoff batter he does not have to have a high slugging percentage.

This year he has drawn a walk in 13.7 % of his ABs, when Reyes had a 10.8 % before getting injured, which means that Pagan gets on base about as much as Reyes would, meaning that maybe he can spark the Mets, and with Murphy moving up to 3, and getting hot we might have a shot at this division yet!

Sheff, and Ollie

I am riding high after a Met win, and I have caught up on my sleep and am ready to sit down and post.

Gary Sheffield has been the most underrated player on the Mets this year, and without him we would have been out of it a long time ago, as he has been the fourth best player this year based on Baseball Prospectus's VORP (Value Over Replacement Player). He leads the team in home runs, and has been the closest thing to a cleanup hitter the Mets have had, and without him, Wright would have no protection in the line-up what-so-ever.

Gary Sheffield is even better then I thought, and when I looked deeper into it I realized what a steal Omar got. His MLVr, which is how many more runs than an average player he contributes to, is .234, which is .4 less than David Wright, who many say has been our best hitter. He has an AVG of .283, and in similar situations the league would bat .263. His SO/BB is 1.06 which is okay; his career average in that stat is .79. He has an RBI every 6.1 ABs, and a HR every 18.8.

Oliver Perez went 5 innings of 2 run ball, which by all means is fine with me, but other people say that the 7 walks make it not as good as it really was which means that he will be back to bad Ollie soon. If we look deeper we can see that him, and the rest of the pitching staff held the Dodgers to a 2-11 with RISP, which is huge, and they left 12 on, and the highlight of Ollie's night for me was when he got a soft liner from Ethier with the bases loaded and two outs, when the old Ollie would have walked him, or allowed a hit.

So for Ollie, the future is bright.

Alexis Rios

Alex Rios is a player that the Toronto Blue Jays have said recently, because of Roy Halladay’s contract being up after next season is expendable. I am a big fan of Rios, not for his five tools, but for the statistical value he gives to your team. He is a well built outfielder, who can hit for power, and hit, as well as run which is something we could use at the leadoff spot.

He is having a bad year, with 9 homers and 37 RBI, and his line is .260/.316/.417, which is not good, but he is capable of better as 2 out of the last 4 years he had an OPS of .850. His K/PA ratio is 1K/6.38 PAs, his career is 5.92, so he is not striking out as much, and his BABIP is .287, and his career BABIP is .324. He has walked 24 times, and has been struck out 55. His walks are way down, they should be a little higher, and the OBP would be where it should be.

He is not walking this year, but if you put him on the Mets now, he would be tied for the team lead with 9 home runs. He could play right field, or left (and even center in Beltran’s absence), and cover a lot of ground, and hit for some power

Magglio Ordonez

Now I know he is expensive and he is struggling, but if we look deeper into the stats of him, we find he may possibly help the Mets, and if we dealt them Stokes, they would accept.

His basic stats are 2 Hr, 22 RBI, and his line is .271/.347/.339, his first two are okay, but the last one is not on line with where it should be. I am not worried about this as the Mets do not hit for much power anyway, so if he can add a bat to hit 5th, and be similar to David Wright, with no HR and a lot of RBIs.

His BABIP is right around his career average, at .310, and his career average is .316, so there is nothing wrong there, so its when the ball is not in play that hurts him, he has 33 Ks in 245 PAs, which is 7.42Ks/1 PA, and when he won the batting title in 2006, his K/1 PA ratio was 8.58Ks/1 PA, so it is actually lower, which means that he will break out of his slump, and if the Mets can buy low now, it will pay off later.

Tim Redding

Has he been good? He has certainly been up and down, and with Livan going nowhere, Nieve pitching well, and Maine and Perez coming (hopefully) back soon.

If we go with the easy stats his ERA is 6.27 which is bad, and his W-L is 0-2, so at first glance he looks bad, as those are the two stats most commonly associated with a starting pitcher, and for Tim they are not good. Another simple stat, which I actually like is quality start ( 6 IP 3 ER), and he has 3 of these in 6 starts, which is very good, so why are people calling for his head?

His 3 starts that were not quality were against Boston, Florida, and Baltimore, so they are against a team you do not expect a quality start from, but two teams that you should expect one. Also, in his non-quality starts he has pitched 16 innings, and allowed 17 runs, so he is all or nothing, remind you of anyone? (Ollie?).

If you look into some of the deeper stats, his BB/9 is 4.4, which reflects that his BABIP needs to be good, because when you are allowing runners on balls not in play, when the ball is in play it needs to be an out, and his BABIP is .298, which is okay.

I think Redding deserves to stay in the rotation, with Nieve pitching the 8th?

Line-Up Simulator Fun

Avg Runs Per Game: 4.34

Runs For 162 Games: 703

Order	Name	G	RBI	R
1	Alex Cora	162	31	86
2	Daniel Murphy	162	58	105
3	Carlos Beltran	162	101	135
4	David Wright	162	107	117
5	Gary Sheffield	162	145	101
6	Ryan Church	162	99	68
7	Brian Schneider	162	85	42
8	Luis Castillo	162	63	26
9	Fernando Nieve	162	10	19

Hopefully I'll have a better post later, but this is alarming.

Where Did Wright's Power Go?

His Slugging Percentage is .25 points below his career average, so why?

One reason that is popular among people who do not like the whole modern age stats thing, so they continue to go with ranting on, and basing players, and how good they are on silly stats, like RBIs and Batting Average, when stats like VORP, and OBP exist, so we can accurately judge how well a player does. One stat I am going to look at to determine if the people who say its Citifield are right is Ballpark Factor, it is a stat where anything above 1.000 is a hitters park, and below is a pitchers park.

Citifield, as we can tell without Ballpark Factor, is a pitcher's park, it has a Ballpark Factor of 0.88, which makes it an extreme pitchers park, if you dive deeper into it, it has allowed its fair share of home runs, with a home run Ballpark Factor of, yes this is true: 1.136. I like most people am perplexed by this as well, how can such a big park have such a high HR Factor? (More on that later). Back to the Ballpark Factor, last season David Wright hit a career high in home runs, and in the season before, at what was also considered a "pitchers park", it had a Ballpark HR Factor of, I am not making this up: 1.081.

What could cause David Wright to lose all his power, after his two best HR years, in 07 and 08 when he hit 30 and 33, and slugged (both of these are 1-2) .546, and .534? I looked into, and I want to show you some photos of Citifield's construction, in those years.

Both of these are in 07.

In 2007, Citifield began to take shape and start to being a real structure out beyond left field, and people talked about a wind pattern that was caused by it that made balls go farther then they usually would at Shea, which in 2003 had a Ballpark HR Factor of .835, in 04 had a .804, in 05 had a .890, in 06, when Citi was first being contructed of .575, which I believe is an outlier in this set of data, as it is not in line with the general point of direction. In 07, when we begin to focus on it had a Ballpark HR Factor of .900, so its climbing, and then finally as you already know from earlier, it had a Ballpark HR Factor of 1.081, when Citifield was at full size.

So what I am saying is the reason David Wright's HR is down, or down according to his last two seasons, is because of the fact he never was a 30 HR guy, but a 15-25 one who had the wind caused by Citifield for two seasons, and that gave him an extra 5-10 and boosted his Slugging Percentage.

This Is The Start Of Huff To Mets Ralk All Over NY Radio

Read the title, my shortest blgo post ever, and least statistically based, but its pretty true.