At the beginning of the season, in terms of pitching, the strength was the bullpen and the weakness was the rotation. While we all can pretty much agree that the opposite has been true, there is one weakness of the rotation that has reared its ugly head this season: depth. The Mets pitching staff has lacked serious depth this year. It’s a far cry from 2006 when the Mets had solid starting pitchers to fall back one when injuries struck.
To focus just on the starting pitching here would be unfair. Part of the failure of the replacements falls on the bullpen (like Batista). The following pitchers have made starts for the Amazin’s so far this year:
– R.A. Dickey
– Johan Santana
– Jon Niese
– Dillon Gee
– Chris Young
– Mike Pelfrey
– Miguel Batista
– Jermey Hefner
– Chris Schwinden
At the start of the season this was the starting rotation:
– Johan Santana
– R.A. Dickey
– Jon Niese
– Mike Pelfrey
– Dillon Gee
Then Mike Pelfrey went down at around the same time as a Doubleheader. The Doubleheader was already, probably regardless of health, going to have one game started by the long man in the bullpen, Miguel Batista. It was a pretty bad start.
His start helped Chris Schwinden become the spot starter for Mike Pelfrey. When that experiment failed, the Mets tried out Jermey Hefner, which also failed. The Mets then went back to Miguel Batista until Chris Young could join the team.
Chris Young was the first replacement that seemed to stick. And things were going well until the All-Star break.
After the All-Star Break (or partially during it) the Mets lost two starting pitchers: Dillon Gee and Johan Santana. Gee is out for the season while Santana may be out for a few starts. First the Mets tried Miguel Batista again, but it hasn’t worked.
So now the Mets are heading into this week with the plan to use Hefner and Harvey. My prediction is that if Hefner fails twice AND it looks like Johan will need more time, then the Mets will bring up McHugh. If anything, it looks like the next injury to the rotation will bring in McHugh.
The Mets were really lucky in 2011. They had only 9 pitchers all season make starts for the team as Schwinden, Batista, Young made 4 starts each and Carrasco made one start. Pelfrey, Niese, Gee, Capuano and Dickey made at least 26 starts each. While this was unusual, it seems like the 2012 Mets are heading in the opposite direction with pitcher #1o making his start later this week.
I feel a little funny criticizing the Mets for rotation depth, because they are replacing 2 starting pitchers (I don’t count Santana as a replacement, the fault for his hole in the rotation sits on the Long Man in the bullpen).
Now for some MLB statistics:
Dickey 13-1, 19 GS, 2.84 ERA, 133.1 IP
Niese 7-4, 19 GS, 3.59 ERA, 117.2 IP
Santana 6-7, 19 GS, 3.98 ERA, 110.2 IP
Gee 6-7, 17 GS, 4.10 ERA, 109.2 IP
Young 2-4, 8 GS, 4.11 ERA, 46.0 IP
Batista, 1-3, 5 GS, 30 G, 4.82 ERA, 46.2 IP
Hefner 1-3, 3 GS, 12 G, 5.85 ERA, 32.1 IP
Pelfrey 0-0, 3 GS, 2.29 ERA, 19.2 IP
Schwinden 0-1, 2 GS, 3 G, 12.46 ERA, 8.2 IP
And some MiLB statistics:
Harvey: 7-5, 20 GS, 3.68 ERA, 110.0 IP
Hefner: 5-2, 9 GS, 2.77 ERA, 61.2 IP
McHugh: 1-3, 7 GS, 4.54 ERA, 37.2 IP
