The Mets eased into the All-Star break by winning five of eight games in a busy week. The offense remained good, the pitching remained troubling and neither John Maine nor Mike Pelfrey could do anything about it. But now we move into what has recently been the hardest time of the year to be a Mets fan. It is July and as a result, rumors of the Mets emptying their farm system to acquire washed up veterans are flying. So I thought this would be a good time to look back at Omar Minaya's offseason trades and see how they're working out so far. Maybe he really does know what he's doing and I can relax.
The first significant trade of the winter was the deal that sent Mike Cameron to San Diego in exchange for Xavier Nady. Cameron was recovering from a serious injury and stuck playing right field if he were to remain on the Mets, so his trade value was certainly diminished a bit. Still, it seemed Minaya jumped the gun a bit in making this trade when he could perhaps have received more by getting a CF-less team like the Red Sox involved in the bidding.
At the artificial midway point of the season, this deal is not looking so great. Cameron got off to a slow start but is now hitting .259/.349/.440 in a very tough pitcher's park. Nady is at .265/.321/.484 and has actually played fewer games than the once injured Cameron. Nady has also looked pretty bad defensively and I seriously doubt the same could be said for Cameron. While the Mets did save a bit of money with this deal, I think they clearly wound up with the inferior player. The Mets couldn't have utilized Cameron in center field the way the Padres have, but I still think they could have gotten more for him.
Next up was the biggest deal of the season and the one I liked the most at the time. Carlos Delgado came to the Mets while Mike Jacobs and top pitching prospect Yusmeiro Petit went to Florida. Delgado got off to a hot start in April only to cool off considerably in May. He bounced back with a good June but his overall numbers are still not good.
Delgado is hitting .252/.344/.513, which would add up to his lowest full-season OPS in ten years and his lowest OBP ever. Perhaps more disturbing is that Jacobs is putting up nearly identical numbers. He's hitting .278/.351/.494 in about forty fewer at bats. Petit has struggled in both the minors and the majors this year, but even so, this trade is a looking like a disappointment. The thirty-four year old Delgado, whom the Mets have signed up for two more years, isn't even out-hitting the twenty-five year old he was traded for. I still believe Delgado has it in him to finish strong. And in any case he's been a significant upgrade over the 2005 Mets' first basemen. But when the Mets are paying $13 million for a thirty-six year old Delgado in 2008, Mike Jacobs might be down in Florida making them regret it.
The Mets made one more deal with the Marlins this winter and that one is more obviously not working out. Gaby Hernandez is having a solid year in high-A ball at age twenty, posting a 3.24 ERA in 111 innings with 107 strikeouts and just 31 walks. Meanwhile, the guy the Mets got for him isn't outplaying his own backup or the guy he replaced.
Paul Lo Duca is showing us all how useless a .300 batting average can be if you don't have any patience or power to back it up. At .302/.343/.409, Lo Duca is about even with Ramon Castro, who's slumped a bit lately to drop to .255/.347/.402. Castro remains the superior defensive player. And out in San Diego, old Mike Piazza is hitting .290/.348/.504 playing only slightly less often than Lo Duca. There was no way Piazza was coming back to the Mets and even I didn't think playing him every day was a good idea. But it sure would be nice to have him around now.
The other two significant trades of the offseason saw the Mets trade pitching for pitching, some of which they've since traded for more pitching. Jae Seo and Tim Hamulack went to the Dodgers in exchange for Duaner Sanchez and Steve Schmoll. And Kris Benson went to Baltimore for John Maine and Jorge Julio, who has since been traded to Arizona for Orlando Hernandez.
The deal with the Dodgers seems like the best of the bunch as Sanchez has been very good in relief while Seo struggled mightily in LA. Seo's since been traded to Tampa Bay and pitched well against the Yankees. I swear if Jae Seo and Scott Kazmir lead the Devil Rays to the top of the AL East one of these years, I will never forgive the Mets. But I digress.
Benson's apparently been his usual mediocre self in Baltimore, just with a bit of AL inflation added to his standard 4.something ERA. Neither Julio nor Maine has been any better for the Mets, but Hernandez has at least added a bit of stable adequacy to the back of the rotation.
Wow. Looking at all of these trades together, a picture begins to develop. And it is not pretty. I thought this could be an unusually relaxing July, given the Mets' enormous division lead, and all I'd have to complain about would be the weather. Now I'm not so sure. I guess I'll get started on my "they traded what for Livan Hernandez?" post.
4 comments:
I think the notion that "Benson's apparently been his usual mediocre self in Baltimore" is incorrect.
Benson has 9 wins. 13 starters in the AL have more.
Benson's ERA is 4.59. 28 starters in the AL have a lower ERA.
Benson has 120.1 IP. 11 starters in the AL have more.
On a given day, there are 90 starting pitchers in the AL. In Wins and IP, Benson is top 15%. In ERA, he's top 30%.
While I would not categorize Benson as a great starter, or a "stopper", or an ace, he has been significantly better than mediocre for the O's this season.
I don't put much if any stock in a pitcher's win totals given how many factors completely outside his control contribute to it. Steve Trachsel's won seven consecutive starts. That doesn't make him an elite starter.
Winning games on a losing team, as Benson has, can be impressive, but it isn't necessarily so. Benson's average run support is 5.55, which is more than half a run greater than what the average AL team scores in a game. That's not an enormous advantage, but it is something.
I don't know where you get the number 90 from, but if each of the 14 American League teams has five starters, there are 70 in total. 45 of these have pitched enough innings to qualify for the ERA title and more than half of those have a lower ERA than Benson. Heck, the league average ERA (4.54) is better than Benson's.
And that seems like the same old Benson to me. A guy who's been no better than league average since 2000. Having a league average guy or two in your rotation is valuable, but I'd value it at a bit less than $7 million. Kris Benson is a perfectly okay pitcher who would merit very little notice if not for his draft position, his contract and his wife.
The number 90 is in error. You are correct that it is 70.
This makes Benson's win total top 20%, IP top 17% and ERA top 41%.
I'm surprised to hear you say you don't put much stock in a pitcher's win totals. This is the primary value of a starting pitcher.
Comparing Benson's ERA to the League average is misleading because the League average includes relievers, which is a different beast altogether.
Comparing Benson's ERA to only the starters who have qualified for the ERA lead is the same comparison as saying "Among the best starters, Benson is in the lower tier".
None of this is to argue that Benson is an elite starter. I readily agree that he is not. The exception taken is a description as "mediocre".
Webster defines mediocre as "of moderate or low quality, value, ability, or performance".
Thus far this season for the Orioles, Benson has outperformed that definition based on the standard set by AL starting pitchers. While his ERA is only slightly above that standard, his wins and innings pitched are significantly above that standard.
Won/loss record just isn't a good indicator of individual pitching performance at all. At best a pitcher has fifty percent control over whether or not his team wins. And unless he's striking out every batter he faces, he's got even less than that.
A team's offense, defense and bullpen have absolutely nothing to do with a starting pitcher's ability and yet they can all significantly effect his record. Earlier this season, Pedro Martinez went seven starts without a win while posting a 3.06 ERA. More recently, Trachsel won seven straight starts with a 4.43 ERA. This is an enormous swing that had very little to do with the way these two pitched and a lot to do with how their teammates played.
This is not an uncommon occurrence. There are just too many variables that contribute to a pitcher's record over which he has no control to treat it an important performance metric. This sort of thing is how Bartolo Colon winds up with a Cy Young Award and Bert Blyleven winds up watching the Hall of Fame induction ceremony on TV.
If I thought it was important, I might point out that Benson is closer to the league lead in losses than he is in wins. But that doesn't mean much to me, either. Pitchers prevent runs. Teams win games.
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