Middle Relief Option
The Boston Red Sox DFA’s Joel Pineiro yesterday, to make room on the roster for Jon Lester.
The guy’s got electric stuff, but has been riddled by injuries and inconsistency since 2003. The Red Sox signed him as a closer candidate when they thought Jon Papelbon would be a starter. It didn’t work out so well for Pineiro in the bullpen, as he posted a 5.03 ERA. He’s only 28, appears to be healthy, and may be ripe for a move to the National League.
A project for Rick Peterson?
How to get him is another question entirely. What do the Astros need? Young outfielders? Would they take Ben Johnson? Caleb Stewart?
May be getting ahead of ourselves, but let’s say the Mets get Loretta to play everyday 2B. What’s the lineup look like, including Alou and Green?
If we did get Loretta, things don’t change much — you put him into the #2 spot and leave him there. LoDuca / Castro goes down to 7 or 8.
Willie’s lineup:
Reyes
LoDuca
Beltran
Wright
Delgado
Alou
Green
Loretta
My lineup:
Reyes
Loretta
Wright
Alou
Delgado
Beltran
Castro
Green
Of course, you won’t see mine. God forbid you have three straight righties in a lineup, or Beltran not striking out in the first inning.
Anyway, although I certainly respect your opinion, I wouldn’t support your lineup. You’re essentially wasting Beltran’s speed and 40-HR power in the 6th hole in the lineup. Plus, you don’t like him striking out so much in the first inning, but you have Wright in the 3-hole instead and he has almost 20 more K’s than Beltran on the season in only 4 more at-bats. I would say your projected “Willie” lineup is dead on, although if Lo Duca’s average continues slipping south you might see him flip-flop with Loretta in the 2 and 8 spot. That also gives you a nice lineup of left-righty-lefty-righty, making it a difficult trek for opposing bullpens to maneuver through late in ballgames. Milledge, Chavez, Gotay, Easley, and Castro would be the bench, again representing a nice mix of lefties, righties, pinch-runners, and defensive replacements.
YES: I’d take him definately. I think he has huge upside. Obviously he has no financial liability and he would sit behind Sele and mop. But better is to go to AAA (player approval needed) to work on becoming a starter again (ala Brian Lawrence and Ollie did time at AAA last yr. He has the stuff, but like Ollie fell off the rails plus there was talk of arm injury when he was in Seattle last yr.
Also Beltran doesn’t have 40-HR power this year, his recent three homers in three games notwithstanding. In fact, I’d be surprised if he finished the year with 30. If he’s on a hot streak, fine, get him in the three hole, but when he’s not hot, he doesn’t produce enough to stay up that high.
Do you think Delgado has “40-HR power”? He’s done it three times in the past.
I have Wright in the 3-hole because he is the Mets’ best hitter, next to Reyes, and you want your best hitter guaranteed an at-bat in the first frame, don’t you? Never mind the strikeouts, he’s hitting 30+ points higher than Beltran, and is about 40 points higher with OBP. And by the way, he’s also stolen 8 more bases.
Yeah, the lefty-righty-lefty crap is all the rage with over-thinking managers these days — which is why we may never see Wright and Alou hitting back-to-back. There’s some sense to the strategy, but not if it means displacing your best hitters from their ideal spot in the lineup. For example, would it make sense for the Phillies to move Ryan Howard down to fifth so he wasn’t directly after Utley? Would anyone have split up Ruth-Gehrig?
The argument to keep Beltran so high based on speed doesn’t hold water. When he’s struggling between .240-.260, how does his foot speed help if he’s not on the bases?
As for power, DWright is hitting a homer once every 20 ABs to Beltran’s 19. Not a significant difference, especially when OBP and AVG are factored in.
Alou, by the way is neither a singles hitter nor one who strikes out often, so yes I do want him at #4, and will take his average speed there as a consequence. Did the Mets ever consider leadfoot Delgado’s baserunning when he started game after game in the cleanup spot?
When you say “your two most prone strikeout batters back to back in the lineup.” — to whom are you referring?
RE: “You can’t move Beltran from 3rd to 6th in the lineup based on his hot streaks. You need a balanced lineup with consistency”
Why? Why continue to put the same lineup out there day after day? Merely to be consistent? Toward what purpose? The spots in the order that might have tools-specific hitters — and even then there is argument — are 1,2, and 8. #1 should be getting on base, #2 should be someone who can handle the bat, hit and run, take pitches, and otherwise move #1 along, and #8 should be a disciplined, contact hitter who won’t be vulnerable to getting pitched around with the pitcher up next. Everyone in between are the free swingers, and they should be ordered according to their current performance. If I’m the manager, I bury Beltran lower in the order until he starts hitting again. Is he going to have a different approach batting sixth as opposed to third? I should hope not. Unless all nine hitters bat in the first inning, the order and the roles change pretty quickly — by the second inning. Which is why the idea of a consistent lineup — after your third hitter — doesn’t have much support.
And I have to respectfully disagree re: Beltran being the third hitter because he was an MVP candidate hitting third last year. That was last year, and this is this year. The spot in the lineup has nothing to do with what he “deserves” or doesn’t deserve — it’s what’s best for the team. And a .250/.260 hitter batting third is not best for any first-place, championship-bound team.
Also, it looks as if Chip Ambres will be up until at least the weekend. Apparently, Moises Alou messed up his shoulder when he was with the Cyclones.
In your world, you remove Beltran, or anyone for that matter, from their regular lineup spot to the bottom half to get them out of a slump. Ok, then let’s say Beltran heats up batting 6th, batting .350 over a 2 week span. Move him back up to 3rd, and now he starts to struggle again. Ok, so move him back down to 6th. All the while, Wright, Alou, Delgado, etc are moving up and down throughout the lineup with him, never giving one player an anchor in the lineup with a chance to get comfortable. If you read articles or listen to interviews a lot of players will say they want the manager to put them in one spot in the lineup and leave him there. Don’t move me up and down and all around in correspondence to my streaks. The bottom line is if you switched players in the lineup everytime they got hot or cold, you’d end the season with 162 different lineups. That CERTAINLY won’t help your offense.
It seems to me you’re concentrating too much on ordering the lineup with the guys with the highest averages first down to the lowest averages last. That theory works, but not exclusively. Alou has a better average than Delgado and Beltran, but does that make him a better clean-up hitter? Shouldn’t that be for someone known for his pop and be able to get the guys home who theoretically get on base in the first inning? If Shawn Green were still batting .300, would he be a candidate to bat third? The answer is no, because we know he’s no third place batter, despite a high average. The same applies to the contrary, whereas if your average is mediocre it doesn’t automatically not make you a middle of the lineup type of hitter. And Beltran is still hitting .263! Since when did that become the new mendoza line? He also leads the team with 19 HR…and he’s the guy you want to demote in the lineup???
And at this stage of his career Alou is mostly a singles hitter. In 110 at-bats this season, 10 extra base hits…only 2 of which are home runs. Over the course of 500 at-bats, he’s amass a whopping grand total of 10 HRs. You want that to be your cleanup hitter? On top of that, you’d have you biggest power guys 5th and 6th in the lineup, whereas traditionally they should be somewhere 3 through 5.
The thing we can agree on, which is probably fueling this argument, is that the Mets have 2 legitamate #3 hitters in Wright and Beltran, and throughout the season you can make valid reasons why one should be in that spot over the other. I’d be in agreement with you to remove Beltran from the 3-hole if he were hitting .230 for the season, but at .263 he deserves no such demotion. The team is scoring runs again and winning, so why tamper with what’s obviously not broken?
So is Milledge going anywhere…or we going to forget jason Bay & X. Then again both those guys make the Mets pay everytime for trading them away.
Isuzu, I understand your argument. Let’s end it here: my feeling is you have to put your best pure hitter — generally that’s a guy who bats at least .300 (on most teams). Other than one season, Beltran’s NEVER been a .300 guy — he’s generally too streaky. Wright, in my estimation, is an ideal #3 hitter. Whatever you want to do with the lineup after D-Wright, be my guest. Put Beltran cleanup … truce?
Erik – Pineiro’s a righty. He’d only be worthwhile if we think he can be what Mota was last year.
Re: Eddie Kunz: nice he’s wrapped up. I’m in agreement with Micalpalyn – he’s for the future. His first home game should be in Citi Field.