Archive for the ‘Mike Erhardt’ Category

David Wright's recent struggles haven't done much to help the struggling Mets. (PHOTO BY ICON SMI)

BY MIKE ERHARDT
STACHE WRITER

It’s been difficult, to say the least. We are at halfway point in the season and we stand at 39-42. Just stating the obvious and getting it out of the way – but it’s mostly the injuries. Delgado has played in 26 of 81 games, Reyes 36 of 81 and Beltran 62 of 81.

We are also missing 2 of our 5 starters. John Maine has only made 11 starts and Oliver Perez has made 5 – though having Ollie make only 5 starts could have benefited us.

The difficulty that the Mets have had this season can all be brought back to the fact that we are injured – plain and simple. But no one cares that half our team is on the DL. No one in our division, not the Mets, not me and neither should you.

We shouldn’t expect this team we have out there to just go on a 10 game winning streak but we should expect to score some runs and get some wins.

Before the Mets hosted the Cardinals we all got the bad news of Beltran to the DL and it was a huge blow. But the Mets put together some timely hitting, scored 20 runs (got shut out in game 2) and took 3 out of the 4 games giving us all some hope.

Then the Mets get swept by the Yanks, lose the first two of the Brewers series and snapped their 5 game skid with a HUGE performance from Mike Pelfrey.

With that win from Pelfrey it put the Mets just a game out of first from the Division leading Phillies and gave us yet another glimmer of home before they took the Jersey Turnpike to face our biggest rivals. A chance to go to THEIR ball park and take first place.

But it was the same back peddling Mets – starting pitchers falter and the bats don’t show up at the most friendly hitters haven. Oh yeah, and it wouldn’t be a disappointing series if Johan didn’t get to go 7 innings and give up 2 runs, get ZERO run support and have his team hand him another loss.

The thing that bothers me most is that when the Mets are within striking distance they fail. Even after the sweep were still just 4.5 out of first which is not bad, but with the way they are playing – so hot and cold all year – it makes it frustrating.

Because you know once we shrink that 1st place lead again they’re just going to falter, again.

Adam Dunn is probably miserable in Washington.

BY MIKE ERHARDT
STACHE WRITER

With the Mets riding a four game losing streak as they try to single everyone to death – we the fans, look for an answer. Its an obvious answer: the trade market. Everyone knows that we need bat, particularly someone with power, can play the outfield and a little bit of first base.

Now, we can’t just snap our fingers and have a trade magically happen and we can’t just say – “hey lets go get this guy” and who ever will be trading “that guy” away will just want to do it because it makes sense for our Mets. In fact, that makes it even more expensive of a trade for us in terms of what young players we will have to give up.

For the past few weeks on WFAN and metsblog.com every caller and blogger has been saying the same name: Adam Dunn. The Nationals record is so bad right now, that they are already eliminated from playoff contention for the 2010 season, so Adam Dunn can be got.

But I must admit it really gets me agitated when I here people say, “lets go get Adam Dunn.” Its not the .247 batting average, the extremely high strike out rate or his lousy defense. The thing that bothers me most is that now that we need Dunn in this line up he is going to cost us our young talent.

Adam Dunn was commanding anywhere from 15-18 million dollars a year in the 4-5 year range and no one would touch him. His price tag continued to drop all off season and could have been had for a bargain basement price (the Mets style ever since shelling out cash to Pedro and Beltran).

Dunn settled for the worst team in the bigs, Nationals for 2 years and 20 million. Any team could have offered him the same 2 years with a smaller dollar amount and he would have gone their instead of Washington. Now, I know – there are some good arguments stating why the Mets should not have inked this slugger before the 2009 season.

I know, he bats left handed. Everyone was saying in the off season that we need a right handed power bat for this line up. Manny Ramirez’s price was way too high for the Wilpons – that much we know. But our starting line up in the beginning of the season read as this: Reyes (S), Murphy (L), Wright (R), Delgado (L), Beltran (S), Church (L), Schneider (L), and Castillo (S). We have four left handed bats, one right handed, and three bats that hit on both side of the plate.

When a lefty comes to face us – we have four batters on the right side of the plate and four on the left. So what does it matter if Dunn is another left handed bat, its not like he would have replaced Wright in the line up giving us an entire left handed and switch hitting roster. Dunn is also an every day player who hit 40 or more home runs in each of the last five seasons and is on pace to do it for the sixth straight season – an everyday player who is in the line up when a lefty comes to pitch against his team.

Before the season started – the Mets only had one everyday outfielder in Beltran. Murphy is a rookie and never has played a full season and Church played one full season in 2007 and was coming off two concussions this past season. The Mets also were expected a 37 year old Delgado to play every day and just assumed that he wouldn’t either get injured or not need a breather every now and then. Now, I know Dunn’s defense is undeniably bad – but he can feel in at two spots, the outfield and first base.

Now that the Mets offense looks hopless and just dropped a game below .500 – Omar is going to need a bat. It was wrong of Mets management to assume that Delgado’s 37 year old body was going to match the 159 games he played in last season, or assume that Church was going to be the same .300 hitter he was prior to his two concussions, or assume that Murphy was going to have a the same .313 batting average that he posted through his first 131 career Ab’s in the 2008 season.

We need Dunn and it makes sense to pick him up, but it will cost us a few of our up and comers. It’s just too bad that Mets management didn’t realize that Dunn made sense on February 10th – the day before Adam Dunn conceded to playing for the Washington Nationals for 2 years/20 million.

Although it wasn't easy, K-Rod got the job done to earn his 20th save of the season.

BY MIKE ERHARDT
STACHE WRITER

The Mets took three out of four games against the first place Cardinals this week and are now three games over .500. The Mets scored 20 runs in the series, having been shut out in the second game; and only 3 of those runs came from the long ball – Daniel Murphy’s solo home run and Nick Evans two run shot over the left field wall.

This was exactly what the Mets needed. With the exception of game two they really were making great contact, Church was going the other way, Wright keeps getting base hits and Nick Evans looks like he is going to steal some ones job. Our depleted roster is missing three out of the four big bats in our line up and everyone is going to have to step up, not just the bats – but our starting pitchers have to keep us in the game.

Tim Redding was able to go 7ip + despite getting knocked around, Livan Hernandez gave yet another quality start despite the loss, Fernando Nieve is proving to be solid in his third consecutive win and Santana pushed his way through seven innings even though it was clear he didn’t have his best stuff.

We shouldn’t get used to scoring eleven runs like we did in the third game of the Cardinals series – hell, I wouldn’t even get used to the six we scored in the first game – because that’s not how this team is going to win while our big bats are out. We’re going to need great pitching, aggressive base running, smart managing and have our batters work each count.

With the Phillies starting pitching in shambles and their first half MVP Raul Ibanez on the DL the Mets have an opportunity to at least keep pace with the Phillies while they continue to put out this rag tag line up.

Who knows, if we keep finding ways to win we may have a great series ahead of us when the Mets go to spend the July 4th weekend in Philly. We just have to keep our heads above water and keep watching that disabled list get shorter and shorter.

How is it possible that Santana leads the messes in losses?

BY MIKE ERHARDT
STACHE WRITER

The Mets starting rotation reminds me a lot of the band The Doors – both have a bona fide leader of the group, both have supporting members that are average what they do at best and both would be screwed if their leader would land on the DL or be found dead in a bath tub.

Johan Santana gives the Mets a chance to win every time he goes out on the mound – there is no questioning that. He leads the team this season in wins (8) but he also leads the team in losses (5). How is that possible? That our best pitchers’ win and loss totals are so close together? The answer is easy, we don’t score any runs for him. Santana is probably jealous of the run support Jerry Koosman got during his career with the Mets.

But the main problem with the Mets rotation is that after Johan, there is not much difference between their 2-5 starters. Take Mike Pelfrey and John Maine for example.
Pelfrey, our number two starter has an ERA of 4.74 and a WHIP of 1.47 as opposed to our number four starter John Maine’s 4.52 ERA and 1.37 WHIP. Both have five wins but Pelfrey has been very fortunate this year in terms of run support – after his first four starts he was 3-0 with a 6.00 ERA and failing to make it out of the fifth inning each time.

Not to mention that our number three starter – and I say that term very loosely – is the only person in the history of Major League Baseball to be on the disabled list because he flat out stinks.

In his five starts this season, Perez failed to reach the fifth inning in four of those five starts. This is a guy who’s claim to fame is that he went 6 innings in game seven of the NLCS and got a no decision, got out pitched by Jeff Suppan who threw seven innings of two-hit ball, and should have gotten the loss that night if it weren’t for the fact that Endy Chavez took Scott Rolen’s home run out of the stands.

Tim Redding is just keeping the seat warm for who ever gets off the DL first – Maine or Perez. Fenando Nieve has thrown two very good starts but you know he’ll come back to earth sooner or later. And the only pitcher to throw a complete game this year came from a guy who no one really expected to be on the Mets roster, yet alone be a big contributor. Livan Hernandez has been nice so far; having only a couple of bad starts, but I wouldn’t expect this “34 year old” to keep it up all season long.

So basically the Mets starting rotation this season consists of arguably the best pitcher in the league that we don’t score runs for, two number 4 starters, a 36 million dollar bum that will probably never reach his “potential” and a guy who was really just supposed to compete with Tim Redding, Freddy Garcia and Jonathan Niese for the fifth spot in the rotation.