7.7.09

On his last two outings, Stokes has thrown about 40 pitches for .2 and 1.2 innings, with Schneider and Santos catching respectively.  That's a lot of pitches, particularly for a guy who gave this blog its name.  So I went to the mlb.tv archives and watched those innings again.  

First of all, the Dodgers are fantastic hitters.  This isn't an excuse.  It's just a fact.  They were making great contact with Stokes's fastball but failed to drive it for runs.  The bad news is that this means that Stokes's pitches were pretty predictable (not surprising, since 99% of them were fastballs).  The good news is that he varied the speed and location just enough to make them a little wily.  Watch Manny Ramirez's body language during last night's AB against Stokes.  He's was visibly annoyed that he could anticipate each pitch but not get more than little pieces of it.  It came down to stamina, with Brian "Rubber Arm" Stokes increasing and decreasing the velocity of his fastball just enough to undermine contact and Manny "I Could Do This All Day" Ramirez nonchalantly swinging away.  If this were Wimbledon, Stokes would be Roddick to Ramirez's Federer.  That should tell you how that AB concluded (hint: walk).

Other thoughts:  too many fastballs!  Maybe Stokes wasn't feeling the change-up but I wanted to see a little more variety, more strategic use of his off-speed pitches.  The seventh inning did not start well (Hudson HBP and a Kemp walk) but things started to click, in part I would argue, because Santos and Stokes started communicating. The result: three strike outs in a row.   

Another thing:  I suspect that more attention is given to starters and working out game plans for starting pitching, but when your bullpen has basically become a "reliever by committee" operation maybe it's time to rethink roles and responsibilities. Stokes has been issuing a lot of walks, an increasing problem for Mets relievers. Maybe they are overworked, but  I'm also starting to wonder if our imploding starting rotation is taking attention away from the bullpen in terms of coaching and practice time.  This is something I want to learn more about--who works with the pitchers and what do they work on?  Are starters and relievers generally coached separately?  Lately, there has been such a disparity between starting and relief performances (in general, bad starts, good relief) that I'm starting to wonder what is going on.

In fact, I was curious just how much work the Mets bullpen has been doing, so I put together some numbers.  This is no fancy statistic.  Basically, I added up the number of innings completed by starters to find the starting innings average for the Mets and subtracted by 9 (although some games have gone into extra innings).  I did this for the past 35 appearances (including last night), in other words for June and July.  The trend is not surprising:

Innings Pitched:

           Starters      Relievers

35 appearances:                  5.46            3.54

Past 10 appearances:         5.26            3.47

Past 5 appearances:           4.84            4.16

That last number is disquieting.  On one of the Mets blogs that I read (I can't remember now which one), the issue of Putz's and Wagner's imminent returns came up and the question was asked if we need three closers (in other words, who would we send down).  If these numbers, particularly the last one, continue to hold, we will most definitely need three closers--to end the fifth inning, if not the fourth.

Jake Uhlenhopp made his major league umpiring debut at age 32 and worked third base in place of James Hoye, who was ill. Uhlenhopp didn't get much advance notice, so he was already in full uniform when his flight from Arizona landed at LAX, according to an umpire's room attendant. The game started with a three-man crew, and Uhlenhopp made his entrance in the middle of the second inning -- 32 minutes after the first pitch.

Invisibility is key to an umpire's work. Their job is to observe carefully, make prudent calls (ha!) and stay out of the way. That being said, since I watch a lot of Rays and Mets games, the umpires that often work these games are becoming a little more familiar. For instance, Ted Barrett #65. One of the announcers mentioned that Barrett was working towards his Ph.D, which I found interesting so I looked up some more info on him. I learned that he's currently working towards a doctorate in Theology and often uses baseball as a point of reference in his ministry. On the field, he tries to apply a more Christian approach to his umpire duties, which he claims helps him keep him cool when managers are not. I saw him accidentally get hit in the face with a bat in one game. He smiled and shrugged it off. They call him the "Teddy Bear."

Also called up this week was Dale Thayer, a journeyman currently playing for Triple-A Durham. Maybe it's because of movies like Bull Durham or the character that Burt Lancaster plays in Field of Dreams, but there is something quite romantic about journeymen.

On the bright side, the bullpen was brilliant for the Mets. Bobby Parnell pitched a scoreless seventh, J.J. Putz worked around Martinez's second error and a James Loney single to pitch a scoreless eighth. Sean Green was shaky, but managed to overcome his own error and general wildness to pitch a scoreless ninth.

And then what can you say about Brian Stokes? He was fantastic on Monday night. He pitched a 1-2-3 bottom of the tenth, and did his best to work through adversity in the eleventh. He made one mistake. The leadoff walk, but after that was perfect. Forcing a fly ball that should've been caught. Then, one batter later, getting Rafael Furcal to hit a short fly to left, too short to score the run, with the bases loaded and none out. Then, getting a grounder to Jeremy Reed, what should've been a double play ball. Should've, would've, could've. (via redwhiteorangeandblue)

Stokes was unbelievably poised during the debacle of the 11th inning. You would think that in that situation another pitcher (ahem, Perez) would melt down having just walked the lead-off hitter. Stokes took a deep breath and kept going. So far, discussions on this game are casting blame elsewhere and that's a relief. It's so easy to pin it on the last pitcher (as the official scorer did). But if you want to see how a good pitcher deals with a jam, watch that last inning. Watch how Stokes directed his fastball like a whip to get the hits he needed. Too bad the field dropped the ball.