I guess that’s the kind of criticism you take when you start putting your thoughts onto the internet for everyone to read. If you had asked me a week ago what the chances were that the Mets would put together five straight wins at any point for the rest of the season, I wouldn’t have given them any better than one chance in ten.

Well, that’s why they play the games.

Jason could probably run a graph telling us the odds of any given team winning a certain number of games for the rest of the year.  But for the next day’s games, what would it matter? It’s only a prediction. Underdogs win every day.

Just as I was comforting myself with these thoughts, my brother called me a bad fan and told me he wouldn’t be sitting next to me at Citi Field come playoff time.

Where’s Jim when you need him? Jim? Jim!? Ah, good, here he is:

It never get’s old, does it?

I enlisted Jim’s help to drive home this simple but profound point: It’s a long season, and even a five game winning streak couldn’t change the fact that the Mets are in fourth place in the NL East. There are also eight – count ‘em, eight – teams ahead of them in the Wild Card.

So I don’t want to hear any talk about the playoffs. I’m just nervous this little winning streak will provide Omar Minaya the cover he needs to make a monumentally stupid move that will mortgage what’s left of our future. He can’t wait to gamble with borrowed money. I can feel it. He just needed the right excuse. Well the Mets have served it up. Now that Omar is finished crying over his most recent embarrassment, he’s probably out looking for the deal that will take the heat off and keep the Mets just close enough to the pennant race to put fans in the seats.

The problem is that the Mets have virtually no shot at the playoffs. The Monte Carlo simulation gives them a 3.64% chance entering today’s games. Now, I know what I just wrote. That’s why they play the games, right? Didn’t the Rockies win 13 of their last 14 to make the playoffs back in ’07? Well, yes, they did. But that’s not the kind of scenario you have in mind at the trade deadline. You don’t make a deal thinking you are going to turn a sub-.500 bottom-dweller into a .650 machine down the stretch.

Does that make me a bad fan? No. I want the Mets to win as much as anyone. I just accept the fact that if they are going to go .650 down the stretch and make the playoffs, they are going to have to do it with the players they’ve got.

Playoffs? Playoffs!? Omar, Please, Don’t Make a Deal is a post from: Free Pedro

Jonathan, how much does a top three of Cole Hamels, Cliff Lee, and J.A. Happ scare you?

If it does scare you, maybe it shouldn’t. I looked at the top three in the rotation for the NL playoff contenders (and the Mets) this year, and found that, even after adding Lee, the Phillies are behind the other contenders in front-of-the-rotation talent. For the data below, I found out what it would look like if you created a pitcher out of the top three in each of the rotations (weighted average) for each of the contenders and had him throw 240 innings. One obvious caveat is that Lee’s stats were compiled in the more difficult league for pitchers. He should perform better in AAAA.

Hamels, Lee, Happ is a post from: Free Pedro

The graph below shows the career arcs of the average MLB batter and pitcher. It’s based on regression analyses (here and here) that isolated the effect of age on production. The vertical axis in my graph is the percentage better than the player was at age 21, so a positive percentage is how much better a player is at a certain age than he was when he was 21 and a negative percentage is how much worse. The average batter peaks at 29, and the average pitcher peaks at 28. For discussion of the current rumors, I have graphed the supposed trade targets and the potential Red Sox prospects in play.

So mark this down right now: The Sox, won’t trade for Halladay. OK, let me amend that a bit–the Sox won’t trade for Roy Halladay if they have to give up what the Jays are asking for. As we can see in the next graph, under Theo Epstein, the Sox have been very careful not to give long-term contracts to aging pitchers. They let Pedro and Lowe walk and showed little interest in the Santana trade or acquiring Sabathia. The length of the arrow is the length of the contract, and the number is the average yearly salary of the player.

Clearly, the Sox value a pitcher who they can sign when he’s still in his mid-twenties. As such, they value players like Lester, Buchholz, Bowden, and Kelly extremely highly. They wouldn’t give up Lester to get Santana. The reason they are so protective of their pitching prospects is not that they think they are all going to be stars, but because they know that if they do develop into talents, they will have the opportunity to lock them up in their mid-twenties and have them under contract for the primes of their careers. As we can see, the Red Sox have had great success in extending the contracts of their players at below-market rates. Ortiz, Youk, Pedroia (coming off an MVP!), and Beckett were all signed at good prices for shorter deals. The Sox have a clear strategy. Their MO is to sign a player who is still under contract to a cheap, short extension. Obviously, the Sox have had problems with shortstops, and the Drew contract is unforgivable.

To me, this means that the Sox are much more likely to give up their young talent for Adrian Gonzales than they are for Roy Halladay, who is quickly approaching the mid-thirties range where pitchers have historically fallen off a cliff. (Of course, these numbers are probably overly generous to older players because they were compiled in the PED Era. Don’t expect to see many productive 38-year-old pitchers in the next decade.)

Let’s consider the Mets.

Omar, like Theo, has done a fantastic job of signing his young talent to extensions. (That Wright contract may be one of the best ever.) It seems he has a soft spot for over-the-hill pitchers.  The Martinez and Wagner contracts were Cashman-esque. (Brian Cashman has a history of overpaying for past production. Oftentimes, this production was not even in the recent past.) While Santana was the best pitcher in the game when he was signed, very soon he will qualify as very overpaid. But Omar is getting better. The K-Rod deal is the type of short contract that works for a young pitcher. And though the Perez deal was a bit of a head scratcher because, let’s face it, his production wasn’t that great, even if it  was presumed to go up based on this analysis, at least it was short and for a young pitcher.

For laughs, let’s look at the Yankees next.

Brian Cashman may be worse at his job than anybody whose performance is so publicly observed. The A-Rod contract is so bad and so long that I had to extend the X-axis. No further discussion is necessary.

On Trading Prospects and Signing Long-Term Contracts is a post from: Free Pedro

Just think about this for a minute. The Mets VP of Player Development, Tony Bernazard, was fired this week because he launched into vicious tirades in the Citi Field stands during Mets games and then challenged the whole AA Binghamton Mets team to a shirtless brawl. And that wasn’t even the story of the week.

Not to be outdone by his disgraced VP, Omar Minaya elected to bolster his own incompetence credentials – and to add ethical turpitude to his resume as well – by hurling serious accusations at one of his chief media critics, Adam Rubin of the Daily News, in broad daylight in front of the entire New York press.  As Matt Cerrone at Metsblog put it, Minaya went in to a press conference to put out the Tony Bernazard fire, and wound up lighting a whole new blaze. The truth is that Minaya’s new inferno makes Bernazard’s old arson look like a smoldering campfire.

How did Minaya manage to outdo Bernazard’s WWE moment? Omar baldly asserted in front of the entire New York press that Rubin has been lobbying for a job in the Mets player development department. Coming on the heels of Rubin’s story about Bernazard (and his recent criticism of Minaya), Omar’s accusation implies that Rubin’s journalism stems from a desire to fulfill his own ambitions of running the team.

It doesn’t matter whether Minaya’s statement is true or not. Those who focus on that detail are missing the big picture. If it is true, then Minaya has sacrificed what rapport he had left with the New York media in order to lash out at one reporter for doing his job. If it’s not true, then, well, draw your own conclusion.

Readers of this blog already know my thoughts on Omar and the team he has constructed. If incompetence in player personnel management can’t get Omar fired, and if three straight years of unprecedented disappointment can’t get Omar fired, then perhaps this final act of self-destruction will finally do him in.

I think it’s especially worth noting that when I look back one day on the Omar Minaya era, I won’t at first recall that third strike on Beltran in the 2006 NLCS, or seven up with 17 to play in 2007, or even the devastating encore in 2008. I will instead remember the Midnight Massacre, the Tony B. Challenge, and the Minaya Meltdown. Those are the moments when I have felt embarrassed to be a Mets fan.

I don’t walk around with my head hung low when my team loses. Every team has its share of disappointments. That’s baseball. But when I watch my general manager sell himself and the team out in order to settle a personal score with a member of the media, it adds just enough insult to render the injuries irredeemable.

Minaya’s Meltdown is a post from: Free Pedro

David Wright hit .306 in his first full season with the Mets in 2005. Two years later he put up MVP-type numbers, going .325/.416/.546 with 30 home runs and 43 stolen bases in 160 games. He has been a model of statistical consistency through his first four full seasons, from 2005 through 2008—at least 154 games played in each season, between 26 and 33 home runs, batting average ranging from .302 to .325, 102 to 124 RBIs, and an OPS between .911 and .962. Only Albert Pujols and Lance Berkman have had a comparable or better stretch in the National League over the last four seasons.

As Mets fans are well aware by now, Wright’s 2009 season has been disappointing by comparison. Through 93 games, Wright is hitting .316 – a formidable average – but only slugging .447. He has been caught stealing more times (eight) already in 2009 than he has in any other full season he has played. Wright has hit only five home runs, and has only 44 RBIs. He has already struck out 93 times.

Wright’s projected numbers for the 2009 season (courtesy of ESPN) have him hitting .316 with nine home runs, 76 RBIs and an astonishing 161 strikeouts in 161 games. By comparison, every single Phillies regular is currently on pace to hit more than nine home runs.

What could explain Wright’s dramatic loss of power and increased strikeout rate? There are at least three explanations offered from the media, but the truth is that none of them quite fits.

First, the Mets have so many injuries that for weeks David Wright has been the only genuine Major League hitter in the lineup. When your best protection is Jeff Francoeur, you should expect to see fewer pitches to hit, especially in RBI situations.

Second, Wright plays in Citi Field now. All those line drive home runs he used to hit are now finding the thousand-foot sea wall some genius decided to build in left field.

Third, Wright’s problems in the field and the general poor state of the Mets have finally affected his hitting. He hasn’t been mentally strong enough to bring his best swings to the plate.

Some might feel the need to question Wright’s leadership and mental focus, but it’s all overblown. The guy has strung together four straight brilliant years in the toughest market in baseball with a team that has now seen every kind of disappointment. I don’t think he is folding. Nor does he require protection to be able to hit. He has hit fifth for the majority of his at bats with the Mets and he has been perfectly comfortable in that position.

So we are left with the expansive confines of Citi Field. Is the new stadium keeping David down? Well, yes and no. Sure, I personally can remember at least two balls he has hit this season off the wall in left that would have been out at Shea (and, incidentally, every other baseball stadium in the world). But the problem with this theory is that Wright has hit only two home runs in 183 at bats on the road. In his best year with the Mets, 2007, he hit 14 of his 30 home runs on the road. Also, remember all those extra doubles Wright was supposed to hit into the yawning gaps at Citi Field? Right now, he is on pace to smack 43 doubles in 2009, only one more than he hit in 2008. The real kicker? 17 of his 25 doubles this year have come on the road, not in the endless alleys at Citi Field.

The good news for Mets fans is that there is no clear explanation for David Wright’s struggles. Good news? Yes, it is good news. If there were some clear flaw exposed, some nagging injury inflicted, or some downward trend shown, then we would all have cause to worry. For Wright, the struggles remain a mystery. Perhaps they portend difficult years ahead. Or, maybe we’ve simply discovered that just like most ballplayers Wright can struggle, and that he might even have a down year now and then. It’s been a forgettable year for the Mets and their fans. We can only hope it’s a year we can forget for David Wright as well.

David Wright’s Bizarre Season is a post from: Free Pedro

OBP + (1B + 2 x 2B + 3 x 3B + 4 x HR + SB – CS) / AB

Okay, simply, I just adjusted OPS (OBP + SLG) by adding the bases a runner steals and canceling out his hit when he gets caught stealing.* I ran the numbers for all 329 hitters with more than 200 AB in 2008. It’s not very interesting to look at the top ten hitters before and after the adjustment. They stayed the same, except for Youk falling from 9^th to 11^th, which is because the hitters with the biggest OPS and AOPS numbers will be the homerun hitters, and won’t benefit much from including steals (also, there’s a long tail factor at play, which means that ranks won’t change much). But my guess is that the Mets and Sox fans reading this will be interested to know that four of the biggest beneficiaries of this tweak to OPS are Jacoby Ellsbury, Jose Reyes, Luis Castillo, and (surprise) Coco Crisp.

Jacoby’s jump is huge. Before the adjustment, he’s comparable with crappy players like Jose Bautista, Troy Tulowitzki, most of the KC lineup, and old friends Mark Loretta, Kevin Millar, and Lastings Milledge. After: Mike Lowell, Russell Martin, Cliff Floyd, and Ichiro. His jump is from the 38^th to the 61^st percentile of players. Reyes’s jump may be even more impressive, though it is much smaller percentile-wise. After adjustment, his comparables are quite nice:

Sorry to include so many players, but I wanted to get Ryan Howard in there for the Mets fans. Anyway, the biggest risers** are included below.

*I realize that a single followed by a steal is not as valuable as a double, which often scores the non-David-Ortiz runner on first, but I’d say that this effect is balanced by the fact that a single followed by a caught stealing is not as bad as a strikeout, because that single and caught stealing probably scored the runner on second and almost certainly the one on third.

**The biggest fallers don’t tell us that much because they’re the players who never try to run and are getting passed by those who do.  As such, I’ve not included them.

In Praise of Speed is a post from: Free Pedro

The New York Mets are the worst team in Major League Baseball.

I know what you’re thinking. It just isn’t possible. No way a team that comprises Johan Santana, Fransisco Rodriguez, and David Wright can be the worst team in baseball. The Mets are only six games under .500, right? They are only eight games out of the Wild Card! And then of course there’s always the Nats. The Nats are 38 games below .500. They’ve already fired their manager this season and they’ve gone 2-5 since. They’ve only got one legitimate pitcher and their best player is Christian Guzman. They can’t be better than the Mets.

Well guess who just took two of three from the Mets? The Nats. And guess who threw a complete game shutout against the Mets? That one legitimate pitcher. Those two wins the Nats have had since their new manager took over? Both against the Mets.

Not that John Lannan will spend much time celebrating his second career complete game (both against the Mets). He’s just the latest pitcher to spend a leisurely evening dismantling the worst lineup in baseball.

The Mets have been shut out in six of their last 15 games. They’ve scored 12 runs in their last seven games, and 35 runs in their last 16. If their abysmal offense weren’t enough, the Mets are pitching Oliver Perez, Tim Redding, and Livan Hernandez in the back of the rotation, sporting 7.68, 7.16, and 4.93 ERAs respectively. Other than Johan Santana, the only starting pitcher currently on the team with an ERA lower than 4.52 is Fernando Nieve, and he of course is on the DL.

It isn’t just about the stats. It’s the countless on-field and off-field embarrassments. It’s Luis Castillo’s dropped pop-up in Yankee Stadium. It’s Carlos Beltran’s bizarre non-slide. It’s Tony Bernazard launching expletive-laden tirades behind home plate and then challenging Binghamton to a fight. This team has become completely unwatchable. They are the laughingstock of the league.

So go with the San Diego Padres and their standard-setting .230 team batting average, or the Cleveland Indians and their league-worst 5.32 staff ERA. I’m taking the Mets.

More daunting for the Mets than their status as the worst team in baseball though, is that they have no pieces to sell and no future to build on. I couldn’t help but laugh when Omar Minaya recently told the New York press that the Mets would not be sellers at the trade deadline. Who are they going to sell? They could have traded J.J. Putz to a contender looking for a proven closer or late-inning guy, but he’s injured. They could trade Feliciano (he has one more year and he is eligible for arbitration), but he’s been relegated to a lefty-specialist role and won’t be worth much more than a mid-level pitching prospect. Also, if the Mets trade him, they won’t have a lefty of their own, and the rest of the season against the likes of Howard and Utley could be disastrous.

The bottom line is that the Mets can’t become sellers and expect to fill their new stadium down the stretch, and they have nothing to sell that anyone wants anyway.

What does all this mean for the future of our beloved Mets? Some fans will hang their hat on the return of Reyes and Beltran next year. They might even delude themselves into believing that Perez will become the 2-starter we all wish he could be, and that Maine will figure out how to navigate a complete inning in under 20 pitches. Perhaps they think that the same team that blew late-season advantages in two consecutive years, then spent a whole year on the disabled list, will be the answer to our prayers.

It’s all nonsense. Any good general manager wouldn’t have counted on Delgado’s hip staying healthy this season. The Mets got stuck with Tatis, Murphy, and Evans at first. Any good general manager would have been reluctant to sign up for three more years of Oliver Perez. The Mets gave him $36 million. Any good general manager would have had at least one major-league ready prospect in the event of a spate of injuries. The Mets don’t have one.

I could go on and on about Reyes’ established propensity for injury and Beltran not being 28 anymore and the Luis Castillo 4-year-contract fiasco. Baseball has to be about building an organization, not just winning a championship or playing favorites. For the money they pay, Mets fans deserve to watch a competitive team on the field.

The Mets must fire Omar Minaya and his entire staff at the end of the season. And they should part ways with Jerry Manuel – who deserves his own full post of incompetence – at the end of the season as well. It’s time to clean house. It’s the only way the Mets can cure the stench that hangs over Citi Field.

This is not a hindsight is 20-20 situation. This is a proof is in the pudding situation. To Omar and Jerry: don’t let the wrong cliché hit you on the way out.

Fire Omar is a post from: Free Pedro