Series Wrap-Up: Marlins at Mets

Results of the series

Mets take 2 out of 3.

Marlins: 6-6, 2 games back
Mets: 6-6, 2 games back

Top Performers

Mets: Aaron Heilman - 9 IP, 1 H, 0 R, 3 BB, 7 K
Marlins: AJ Burnett - 9 IP, 4 H, 2 R, 3 BB, 5 K, 1 HR

Worst Performers

Mets: Wright and Reyes - .059/.158/.118
Marlins: Carlos Delgado - atrocious defense, a lot of bitching about the strike zone, 3/11, 5 K, 0 EBH

One sentence summary:

An excellent first two games from the Mets, but as the late and great George Harrison would say, "All Things Must Pass."

Longer summary

I've been staring at this for the last hour or so, mixed in with the occassional sentence for my French homework:

.278/.278/.407

That's the current season's line on Jose Reyes, who has had 80 plate apperances since his last walk.

This disturbs me greatly.

But that's not the mood of this entry. The Mets took 2 out of 3 from the Marlins, which is pretty much the best you could have hoped for against Beckett, a vengeful Leiter, and Burnett.

The key to this series was the determined and masterful performance from Aaron Heilman, whose brilliant performance and Game Score of 89 are currently the best of the young season. I would have voluntarily called Friday's game a throwaway, hoped for some offense against Leiter, and then flipped a coin for Sunday, hoping for 2 wins but tolerating 1. Heilman refused to pitch a throwaway game and Beckett didn't have it.

Am I "drinking the Kool Aid" on this start? Well, not yet. I've got the packet of the Kool Aid powder on my desk, but it's not getting opened. This was one start which far exceeded anything he's EVER done as a professional. You'd have to go back to his days at Notre Dame to see anything like this from Heilman. But there were a few things that could portend well:

- Heilman returned to his "natural" delivery, the one that he used in college. In the minors, the Mets changed his delivery for some odd reason and it didn't work all that well in the bigs.
- Heilman LOOKED tough on the mound, from the few facial expressions I got from the highlights. He'd always looked scared out there, and I went to a game where I could see that from the upper deck behind home plate.
- He worked both sides of the plate. One of the knocks on Heilman from the past is that he always seemed to shy away from working the inner half of the plate, and it hurt him a lot (the thinking was that this stemmed back to college and the aluminum bats).
- He was pretty much untouchable in that game. There's obviously something there. It's a matter of putting it all together, which I guess is the major problem for most players that don't pan out.

Heilman goes on Wednesday against the Marlins, again, so we'll see if they figured out some problems in his delivery. I'm still thinking that Heilman could be a really good reliever; the delivery and approach in that last start reminded me of Eric Gagne. But, who knows? This one's out of the realm of statistical analysis at this point.

Pedro / Leiter on Saturday was an electric game. I was at work for most of it, but by the time I got back to the dorm to put it on, the crowd was rocking. (Yes, for some odd reason, I get the WB11 in Gettysburg, PA.) Pedro's stuff was so on that he fooled Piazza for 3 wild pitches, which was the cause of the Marlin run scoring. Looper blew another save, but anyone who expects elite closing from Looper's not realistic. He is what he is - a serviceable closer who is better suited for getting righties out than shutting the door every time.

Tom Glavine didn't have it on Sunday, giving up a couple of runs before recording an out. David Wright bailed him out with a nifty double play in the first, but they were down 2-0 a bit too soon. Kaz Matsui didn't help out in the 3rd, when he botched a couple of plays that don't go into the book as errors, There, the Marlins added the decisive third run, and Burnett cruised to victory, save a few hiccups.

Wright and Reyes have looked shaky over the last week, and they collectively earned the honor of "Worst performers" with an abysmal AVG/OBP/SLG. But I am much, much higher on Wright than I am on Reyes, and my rationale was proven in Sunday's game. Wright worked out an 11-pitch walk from an 0-2 count against a dominant AJ Burnett. Reyes? His longest was 5 pitches, and he averaged all of 2.75 P/PA. Wright's 5.67 P/PA in that game is actually LOWER than it could be; obscured by the fact that an at bat that was growing to be a pretty long one was ended on an ill-advised 3rd out on a steal attempt from Doug Mientkiewicz (I'll put this on Randolph, not Doug).

I'm pretty confident that Wright will stop "pressing" or "slumping" or whatever you'd like to call it at some point and start roping doubles at a nice rate. I'm also pretty confident that Reyes will show more flashes and drive the batting average up over .300 a few more times this year. The skill set of Reyes is seductive, but I get the feeling that a lot more Met fans wouldn't be as high on him if he were playing in, say, Pittsburgh or somewhere else. That all said, he DOES have special tools and he's unbelievably fast. And, as John Sickels mentioned recently, some of those guys, like Torii Hunter, can pan out. (More recently, Sickels posted some toolsy prospects that never did pan out. There are many more prospects that don't pan out than those that do.)

OK, that last paragraph was a bit too much of justifying both sides of an issue. I'll simplify it: the possibility of Reyes not panning out scares me, and his lack of patience is only augmenting my fear.

Last guy: Victor Diaz. Is there anyone hotter right now?

34 PAs, .321/.441/.500

Let's not go crazy, but early returns are showing an incredible increase in patience. I can't recall anyone so dramatically increasing their pitch selection in one year, so I look at this as a quirk of sample size. But it sure looks nice, and the man can hit the ball hard.

Number of the series

71.4 - percentage of the National League's pitchers with complete games that were at Shea Stadium when Burnett finished off his second one of the season. Aaron Heilman, Pedro Martinez, Josh Beckett, and Dontrelle Willis (who also has 2) were the others.

Next two series: Phillies and Marlins

Monday, 4/18, 7:05 PM (PHI) - Kaz Ishii v. Randy Wolf
Tuesday, 4/19, 7:05 PM (PHI) - Victor Zambrano v. Vicente Padilla
Wednesday, 4/20, 7:05 PM (FLA) - Aaron Heilman v. Josh Beckett
Thursday, 4/21, 7:05 PM (FLA) - Pedro Martinez v. Al Leiter