The Mejia Move: Too Late
By Howard Megdal ~ June 21st, 2010. Filed under: Howard Megdal.
As Ted Berg put it this morning, we should be happy for any baby steps the Mets take toward becoming optimally run, even if that simply means recognizing errors that others pointed out months ago.
And while one can never know how much damage the Mets have done or not done to Mejia’s future, what we do know should be disturbing as we consider how his 2010 and beyond will be limited going forward.
Mejia, by virtue of pitching out of the bullpen, threw 27 2/3 innings through June 19. If we assume the following:
1. Mejia will need to be stretched out. Aggressively, that will mean three innings on June 24, four innings on June 29, five innings on July 4, and six innings on July 9.
2. Mejia will average six innings a start from then on until the Binghamton season concludes on September 4, pitching every fifth day.
By that math, Mejia will get in another 84 innings, giving him a total of 111 2/3 for the 2010 season. That still puts him in a position, assuming the Mets don’t want to increase his innings by more than about 30 per year, to be at around 140 in 2011, 170 in 2012, and 200 by 2013.
In other words, a long way off from assuming a full-season workload. And three months that he could have been working on a still-unfinished repertoire wasted as well.
And of course, that assumes he can last six innings per start- a big assumption, considering that he failed to last even five innings per start last season in high-A ball, and less than 4.5 innings per start in Binghamton. If we assume he improves to an average of five innings per start once he is stretched out, he’d get a total of 72 innings over the rest of the season, for a total workload of 99 2/3.
The Mets have talked about bringing him back in 2010 as a starter. If they are out of contention come September, I suppose there is no harm in that. But if they are, throwing someone who pretty clearly not ready for the big leagues into a race will certainly guarantee he won’t be given the chance to work through trouble, develop his pitches, and learn his craft. Plus, that can’t have been the Mets plan, right? To assume they were out of contention in September?
The Mets have also talked about getting him some winter ball innings, but there are some uneasy assumptions made in that idea. For one thing, there’s no guarantee Mejia’s winter ball team will make sure he gets regular work, or will keep him in games if he falters. For another, even if he does get another 30-40 innings this winter, it will mean that the Mets decided 25-30% or more of his pitching this year should be done not under the guidance of their own developmental team.
In short, the Mets have put themselves in a position to both stunt Mejia’s development while keep him from being able to contribute at the big league level as a regular rotation for years to come. He’s a pitching prospect; there are no guarantees with them. But there’s no math that works out to a reasonable workload for Mejia in 2010, now that he’s wasted three months in the bullpen doing mop-up work.
Had the Mets planned for Mejia, rather than engaged in a daily debate while Mejia wasted time in the bullpen, this wouldn’t have happened. That much we know.
June 22nd, 2010 at 1:03 am
Credit to you for using the word assume and it’s variations as often as you did since so much of your premise is based on assumptions. I appreciate that you did not attempt to hide that.
If as you say the Mets have really wasted 3 months I assume based on that figure you mean to suggest he should’ve been in the Binghamton rotation since their season began even though that began 2 months and 10 days ago, not 3 months ago.
Further I assume the Binghamton Mets website might have some statistics on their pitchers so I’m looking at it now. What I see there is a young man named Michael Antonini has been in their rotation all season. He has made 14 starts and thrown 81 innings or 5 2/3 innings per start.
So I assume if Mejia had been in AA all this time he too would have made 14 starts. At your assumed workload of 5 innings per start Mejia would now have pitched 70 innings this season. But I’m going to assume he would’ve pitched just as much as Antonini has because I can. Having pitched 95 innings last season and wanting to stick to your prescribed assumption of 30 inning annual increases Mejia would only have 44 innings left coming to him before they’d have to shut him down.
To accommodate that I assume the Mets would have to assign some “Jenrry rules” and skip some of his starts or remove him from them early, to keep his innings down.
So really what it comes down to is the Mets should have sent him down 15 days ago, not 3 months ago, or even 2 months and 10 days ago. 15 days ago would have given him 3 starts or 15 innings based on your assumptions.
So uneasily assuming those 15 innings applied to your previously assumed 111 2/3 gives him 126 2/3 which is right around where he should be based on your assumed annual increases. Then saying I’m going to add “around 30″ innings to that and then actually adding 30 instead of 28 1/3 I assume that he’ll be at 156 2/3 in 2011, 186 2/3 in 2012 and a whopping 216 2/3 in 2013.
I assume that was as fun for you as it was for me.
June 22nd, 2010 at 2:06 am
Obviously, it’s the right move to send Mejia down, but jeez. This has become like “J’Accuse” with you guys, as though the Mets have ruined a young man’s career.
Everyone seems to assume that facing good major league hitters for a few months has been of zero benefit to Mejia. Sure, he’d have been better off honing his secondary pitches, albeit against inferior competition, but I reject the idea that this has been a complete waste for him. In fact, he seems to have gained some confidence that will stand him in good stead going forward.
Moreover, having a 20-year-old with his kind of stuff on the staff added a little bit of that mojo and excitement that was so badly needed for the 2010 Mets. I actually think that was a bit of a shot in the arm.
We can pretty much agree that the best move is for him to be in the minors, but three months of relieving in the major leagues, with no apparent blow to his confidence, is not going to spell the end of the career. I think that Dallas Green making Al Leiter throw 166 pitches in a game early in his career, or Joe Torre ruining several bullpen arms through overuse, is ten times the crime than what has been done with Mejia.
June 23rd, 2010 at 9:19 am
I think that moving Mejia back to AA was clearly the right move. And I think he has the potential to be a quality major league starter.
That said, I don’t think there is any guarantee that he develops those secondary pitches. So ultimately Mejia may end up in the majors as a late inning reliever anyway. (Think Mariano Rivera starting career-not that I mean to compare him to Rivera). There is no question that he has the stuff to succeed as a one inning guy.
So let him go back and try to develop. If he makes progress this will probably take him into 2012 so using your formula he should be “allowed” to throw 170 innings that year. Not bad for a “rookie” starting pitcher.
So the only problem I see is the Met’s unrealistic timeline for him to come back to the majors as a starter. But that could just be comforting talk for the kid as he goes back to buses instead of charter jets