Closer?!? We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Closer!!

The Mets are winning the NL East.  David Wright will win the first MVP trophy in the team’s history.  You can write it down.  After that my crystal ball gets a little cloudy.   The Mets are a red hot team, granted they have gotten fat against the dregs of the NL, but they’ve played the cards they were dealt and managed to build a season-high 2.5 game lead over the Cheesesteaks, who have lost ground while playing the same terrible teams, such as allowing the Nats to snap their 12 game losing streak last night.

On August 19th, after it was announced that erstwhile closer Billy Wagner was out “indefinitely” due to his elbow injury, some random dude who lives in my building, after seeing my Mets shirt when I walked into the elevator, announced ”the season is over.”  Well my defeatist friend, this column is for you and the hundreds of doom-and-gloom Amazin fans like you.

Maybe you noticed we’ve been getting it done with the bullpen-by-committee.  Jerry Manuel (who it turns out has a great mentality for managing in NY) made it clear that there is no silver bullet for this situation, and that different relievers will be counted on from night to night to close games.  “My guys should come to the bullpen excited, knowing anyone could get a save on any given night,” said Manuel, according to SNY’s Gary Cohen.  However, given the failures and mental struggles of Aaron Heilman, it seems like the majority of the ninth inning pitches will come from the left arms of Pedro Feliciano and Scott Schoeneweis for a while, and both have stepped it up a notch after the Wagner news.

Add to this the acquisition of Luis Ayala, who had horrible stats with the Nationals but has given the Mets a huge lift in two appearances so far.  GM Omar Minaya has prior knowledge of Ayala from his pre-injury days with the Nats/Expos and obviously saw the potential for Ayala to bounce back and perform at his effective 2004/2005 level. On Tuesday he came into the game with the Mets trailing 3-2, with one out and men on first and third, and he promptly shut the Braves down. A loopy slider got Omar Infante to pop up harmlessly to second and then another slider induced a fly ball from Brian McCann.  Inning over, threat over.  Mets rally and win.  And last night (Thursday) Ayala cruised through the ninth in a tie game and set the stage for the walkoff heroics.

So you can (for now) slot Ayala in below Feliciano and Schoeneweis and above Duaner Sanchez, Heilman and Joe Smith on the committee depth chart.  Sanchez has been a puzzle, and looked terrible Monday in the Mets only loss over the last ten games.

In actuality, it hasn’t been the performance of the bullpen which has kept the Mets afloat in the Wagner-less games since August 3rd.  Instead the Mets, since then, have given a textbook performance in….

How To Win Without a Closer:

1) Get a complete game.  Well, duh, that one is obvious.  But in today’s world of five inning starts, the recent complete games contributed by Johan Santana and Mike Pelfrey, the first two for the team this season, could not have come at a better time.  Both picthers have stepped up their intensity along with their pitch counts, and could start to put pressure on Tom Seaver’s team record of 231 complete games for his career.  (Ha ha).  Look for Ollie Perez to throw in a CG or two before the season ends as well.

2) If you can’t get a complete game, at least squeeze out an extra inning or two.  Case in point Pedro Martinez threw a pitch in the 8th inning last night.  OK it was hit for a single and was his only pitch in the inning, but its amazing to see ol’ Pedro complete the seventh inning for two straight games.  His performances have been sublimely brilliant, instead of living in the past and insisting that he can be the fireballer he once was, Pedro has had the humility to become basically a junkball pitcher, because that’s what the team needs to win.  He throws the fastball a lot less often, and has eliminated the cutter that requires more arm speed than he feels he has these days.  And as SNY’s Ron Darling pointed out, with his fastball a lot slower than in the past he had to shave an extra 10 MPH off the changeup so that the difference in speed is deceptive enough.

3) Score some first inning runs. The Mets have scored in the first inning 11 times in the last 14 games, and Met fans have learned to delay their beer runs appropriately. (Make that 12 times in 15 games as Reyes just trotted home as I prepare to post this).  Furthermore the Amazins have a +103 run differential in the first inning this season, best in MLB.  (Of course the flip side is their -51 run differential in innings 7-9 makes it crucial to score early!)  With the ubiquitous Jose Reyes flying around the bases all the time it almost seems like there are two Reyes’s at the top of the lineup.  Oh wait, there are.  I like Argenis “The Other” Reyes in the #2 slot creating the double-table-setter approach.

4) Clutch hitting from David Wright and Carlos Delgado.  These guys have been at the heart of the offensive fireworks day after day.  Last night the Mets needed all five of Delgado’s hits and Wright’s homer and two doubles to prevail.

5) Endy Chavez as a defensive replacement in the outfield.  This one is a little more subtle, but I counted at least two balls in the last ten games that would have fallen in for extra base hits if Endy wasn’t inserted into the outfield in the eighth or ninth inning, and that adds up.

6) Team Karma.  Laugh if you want, but there is something special that happens when everyone on a team pulls together as a group to overcome the injury to an individual.  (Just ask the Rays about this).  Instead of anointing a new closer, the pressure of that role has been evenly distributed over the entire team.  The Mets good vibes could be seen clearly over the last series in contrast to the bad karma of the Braves, who have lost an MLB record 27 straight 1-run games on the road going back to last year.  And the Bravos held one-run leads late in two of the three games of the series.  Last night with the game tied 4-4 leftfielder Omar Infantile (I mean Infante) caught a deep and dangerous looking drive off the bat of Fernando Tatis in front of fans right behind a viewing window in the outfield wall, and made a taunting gesture with his glove.  That’s exactly why the baseball gods laid down a banana peel on Infante’s path as he slipped and committed the game-losing error in the ninth. 

Ryan Church is back!!  Could not be happier to welcome back the guy who coulda shoulda been an All Star this year if not for the two concussions.  It’s a win-win situation becuase if Church performs the bench just got that much stronger with Tatis or the Murphy/Evans platoon getting bumped.  And if Church doesn’t perform the team’s been winning with those other guys anyway.

Finally, I must say that I may kill someone if I have to see that awful Derek Jeter Ford ad one more time.  It brings new meaning to the term “ad nauseum”.  Last night I swear they played it twice in the same commercial break.  I’m sorry, but what Mets fan wants to log on to the Ford website and see OUTTAKES of Jeter’s Ford commercials?  Seriously, as if the finished product wasn’t torture already.  Do they have any understanding of who their audience is?  It makes me want to go out and buy a Chevy right now.  OK rant over.

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Last post (s) by Mark Reichman

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