Bailing Out The Bullpen

So, it's come to this. The Mets have now been turned into a team that will only win if someone can come up with a big hit to bail out the bullpen. Either that or the team scores 12 runs, but something tells me that's not happening too often.

The whole Closer-By-Committee thing was pretty bad in the first place, but after 3 games of having it in action, it's pretty clear how ridiculous and potentially embarrassing it really is. Tuesday, Aaron Heilman couldn't do it, but Scott Schoeneweis yanked his ass out of the fire. Wednesday, the Mets apparently did their bullpen a favor by not scoring enough runs to create a save situation (although Eddie Kunz allowed his 1st HR as a pro, thereby making a daunting 1-run deficit an insurmountable 2-run deficit). Yesterday, it was Tuesday in reverse. Schoeneweis came in and got one of the three necessary outs before Dirty Carrots Gerut struck. So, Heilman came in to clean up the mess. But, miracle of miracles, the game was only tied, and so when David Wright came up and hit his first-ever Walk-Off HR, he not only won a game that the Mets once again tried their damnedest to lose, he also saved his bullpen from another day of getting ripped a new asshole.

But let's be honest. The boxscore says that the winning pitcher was Aaron Heilman. But I think David Wright should get the win for yesterday's game. Aaron Heilman didn't do anything particularly special other than his job for two batters. Why should he be the one rewarded with a win? I say give the win to Wright. He's the one who actually stepped up and did something, getting what is, for the Mets, an ultra-rare clutch, run-scoring, 2-out hit.

I'm sure Red Foley, wherever he is, would agree with me.

"All Train Compartments Smell Vaguely of Shit..."

One game into the experiment, and I already don't like this closer by committee business.

I suppose it's the Mets only true option for the next couple of weeks, with Wagner on the DL. That's one thing in and of itself. But considering what happened the last time the Mets went into a game, and Wagner wasn't available, and the Mets had to cobble together the 9th inning with a random hodgepodge of the seedy underbelly of their bullpen, we have very good reason to be frightened.

Tonight, the Mets were able to stop the bleeding by shoving some heavy towels at a wound that was beginning to gush. Two weeks ago, they weren't so lucky. Those towels are only effective some of the time. Lord only knows what these next two weeks will hold.

Simple logic would dictate that one of these guys, someone out of the Smith, Schoeneweis, Heilman, Sanchez, Feliciano, Kunz, Chico, Harpo, Zeppo bunch ought to catch the hot hand and emerge as the replacement for Wagner, but, really, can you trust any of these guys to do so? I laid it all out before the season began: This bullpen was already a spotty bunch of guys who might get the job done, but they also were going to make us all insane before the season was over. Wagner was the sure thing, but I laid this shot out as well: He's aging and he's tempestuous. And now he's hurt.

So, the first shot went to Heilman. And Heilman did his very best to show us that he wasn't anywhere close to worthy of the task. True, he wasn't helped by Beltran pulling up on Luis Rodriguez's single, but he didn't help himself by walking Nick (Don't call me Todd) Hundley and helped himself even less by laying the ball on a tee for Gerut to hit it out. Fortunately, the Mets still had the lead, and Manuel was able to mercifully remove Heilman from the game and let Smith and Schoeneweis finish the job.

Yeah, this closer by committee thing looks great already. 3 guys to get through 1 inning. I love it. What's tonight's combo going to be? Sanchez, Smith and Kunz? Franco, Sisk and Guetterman? Henry, DiPoto and Donne Wall? I have a bad feeling about this. Wagner might have been erratic and he certainly blew more than his share of saves this season. But, at the very least, he gave us some semblance of stability at the end of a game, after navigating through some scary innings. Now, these guys have to finish off games? I don't like where this is going.

I hope Pedro has a 7.2 inning effort in him tonight.

(Props if you're able to catch the reference I dropped with today's header. There's a link to a previous post in here that should make it a dead giveaway.)