In the old days, there were just pitchers: not starters, not relievers, not closers, and certainly not lefty specialists. And pitchers were expected to pitch a complete game (and pick up some innings on their off days if one of the other pitchers fell short). In the days of “Spahn and Sain and Pray for Rain,” there were no fixed rotations, as such. You might save your best pitcher for when you were facing the best team—after all, why waste Josh Beckett against the Royals? But in the 50s, teams began to realize that pitchers could be used in relief, as a regular feature. This new strategy allowed managers to put their starting pitchers on a regular schedule, which also allowed those pitchers to start more games and pitch more innings. In the 60s, the four-man rotation became de rigeur and by the early 70s some teams even started fooling around with three-man rotations. But in the mid-to-late 70s this trend reversed, and by the 1980s all teams were firmly entrenched in five-starter mode, with only occasional forays back into four-starter territory in situations of dire need.

Given this trend, it’s not surprising that we witnessed, in the 2007 season, even stricter limitations on pitchers, especially young pitchers. Case in point: the Joba Rules, which carefully proscribed Joe Torre’s use of hardthrowing prospect Joba Chamberlain as a reliever, dictating that the young fireballer, who is slated to be a starter in 2008, could not be used on consecutive days and could not come in to the middle of an inning. We saw something similar with the highly-touted Clay Buchholz in the Red Sox organization. Clay was subject to a strict pitch count in each game and a strict innings limit over the course of the season; in fact, Theo Epstein had given instructions that Buchholz was to be removed from his no-hitter against Baltimore if his pitch count reached 120 (thankfully, he retired the final batter on his 115th pitch, a beautiful curveball). Sox fans hoping to see Buchholz take the hill in the postseason were disappointed when management shut him down, citing a rigid 155 innings limit for a skinny kid who started the season in Double A. While pulling any pitcher out of a no-hitter in the 9th is inexcusable, an innings limit is hard to argue with—just think of Anibal Sanchez, another rookie who threw a no-no for the Marlins in 2006 but threw just 30 innings this year before having season-ending surgery for a torn labrum in June.

Given these two trends—mandating kid gloves for young hurlers and limiting pitchers of all ages to a certain number of pitches—it is only a matter of time before we see the advent of the six-man rotation. We probably would have seen it before now if not for the expansion era and the resultant shortage of quality pitching. But these days, with plenty of young talent in the pipeline and plenty of old talent hanging on by their surgically reconstructed fingernails, the era of the six-pitcher rotation may have finally arrived.

It’s been a subject of growing discussion in Boston this month, as the Sox have six starting pitchers slated to go in 2008: Josh Beckett, Daisuke Matsuzaka, Curt Schilling, Tim Wakefield, Buchholz, and Jon Lester. Among fans, the six-man rotation has been discussed mostly because the Fenway Faithful are loath to see any of these players go: Beckett is the staff ace; everyone expects Dice-K to break out next year; the city practically demanded Theo find a way to re-sign Schilling; Wakefield is a perennial fan favorite, still pitches extremely effectively, and costs practically nothing; Buchholz has the no-no under his belt and nasty stuff at his fingertips; and Lester, in addition to being the clinching pitcher of the 2007 World Series, has had the city’s heart in his hands ever since his diagnosis with cancer last year.

But sentiment is no reason to make poor baseball decisions, and Theo and Co. are about as unsentimental a management team as exists in baseball: if, say, the Marlins call them this afternoon and offer them, say, Miguel Cabrera for Jon Lester, that’s a deal they’d make. But this morning, on WEEI’s morning talk show, Schilling himself explained some practical reasons why you just might see the six-starter scenario play out in Fenway Park next year. “Simple math tells you if they start out with Lester and Buchholz in the rotation and they make every start of the year, don’t miss a turn, that they won’t be able to pitch in September and October,” Schilling said, referring to the front office’s innings limits on their two crown jewels. In addition to the younsters, there’s the oldsters—Schilling referenced himself and Tim Wakefield, tacitly admitting that neither of them is exactly the innings-eating horse they once were. Plus, as Schilling also noted, Daisuke Matsuzaka was accustomed to pitching on a six-man rotation in Japan. Given the other factors at play here, and given their huge investment in Matsuzaka, the six-man rotation is something the Red Sox have to be considering. Plus, if someone gets hurt, you could just go to a regular, five-man rotation without too much disruption. As Schilling concluded, “There’s a lot of things that lend itself to this being just about the perfect storm if it’s going to happen.”

Has the era of the six-man rotation finally dawned? And if it has, are we happy about it?

Before I begin, I’d like to share with you all an artistic rendering of the 7 game lead the Mets had over the Philadelphia Phillies as of September 12, 2007.

Sure, it’s subtle. But I didn’t want to bash you over the head with it.

Back in April, I wrote a post expressing doubt over the solid numbers that the Mets pitching staff (primarily the rotation) was able to post early on in the season. Basically, I thought that they were getting away with far too many mistakes and that the small number of runs they were giving up could not last unless they cut down on the walks and homeruns. But as July rolled around, not much had changed. The pitchers were still performing admirably, and I began to wonder if my projections were off - that they could continue to pitch at this level.

The lesson here? If it looks like a fluke, then chances are, it is a fluke.

The important numbers for the purposes of this post are ERA and Hits Per Nine Innings (H/9). For the first part of the season, those numbers were rising every month but were still digestible. Come July, the Mets were allowing 4.5 earned runs per game, which is getting to be too high. The numbers in August and September are downright abysmal. But here’s the funny thing - they’re not really allowing that many more walks or homeruns than they had been in the better months. Moreover, the strikeouts have been going up. The main culprit here, is the hits allowed. Suddenly, the Mets pitching has become incredibly hittable, especially since September 14th.

During this stretch of twelve games, opponents have posted a .311 AVG and an OPS of .869 (.380 OBP and .489 SLG), which basically means that the Mets have allowed hitters like Alejandro De Aza put up numbers on par with Mike Lowell. The pitchers have a collective ERA of 6.19 and a 1.66 WHIP. But there are those constants again - a good strikeout rate along with a not-too-terrible (but still a bit high) walk and homerun rate. The fact that they’ve allowed more flies than grounders isn’t much of a surprise either when you look at the names in the rotation. We can harp all we want on the terrible defense exhibited of late by the Mets (see the Runs Per Nine - there’s almost a one run difference with ERA), and under normal circumstances, we can criticize that more than anything. But we’re still talking about a pitching staff that’s allowed over six earned runs per game. Sure, they’ve been a bit unlucky as exhibited by a high BABiP, but it’s not so out of the norm that it ought to be highlighted.

During these last twelve games, relievers Aaron Heilman and Pedro Feliciano have combined for 19 appearances. LOOGY Scott Schoeneweis has appeared in eight games and Jorge Sosa and submariner-rookie Joe Smith in seven a piece. Closer Billy Wagner has been day-to-day with back spasms. Plain and simple, the relievers are exhausted and the organization doesn’t have the depth to fill the void. Combined with the fact that 1) Tom Glavine and El Duque are getting on in years; 2) Oliver Perez is always a crapshoot 3) John Maine was defying logic all season long by putting up numbers that rationale would deem improbable; and you have the current situation that the Mets find themselves in - having blown a seven game lead over a span of seventeen days. And this is WITH Pedro Martinez, who has been better in his first five starts than I could have hoped for following surgery.

This is not to say that I don’t think that the Mets are making the postseason, but I’d be lying if I said I feel as secure saying that as I did two weeks ago when it seemed all but a certainty. Starting tonight, the Mets have three games left in the regular season. If the Mets and Phils end up tied, there will be a one-game playoff between the two in Philadelphia (as dictated by a coin toss earlier in the year).

Things should be a lot of fun, baseball fans.

The New York Mets were swept out of Colorado last night following a 20-hit, 17-run beat down at the hands of the Rockies, who in the process became the first team in Major League history to sweep both the Mets and Yankees in a single regular season.  

In the three game series, Colorado pounded out a total of 34 runs on 47 hits including 7 homeruns, which creates per-game averages of 11.33 runs, 15.67 hits, and 2.33 homeruns. Prior to their trip to Denver, the Mets’ pitching staff sported a 3.65 ERA while averaging roughly 7.8 hits and a single dinger allowed per game. But in hindsight, we may have to look at this series as a major flaw in the construction of the Mets’ corps of arms. 

It’s certainly no secret that Colorado’s Coors Field is a hitters’ park (in fact, it’s reputation is probably exaggerated at this point). We look at the numbers of sluggers like Matt Holliday and think, “Oh, it’s totally inflated by Coors”, or, conversely, look at Jamey Carroll’s numbers and think, “Wait, THAT’S totally inflated by Coors?”. While I feel that Chase Field and the Great American Ballpark have surpassed Colorado in terms of being a “hitter’s park”, it’s still not a place where you’d like to pitch – especially if you can’t keep the ball on the ground.  

For the maybe two of you (including myself) who have read my posts on this blog in the past, I subscribe to the theory (may as well be “fact”, but I’ll shut up about that) that if you allow too many fly balls, you will inevitably allow too many homeruns. This is the Mets pitchers’ Achilles heel.  

While Tom Glavine, who pitched the first game of the Colorado series, has not been known in his career for being a flyball pitcher (career Groundball-Flyball Ratio of 1.43), he never was considered a groundball pitcher either. In 2007, Tommy has been allowing (or “inducing” if you want to call it that) more flyballs than we have grown accustomed to, with a 1.18 ratio. And he’s been one of the BETTER ones. Young Jason Vargas, who made his second start of 2007 in Tuesday night’s 11-3 debacle (and who, incidentally, was already shipped back down to the minors), appears destined to be a flyball pitcher (a terrible 0.63 ratio over 127 innings in his career), much like last night’s Starting Pitcher, Orlando Hernandez (career 0.82).  The trend does not stop there, either. Fellow Starters John Maine (career 0.92), Oliver Perez (0.73) and Jorge Sosa (0.81) all fit this characteristic.

This trait, however, tends not to affect the Mets as much as it would other teams due to the size of Shea Stadium. As one of the parks that are most beneficial to pitchers, flyballs that may have cleared the wall in other parks are caught near the warning tracks in New York. Moreover, their divisional rivals home fields have similar tendencies, as every stadium in the NL East aside from Philadelphia are rightfully regarded as ones that favor pitchers (Turner Field, Dolphin Stadium, and RFK Stadium).  

I am inclined to think that this is no accident. Mets GM Omar Minaya sought after pitchers who he felt would be far more valuable pitching in Shea than in other, more hitter-friendly, parks. He surmised that he could obtain these arms on the cheap and as long as they continued striking batters out as El Duque, Perez and Maine have done, that he would have a staff that will be good enough to win the NL East. Thus far, he has been correct on this point. 

But what about beyond that? You may consider this to be presumptuous, but the Mets are looking towards October and beyond even though they may never admit it in public (“just playing one day an a time, man”).  Despite a smaller sample size than I’d like to work with, the statistics show that the Mets pitchers have not fared well thus far in 2007 when pitching at a visitor’s park outside the NL East (where pitcher’s parks reign). In a total of 22 games and 186 innings pitched, they have a 5.42 ERA and have allowed 1.4 homeruns per game, which is over 40% worse than the number of long-balls they allow at Shea. If this is not an anomaly, then the Mets had better hope that their playoff opponents also play in pitchers’ parks. Because no matter how much firepower you think your offense has, if your pitchers can’t hang, you’re no better than the Texas Rangers.

If you had read any preseason analysis on the National League, you heard ad nauseum how the Mets starting pitching were not playoff-calibre. Whether you heard that they were too old (Tom Glavine and Orlando Hernandez) or too young (John Maine and Mike Pelfrey) or simply too awful (ahem, Oliver Perez), they were deemed pretty vulnerable as they set out to defend their NL East title against the likes of the Atlanta Braves and Philadelphia Phillies.

Yet, through the first twelve games, the Mets as a team are 8-4, while their starters are 6-3 with a 3.03 ERA. Pretty impressive, no? Well… no, it’s not THAT impressive if you dig a little deeper.

That 3.03 ERA does not tell enough of the story. The Mets starting rotation has thus far posted a WHIP of 1.36. While certainly not bad, it’s unlikely that the balance between those two numbers can continue because they are not equal. To help illustrate the point, I looked at statistics from the past three seasons (2004-2006), primarily at the starting pitchers who logged at least 150IP and for the sake of sample size, had a WHIP between 1.35 and 1.37 (0.01 points higher or lower than the Mets’ 1.36). Under this criteria, 19 pitchers qualified, and sure enough, their ERA as a group came out to a more realistic 4.43.

So what, you say? Well, a very good point and well argued. As a counter to your claim, allow me to use some logic. The more runners you allow on base, the higher the probability that you concede runs. Channeling Rick Peterson’s love of metaphors, the Mets are currently driving straight and narrow despite the fact that their rotation is a bit intoxicated. There is certainly a chance that they get home safely, but there is also a good chance that they run into a guardrail. Simply looking at this year’s statistics around MLB, the Mets starters have posted sub-average numbers in nearly every major category:

As you can see, the Mets’ five have the same WHIP as the rest of the league. However, they also have fewer strikeouts, have allowed far more walks (5.27? Yikes), and despite the lack of homeruns around the league, have allowed 1.32 per 9 innings. But there’s that ERA again - over a full run lower than the league average.

Unless you have convinced yourself that pitchers have the ability to control where batted balls end up (they don’t), there is no other explanation for this aside from luck, with good defense sprinkled in for good measure. It sure does look like the other shoe is going to drop, Mets fans. With the way the lineup and bullpen have been performing, a sub-average rotation may very well be good enough to win them another division title. If Pedro Martinez upon his return is anywhere close to where he was two years ago, it certainly would not hurt. But questions regarding this  rotation are not going away just yet.

Pat Venditte just wants to play ball. He doesn’t feel superior, he doesn’t feel like his gift is one in a million. But it is unique in NCAA Division I history.

You always hear the question: “Can a pitcher switch hands while facing the same batter?”

But you never hear, as part of the answer, the tale of so-and-so a righty who, back in 1994, decided to throw one inning left-handed.

Well here it is, courtesy of the New York Times:

Greg Harris, primarily a right-handed reliever for many clubs from 1981 through 1995, pitched one inning using both arms for the Montreal Expos in his final season. That outing was considered more stunt than strategy.

But as far as the New York Times is concerned, he was the only Major Leaguer. And though the Times says there have been ambidextrous pitchers at the college level, Venditte is the only one in Division I play.

As his teammates whipped the ball around the infield, Venditte smoothly, unthinkingly, removed his custom glove from his left hand and slipped it on his right. Moments later he leaned back, threw a strike left-handed to the next batter, and finished the side in order.

Venditte is believed to be the only ambidextrous pitcher in N.C.A.A. Division I college baseball, the ultimate relief specialist. A junior, he throws left-handed to lefties and right-handed to righties, and effectively. In a home game in Omaha last Friday, he allowed only one hit in five and a third shutout innings to earn the victory against Northern Iowa.

Because neither arm was particularly tired afterward, Venditte also pitched in both games of Creighton’s doubleheader against Northern Iowa two days later, retiring the only batter he faced (left-handed) in the first game and then tossing a shutout inning (pitching both ways) in the nightcap. He also pitched two innings, alternating arms, in Tuesday’s game against archrival Nebraska. Venditte (pronounced ven-DEH-tee) has a fine 3.29 earned run average in 18 appearances this season.

Venditte has been scouted by some Major League clubs, with one scout saying “He could be an economical two-for-one,” but more than a threat to a line up made up with alternating lefties and righties, he poses a threat to pitching coaches everywhere. What with more “specialized” pitchers becoming a reality, if Venditte is the first of a deluge of ambidextrous hurlers, pitching coaches will have to work much less.

“Usually you have to follow the hitter: a left-hander’s coming up, so you have to decide whether to bring a lefty in,” Creighton’s pitching coach, Rob Smith, said. “In this scenario, you have the control. It helps the depth of the bullpen a lot — you don’t have to burn a guy to get the matchup you want.”

Translation: I don’t have to decide; he can do that for me. I don’t have to rely on our scouting, just his customized glove.

Watch Venditte in action. [nyt]