Views from the Promenade

I’ve been hearing it all season. Livan Hernandez is a gutty veteran. Oh, sure, his numbers aren’t good, but he knows how to win! He’s crafty, and can get people out with mediocre stuff. He’s the kind of guy you want on your team.

Whenever you hear these sorts of platitudes thrown around about a player, you should immediately be suspicious. Why can’t people come up with a tangible reason why I should be excited about this player? Usually, the answer is that the player’s on-the-field performance is lacking.

Such is the case with Livan Hernandez. Let’s be honest here: it’s been a few years since he’s put up even average numbers for a starter, and his last good year was probably 2004, when he was an All-Star. If you want one number to look at for pitchers as a quick and dirty analysis, I like WHIP — walks and hits per inning pitched (or put another way, baserunners per inning). Livan’s WHIP has been over 1.50 each of the last three seasons. This is not good; the league average is about 1.41. His ERA has also been above the league average each season since 2006.

Finally, some people will likely point to his “ability to win” or something similar as a reason why Livan’s stats don’t tell the whole story. I don’t like win-loss records, but that’s a topic for another post on another day. If that’s what you want to point at for Hernandez though, you might be surprised to find that his career record is a mediocre 152-143 — hardly the “winning veteran” many seem to classify him as.

This may seem like piling on Livan after a few rough outings, and I don’t want to do that. Tonight’s start just seemed like a good jumping off point for a discussion of his real value to the team. I didn’t mind him as a number five starter, at least temporarily; he does seem to give the Mets more length than most teams get out of that spot, and he gave us a surprisingly good run to start the season. But I’m afraid his recent performance is more a return to form than an aberration. In either case, it might be time to give Jonathan Niese that role going forward. He probably won’t do worse, might do better, and will gain some valuable experience in the big leagues either way.

It had been nearly three weeks since the Mets last won a series (June 5-7 against the Nationals). That streak ended today as the Mets defeated the Cardinals 3-2, taking three of four in their series at Citi Field. Nick Evans came up with another big hit, driving in two runs with a double in the Mets’ critical 4th inning rally. Johan Santana threw seven strong innings, and despite walking two runners in the 9th, Francisco Rodriguez was able to close out the game.

This winning stretch couldn’t come at a better time for the Mets. Defeating a division leader at half-strength has to give the team (not to mention the fans) some confidence heading into this weekend’s Subway Series. The Mets are also finding ways to stay close to the Phillies; if they can bring back most of their missing parts over the course of the next month while staying within a couple games of Philadelphia, you have to figure the Mets will be poised to make a run.

Right now though, all eyes are on this weekend’s clash with the Yankees. Here’s a quick preview of the probable pitching matchups for the weekend:

• Friday, 7:10 PM: Pelfrey (5-2, 4.74 ERA) vs. Sabathia (6-4, 3.71)
• Saturday, 7:10 PM: Redding (1-2, 6.08) vs. Burnett (5-4, 4.24)
• Sunday, 8:05 PM: Hernandez (5-2, 4.05) vs. Wang (0-6, 11.20)

It’s been a while since the Mets had a nice, easy win where there wasn’t some level of drama in the late innings. Before tonight, the Mets had only won by five or more runs twice in the last month, both times against the Nationals. Isn’t it great not having to sweat during those last few outs?

Not only did the Mets win, but just about everyone had a good night. Fernando Nieve had an excellent start, and the bullpen allowed one hit in three innings of work. The lineup came through from top to bottom, especially David Wright (4-4), Ryan Church (3-4), Fernando Tatis (2-4) and the recently promoted Nick Evans (2-3 with a HR). Games like this prove that even a depleted lineup can produce  from time to time, and we don’t have to assume the Mets can’t score runs with the team they’re fielding. Things might not be great for a while, but the Mets won’t be held to two hits every night.

As Mets fans, we’re naturally inclined to look for bad news, and while there wasn’t anything to complain about during the game, the Mets did suffer yet another injury setback today — albeit a minor one. Gary Sheffield was given a cortisone shot behind his right knee due to an inflamed bursa sac, and will be out of the lineup until at least Friday. Sheffield has worked out nicely for the Mets, especially considering they signed him for next to nothing; while nobody counted on Sheffield to play every day, the current power-starved lineup could use him back as soon as possible.

One final note: after tonight’s performance, it’s hard to see a way to move Nieve out of the rotation in the near future. How that will work out when John Maine and Oliver Perez is anyone’s guess.

I want to take a second look at the rehab starts made by Oliver Perez and John Maine yesterday. The initial reaction, which I parroted yesterday, was that Perez’s start was a disaster, while Maine’s was good. But is there something else we should be looking at here?

Maine did allow just one run on two hits in four innings. However, he did walk three batters and record just one strikeout. Meanwhile, Perez gave up six runs in three innings, with seven hits allowed — but with just one walk allowed and three strikeouts, which is unlike the “Bad Ollie” we’ve become accustomed to. Remember that the number of hits a pitcher allows is largely impacted by the performance of the defense behind them (and some luck), and that defense in the Florida State League is probably not quite as consistent as in the majors.

With all that out of the way, it’s still a bad outing for Perez and a solid performance by Maine. Still, the results probably aren’t as dramatically different as they were presented in the media; strikeout to walk ratio is good at predicting future success, and Perez did outperform Maine by that standard. If scouts and team officials say Maine is ready and Perez needs more time, then I trust them, but our opinions shouldn’t be  influenced by statistics from a few innings of single-A baseball. It would be wrong to get too excited — or too concerned — over such a small sample of pitching.