Gotham Baseball Magazine is proud to welcome John Young to our starting lineup. He'll be sharing his thoughts on a regular basis here at GBM, and is a regular contributor to Gotham Nation as well.
I Just Don’t Get It
When a pitcher comes out of the bullpen and has held opposing batters
to a .185 (right - .200; left - .169) batting average, you expect to
see him for at least one inning. This isn’t the case with Pedro
Feliciano.
For some unknown reason, manager Willie Randolph, must, keep telling
himself that all Feliciano is good for is as a loogy (lefty one out
guy). Never mind that right handed batters are hitting only .200
against him. Never mind the fact that Feliciano has been one of the
Mets most consistent arms out of the pen and in my eyes, should be
setting up for Billy Wagner. No, that doesn’t even come into play for
Willie.
Feliciano has made 55 appearances out of the bullpen this year and has
only gone one inning plus 24 times and the most he has been allowed to
go for is two innings (June 30th @ Phillie). Instead Randolph relies on
guys like Mota and Schoeneweis, whom have allowed batters to hit .254
(Schoeneweis) and .265 (Mota) against them.
There is no action against one kind of batter, be it lefty or righty ,
that Feliciano demonstrates, that in any way suggests that he should be
the specialist in the pen. If anything, Schoeneweis should, in fact, be
the lefty specialist, because left handed batters are only batting
.185against him. That’s a far cry from rightys (.323). So wouldn’t this
conclude that Schoeneweis should be the pitcher coming out to face one
batter every couple of games instead of Feliciano?
By the way, it almost seems that Willie is still holding some animosity
towards Feliciano for the incident that took place last August, when
Pedro berated Randolph, to the media, about not using him in a game he
felt he needed to be. None of us can be sure this is what’s happening,
but there’s always going to be that air of suspicion when it comes to
how Feliciano is used.
Now I’m not, by any means, calling Willie Randolph a bad manager. Like
every manager in the game, he makes some questionable calls and I can
live with that, because, let’s face it, managing a Major League team is
not nearly as easy as it might seem. The only thing I’m trying to say
is that the Pedro Feliciano decision is, by far, boggling my mind and I
can’t seem to get over it.
Whatever the case may be with the relationship of Willie Randolph and
Pedro Feliciano, it has to get fixed soon because if it’s not, we’re
probably going to be seeing a lot more bullpen meltdowns before the
season comes to a close.
Gotham Baseball Magazine is proud to welcome John Young to our starting lineup. He'll be sharing his thoughts on a regular basis here at GBM, and is a regular contributor to Gotham Nation as well. 