Yesterday, the Mets put themselves into first place (solo edition) off another brilliant performance by Phillie Killer® Oliver Perez, and a clutch hit by the resurgent Carlos Delgado. The two biggest pariahs of the Willie Randolph administration are now the two biggest heroes of the Jerry Manuel campaign. Over the past 28 days, Carlos Delgado is hitting to a .368/.467/.736 tune, while Oliver Perez has a 1.33 ERA with a 0.98 WHIP, and a 39/12 K/BB ratio. Where both seemed headed for the scrap heap a few weeks ago, now both are making their cases for the Mets to consider bringing them back for 2009.
What's gotten into these two? Did Jerry Manuel find the switch on their backs and turn it from "Sux!" to "Rox!"?
Well, Delgado had been hitting into a significant bit of bad luck this year, with his 22% LD rate only resulting in a .280 BABiP, and Oliver Perez's recent surge may have a lot to do with his 3 starts against the Phillies and Yankees, two teams that always have difficulty hitting him (for his career, the Yanks are hitting .199/.293/.315. against him and the Phils are .204/.351/.335). There seems, however, to be something different at play here than simple luck of the draw.
Delgado's luck hasn't really improved all that much- while his LD% has increased to 23.4%, his BABiP is still .282. Perez may have beaten the lefty-susceptible Yanks and Phils, but he's also had starts against both Colorado and Cincinnati, two teams that have hit well against lefties this year. Has Delgado figured out the strikeout bug that plagued him the first half of the year? Has Perez gotten over the mental blocks that normally eat him up when he's pitching against the Colorados and Cinncinatis of the league? How much of their success is due to the Randolph/Peterson firings? Any of it?
I really don't know. I suspect both will continue to have excellent second halves, if not quite this good. The franchise will have to make decisions on whether to try to bring these two back for next season. Both will cost an extravagant amount of money next year. I hope both Ollie and Carlos make Omar's decisions very difficult.
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3 comments:
Of course, if the defense knew exactly where the batted ball was going, a hitter's BABIP would be .000 no matter how many line drives he hit. Surely, the defensive shift employed against Delgado-- combined with the unusually high number of inside pitches Delgado's is being thrown this season in order to increase the chances that Delgado hits into the shift-- are factors to consider in understanding Delgado's low BABIP/LD ratio.
Good luck with this blog.
batmagadanleadoff
Thanks Batmag!
Yeah, the idea behind the shift is to limit the damage Delgado can do when he pulls the ball. If most line drives are off of "pulled" balls, then the shift would take away some of them. I'm gonna check out what percentage of his line drives have been pulled to see if it matches up to his BABiP/LD ratio.
Hmm, just went through all his box scores for this season on B-R and he's hit 22 line drives to left, 22 to center and 23 to right. I don't think that the shift has anything to do with his line drives.
Perhaps he's losing so many grounders to the shift thatit's dragging down his results. He's only batting .169/.169/.185 on his ground balls, compared to his .207/.226/.433 career average.
Actually, that may not be because of anything but luck, either- in his first 2 years with the Mets, teams were using the shift on him, but his results on groundballs were about the same as his career norms.
So maybe Carlos starts seeing some seeing eye singles than he's been getting so far this season.
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