The 2014 Mets, Part e: Starting Pitching

This is out of order. Also I think the series as a whole is on hold, both because I'm dealing with a nagging shoulder injury and because stuff is just happening too rapidly that's changing the landscape. But I wanted to respond to a thing Sandy Alderson said in a recent interview on WFAN, namely that the injury to Matt Harvey means that he'll try to acquire a veteran free agent starting pitcher over the offseason. I think that's a mistake. The Mets' projected 2014 rotation prior to the Harvey injury was Harvey/Wheeler/Niese/Gee/Mejia/Montero, which is too many pitchers already all of whom deserve a spot, and then throw in Noah Syndergaard at mid-season. You were already going to have to squeeze Gee/Mejia/Montero into two rotation spots, unless someone got injured, which they did. Even though Mejia just underwent surgery, it was of a rather routine variety, so there's no reason to think any of those pitchers other than Harvey won't be ready for Opening Day. And although I don't think the Mets should just punt on 2014, I do think that it would be a mistake to commit every fifth start to a veteran pitcher and take those innings from the team's promising youngsters.

That's not just because the resources could be better allocated somewhere else, because they could. It's because Wheeler/Niese/Gee/Mejia/Montero is a very good rotation. For the season the first four of those guys have pitched 387.1 innings, which is obviously not enough innings for four starters but that's because Wheeler came up mid-season, Mejia had only a few starts between coming off an injury and needing further surgery to complete coming off that injury, and Niese had anomalous issues related to having pitched in the vicious cold early in the year. Over those 387.1 IP they've allowed a combined 150 earned runs, for an ERA of 3.49, which is very very good. It's not good enough for an ace pitcher, but it forms a deeply solid rotation overall, and note that that includes significant stretches of mediocrity or worse from Niese and Gee and Wheeler. Oh, and Rafael Montero's put up a 2.78 ERA over 155.1 minor-league innings, including a 3.05 ERA with AAA Las Vegas in a terrible pitching environment.

If these guys stayed healthy, you'd have the kind of rotation that doesn't (unless Wheeler progresses significantly) have a single dominant ace but it also doesn't have a single bad pitcher in it. That's important. It's how, I think, teams like the Braves and the Reds end up with great team pitching numbers without feeling like they have any dominant starting pitchers. Aces are nice but a "full house" rotation of two #2 pitchers and three 3# pitchers is pretty good as well. It's those #4 or #5 pitchers, guys who might just blow up on any given day or at best will labor through five or six innings of three-run baseball or whatever, who really kill a team's rotation over a full season, and even without Harvey the Mets aren't currently projected to have any bad pitchers in their rotation. And also, as I noted, if something goes wrong or even if it doesn't they've got the guy with the career minor league ERA of 2.64 who's got three more career strikeouts than walks and hits combined to come in sometime in the middle of the season.

Now, I'm obviously putting a lot on "if these guys stay healthy" here, and that's an issue. None of them exactly have a big history of staying healthy. So a fair question is what happens if things go wrong. One answer is "well, contending in 2014 is a stretch anyway without Harvey so if something goes wrong they'll just wait until 2015." I'm okay with that, honestly. This team has the opportunity to be very good for a very long time by building around a foundation of young pitching. They should definitely work to add useful pieces over the off-season, say by signing a reasonably big-name outfielder to a multi-year deal or something, but I think it would be a mistake to do anything that would impede the development of the team's young pitching even if it would be necessary to make the 2014 team more competitive. So I'd try pretty hard to avoid signing any veteran pitchers to any guaranteed Major League contracts.

But if Alderson can find someone who a) would be willing to take a Minor League deal, and pitch in Vegas until needed, and b) would be better as a fall-back option than the likes of Jacob deGrom or Matt Fox or Chris Schwinden (that one's not hard) or Darin Gorski, who might either be a backup starter option or a lefty reliever option, then he should sign them as a way of raising the team's performance floor. Actually, though, now that I think about it Carlos Torres has done a pretty good job as a swing-man/spot starter this year, so really you'd need someone who'd seem like a better option than conscripting Torres into the rotation should someone get hurt. And that's already, really, if two starters get hurt; if only one goes down, you can bring up Syndergaard mid-season to take his place. So we're talking about an eighth starter, really, even with Harvey injured. That's the only place I think a veteran starting pitcher would fit in on the 2014 Mets. Sandy Alderson should, if he wanted for some strange reason to take my advice, shy away from any big-name or even middle-name free agent starters, and should indeed spend the money instead on an outfielder, like Shin-Soo Choo.

And with that I'll conclude this series until at least the end of the Mets' regular season. I might resume it in October, when only the non-terrible teams keep playing and therefore less stuff will be happening to change the Mets' prospects (in the non-baseball term, heh).