Sunday, May 07, 2006

It's Lima Time!!!!

Fortunately the Met game starts an hour before the Yankee game does. That may give me enough time to see Jose Lima's entire start. Lima has come back before and done unexpectedly well, however this time he has a 5.10 ERA in 6 AAA starts (although he has walked only 3 in 30 innings).

When are teams going to understand that you can never have enough starting pitching.

Today this could become painfully obvious to both the Mets and the Red Sox. As the Mets throw Lima up against John Smoltz, they could have Kris Benson instead (or Jae Seo), who will be pitching today for the Orioles against Lenny DiNardo. The Red Sox could have Arroyo starting, who is 5-1 with a 2.36 ERA (although I admit I think his ERA would be significantly higher if he was still in the AL, but significantly lower than DiNardo's 7.36).

And it's hard to say these teams should know better, because few teams ever do. The only reason the Yankees went into the season this year with 7 starters, keeping the depth, is because the disaster of last season. Starters for the Yankees last season included Tim Redding, who sported a 54.00 ERA, along with Darrell May (16.71), Sean Henn (11.12), Al Leiter (5.49). Scott Proctor and Tanyon Sturtze both got one bad start. This was mostly because Jaret Wright (6.08) and Kevin Brown (6.50) had some combination of injury and complete innefectiveness. Looking at these numbers, I can't even believe the Yankees made the playoffs last season.

Fortuately they kept 7 for this season, because they learned from last season. Maybe the Mets and Red Sox will have more starters next year.

2 comments:

Ross said...

They just showed a stat on the Met game that Lima's 6.99 ERA last season was the highest in Major League history for a pitcher with 30 starts.

There have been a lot of bad pitchers in Major League history. Wow.

Greg said...

And the Royals kept running him out there, even letting him reach bonuses for games started and/or innings pitched, I forget which one.

That being said, I watched a little of the Mets game earlier, and I love the blonde afro that Lima is sporting. He looks like "The Natural" Butch Reed.