(AP Photo/Kathy Willens)
That is to say, he is man’s best friend. Especially if that man is a starting pitcher for the New York Mets not named Livan Hernandez.
The following chart of the 4 starting pitchers for the Mets who have thrown at least 50 total innings so far this season is broken down by battery mate. It seems that the decision for the Mets to jettison Ramon Castro and in doing so keep Santos with the Major League team was based on more than just dramatic game winning hits.
- Santana IPÂ Â Â Â Â Â HÂ Â Â RÂ Â Â ERÂ Â Â BBÂ Â Â KÂ Â Â ERAÂ Â Â WHIPÂ Â Â W-L
- w/Schneider 5.66    3    1   1        4     7   1.59      1.24     1-0
- w/Castro      40     33   14   10    11   55   2.25     1.10   4-0
- w/Santos      20.33 16   5    2       5    24   0.89    1.03   2-1
- Pelfrey IPÂ Â Â Â HÂ Â Â Â RÂ Â Â ERÂ Â Â BBÂ Â Â KÂ Â Â ERAÂ Â Â WHIPÂ Â Â W-L
- w/Schneider   10    13   9    9       6      5    8.10    1.90      1-0
- w/Castro         7      8    3   3        1      0    3.86    1.29      1-0
- w/Santos    38.66   36  12  12     10    18    2.79    1.19      2-1
- Maine IPÂ Â Â Â HÂ Â Â RÂ Â Â ERÂ Â Â BBÂ Â Â KÂ Â Â ERAÂ Â Â WHIPÂ Â Â W-L
- w/Schneider      5     2    2    2       1     5    3.60    0.60    0-0
- w/Castro      29.33   27   17   17    20   20   5.21   1.60      2-2
- w/Santos      23.33   16   7      5     11    16    1.93   1.16      3-1
- Hernandez IPÂ Â Â Â HÂ Â Â RÂ Â Â Â Â ERÂ Â Â BBÂ Â Â KÂ Â Â ERAÂ Â Â WHIPÂ Â Â W-L
- w/Schneider    6.66    6    2      2      3     4    2.70   1.35        1-0
- w/Castro       18.33    21   6      6    3     7    2.95    1.31     1-0
- w/Santos       29.66   36   18   18     8   20   5.46   1.48        2-1
Clearly I have a bit to learn about how to make a chart line up. But if you can see through the imperfections of my work, you might just see why Omir Santos is a Met today, and Ramon Castro is plying his trade in the Windy City. I tip my TRDMB cap to commenter Oleosmirf who noted in a previous thread that the pitchers seemed to be better with Santos behind the plate. Thanks for the inspiration to do some research. Feel free to inspire me to learn how to make a chart.
(AP Photo/Kathy Willens)
29 comments
Kingman 26
5/31/2009-9:50pm at 9:50 pm (UTC -4)
More great stuff Grave! When I saw the title of the post, I was wondering where you were going with that!
Wow, those numbers for Pelf and Maine sure are eye-opening….and as one could argue that the two of them pitching well is one of the biggest keys to this season being a successful one, those numbers indeed speak pretty damn loudly.
Again, thanks for the enlightenment Grave.
GravediggerHebner
5/31/2009-9:57pm at 9:57 pm (UTC -4)
I will redirect your thanks to oleosmirf who pointed out the basic idea in an earlier thread comment. I decided to put together some numbers to see if he was right (Simpsons and Family Guy are re-runs) and with the exception of Livan Hernandez, he was.
Kingman 26
5/31/2009-10:02pm at 10:02 pm (UTC -4)
Grave, it is getting late and I have been enjoying some fine Kentucky Bourbon, but I must say that this team is really starting to grow on me.
The usual suspects, plus Shef, Santos, Parnell, FMart…..this could be a really fun year.
dirtysanchez
5/31/2009-10:02pm at 10:02 pm (UTC -4)
wow great work grave!
johan4cy
5/31/2009-10:04pm at 10:04 pm (UTC -4)
lol sit santos once a week on the day that livan pitches
GravediggerHebner
5/31/2009-10:07pm at 10:07 pm (UTC -4)
Exactly! Paging Jerry Manuel…
QnsNative718
5/31/2009-10:05pm at 10:05 pm (UTC -4)
Great work, Grave!
oleosmirf
5/31/2009-10:09pm at 10:09 pm (UTC -4)
thanks for the acknowledgement grave. good works on the chart now if you continue that for the relievers, i wonder how the catchers match up then.
i’ll also post this here as it’s more fitting.
The Mets are 4-3 when Schneider started, 10-11 when Castro started and 13-7 when Santos started.
GravediggerHebner
5/31/2009-10:24pm at 10:24 pm (UTC -4)
I’ll see if I can find a website that breaks it down. Unaware of one I did this myself by just going back through all the boxscores, which is not too hard when doing it just for 4 starters. I’m not sure if I have the patience to do it for all the relievers. I was happy to artificially create the 50 IP limit so I didn’t have to deal with Niese, Figueroa and Perez. Plus there were a few games in which one catcher started, then a second one came in later. That’s a lot of game log study.
One can go to baseball-reference.com and in every pitcher’s “splits” chart they do have breakdowns by catcher for other stats, like batting average against, OBP against, K/BB ratio. But they don’t have IP & ER I had to find those myself.
Kingman 26
5/31/2009-10:25pm at 10:25 pm (UTC -4)
Yeah, thanks for being the motivation for this post Oleo.
And THANKS AGAIN to MRose, TRS, and Dirty for starting this site!
I am cured of Metsblog, so the proprietors of this here site do not have to worry about any more childish anti-Metsblog comments from me from now on! I shall focus my energies to contributing to this fantastic site, which may very well be the best Mets site that there is!
GravediggerHebner
5/31/2009-10:27pm at 10:27 pm (UTC -4)
Aww, that’s the Bourbon talking. 8)
Kingman 26
5/31/2009-10:53pm at 10:53 pm (UTC -4)
LOL! But I do listen to the Bourbon….
QnsNative718
5/31/2009-10:46pm at 10:46 pm (UTC -4)
TRDMB all day, every day! lol
CaseStreet
5/31/2009-10:43pm at 10:43 pm (UTC -4)
that’s crazy. Brian’s numbers are pretty ugly, too, although they are a small sample.
Kingman 26
5/31/2009-10:52pm at 10:52 pm (UTC -4)
His positive contributions to this team are, alas, a small sample too…..
CaseStreet
5/31/2009-11:11pm at 11:11 pm (UTC -4)
I blame it all on Toyota of Manhattan, they don’t know squat
gategem
5/31/2009-10:50pm at 10:50 pm (UTC -4)
Excellent post Heb.
Heb, your numbers support Jerry’s touting of Santos’ work behind the plate.
BTW Approximately a week ago Ted Berg wrote a column at SNY.tv where he wondered just how long we could expect Omir’s offensive numbers to remain at their present level when Omir’s minor league OPS is worse than Castro’s major league OPS. He was not in favor of trading Castro and instead thought the Mets should send Omir back to Buffalo. He wondered what the Mets would do if they traded Castro and then either Schneider and/or Santos were to get injured.
oleosmirf
5/31/2009-10:53pm at 10:53 pm (UTC -4)
Javier Valentin
GravediggerHebner
5/31/2009-11:08pm at 11:08 pm (UTC -4)
I agree with Oleo, most likely Valentin. Also on the Buffalo roster as catchers are old friend Robinson Cancel, Rene Rivera and Mike Nickeas, and if they want to really blow our minds there is “catcher of the future” Josh Thole at Binghamton.
oleosmirf
5/31/2009-11:13pm at 11:13 pm (UTC -4)
not only is Valentin hitting well in AAA but he is also playing 1B which could also be pretty useful.
not to mention he is the little brother of the Stache himself
GravediggerHebner
5/31/2009-11:25pm at 11:25 pm (UTC -4)
Javier’s presence in the system, along with guys like Emil Brown, Wily Mo Pena, Cory Sullivan, Andy Green, Mike Lamb and Bobby Kielty on offense and Elmer Dessens, Kyle Snyder, Nelson Figueroa and Brandon Knight on the mound make me think that whatever problems come up, the potential solutions are going to come from within this season.
Oh and as actual prospects Jon Niese, and to a lesser extent Lance Broadway and Dillon Gee for pitching. I’m resigning myself to seeing these guys if more holes develop.
Wonder how Angel Pagan is feeling right about now?
trs86
5/31/2009-11:06pm at 11:06 pm (UTC -4)
OK guys say good bye to the yardbarker widget. It has had Chase Futley on their for 2 days as the top story.
trs86
5/31/2009-11:08pm at 11:08 pm (UTC -4)
I am giving it until 8:00am tomorrow to get it’s shiz together or it’s out of here.
baseballmercenaries
5/31/2009-11:09pm at 11:09 pm (UTC -4)
amen
GravediggerHebner
5/31/2009-11:10pm at 11:10 pm (UTC -4)
and a “Sixers hire Eddie Jordan” story beneath that. Is that a Phillie Yardbarker?
trs86
5/31/2009-11:11pm at 11:11 pm (UTC -4)
LOL, it’s supposed to be an MLB but it’s like my new puppy it just sh$ts a little bit of everywhere.
oleosmirf
5/31/2009-11:11pm at 11:11 pm (UTC -4)
i did a quick comparison of Castro and Santos for relievers and Santos worked much better with Putz, Stokes and K-Rod but Castro worked much better with Takahashi and Green and were virtually equal with Feliciano and Parnell.
btw Sean Green should never pitch with Santos behind the plate as 13 of his 17 runs have been with Santos…
metsinnats
6/1/2009-10:13am at 10:13 am (UTC -4)
Great blog you guys – I’ve been a lurker at metsblog for a while, enjoying the comments, but with their new policy I’m outta there. I want more opinions than just Matty’s.
Grave, to get the stats to line up, copy the HTML of the Yahoo boxscore. You coded this post with list items / formatting. You could do it like yahoo with // code and it should work properly. The main thing to remember about the table HTML code is to mentally visualize the Table Row and Table Data (i.e. table cells) structure, and to make sure that you have the same number of elements in each row. When I mess up my tables, it is usually because I forgot a element – even if the cell is supposed to contain empty data, you’ll need to put in tags.
Of course take the above with a huge grain of salt, as I code websites for personal consumption and am in no way an HTML jockey.
metsinnats
6/1/2009-10:18am at 10:18 am (UTC -4)
oops.. I put in html code in the reply and it didn’t show up. what I meant to say was:
Grave, to get the stats to line up, copy the HTML of the Yahoo boxscore. You coded this post with list items / unordered list formatting. You could do it like yahoo with table / table row / table data code and it should work properly.
The main thing to remember about the table HTML code is to mentally visualize the table row and table data (i.e. table cells) structure, and to make sure that you have the same number of table data elements in each row. When I mess up my tables it is usually because I forgot a table data element – even if the cell is supposed to contain empty data you will need to put in opening and closing table data tags.