The Mets are moving Jenrry Mejia back to the starting rotation and it’s about time. Mejia, 22, has bounced between the bullpen and the starting rotation throughout his career including a stint in the big league bullpen as a relief pitcher.
The original thought on Mejia was he was coming off Tommy John surgery, so his innings would be limited this season. The Mets front office decided to take advantage of that and move Mejia to the bullpen, where he eventually might be anyway. However, the role switch really hurt Mejia’s performance. As a relief pitcher, he has a 5.48 ERA in 21.1 innings pitched compared to a 1.13 ER in three starts with the Bisons.
The Mets want to (and need to) give Mejia the quality innings so he can develop and eventually become the major league pitcher that he has the talent to be. However, it’s been made clear that the bullpen is not the place for him to do that. I’ve always thought that a pitcher gets quality innings when starting. Then, pitchers are utilizing their off-speed pitches in order to get hitters out as opposed to just trying to blow away hitters with fastballs, as Mejia is reportedly doing and what many starters transitioning to the bullpen often try to do.
Velocity isn’t going to get Mejia by at the major leagues. It may scare a Double-A, or even some Triple-A hitters, but hitters like Giancarlo Stanton and Chase Utley are going to smack a fastball down the middle, whether it’s at 100 miles per hour or not. It’s the changeups and breaking balls that make or break pitchers and that’s what Mejia really needs to work on.
As I’ve said all along, Mejia, for development purposes, belongs in the starting rotation. Who knows? He may still be a relief pitcher in the future, but he needs those quality innings as a starter in the minors before he can become the dominant, late-inning force the Mets so desperately need him to be in the future.
Mejia is scheduled to return to the rotation for Buffalo on Monday, when he will start in Indianapolis.
6 comments
Bryan
7/29/2012-11:53am at 11:53 am (UTC -4)
It’s easy to say this in retrospect, but the Mets should not have moved Mejia to the bullpen. Their whole mantra this year was not to mortgage the future in hopes of competing this year, which they did by interrupting the schedule of a guy returning from TJ and changing his role in hopes of getting him to the ML pen. They should have kept him as a starter in Buffalo all along, let him pitch a reasonable number of innings post TJ, and then put him in the mix with everyone else next spring.
srt
7/29/2012-12:42pm at 12:42 pm (UTC -4)
Good article, Connor. You’ll get no arguments from me on your logic.
Hazmet
7/29/2012-1:23pm at 1:23 pm (UTC -4)
Jenry Mejia’s future is not as a starter, and the Met’s made that decision which is why after stretching him out initially as a starter they moved him to the bullpen. You can look at it a number of ways in my humble opinion, they are as follows:
His innings pitched since starting his baseball career in 2007:
2007: 43.2
2008: 71.2
2009: 94.2
2010: 81.1
2011: 28.1
2012: 56.1 and counting
So in 5 years of major league ball, for whatever reason he’s yet to pitch over 100 innings. If we apply the standard of building up a starting pitcher’s innings in the minors then next year he’s going to need to pitch in the neighborhood of 130 innings followed the next year in 2014 of either being in the majors to build his pitch count or more likely being in the minors to to get up over 150 innings.
So: 1) do we think he’ll stay healthy enough at whatever level to significantly increase his pitch count to that expected innings count required for grooming a starter? That’s one toss of the dice, the other being will the pitches he needs to develop actually develop.
2) Are the Met’s going to be willing to carry Mejia on their 40 man roster while he’s in the minors the next 2 years learning to pitch enough to be a starter? I’d be surprised they’d be willing to lock up a position for that period for a player coming off tommy john surgery who needs to learn how to pitch. So he will most likely become a Rule 5 Draft candidate and most likely get snatched up. Or, you keep him on the 40 man in hopes that he can, you guessed it: contribute in the pen.
So if he becomes a Starter at the MLB level I expect we’ll be seeing it in another uniform in about 2+ years. Since, if the Mets are commiting to making him a Starter I don’t want to hear his name for the big league club in 2013 and maybe 2014 if he hasn’t been plucked or traded. Also consider he’ll be 23 this fall. So if they are going to commit to do this right and build his pitch count over the next couple of years he’ll be ready for the bigs at around 25 years of age where we’ll be ready to start calling him Schwinden or Heffner.
I like Mejia’s arm but he just hasn’t built up enough innings and combined with the violence of his delivery I just don’t see him as a Starter. And the time commited to grooming him properly, underline properly, means they’ll probably lose him via Rule 5. I just assume stretch him out and groom him to be a closer rather than lose him.
Stick
7/29/2012-2:11pm at 2:11 pm (UTC -4)
that was a key difference this year vs. last time with Mejia. Then, he was a kid that was not ready and they made a panic moved, started the clock on him, etc.
now, they are running out of time to get something out of him, and if he is pitching in the majors in the next year (or 2), it is going to have to be in the pen.
People get hung up on doing what’s best for the player, but the team is really worried more about the overall team, and having to deal with issues like roster space and control.
gategem
7/29/2012-2:13pm at 2:13 pm (UTC -4)
“Velocity isn’t going to get Mejia by at the major leagues.”
But movement on his fastball coupled with velocity can get him to the majors as a reliever. The best closer in the history of baseball, Mariano Rivera, basically has one pitch, a cut fastball with incredible movement and velocity. Mejia has Rivera type movement on his fastball but he has yet to gain the necessary command of it.
Mr North Jersey
7/29/2012-2:49pm at 2:49 pm (UTC -4)
The positive at least is that Mejia is healthy and this being his 1st season after surgery should only get stronger.