Mets Shopped El-Duque?
Posted on February 25th, 2008 by Old Navy King
According to Jon Heyman at SI.com, the Mets had shopped Orlando Hernandez this winter, with the idea of signing free-agent Kyle Lohse if there were any takers. Apparently, there wasn’t much interest in El-Duque. Teams probably think the right-hander is much older than his listed 41 years of age.
Last season with the Mets, Hernandez went 9-5 in 24 starts, posting a respectable 3.72 ERA and 1.17 WHIP. He was 5-1 after the All-Star break.
Filed under: New York Mets
That record also doesn’t do El Duque justice. He made 24 starts and the Mets won 16 of them despite lack of run support early in games and a lot of blown decisions/vulture wins in his games. Despite all the talk of the seasons of Maine and Perez, in Metsland Duque was largely considered the most effective pitcher on the staff through most of 2007.
His ERA was 4.28 after the break, hardly spectacular. But he was downright filthy vs. righties… 0.90 WHIP and .167 BAA for the season. I agree Mark, the dude is still effective, 50 years old or not! ha
I wonder why no one tried him as a reliever, stamina seems to be his biggest issue at this poitn.
I’m not in the El Duque as a reliever camp. He’s in his own time zone when he warms up before starts, and I think there’s something to be said for keeping frail players in a regular routine rather than putting them in a stop and go situation (such as a relief role). What happens when he doesn’t pitch for a week and all of a sudden he’s needed three times in four games?
As for the post all-star break ERA, you look at his game log, and you see that he was very effective through his final August start. 17 of his first 22 starts of the season were quality. His August ERA was tainted by his final start of the month, which was also his final one before hitting the DL. Then he came back in September to give up 8 ER in 3 IP, which is really the culprit for his inflated second half ERA.
Also El Duque had a tendency to struggle early in games and then cruse for five or six innings. They break down stats by pitch count on Yahoo’s stat page, and that seems to agree with my assessment. On pitch numbers 1-15 he had a 5.31 ERA and a .284 BAA. Going through intervals of 15 pitches (up to 105), his second highest ERA is 3.48 and his second highest BAA is .239.
Another interesting note, he seemed to get more effective as he got deeper into the game. His ERA from pitch #60-90 was 2.61.
Considering this, the prospect of using El Duque in the pen aren’t particularly appealing.
The Mets were trying to divest themselves of El Duque for a reason.
Through August 25th he was 9-4 with an ERA of 3.07 and 16 quality starts.
Then over the course of his last five games he was 0-1 giving up 14 earned runs in 9.2 innings and posting an ERA of 13.04 in those last five appearances.
Everyone was dogging Glavine over his last three starts while El Duque was experiencing the same exact meltdown.
Glavine is gone , Pedro is as much a question mark as Mike Hampton , Pelfrey has bombed so far and El Duque is apparently unwanted.
The Mets have some serious pitching , rotational and depth issues.
1. Pedro is not NEARLY the risk Mike Hampton is. At least he’s shown he can be effective at all in recent memory.
2. I agree that El Duque was as big a part of “the collapse” as Glavine, but that was the Mets 1-2 punch going into last season. Now its Santana and Pedro. Not to mention there’s a lot more faith in Ollie and Maine going into this season.
3. More than half of those 14 ER (eight, to be exact) came in one start. In fact, that was the only start he made after August 25, and it was his first game after he came back from the injury.
Would I rather have Glavine over El Duque? Of course (although PECOTA disagrees with me). But with the front four the Mets have, the difference is negligible. As it stands, the Mets rotation is very strong. PECOTA thinks the Mets pitching staff is the best in the bigs (in terms RA). They also like Mike Pelfrey more than the Braves #3 pitcher, who they have listed as Tom Glavine.
Tom Glavine’s PECOTA projected line:
125 IP / 23 GS / 5.10 ERA / 1.53 WHIP / 149 H / 43 BB / 16 HR / 59 K / 7 W / 8 L / VORP 4.3
Mike Pelfrey’s projected PECOTA line:
130 IP / 24 GS / 4.32 ERA / 1.46 WHIP / 131 H / 59 BB / 12 HR / 90 K / 8 W / 8 L / 11.5 VORP
The Mets also have five other SP who PECOTA likes better than Mike Pelfrey, including El Duque (and yes, they do have him listed at age 42). The only pitchers the Braves have with a better pitching line than Pelfrey are Hudson, Smoltz, and James (and with James its VERY close).
you need to take PECOTA with grain of salt when you compare individual players at very different stages of their career.
still though that debate is pointless. it projects the Mets to completely runaway with the division and i can’t see that not happening barring Santana blow out his arm 2 month into the season.
To a degree I agree with you, but its still something important to look at. The way to judge value is to compare each guy to other guys at similar points in their careers, as you say. As far as this goes, they still like Pelfrey a lot more than the average media outlet. His top comps are still littered with legit big leaguers and a handful of studs. On the other hand, they don’t like Glavine at all compared to other 40-something lefties. Obviously comps aren’t as relevant since so few players have gotten to this point in their careers, but still, only one player among his Top 20 trended up at this stage of his career: Warren Spahn. And when you look at other 40-something hurlers, they almost all project better than Glavine. Jamie Moyer, Kenny Rogers, Greg Maddux, and Orlando Hernandez all come to mind and all feature a significantly superior projectiosn.
And my previous point was still relevant. I could replace El Duque with Glavine and it would still be true. He’s listed as the Mets #5 and his projection is vastly superior to Tom Glavine or Mike Hampton. Pelfrey’s projection is superior to Jair Jurrjens or Jojo Reyes, listed 6th and 7th for the Braves. Maine and Perez’s projections are both superior to Chuck James. Despite significantly less PT, Pedro’s VORP is nearly identical to Tim Hudson’s. And obviously Santana trumps all.
Sorry, what I meant was you could replace Pelfrey with El Duque, not El Duque with Glavine. That is to say, El Duque’s projection is significantly better than Glavine’s and he IS at a similar stage of his career.