The Mets signed Tim Redding. You're probably not impressed. No he's not C.C Sabathia and he's not Derek Lowe. He's Pedro and he's dirt cheap. To be a successful Met he doesn't need to win, he needs to eat innings.
I got killed yesterday talking about the Mets frugality , so I guess this signing is what people want, a nice cheap pitcher not one of those high priced free agents that the Yankees overpay for. That's what comments like these are telling me:
What are you talking about? We have the 3rd highest payroll in baseball! You don't have to throw money around frivilously just to prove yourself to be a big market team. I am, for one, glad we are NOT like the Yankees! Look at this offseason and all the signings they made. They could have had them all for much much less. They basically competed against themselves. No one was even bidding remotely close to them!
and
What you want is the Mets to be like the Yankees. Spend spend spend. When will you and other Mets fans realize that the Wilpons, who spent over $137 million on team salary last year, do NOT want to go over the luxury tax. You want Manny, you want Lowe, you want K-Rod, you want Tex, you want this guy and that guy. ALL that signage means the Mets will a) be compared to the Yankees as just a team who spends and b) go over the luxury tax and be forced to pay the fine. Just because we spend a ton of money doesnt mean we wont collapse again. This is a good team that has to find a way to finish at the end of the year. Plain and simple.
That post got a lot of attention and I'll break that down tomorrow...but today I want to focus on Redding. $2.25 million is nothing. Redding doesn't need to win. He doesn't even have to pitch .500. He can go 10-16 and do the Mets a favor. All Tim Redding needs to do is eat innings.
Last year I had a big problem with Pedro Martinez (people go bananas when I call him "Four Inning Pedro") but one of the problems with the 2008 Mets was that every time Pedro pitched you had to use the entire bullpen to get through 9 innings. Pedro started 20 games and pitched 109 innings....with some short starts in there let's call it about 5 1/3 innings per start maybe even 5 2/3 if you throw out the really short ones. Redding pitched 182 innings in 33 starts. That also is 5 2/3. He's going to need to go a little deeper. The front end of the rotation will bank the wins, he just needs to not waste the entire bullpen every fifth day. It's the old adage that no matter what you are going to lose 60 - so lose them on Redding day but don't let it spill over.
A guy like Derek Lowe may not win 20 games, but he'll get you over 6 1/3 per start. (211 IP in 34 starts). Comparatively a guy like Santana, and we saw how good he was, averaged nearly 7. (234 in 34).
Redding replaces Oliver Perez who averaged 5.7 per start. The Mets save some money and aren't those crazy wild spending idiot Yankees....but we'll get back into that tomorrow.
www.metspolice.com
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