Nothing Accomplished

I searched back into baseball-refence.com to find the complete number of times that Johan Santana had victories snatched from him by sub-par efforts by the Mets bullpen since his arrival in 2008. I searched through looking for all the times Santana left the game with the lead and came away with a no-decision. The number I came up with: three. I found three games where the Mets bullpen cost Johan Santana a victory since 2008.

Of course, I only got to three before I started sobbing uncontrollably. Unfortunately, there’s no metric or variable to account for my bawling. So suffice it to say that Johan Santana has been robbed of a truck load of victories as a New York Met at the hands of the burglars of the bullpen. They did it again on Wednesday as the Mets dropped their second in a row, this one to the Reds by a score of 6-3. The culprit this time was Jon Rauch, who was good all season but came in the game in the eighth and gave up hits to Drew Stubbs, Joey Votto, and Brandon Phillips. Then, after Tim Byrdak got Jay Bruce to fly out deep to right to drive in the go-ahead run, D.J. Carrasco game in to a game which was still winnable and made it much less so by giving up an absolute bomb to a guy named Todd Frazier. Frazier, who grew up in Tom’s River, NJ, no doubt dreamed that one day he would destroy the hopes of the local team. And with his two home runs, he did.  As for Carrasco, after he gave up Frazier’s bomb, Gary Cohen discussed the Mets career of Carrasco as if it was already over … quote:

“His tenure as a Met has accomplished … nothing.”

Cohen must have known something, because after the game Carrasco was designated for getting the hell out of our sights forever and ever assignment in favor of Robert Carson. Carson will provide a second lefty in the bullpen, which of course would have helped the hell out of Wednesdays game if he had been around to keep Rauch from facing Joey Votto, and still having Tim Byrdak available to face Jay Bruce. But of course, that’s hindsight. Robert Carson could give up a double to Joey Votto just as easily as Rauch did. (Votto hits pitchers of all arms.) The fault, ultimately, lies with Rauch for not getting the job done, as he has already plainly admitted. As for Carrasco, his Mets tenure really has accomplished nothing. And it lasted one game too long. I’m reasonably sure that his skills will be in demand on the Citi Field mound once again. But don’t worry, the skills that Citi Field would want and demand from him wouldn’t be until the home run derby at the 2013 All-Star game.