Mets' Rotation

Today I'll take a peak at the Mets' starters. I used '08 projections for some numerical grounding, but these stories could go in a lot of different directions. The tables come from Marcel the Monkey via baseballmusings.com.

First the Mets:

Starter	Innings	ER	ERA
Johan Santana	193	71	3.31
Pedro Martinez	87	38	3.93
John Maine	163	73	4.03
Oliver Perez	160	80	4.50
Orlando Hernandez	148	74	4.50
Totals	751	336	4.03

Santana looks a little conservative here. Those are fine numbers, but we're talking about possibly the best pitcher around moving to a pitcher's park in a pitcher's league (and he can hit!). He could be a real monster. Hard to know what to make of Pedro. If he's healthy he's a magician, and he could outperform those numbers by a lot. He could also go 2-2 with 50 innings and no one would act surprised. That's the thing with projecting Pedro: it divides us into cynics, optimists and uncertaintists. I know where my loyalties lie- Pedro '08: 16-8, 149 IP, 3.76 ERA.

Some are predicting that Maine will go from solid citizen to star. He's in a good spot to try it behind Johan and Pedro. As for Enigma Perpetual, he's a Boras client in his walk year on a contending team, so he should be motivated. The Mets' 1 and 3 are dependable with the potential to find the upper range of their possibilities. 2 and 4, are less predicatable, each with the potential for greatness or frustration.

In the fifth spot are two sides of a strange coin.

There's Mike Pelfrey, age 24, plenty of potential, has a great fastball, but needs to develop his other pitches.
On the flipside is El Duque, age unknown, this may be his last season, rarely breaks the low 80s on the radar gun, but almost never throws the same pitch twice.

If only we could combine them.