Joey's Soapbox: Can the Mets Trade Eric O'Flaherty For Doug Sisk?

I can't "bear" to watch the screen whenever Eric O'Flaherty takes the mound for the Mets.

Good Labor Day weekend to you all.  This is Joey Beartran, your fav'rit Studious Metsimus roving reporter/culinary expert/soapbox climber.  It's been far too long since I've gotten on my soapbox to complain about a Mets player I strongly dislike.  On the positive side, that's probably because the Mets have actually been a good team this year.  On the negative side, that means we were probably long overdue for a player who deserved my wrath.  And I've found that player in left-handed relief pitcher Eric O'Flaherty.

In Friday night's series opener in Miami, O'Flaherty came into the game in relief of Erik Goeddel, who had retired four of the five previous batters he had faced.  Why was Goeddel taken out in favor of O'Flaherty?  Because left-handed swinging Christian Yelich was up, and we all know lefties retire lefties, right?  There's only one problem with that for me.  Left-handed batters were batting .226 and had a .250 on-base percentage against Goeddel this year, while O'Flaherty had faced 23 lefty-swingers during his brief tenure as a Met and had allowed nine hits and one walk.  For all you kids out there, that's a .409 batting average and a .435 OBP.

O'Flaherty must have had his Lucky Charms before the game because he got Yelich to hit into a fielder's choice.  However, his luck ran out once Martin Prado stepped into the batter's box.  Let me set this one up for you, 'cause this one's a knee-slapper.

Prado is a right-handed batter.  He also had four hits in the game entering his confrontation against O'Flaherty.  Jeurys Familia had still not been used by the Mets because he had to be held out for a potential save situation in case the Mets took the lead, which, because it's the Marlins, might not have occurred until the 20th inning.  So let's leave O'Flaherty in the game to face a right-handed hitting Mets killer.  Makes perfect sense, right?  I mean, O'Flaherty had retired eight right-handed batters in his month with the Mets, so why couldn't he make Prado victim No. 9?  Never mind that he had also allowed eight righties reach base against him, including two doubles and one home run.  That's not important right now.

So Prado stepped in to face O'Flaherty with the speedy Christian Yelich on first, working the count full.  With two outs and a 3-2 count, Yelich would be running on the pitch.  Sure enough, Prado ripped his fifth hit of the game down the right field line, scoring Yelich easily from first base and setting off the jubilant celebration for the Marlins' third-ever World Series championship victory - or at least it seemed as if that's what they were doing.  I almost expected Marcell Ozuna to come out of the dugout and fire 2015 World Champions t-shirts into the stands with his cannon arm so that the four Marlins fans who attended the game could come to blows over them.

But I digress.  The point of this rant is to discuss Eric O'Flaherty and why he's still on this team.  And I'm going to bring up a former Met to kick everything off.

Let's hop in the DeLorean and go back to 1985.  No, we're not reenacting a scene from Back To The Future.  We're going back to Shea Stadium in the mid-'80s to pay a visit to Doug Sisk.  In 1984, the right-handed reliever was coming off his second consecutive solid season for the Mets.  Sisk had 15 saves and a career-best 2.09 ERA in 77⅔ innings, as he held opposing hitters to a .215 batting average and .260 slugging percentage.  His '84 season was fresh off his successful '83 campaign, a year in which he posted a 2.24 ERA and pitched a career-high 104⅓ innings, while recording 11 saves.  Then 1985 happened, and Sisk hit the fan.

One of the few problems experienced by Sisk in 1983 and 1984 was his lack of control.  He did walk his share of batters over those two seasons (113 in all), but always seemed to pitch his way out of trouble.  He finally learned how to throw strikes in 1985, and continued to throw balls over the plate in 1986, as he walked just 71 batters in those two seasons.  There's only one problem with that.  Hitters like balls over the plate.  And they responded by batting .286 over the two campaigns, pushing Sisk's ERA and WHIP to 4.20 and 1.63, respectively.

When a team has a plethora of good pitchers as the Mets did in 1985 and 1986, fans tend to notice the pitchers who don't do well, and Sisk got the undivided attention of all the boobirds during those two otherwise successful campaigns.  Let's put it this way.  In 1985, fans showed up to cheer Dwight Gooden, who posted a stellar 1.53 ERA.  Those same fans showed up to boo Doug Sisk, who produced a cringeworthy 1.73 WHIP in '85.  When one pitcher has a higher WHIP than his teammate's ERA, that's a problem, and Sisk was used less and less until he threw his final pitch for the Mets in 1987.

That brings us back to Eric O'Flaherty and Friday night's game against the Marlins.  The game was started by Jacob deGrom, who like Gooden thirty years earlier, was having an exceptional sophomore season after winning the Rookie of the Year Award the previous year.  DeGrom left the game with a 2.40 ERA.  When O'Flaherty's night ended after Prado's double, his WHIP stood at 2.45.  Even Doug Sisk has to be shaking his head at that.

Doug Sisk is cringing in this photo because he knew we'd someday compare him to Eric O'Flaherty.

General manager Sandy Alderson acquired O'Flaherty to face left-handed hitters.  O'Flaherty replaced southpaw Alex Torres, who had far more success against right-handed batters (.157 batting average, .298 OBP) than lefty-swingers (.268 average, .406 OBP).  In hindsight, they should have kept Torres, as O'Flaherty has allowed all hitters to bat .405 against him and slug at a .622 clip.

O'Flaherty has pitched in 13 games with the Mets.  He has allowed base runner in ten of those 13 affairs.  In two of the three games he shocked the world by retiring every batter he faced, every batter consisted of one batter.  Even Doug Sisk could get one batter out more often than not if he only had to face one batter.

There is no reason why O'Flaherty should have been in the game to face Martin Prado.  He faced his one batter in Yelich and got him to ground into a fielder's choice.  O'Flaherty is a one-and-done pitcher.  That's all he should ever be for the Mets.  Instead, he faced one too many batters and the Mets were the ones who were done.

Doug Sisk will turn 58 at the end of the month.  His fellow Washington State native Eric O'Flaherty just entered his thirties this past February.  And yet, somehow I think I'd rather take my chances with the former Met and current AARP member on the mound to face batters in a back-and-forth affair than I would with the ticking time bomb we've come to know as Eric O'Flaherty.

Then again, Sisk might prove to be useful in other ways if the Mets continue to trot out O'Flaherty in tight games.  You see, Sisk has been working in sales for a Washington-based wine company since the beginning of the year, and has been participating in wine tastings in the Pacific Northwest.  Should O'Flaherty continue to implode on the mound, Mets fans in the Atlantic Northeast might need to partake in a sample of Sisk's wines.

Right now, I'll drink anything to make me forget what it feels like to watch Eric O'Flaherty "pitch".  Keep 'em comin', Dougie.  Keep 'em comin'.

I don't remember posing for this photo with an empty beer cup on my Mets hoodie.

Hey, Kids! How Do You Like The World Zzzzeries?

Despite the "Hey, Kids!" in the title, I'm going to start this post by asking a question to our older readers.  Tell me, my friends.  Do you remember when you were in school and you rushed home every October to watch a World Series game at home?  How about the times when your teacher would occasionally bring a TV or radio into the classroom so that you could watch or listen to the game in class?  No?  Well, it used to happen (unless if my father lied to me, which he would never do).

Unfortunately, like closers pitching three innings and Jason Bay being a major offensive threat, those things just don't happen anymore.  This year's World Series between the Cardinals and the Rangers will have all its games starting at 8:05 PM Eastern Daylight Time (7:05 PM local time in St. Louis and Texas).  While this is an improvement over the old 8:29 PM (or later) start times, it's still not early enough for kids to watch.

Let's take Saturday night's Game 3 for instance.  The Cardinals outslugged the Rangers, 16-7, to take a two games to one edge in the World Series.  The game, as with all World Series games this year, started at 8:05 PM (actually, the first pitch was thrown at 8:06 PM because ceremonial first pitch chucker Dirk Nowitzki needed an extra minute to warm up his seven-foot frame).  However, with all the runs and pitching changes, the game took four hours and four minutes to play.  That's what happens when you get 23 runs and six pitching changes in the middle of an inning (four made by Tony La Russa and two made by Ron Washington).  Even with the "earlier" start time, the game ended at 12:10 AM on Sunday morning.

You don't need a rocket scientist or a flux capacitor inventor to figure out that World Series games take longer to play than regular season games.  Managers tend to yank their starting pitchers at the first sign of trouble, and this usually will occur during an inning rather than after it.  Also, there will be more trips to the mound to talk to rattled pitchers and these trips will occur earlier than they would in the regular season.  And of course, there are the commercial breaks.  Having the games in prime time generates more money from advertisers, which means FOX has to squeeze out every penny from said advertisers.  Simple translation:  There are more commercials per break in the action than you would see from April to September.

This is not something new.  In 2000, when the Mets played the Yankees in the World Series, no game lasted less than 3 hours and 20 minutes, with every game starting after 8:00 PM.  Game 1 (a 12-inning game) was nine minutes short of a five-hour game.  On average, each game in the five-game series lasted 3 hours and 46 minutes.  Take out the extra-inning affair in Game 1 and the other games, all of which lasted nine innings, took an average of 3 hours and 30 minutes to play.  There was no plethora of pitching changes and the games were relatively low-scoring (the Mets and Yankees combined to score 35 runs in the five-game series, an average of seven runs per game between the two teams).

I wonder how many kids stayed up to watch Roger Clemens as he thought he threw the ball towards Mike Piazza in Game 2 of the 2000 World Series.

Do you remember when the last day game was played in the World Series?  That was in 1987, when the Twins forced a seventh and deciding game against the Cardinals by defeating them in Game 6, an early afternoon start in Minnesota.  Even so, that game was played on a Saturday, when kids would have been home from school anyway.  The 1984 World Series between the Tigers and the Padres also featured two day games in Games 4 and 5, but they were also weekend affairs.

To find the last weekday day game in World Series history, you have to go back nearly four decades.  On Friday, October 20, 1972, the Cincinnati Reds defeated the Oakland A's in Game 5 of the Fall Classic.  The Reds' victory in Game 5 sent the series back to Cincinnati, where the A's would win their first of three consecutive championships in Game 7.  It would also mark the final time that lights were not needed during a World Series game that took place while kids were still in school.

Television ratings for World Series games have been in a steady decline for quite some time now.  People have more choices when it comes to what they watch on TV at night, especially since the advent of cable television.  There is nothing that seems to suggest that this trend won't continue over the next few decades.  And who is going to be watching those games in the next 10-20 years?  That's right, my friends.  Today's children are going to be the adults of tomorrow who would be watching those games.  Unfortunately, if the games start too late for children to watch in 2011, then how will they develop an interest in the Fall Classic that would make them want to watch in 2021 and beyond?

Major league baseball doesn't have to start their World Series games at 1:00 PM like they used to in the pre-cable days.  They can start them at around 5:00 PM, when children would be out of school.  Parents would be home from work before the games would end and they could watch the best teams in baseball competing for a championship together.  Since World Series games take longer to play then regular season games, these earlier starting games would still run into prime time (which normally starts at 8:00 PM), so FOX can still generate ad revenue from their sponsors at that time.  Since more people tune in to games in at the end, when the game might have the most drama and suspense, more people would be watching those ads between 8:00 and 9:00 PM.

It seems so simple, really.  A late afternoon start time for World Series games would be beneficial to everyone involved.  It would allow for kids to watch entire games without having to worry about games finishing past their bedtimes.  It would allow for parents to watch the games with their kids, which would create more of a mutual love for the game, and it would allow the networks to not only generate more revenue from their sponsors during the most exciting moments of a game, but would also allow them to air their regular programming after the games end.  Assuming games don't go into extra innings, starting them at 5:00 PM would almost always allow the networks to broadcast their regular fall lineup at the conclusion of each game.  After all, who really wants to watch the Simpsons' Treehouse of Horror episodes after Halloween?

For over two decades, Major League Baseball and television network executives have turned the World Series into the World Zzzzeries.  It's time for baseball to use common sense and think of the long-term effects of starting World Series games at such a late hour.  The future of the sport depends on it.

Song Parody: Ollie B. Gone

So have you heard that Oliver Perez was released today? Yes? Oh. Then I guess I don't have to put a spoiler alert on this blog. But yes, it's true. Oliver Perez is no longer a Met. El Perez-idente was finally impeached after spending the past two years in a position nobody elected him to.

Remember 2008? That was the year after Oliver Perez went 15-10 with a 3.56 ERA for the Mets. In 2008, Ollie's win total decreased to ten, while his ERA increased to 4.22. He also led the league in walks that season with 105. Still, the Mets felt it necessary to pay $36 million over the next three years to retain the services of the man who would probably find a way to walk Helen Keller if she came up to bat against him.

The year 2008 was also the fiftieth anniversary of one of the greatest rock n' roll songs ever written. In 1958, Chuck Berry recorded "Johnny B. Goode", a song that has one of the most recognizable opening guitar riffs and has been covered by dozens of artists over the year. Mets fans might also remember it as longtime reliever John Franco's entry music.

In "honor" of the release of Oliver Perez, Studious Metsimus would like to celebrate with its own version of Chuck Berry's classic. So let's stop talkin' and let's get rockin' to "Ollie B. Gone".


Way down in Port St. Lucie on a field of dreams
Look back up in the bullpen on the New York team
There stood a lefty pitcher whose career was near done
He was Oliver Perez; now he's Ollie B. Gone
He never ever learned to throw a strike so well
But he would give up ten runs every time he got shelled

Just go!
Go Ollie go!
Go!
Go Ollie go!
Go!
Go Ollie go!
Go!
Go Ollie go!
Go!
Ollie B. Gone!

He had a bunch of teammates who would have his back
Like Endy in Game Seven on the warning track
But when those teammates noticed how much Ollie got paid
They knew he'd lose his rhythm and the Metsies would fade
So Mets fans passing by would just stop and say
"I hope the game gets rained out so that Ollie can't play!"

Just go!
Go Ollie go!
Go!
Go Ollie go!
Go!
Go Ollie go!
Go!
Go Ollie go!
Go!
Ollie B. Gone!

The Mets fans told him "Ollie, don't you make us laugh
By saying you will be part of a big league staff."
Many of us driving from miles around
Are hearing news that you were booted out of our town
So today we'll celebrate in joyous delight
Now that Ollie B. Gone tonight!

Just go!
Go Ollie go!
Go go go Ollie go!
Go go go Ollie go!
Go go go Ollie go!
Go!
Ollie B. Gone!