I rarely get on Sandy for anything and in reality this move won't mean anything once the team is out of the playoff race, but it's still disappointing. You don't just punt a spot like that. It's pretty obvious to anyone, whether you look at traditional stats or sabermetric stats (or no stats at all), that Miguel Batista is bad. He really shouldn't be on the 25-man roster as the team's long reliever, let alone starting games every fifth day.
It's true that the other options (Schwinden and Hefner) might not be incrementally better, but that goes back to Sandy not adding any starting depth in the offseason; plenty of okay pitchers signed minor league deals like Jeff Francis, Zach Duke, and Joel Pineiro. And yes, these pitchers are sure as heck better than Batista. But instead of adding a body, the Mets sat on their hands and entered the year with the unproven Chris Schwinden as their best option if someone got hurt. That's just not good roster management. Hopefully Sandy has something up his sleeve and he can bring in someone capable of not being an embarrassment every fifth day, but for now we'll just have to deal with Batista.
I guess the only positive to come of this is that Sandy has been clear about Matt Harvey and Jeurys Familia not being options. And he's right, neither pitcher is ready for the Majors.
Edited by nmigliore, 04 May 2012 - 04:03 PM.
