The winds of change are starting to blow harder and harder inside the Mets clubhouse and in the starting rotation particularly.
Already, the Mets have jettisoned Dillon Gee from the starting rotation, which will now include just five pitchers going forward. With Steven Matz having left to prove nothing to the front office to warrant a promotion, Jon Niese might be the next in line to lose his job to a young starting pitcher.
“I can’t worry about it when I step in between those lines,” Niese explained on Thursday night. “I do think about it the four other days I am not pitching. I wonder where I am going to end up, but I am not worried about it. I know wherever I end up I can handle it. But that fifth day, when I am pitching. I don’t want to think about it all. I just want to go out there and show them what I can do.”
He’s right – the only thing Niese can do is pitch well. And for four starts in May, he was struggling badly to do so. He had allowed five home runs in only 20 innings during that span, going 0-3 with a 9.00 ERA in those starts.
The ineffectiveness of his two-seamer, curveball and cutter were glaring. Everything was up over the strike zone, he had no command of his two-seamer in particularly, and was just getting mashed in seemingly every inning.
But things started to turn in his start last Saturday against the Diamondbacks in which he allowed only three runs in six innings. It was progress, and his first quality start in nearly a month.
That progress continued on Thursday night against the Giants, when he allowed four runs – two earned – in seven innings of work.
The only kink in Niese’s armor was when he got derailed by another error by an infielder in the sixth inning. He allowed two unearned runs in the sixth inning after Justin Maxwell reached on an error by Eric Campbell – his eighth at third base this season – and Brandon Crawford homered in the next sequence to give San Francisco a 4-3 lead.
It was the 12th and 13th unearned run Niese has allowed this season. And while there’s no question the defense behind him has been horrid in most of his starts, Terry Collins held Niese accountable for the bad pitch he made to Crawford, rather than picking up Campbell for the error.
“We make another error and that’s where Jon’s got to say ‘This next guy is mine. I might not be out here next inning, but this guy’s mine,’” Terry Collins explained. “He just left a pitch out over the plate for the home run.”
Still, Collins was impressed with Niese’s outing in large measure.
“I thought [Niese] pitched a very good game against a very good lineup,” the manager said.
Niese has rediscovered both the command the location of the two-seam fastball in particular, and he has complemented it well with his cutter in particular. On Thursday it was all working for him and he induced 15 groundball outs. And, while the curve wasn’t a great pitch for him, he mixed it in nicely which at least gave him another look against that excruciatingly tough Giants lineup.
But, Collins is right. There’s no question Niese has had horrible luck behind him this year – he’s allowed 12 unearned runs in 12 starts this season. But that doesn’t excuse the lack of execution which has followed those errors. Often times the body language tells the story for Niese in those instances, and the results are unfortunately translated in the same way. Whether it’s here or another team, Niese has to be able to manage those emotions, find a way to get through those difficult times on the field, and not lose focus.
Maybe those unearned runs didn’t hurt his ERA, but they can certainly affect the outcome of the most important baseball statistic for a team.
And with the trade winds and speculation only growing with intensity, overcoming his emotional entanglements is maybe the issue he has to prove he can overcome the most.
Just Mets 