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Whenever something goes wrong with Aaron Heilman, Mets fans don’t like the scared look on his face. Fans don’t like that he gave up the home run to Yadier Molina in the 2006 NLCS, and they don’t appreciate his mostly poor showings this year that have involved way too many home runs.
I’m probably the last guy left that does, but somehow and for some reason I believe in Aaron Heilman and I’ll try to defend him here. For some Heilman hate, read Rob Harding’s piece here on Hot Foot.
First of all, Heilman has been over worked this season. He’s thrown the third most games of any NL reliever. Consistently getting worked so hard year after year has to take a toll on a player. Manuel has to do a better job resting his relievers, probably by letting starters go a little deeper in games. While Heilman’s imploded a few too many times and lost a few too many games for the team, much of it has just been bad timing combined with a heavy work load.
We also tend to look for Heilman to be the scape goat for our general bullpen issues. We never liked him from the beginning, as we expected him to be a top part of the rotation starter and after some failure (and some success) he was converted into a reliever. We’ve never liked him because he gave up that home run to Molina, or because he always has a deer-in-headlights look on the mound. But let’s take a look at our bullpen statistics in the month of July:
- In 16 innings, Heilman had a 4.41 ERA while striking out 21.
- In 11.2 innings, Duaner Sanchez had a 3.86 ERA while striking out nine.
- Joe Smith had a 5.25 ERA in 12 innings while striking out six.
- Scott Schoeneweis had a 3.00 ERA in nine innings while striking out ten.
Well, Duaner clearly cannot close because of his noted velocity issues lately. Even though his numbers seemingly look good, it’s tough for his off speed pitches to look good when his fastball is barely scraping 86 MPH.
Last month, Smith was worse than Heilman. Plus, as a reliever Smith is really a role player. While righties hit a meager .235 off of him in his career, lefties lick their chops against him with a .292 batting average career. Smith also lacks the K-factor: the ability to strike people out. Late in games and in many crucial spots, strikeouts are needed to calm the situation.
Similar to Smith, Schoeneweis and Feliciano are really only specialists. In general, they are much better vs. lefties. Their pitching to righties shouldn’t be strictly forbidden, but they definitely should do so as minimally as possible.
Sure, there are Eddie Kunz and Ruddy Lugo, but are we really ready to throw Kunz into the fire already?
I’m not writing this trying to convince you that Heilman should be our closer while Billy Wagner is out, because that is clearly illogical. However, the “Never-pitch-Heilman-again-because-he-sucks-and-looks-grumpy-all-the-time” bandwagon is becoming too popular and I can’t resist disagreeing and thinking that he’s the scape goat for all of the bullpen’s struggles lately.
Heilman has the ability to consistently strike hitters out, which others in the bullpen lack. He should also be put carefully into situations, because this season lefties have hit extremely well against him (although that hasn’t been true most of his career). For now, the Mets should treat the ninth inning just like any other inning where we use relievers, like the 6th, 7th and 8th. Manuel should play the match ups and go with whichever reliever is right for the situation. But don’t blindly hate on Heilman, please - he’s serviced us well for a while, he has earned some patience.
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10 Responses for "My Case for Heilman"
I agree.
To be frank, all of our relievers have blown their share of games this season. When Duaner Sanchez had the chance to close one game when Wagner was unavailable, he didn’t get the job done that night either. Neither did Smith or Schoeneweis in that inning. To these Mets middle relievers, pitching the 9th inning is just absolutely daunting to them. It’s not just Heilman.
Aaron hasn’t morphed into dominant second-half Aaron just yet, and that’s a bit concerning. If he doesn’t, this will be his worst year as a reliever. But people act like he’s been terrible since 2005 when he clearly hasn’t.
I’m gonna repost my comment in joe’s heilman post here:
In his last 3 years with the mets, Heilman’s ERAs are 3.17*, 3.62, 3.04. The bad in pressure sitatuions line is just stupid idiotic talk because you REMEMBER the failures far more than the successes.
Now this year, Im not saying heilman has been to that level. His ERA is 5.67, and more importnatly, he has more walks already than last year, a WHIP of 1.49, a huge jump. And he’s giving up home runs at a greater clip. On the other hand, his BABIP is abnormally high (Career its 296, and now its 339) showing the increased hit total is a large part due to luck. Which suggests at least some normalization down to career stats is likely (he’s projected to have an ERA of 4.57 this year, which is still higher than any of the last 3 years, but far better than he’s gotten this year).
In other words, Heilmans’ likely to at least come down to close to his career stats (or at least in the 4 ERA range) if given the time. And of course, he’s been overworked to hell again this year, which may take its toll and result in the walks.
All evidence suggests the mets should rest him a bit if they can, and then use him as normal, and that he will become effective again. I’m not saying he’s closing material right now, but he’s certainly far from as awful as you and other stupid met fans make him sound. And he’s way worth holding onto for this year and beyond.
*The 05 stats include 7 starts.
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but anyhow, andrew you’re not alone. Right on Man.
Robby, my sentiments exactly.
I’m actually surprised that there are two people who agree with me. I expected to be getting hate mail/comments after writing this.
Before I wrote this I told two people my feelings about Heilman, and one of them said, “You are the only person alive who likes him.”
The other person said (albeit sarcastically), “I have no problem killing you too.”
Heilman is unfairly getting the brunt of the criticism that all of the bullpen deserves.
I dont care what the argument is
you cant ignore 9 homers in 60 innings.
that is absolutely awful.
Well, he did have 8 HR in 86 innings in 2007. I know he already has more in 2008, but you could argue he gave up too many HRs in 2007 as well. But I’d say his 2007 was a good year because he had a 3.03 ERA, 1.07 WHIP, and .224 BAA.
J0e/rob, you know i love you, but you’re looking at one stat here and its kind of stupid.
I mean, I’m not denying that heilman’s not been bad this year. But he a. has a track record of being better in the past, b. has stats that show quite a bit of bad luck, and c. he’s been overused this year.
In fact, here’s the real question which im surprised no one has brought up….why has heilman been pitching to LEFTIES THIS YEAR….
Heilman: vs Righties, 2HR, 218/299/310 against.
vs Lefties, 7HR, 326/417/596 against.
Guess what handed batter hit the HR yesterday?
You can’t make the argument of why he was pitching against a lefty last night. He assumed the closers role. I felt it was the worst move to begin with.
I still feel that it should be Feliciano or Smith in the 9th in a save situation, depending on the batter that is up.
Well, to your comment loran about righty-righty, lefty-lefty:
The Mets bullpen has been mostly overworked this year, and looking at the splits, it seems like Heilman, Sanchez, Schoeneweis, and Feliciano have all worked at least 20 innings against batters of “the opposite hand,” as it were. But I do agree, out of those four, Heilman’s splits are the most dramatic, while Sanchez’s are the least.
For what it’s worth, splits really show how much the Mets have protected Joe Smith, who has only pitched 10 innings against lefties. That’s the least anyone in the Mets bullpen has pitched against “opposite-handed batters.”
@Gary, we dont have a closer ready right now. So why not close by committee for a while? two men on, lefty up, bring in show, especially with another lefty in two batters. who cares about the stupid closer role..its a dumb role, and the save is stupid too.
Robby, the reason for that is rather obvious…going into the year, feliciano and heilman’s righty-lefty splits weren’t bad (and no where near as profound). Sanchez never was a righty or lefty specialist, so the same with him.
Only show and Joe smith had shown a tendency to be a specialist of sorts, and smith’s is more blatant due to his delivery (which makes that person more often than not a specialist). So smith was never going to face lefties that often if it could be avoided.
Also gary, feliciano and smith both have similar splits to heilman, and unless its rrr or lll, you’re going to have the same situation as you did with heilman. those guys arent going to be a “closer” anymore than heilman.
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