I'd like to add some numbers to Sam's loud yet totally justified rant. The gods reached down and blessed Pedro Feliciano with the gift of turning left-handed batters' plate appearances into outs. The same cannot be said of Pedro's performance against right-handed hitters. Righties, against Feliciano:
| BA | OBP | SLG |
|---|---|---|
| .276 | .365 | .423 |
This season and last, righties have an OPS over 1.000 against Feliciano. Right-handed hitting Matt Diaz came up to bat against him in the 7th inning of last night's game with the bases loaded. Brian Stokes, J.J. Putz, and Francisco Rodriguez, three very good right-handed relief pitchers, remained in the bullpen unused. Keep in mind Diaz is an overall average major league hitter, who performs like this against left-handed pitching:
| BA | OBP | SLG |
|---|---|---|
| .323 | .360 | .497 |
So Feliciano isn't great vs. righties and Diaz mashes lefties. The Mets bullpen had three above average or fantastic righties available. And Jerry Manuel stuck with Feliciano. Something is wrong here.
It doesn't take a theoretical physicist to understand what a mistake this was. At this point, I'd rather have physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer serve as Mets manager, and he's been dead for forty-two years.