Pedro's proven his worth to Mets
Posted: Wednesday, April 02, 2008 1:10 PM
I’ve never been to the Dominican Republic but I think I sampled it along the left-field line at Dolphin Stadium Tuesday night.
It was Pedro Martinez making his 2008 debut for the Mets in the closest thing to a “home” game that a Dominican (Martinez was born in Manoguayabo, Dom. Rep.) can play in Major League Baseball. The Dominican fans bore the native colors, waved the nation’s flag, chanted incessantly and gave Martinez a standing ovation for a successful sacrifice bunt. The only missing ingredient was that a concession stand that sells Presidente, the beer brewed in the Dominican Republic, was closed. Memo to the Marlins: bad planning.
The show was all about Martinez. Unfortunately it came to an early end -- a hamstring strain forcing the three-time Cy Young Award winner out of the game in the fourth inning.
While Martinez was on the mound, the observant fan saw the veteran who at age 36 has pitched 200 innings in just two of his last seven seasons. It was the Martinez who is coming off surgery that cost him just about all of last season and who wants to prove himself worthy of one more big payday (he’s in the final year of a four-year contract with the Mets). It was the Martinez who has accepted Johan Santana with the Mets in a way he never accepted Curt Schilling with the Red Sox -- as the pitcher who replaced him as the new leader of the staff. But Martinez is still a star who loves the limelight.
Today’s Martinez is all about trickery and deception. He showed the Marlins’ lineup -- one which features a 3-4-5 combination of Mike Jacobs, Josh Willingham and Jorge Cantu -- an array of curves, changes and batting-practice fastballs after he allowed two early homers on 85-mile-per-hour fastballs. Can he survive the game’s better lineups in that manner?
Tom Seaver brilliantly explained late-career pitching as knowing that he had about four or five good fastballs a game in his arm. When to use them was the challenge. Martinez may now be in the same place as Seaver was in the latter years of his career. Facing a young hitter in the third inning, Martinez strung together a sequence of soft stuff. With two strikes on the hitter, he then threw one of those 85-mile-per-hour fastballs. The right-handed hitter was naturally late on the pitch and harmlessly flied out to right.
The obvious question hanging over Martinez is whether he could make 30 starts this season. Could he give the Mets a stunning 1-2 punch with Santana? The hamstring injury may have already answered that in the season’s first week. Then again the Mets have already won with Martinez. He was an upfront signing, designed to deliver credibility to a sagging franchise. And he delivered that beyond any expectation.
Mets general manager Omar Minaya knew that years three and four of Martinez’s deal were a risk and that’s why the 2006 NLCS loss to St. Louis and last year’s collapse to miss the playoffs hurt so deeply. The Mets hoped to have won a World Series before reaching this point in Martinez’s contract. Now they try to nurse a fragile, older Martinez thorough one more season in a supporting role.
