Mets stud — Livan Hernandez
Hernandez continues to be the pleasant surprise of the Mets rotation — as opposed to the surprising inconsistency of John Maine and Mike Pelfrey.
The Mets’ one-time fifth starter threw seven shutout innings against the Nationals on Sunday, which was preceded by a decent start in Pittsburgh where he gave up three runs in 5 2/3 innings. He left with the lead against the Pirates, but the bullpen coughed it up.
Hernandez is the only Mets starter besides Johan Santana to average over six innings per start, which is exactly what the team needs considering the fragility of their bullpen outside of Francisco Rodriguez.
Mets dud — J.J. Putz
Speaking of the fragile bullpen — Putz was the runaway winner of this week’s dud of the week.
Putz blew Hernandez’s lead in Pittsburgh allowing three runs without retiring a Pirates batter. He followed that up by giving up another two runs against Pittsburgh on Thursday, when he was pitching in a mop-up role. This is against a team whose lineup resembles something closer to a Triple-A club. (I hope Adam LaRoche doesn’t read this, because it was a pretty ‘zero class’ line.)
The news of Putz going to the disabled list for the next two months following surgery to remove bone spurs was met at most by a mild shrug the way the Mets’ set-up man looked like this year. Fans can only hope that the bone spurs were the reason for his awful performances and not some inability to get pumped up being the eighth-inning guy, opposed to the Mets closer. That job is taken J.J.
Bobby Parnell has a chance to claim the set-up role as his own, let’s hope he takes it.
Yankees stud — Jorge Posada
Posada came back from the DL and had a solid week behind and at the plate for the Yankees.
In the nine games since returning, Posada has gone 9-for-31 with two home runs and seven RBIs. Francisco Cervelli played well as the replacement starter for Posada, but at this point of his career he is a backup.
Yankees dud — Chien-Ming Wang
Hopes were high that Chien-Ming Wang’s return to the rotation would signal that the sinker-baller is over his early-season woes — he was coming off of five shutout innings out of the bullpen.
But after throwing two perfect innings, Wang gave up two in the third, two in the fourth and one in the fifth before being removed. It was just one start and maybe he needs to be stretched out a bit more, but this wasn’t an encouraging sign.
On a positive note, Wang lowered his ERA to 14.46 and passed Damaso Marte, who now has the worst on the Yankees. And now Phil Hughes has not appeared since May 31 and an undeserving return to Triple-A may be imminent if Joe Girardi cannot find a way to get him into a game.
