I love the Met players but Terry Collins has to make up his mind who is playing and who isn’t and where. The pitching coach, Dan Warthen, needs to be tougher with his pitchers. And needs to teach them how to pitch. They can throw but they can’t pitch. You can’t be a relief pitcher and walk the first man you face. You have to be able to throw strikes with secondary pitches. Trouble is the Met relief pitchers can’t even throw fastballs for strikes. If a relief pitcher comes in and the first pitch is a ball, and keeps doing that, I would read him the riot act. And if he walked the first man and keeps doing that, I would send him back to the minors for more seasoning or get rid of him. And if Warthen doesn’t fix that, I would get rid of him.
Finally, this business of managing by pitch count is ludicrous. I remember Don Newcombe pitching a shutout in the first game of a double header and then pitching five innings of the second game. It never hurt him. Many pitchers in the league during my Brooklyn Dodger fan days, didn’t get warmed up until the sixth inning. Spahn, Sain, Roberts, Maglie, Reynolds, Raschi Feller. Newhouser. Batters had to get to them early because they were death in the late innings.
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