Victor Zambrano RIP

"I'm sick of Victor Zambrano. I'm sick of his grimmace. I'm sick of his sad-sack, loser's demeanor. I'm sick of feeling that it would take a miracle for the Mets to win a game with him on the hill."

- April 19, 2006 (http://yankees2000.blogspot.com/2006/04/help-us-mike-pelfrey-youre-our-only.html)

As evidenced by the above, I've never been reticent about my disdain for Victor Zambrano. Like a lot of other Mets fans, I've never been able to forgive him for the Scott Kazmir trade in summer 2004, nevermind that it was by no means his fault.

But I've gotta say that I was stunned when I opened the paper today and saw the news for the first time that Zambrano had been lost for the season.

I feel as though I should be elated. I mean, I really, really dislike Zambrano. But there are competing emotions here.

The truth is, I feel bad for the guy. My heart goes out to him when I hear that he was crying in the clubhouse because he's not going to be there to take the ball every fifth day.

My heart goes out to him (if only for a brief moment) when I put myself in his shoes and consider the unfair burden of expectation that accompanies his every moment in a Mets uniform.

So I'm not happy that he's been lost for the season due to injury, even for reasons that extend beyond baseball.

But focusing in on baseball, his injury presents us with a gaping hole in our rotation, and the fact is that we're pretty thin on options right now.

Let's consider the options:

1. Move Aaron Heilman to the starting rotation. Probability: 10-1*

Chances are there are a lot of you out there who want to see this happen. I haven't been over to the message boards at MetsGeek (http://www.metsgeek.com) yet, but I'm positive there are already several posts saying that this move has to be made.

I don't want to see it happen, and my reason's got a lot to do with yesterday's game. Look at our bullpen situation yesterday.

Remember that exceedingly uncomfortable feeling you had after Darren Oliver came out of the game? That certainty that the Heilman-Sanchez-Wagner-less bullpen couldn't help but implode?

That feeling would define all 7th innings for the foreseeable future if Heilman were slotted in to the rotation.

Moving Heilman into the rotation would weaken our team's greatest asset. We have the best bullpen in baseball by all metrics (unless that changed yesterday, which it might have), you can't tamper with that.

2. Trade for middle of the rotation starter. Probability: 15-1 in the short term, 5-1 in the long term, 1-1 if Mike Pelfrey can't fill the void (see below)*

Steve Trachsel has been inconsistent on the young season, and there are question marks around Brian Bannister, as good as the results with him have been.

As discussed below, Mike Pelfrey could make this discussion irrelevant. If he falters in the minor leagues, however, acquiring a starter via trade is basically a foregone conclusion.

We can lament the loss of Kris Benson all we want (I assume nobody's going to complain about the Jae Seo-Duaner "Best Reliever of All Time" Sanchez deal), but Benson's gone and he's not coming back.

So now with Zambrano out and Pelfrey not quite ready to make the jump to the pros, the possibility of a trade swells. For more on the Pelfrey scenario, let's move to option 3.

3. Promote Mike Pelfrey. Probability: 8-1 in the short term, 2-1 in the long term*

As some of you may remember, the title of my Zambrano-bashing piece three weeks ago was "Help us, Mike Pelfrey, You're Our Only Hope". In it, I wrote the following:

"I think our best hope is that this Zambrano saga resolves itself with a certain fitting conclusion. We trade Kazmir to get Zambrano, and I'm fairly certain the pitcher to save us from Zambrano is Mike Pelfrey."

So yes, I think Pelfrey is the long-term solution, and I think now more than ever that he will be in our rotation by the end of the season.

Actually, my guess is he'll be on the team by mid to late June. That way, Mets brass can see him perform at the Major League level, and decide whether they need to make the aforementioned trade for a third starter on the basis of how he fares in the 5 starts or so he'd get in before the trade deadline.

So for now, my bet is that Pelfrey stays in the minors for another month or so. He had the first rough outing of his professional career his last time out, and the Mets will want to see him rebound and make adjustments in the minors before calling him up to the show.

Provided he doesn't get shelled in AA, look for Pelfrey to join the big club next month.

4. Use some combination of Jose Lima, John Maine and Jeremi Gonzalez. Probability: 2-1 in the short term, 30-1 in the long term*

It may inspire fear in some of you out there, but this seems to me the odds-on favorite to fill the void at the back end of the rotation for the next month.

The team probably figures it can take a flier on one of these guys and hope to catch lightning in a bottle. If he fails, he'll be replaced by Pelfrey in good time. If he succeeds, happy days are here again.

Lima-Time is going today. He was awful last year but has had as schizophrenic a career as you could possibly have. He could be terrible for us, or he could win his first 5 starts.

(Photo courtesy of CNNSI)

Neither would shock me, but put it this way: if the former happened, none of us would be shocked; if the latter happened, we'd all know we were living on borrowed time.

As for Maine and Gonzalez, Maine's on the DL for now so forget about him in the short-term. I know nothing about Gonzalez, but I think I read he's got a 3.02 ERA at AAA this year. If one of our readers know anything more about him please fill me in on the comment board.

* * * *

So there you have it, Mets fans, the four possibilites for replacing Zambrano.

Lest it be at all unclear, my theory is we will seek to replace Zambrano from within in the short term, go to Pelfrey in a month or so, and then decide if we should make a trade based on how he fares.

If Pelfrey can be the pitcher we project him to be, or even just another Brian Bannister, a rotation of Pedro-Glavine-Pelfrey-Trachsel-Bannister should be no worse than Pedro-Glavine-Trachsel-Zambrano-Bannister, and may be better.

Three last thoughts before I go.

1. Who would have ever thought that it would be the back end of our rotation, featuring Zambrano and Brian Bannister, that would suffer from the injury bug? For all our fears about Glavine's age and Pedro's toe, we almost considered the 4 and 5 guys invincible. So much for that.

2. The Daily News and New York Times looked to assign blame for Zambrano's injury. It wasn't a witch hunt or anything, they were just raising the question of how Zambrano was still pitching with an elbow that was about to burst.

I don't have any answers for that myself, but I did get a flashback to the hospital scene in Varsity Blues when I read the following in David Picker's NYT piece:

"General Manager Omar Minaya and the Mets' pitching coach, Rick Peterson, said Zambrano never discussed the pain with them."

Am I the only one conjuring up images of Coach Kilmer telling the surgeon that Lance Harbor "Never said anything to me" about the pain that foretold his career-ending knee injury? You're a liar, Kilmer, you did so know that his knee was barking! That's why you ordered all those cortisone shots! LIAR!!!!

3. As shaky as the bullpen looked yesterday, it was great to see them come through and to see the Mets win the ballgame. Up against one of the top pitchers in the league and down our starting pitcher and our bullpen, the boys came from behind, again, and beat the Braves, again.

By the way, we're now 9 games up on the Braves. My god would a sweep be sweet.

- A.F.O.M.G.

* - Probabilities are purely speculative.