Joe Knows

Wave goodbye, for the moment, to the Mets' baby-faced bullpen assassin. Joe Smith was sent down to New Orleans yesterday after giving up a run in 1/3 of an inning during the team's 8-4 loss to the Pirates.

Bye, Joe. Say "Ha" to Juvenile for us. Get a load of the French Quarter. Enjoy the gumbo and the AAA competition. Don't work too hard. And come back soon.



That's the plan, of course. The team has made clear this isn't a, "Son, you blew your chance at the bigs" type of demotion. Joe won't be waking up in a cold sweat tomorrow morning, "Millenium"-style. Here's Omar, as quoted in Newsday this morning.

We're talking about a young kid," Minaya said. "Physical and mental, he just needs a little bit of a rest right now. We're talking about putting a little plan in place, especially at the beginning, just to let him rest a little bit.

Exactly. His innings pitched total -- 38 2/3 IP -- isn't all that high, even for a reliever, and his season ERA -- 3.03 -- is perfectly great. I've always been a huge fan, and while the most important thing is always going to be how a guy's performing for the big-league team when it matters, it's still ridiculous to think that Smith was throwing against such Horizon League powerhouses as Cleveland State and Wisconsin-Green Bay last summer.

I mean, those CSU Vikings (14-44) are no joke. You've got leading hitter Josh Hungerman, an absolute beast of a kid who leads the squad in hitting at .278. He's actually, um, a pitcher. Then there's "Bashful" Bobby Cash, the team's best everyday hitter but a butcher with the glove (27 errors), and "Marvelous" Matt Madrid, whose team-high 6 home runs pair nicely with his .288 on-base percentage. I won't even get into the outstandingness that is Vasili "The Greek" Pahoulis.

I'm not picking on Cleveland State for any particular reason, other than I hate those clowns. But it bears repeating that one of the Mets' key seventh-inning guys, a cheap and real asset going forward, is still shaking crumbs of mediocre suburban Ohio prep second basemen out of his spikes, and anything the organization can do to facilitate the long-term transition from "Wright State closer" to "Chad Bradford in his prime" is unquestionably a good thing.

But Smith hasn't been Bradfordesque in a while -- his pitches aren't biting the way they did early in the season, Darling has been harping on his reduced velocity all summer long, and batters are able to sit back and wait for a flat slider coming into the zone. They've been getting them.

And the results haven't exactly been pretty. The Times has Smith allowing 19 of 27 inherited runners to score since May 5, which is not only awful but in fact the worst such percentage for any reliever in the bigs.

Seriously, did anyone realize it had gotten that bad? I confess to having no idea things had regressed to that point. Joe Smith, secretly killing the Mets.

But anyway, this is clearly going to be an R&R assignment. Zephyrs brass are going to be under orders not to play him that much, and Joe can just take some time off and regroup before being called back up to help the Mets for their stretch drive. I love the move, both in that it gets a weak arm out of the 'pen during a period when we can't afford to be allowing 70 percent of inherited runners to score, and protects a good young arm (and head) from being unnecessarily damaged.

In the meantime, we'll have us some Jon Adkins (?), which won't be so bad, and sit around to see if the Nats will bite on a low-ball offer for Chad Cordero. Thanks to Milwaukee GM Doug Melvin, it's increasingly unlikely they will -- Melvin dealt three young pitching prospects, including one (20-year-old Will Inman) just about on the same level as a Phil Humber -- to San Diego for Scott Linebrink and his fancy 3.80 Petco ERA and shitty strikeout rate.

Asshole. The market for a Cordero, a much better reliever and far more valuable property (under contract for a while!), just shot into the Milledge Zone, at which point I say, "Thanks, but no cheese."

More on this as the trading deadline approaches. Cheddar Ben's got thoughts ...