Tony Armas – A Sleeper?
Posted: July 1, 2008 Filed under: MLB | Tags: Mets, Tony Armas Leave a comment »Because pitchers in the 21st Century are treated as if the human body has undergone radical evolutionary transformations that no longer allows them to throw more than 120 pitches every four days like Tom Seaver did way back 30 years ago, the Mets have called up Tony Armas for a spot start tonight. Mike Pelfrey, throwing 98 pitches on Friday afternoon apparently might need Tommy John surgery if he goes on three days rest today.
To make room for Tony Armas, the Mets designated Andy Phillips, which indicates Omar Minaya must have studied his stats AFTER he signed him and then said, “This guys sucks against lefties, who told me to sign him?” (This is because no front office executive would ever take personal responsibility for a bad move, unless they were already fired, and then they would get a job on ESPN and joke about the bad moves, much to the discontent of the fans at home.)
Strange thing is the Mets will carry 13 pitchers and 12 batters for at least a day. I’m guessing they plan to send a pitcher down (Carlos Muniz?) when Moises Alou completes rehab in a day or so, but I’m sure he’ll pull a cramp in the arch of his foot before he re-joins the Mets, putting him out another two weeks.
But enough about Omar, Moises and Andy Phillips and let me move on to Tony Armas. He was a big piece of the Pedro Martinez to the Red Sox from the Expos trade before the 1998 season, but has never been able to pan out. At age 30, a career ERA of 4.62 and a career WHIP of 1.43, he has now found his way back to Omar Minaya (his GM while with the Expos). On the surface, Tony Armas has a history of bad stats, and the Mets recalling him would bring back memories of recycled vets like Jose Lima, Aaron Sele, Brian Lawrence, Dave Williams, James Baldwin, Scott Erickson and whole slew of veteran pitchers with a history of poor pitching, yet, more enticing to Mets GMs than an unknown rookie. But Armas has shown some nice signs of late.
In the second half last season he sported an unspectacular 4.30 ERA, but a very respectable 1.21 WHIP for Pittsburgh. (Johan Santana currently has a 1.22 WHIP). Down in the hitter friendly Pacific Coast League, Armas this season over 100 2/3 innings pitched has struck out 88 batters, issued only 20 walks, and has a 2.52 ERA with a 1.02 WHIP. Has Armas figured out how to pitch? Or is he simply too smart for Triple-A batters? This is tough to say, but factoring in his solid WHIP in the second half of 2007, and the solid pitching in AAA this year, maybe the Mets have found a Rick Reed late developer type. Or maybe Tony Armas is this year’s stinky veteran retread.
