'Who'd you get!? Who'd you get!?' Opening those first 2012 cards

I finally found some 2012 Topps cards at a local Target, and even though I was going to boycott them this year for putting Jose Reyes in a Marlins uniform when he hasn't even played a game for them, I couldn't help myself. I bought one of the Target-exclusive 10-pack (eight cards each) boxes and an additional five single packs holding 12 cards each.

First off, the exclusive commemorative patch card in the box was one of the weak "Historical Stitches" meant to resemble the ID stitching sewn onto the jerseys back in the day. I got Bob Gibson, which if it were a patch of his number, I might be more excited about it. But his name? Meh. So that card, along with several others I pulled, I've put up on eBay in team-sorted lots of varying sizes. I'm not expecting too many hits, but figured it was worth a shot. The only ones I knew I definitely wanted to keep were any Mets and a few other players I like. I also have an affinity for the stars who helped me win my fantasy league last year, so I put those aside.

Now, for the Mets. Out of 140 cards, I drew five Mets, which seems like a solid ratio compared to past years, but it's certainly possible that I'm not remembering it accurately. A better ratio? I went 5-for-5 in not drawing black jerseys. Even better: two pinstriped uniforms, two white with blue hats/helmets, and one road uniform.

Here are the five, from least desirable to most (in my mind), with a few thoughts on each:

Not many people want Mike Pelfrey on the Mets, let alone his baseball card. But it's a beautiful sunny day in the pinstripes, so there's no better look in Queens. And he looks like a cat sticking out its tongue. Here's hoping for a rebound season.

After two years of underachieving, hopefully this is the year Jason Bay comes close to producing for what he's paid. Right? RIGHT?! The closer fences should only help. He just has to stay healthy. I saw the guy hit a grand slam last season, so hopefully that's a sign.

I was torn as to whether this or the next card is my second-favorite, but you'll see why the next one won out. I like Lucas Duda as a promising power source this year, plus the horizontal orientation is nice. And I'm 99.9 percent certain that the photo was taken after his walk-off single against the Padres on Aug. 8 last season. In fact, I believe it's this moment at the 48-second mark: The high-five matches up; Willie Harris is furthest from the TV camera and closest to the first-base photo pit; Terry Collins has come out for a handshake; and Ken Oberkfell is the big head behind Duda's in the video still and his jersey is to the left of Collins' head.

The reason R.A. Dickey is No. 2 should be obvious: Dickey Face! I've also seen it in person in Baltimore, but how can you beat a sunny day in the pinstripes? Plus, it's a great vantage point, probably taken from a concourse with a super telephoto lens. I've seen some of the pros shooting up there several times.

And the top Mets card I pulled is none other than David Wright's. This is the first standard base card of Wright that I've drawn in some time. I think any recent ones I have I bought on eBay.

Wanna guess which team showed up the most on cards I pulled? Yeah, the Yankees -- nine of them, including two Jesus Montero cards, one of which was the Target-exclusive red-border variation. I also got Derek Jeter's base card and a couple of subsets that forced Babe Ruth and Mickey Mantle into the set. And CC Sabathia came in the form of the 1987 Topps mini homage, the only time you're likely to hear "mini" when relating to Sabathia. (The other two '87 minis I got were David Price -- one of the stalwarts of the pitching staff of my Doherty Silk Sox championship team -- and Buster Posey.)

I'm toying with the idea of buying more -- perhaps a hobby box online -- to see what else comes up, but I'm going to give myself the weekend to mull it over. Of course, it would all be worth it if I drew one of the short prints that are fetching $30 and up on eBay. I have no need for fake a Reyes or Pujols card or a squirrel.

Looking beyond the Verducci Effect

Tom Verducci has unveiled his red-flagged pitchers to watch this season (now with video!) for the dreaded Year-After Effect -- or the Verducci Effect, as Will Carroll dubbed it.

So watch out, Joba Chamberlain, Josh Johnson, Rick Porcello, Max Scherzer, Felix Hernandez and -- in a perfect storm of workload and managerial risk -- Homer Bailey.

Verducci's yearly analysis of young pitchers' innings increase (hurlers 25 and younger who set a career high in innings by more than 30), developed with help from Rick Peterson when he was the A's pitching coach, has been pretty accurate in forecasting either a drop in production (usually seen in a rising ERA) or, in the worst cases, injury the following season. Two of the most notable examples for the latter are Francisco Liriano and Anibal Sanchez. The disappointing 2009 seasons had by Cole Hamels and Mike Pelfrey support the former. And so Verducci's list of the pitchers to watch affects both fans who don't want to see their teams' hurlers named and fantasy owners, who may add a red flag to their rankings sheets in preparing for draft day.

But rehashing what Verducci has already done wouldn't add to the conversation. Inspired by Pelfrey's joining the club in '09, I was curious to see what happened to the pitchers Verducci singled out in the years after the Year-After Effect. In short: Can we hope for -- or expect -- improvement from Pelfrey in 2010? David Gassko looked at the general numbers a few years at The Hardball Times ago, but I'm curious about specific pitchers.

Through a combination of digging up old Verducci columns in which he listed a particular year's at-risk pitchers and use of Baseball-Reference's Play Index tool, I set out to put together a nearly complete all-time list of a "red-flag roster," going back to those to watch for the 2002 season. But that became cumbersome, so I edited where I felt it necessary and mostly left the prominent names, or at least those who seemed to have the most potential at that time. As Verducci says nearly every year in explaining his theory, the workload is just one factor in this analysis.

Below I've charted the pitchers' seasons that prompted the alarms (the one in which he exceeded his career high in innings by more than 30), the year-after season (the one Verducci warned us about) and his "year-after-after" season, the one immediately following the red-flagged campaign. In an effort to keep the charts manageable, I'm only including innings (rounded down; I'm not bothering with the fractions), ERA and WHIP, unfortunately omitting data like batting average against and BABIP. Most stats are MLB only, though in some cases full minor-league numbers are asterisked. If there's any combo of MLB and minor league figures, that's pointed out in the notes below the charts.

	1998 IP/ERA/WHIP	1999 IP/ERA/WHIP	2000 IP/ERA/WHIP	2001 IP/ERA/WHIP
Omar Daal	162/2.88/1.21	214/3.65/1.24	167/6.14/1.68	185/4.46/1.37
Sidney Ponson	135/5.27/1.47	210/4.71/1.46	222/4.82/1.38	138/4.94/1.43
Kevin Millwood	174/4.08/1.33	228/2.68/1.00	212/4.66/1.29	121/4.31/1.33

Daal was actually 27 years old and in his seventh Major League season in 1999, the year his innings jumped by 52, so he was outside the at-risk age range, yet he still had a precipitous fall -- and never posted an ERA below 3.90 again. Ponson's innings actually went up in his red-flag year, but we've since learned that he has general problems with restraint and conditioning. Millwood led the NL in WHIP and the Majors with just 6.6 hits per nine innings allowed in 2000. He's had the longest (assuming Ponson doesn't try to stick with a last-place club again) and most productive career, but he did take another step back in 2001.

	1999 IP/ERA/WHIP	2000 IP/ERA/WHIP	2001 IP/ERA/WHIP	2002 IP/ERA/WHIP
Albie Lopez	64/4.64/1.41	185/4.13/1.45	205/4.81/1.46	55/4.37/1.51
Mac Suzuki	110/6.79/1.71	188/4.34/1.53	118/5.86/1.65	21/9.00/1.95
Ryan Dempster	147/4.71/1.63	226/3.66/1.36	211/4.94/1.56	209/5.38/1.54

Another trio with just one pitcher still active. Lopez's jump from 1999 to 2000 (when he was 28) was tremendous -- and after his red-flag season of 2001, he pitched just 78 more innings in the Majors, less than his increase from '99-2000. Suzuki was finished after 2002. Dempster led the Majors in walks in his red-flag year, but after a three-year stint as a closer, he became an All-Star again (as he was in his breakout year of 2000).

	2000 IP/ERA/WHIP	2001 IP/ERA/WHIP	2002 IP/ERA/WHIP	2003 IP/ERA/WHIP
Mark Mulder	154/5.44/1.69	229/3.45/1.16	207/3.47/1.14	186/3.13/1.18
Brad Penny	119/4.81/1.50	205/3.69/1.16	129/4.66/1.53	196/4.13/1.28
Chad Durbin	72/8.21/1.85	179/4.93/1.45	8/11.88/2.04	8/7.27/2.42
Joe Mays	176/5.52/1.58	233/3.16/1.15	95/5.38/1.45	130/6.30/1.52
Freddy Garcia	124/3.91/1.42	238/3.05/1.12	223/4.39/1.30	201/4.51/1.33
Mark Buehrle	51/4.21/1.44	221/3.29/1.07	239/3.58/1.24	230/4.14/1.35
Tony Armas	95/4.36/1.31	196/4.03/1.38	164/4.44/1.38	31/2.61/1.07
Chris Carpenter	175/6.26/1.64	215/4.09/1.41	73/5.28/1.58	INJURED
CC Sabathia	146/3.57/1.33*	180/4.39/1.35	210/4.37/1.36	197/3.60/1.30

In his breakout year, Mulder led the AL with 21 wins and paced the Majors with four shutouts. He didn't have much of a dropoff in 2002 or '03 (though he pitched fewer innings). The signs came instead in '04 (225/4.43/1.36), after which the A's traded him to the Cardinals. After a decent '05 (205/3.64/1.38), he's never been the same. Penny saw an improvement in his 2003 numbers -- but none of this considers the Alyssa Effect.

With Durbin's '02 and '03 numbers so low, I checked his minor league numbers and saw that he pitched only eight in 2002 (injured), and 82 in 2003 (working his way back). But the reason I'm not too concerned with minor league numbers after the red-flag year is because I'm only interested in what these pitchers contribute to the big-league club. If they're still active in the Majors, we know they made it back.

Mays' breakout years was the only Major League season in which he posted a sub-4.00 ERA. Garcia went on to have a couple of productive years with the White Sox before his arm troubles began in recent seasons. With the exception of 2005 (3.12) and 2006 (4.99), all of Buehrle's ERAs have been between 3.50 and 4.00 and his WHIPs have been between 1.25 and 1.35 except for '05 (1.18) and '06 (1.47), so that's the kind of pitcher he is. Plus, he's got a no-hitter and perfect game on his resume. Armas' small sample size of 31 innings are key, because his ERA has been higher than 4.80 ever since.

And then we have two Cy Young Award winners. Carpenter missed 2003 after surgery, then went to the Cardinals (and pitching coach/healer Dave Duncan) and won 15, 21 and 15 games (and a Cy Young) before more surgery -- and then nearly won the award again in 2009. Sabathia's 2000 numbers are all from the minor leagues; '01 was his rookie year. He's steadily improved since, winning the Cy Young in '07 and avoiding the catastrophic injuries that several times have been predicted.

	2001 IP/ERA/WHIP	2002 IP/ERA/WHIP	2003 IP/ERA/WHIP	2004 IP/ERA/WHIP
Vicente Padilla	34/4.24/1.41	206/3.28/1.22	208/3.62/1.24	115/4.53/1.34
Roy Oswalt	141/2.73/1.06	233/3.01/1.19	127/2.97/1.14	237/3.49/1.25
Ben Sheets	151/4.76/1.41	216/4.15/1.41	220/4.45/1.25	237/2.70/0.98
Jake Peavy	28/2.57/1.11*	97/4.52/1.42	194/4.11/1.31	166/2.27/1.20

I omitted Runelvys Hernandez from this group because he was one of several Royals in the early part of the decade who was overworked and flamed out. Plus, his entire 2001 season and much of '02, when his innings shot up, were in the minors, and I didn't feel like doing all the math. And Andy Van Hekken was flagged for 2003, but one look at his page there and you'll see why I didn't bother including him.

From 2004-06, Oswalt finished in the top four of Cy Young Award voting and added a third straight All-Star season in '07. Since then, he's seen a bit of a drop-off. Sheets' best season to date came in 2004, when he fanned 264 and led the Majors in K/BB at 8.25. His record was just 12-14 for a Brewers team that went 67-94, which is why I'm not including won-loss records in this analysis. I still wish the Mets had signed him. Peavy's 2001 numbers are from the minors and his 2004 ERA remains a career best, better even than in his '07 Cy Young season.

	2002 IP/ERA/WHIP	2003 IP/ERA/WHIP	2004 IP/ERA/WHIP	2005 IP/ERA/WHIP
Carlos Zambrano	108/3.66/1.45	214/3.11/1.32	209/2.75/1.22	223/3.26/1.15
Dontrelle Willis	157/1.83/0.88*	197/2.97/1.21	197/4.02/1.38	236/2.63/1.13

Zambrano has remained pretty consistent -- right through his consistent, gradual decline the past couple of seasons. But he's apparently rededicated himself heading into 2010. Willis finished second in the NL Cy Young voting in '05 (to Carpenter, a fellow Verducci Effect alum) but has had other problems since.

	2003 IP/ERA/WHIP	2004 IP/ERA/WHIP	2005 IP/ERA/WHIP	2006 IP/ERA/WHIP
Carlos Silva	87/4.43/1.48	203/4.21/1.43	188/3.44/1.17	180/5.94/1.54
Jason Marquis	134/4.03/1.40	201/3.71/1.42	207/4.13/1.33	194/6.02/1.52

Silva's 2003 innings represent his entire year, all of it in the Majors. Seattle has gotten five wins and 18 losses since signing him before 2008. Marquis' first year in St. Louis was 2006, but he turned it around after that, even finding success in Colorado in an All-Star '09.

	2004 IP/ERA/WHIP	2005 IP/ERA/WHIP	2006 IP/ERA/WHIP	2007 IP/ERA/WHIP
Scott Kazmir	134/3.29/1.31	186/3.77/1.46	144/3.24/1.27	206/3.48/1.38
Matt Cain	158/2.67/1.19*	192/3.89/1.22	190/4.15/1.28	200/3.64/1.26
Francisco Liriano	156/3.79/1.42*	191/3.02/1.06	121/2.16/1.00	INJURED
Zach Duke	148/1.46/0.97*	192/2.44/1.21	215/4.47/1.50	107/5.53/1.73
Paul Maholm	60/3.43/1.44*	158/3.02/1.26	176/4.76/1.61	177/5.02/1.42

Kazmir -- there he is again. Would definitely be useful in Citi Field, but he hasn't yet become the Cy Young winner everyone thought he would. The Effect hasn't hurt Cain too much since '06, despite his 15-30 combined record in '07-08, which had a lot to do with terrible run support. The Twins tried to bring along Liriano (whose 2005 innings include the minors) slowly, as they did with Johan Santana, by pitching him out of the bullpen to ease him in. It didn't work. Duke led the Majors with 255 hits allowed in '06 but made strides last year, getting his ERA back down to 4.06 and his WHIP to 1.32. Maholm has also had two decent seasons since, posting ERAs for 3.71 and 4.44 and WHIPs of 1.28 and, less impressive, 1.44.

	2005 IP/ERA/WHIP	2006 IP/ERA/WHIP	2007 IP/ERA/WHIP	2008 IP/ERA/WHIP
Cole Hamels	35/2.31/1.03*	132/4.08/1.25	183/3.39/1.12	227/3.09/1.08
Justin Verlander	130/1.80/0.98	186/3.63/1.33	201/3.66/1.23	201/4.84/1.40
Anibal Sanchez	136/2.85/1.07*	200/2.97/1.23	30/4.80/2.07	51/5.57/1.57
Jered Weaver	76/3.91/1.24*	200/2.39/1.00	161/3.91/1.39	176/4.33/1.29

Hamels' 35 minor-league innings in '05 were all he threw, but his previous career high was 101, so while his jump wasn't as big, it still fit the parameters. He then became a two-time Verducci Effecter with his huge jump in 2008 -- and those numbers don't include his 35 postseason innings. Verlander's '05 numbers are mostly from the minors, and it wasn't until 2009 that he seemed to get back on track. This is the year we'll see if Sanchez (whose '06 numbers include the Minors) can regain his no-hit stuff. Weaver's WHIP in '08 is a good sign. And it went down again (1.24) in '09, along with his ERA (3.75).

This was a big year for red-flagged pitchers. With all these big names, I decided to skip Sean Marshall, Scott Olsen and Jeremy Bonderman, as well as several who haven't really been heard from since, incluing Adam Loewen, who has given up pitching and trying the Rick Ankiel route.

	2006 IP/ERA/WHIP	2007 IP/ERA/WHIP	2008 IP/ERA/WHIP	2009 IP/ERA/WHIP
Ian Kennedy	104/3.81/1.35*	165/1.91/0.99	116/4.27/1.30	23/1.59/1.10
Fausto Carmona	101/5.52/1.53	215/3.06/1.21	120/5.44/1.62	125/6.32/1.76
Ubaldo Jimenez	151/3.80/1.36*	185/5.16/1.51	198/3.99/1.44	218/3.47/1.23
Tom Gorzelanny	61/3.79/1.31	201/3.88/1.40	105/6.66/1.80	47/1.32/5.55
Yovani Gallardo	155/1.86/1.00*	188/3.35/1.18	41/3.07/1.34	185/3.73/1.31

All of Kennedy's numbers include a mix of Majors and minors, and 2006 is actually college and minors -- with only 2 2/3 innings in at short-season Staten Island. So those underwhelming stats are mostly with USC. Any further comeback from his recent injuries will be in Arizona after this offseason's trade. Carmona's '06 has 27 minor-league innings, and so far, his breakout '07 is a fluke.

Jimenez is an interesting case. He also pitched seven innings with the Rockies in '06, but I left those out. His '07 totals don't include the 16 postseason innings he pitched, which put him over the threshold for Verducci's list. And despite the red flag last year of pitching in the World Baseball Classic, he truly had a breakout season at 25. So perhaps this year we'll see a fall.

Gorzelanny has minor league numbers all around -- in '06, '08 and '09 -- that aren't included. He'll be 27 in July, so this is the year we'll know what we'll get from the big lefty -- if we don't already. The Brewers may have caught a break with Gallardo, who injured his knee covering first base in 2008 and had his innings limited that season. He posted decent numbers last year, so we'll see how he progresses this summer. Dustin McGowan was part of this class, too, but surgery knocked out his '09 season, so there are no further numbers for comparison.

Randolph fired in the middle of the night

In a move stunning and disgusting for its timing and method, the Mets fired Willie Randolph after their 9-6 victory over the Angels on Monday night. Pitching coach Rick Peterson and first-base coach/catching instructor Tom Nieto were also axed.

On the one hand, the team wasn't playing up to its potential. But on the other, it isn't a very well-constructed team to begin with, particularly with so much of it relying on declining veterans.

I think, though, the most shocking aspect of it is that they did it after an inspiring victory, one in which the hitters came through in the clutch with runners on and tacked on runs in the later innings. With the exception of Pedro Feliciano, the bullpen performed well, with Aaron Heilman getting out of a seventh-inning jam by striking out Vladimir Guerrero and Torii Hunter; Duaner Sanchez pitching the eighth and Billy Wagner saving his second straight after three blowups. Plus, Mike Pelfrey had his fourth straight impressive start.

My concern now is that some players who have begun to put it all together -- Jose Reyes and Carlos Beltran have been playing well of late, and then there's Pelfrey -- will regress. That momentum will be gone, that familiarity out the door.

Or maybe they wanted Willie booted. We'll see.

I'm sure I'll have more to say after I've slept on it. I don't want to go too far now on my initial gut reactions, only hours after the announcement.

Shea Goodbye: 70 to go

I'm always wary when going to Shea Stadium with the Braves in town. I tend to get my hopes up -- This is the day. Today, they'll turn it around and bury those punks. -- only to have Tim Hudson throw a one-hitter through seven, or some such dominance. Had I attended last night's game, I probably would've felt the tide turning during the three-run-on-four-straight-walks third inning ... only to have Mike Pelfrey piss it all away in one at-bat to Kelly Johnson.

And so as I dragged myself out of bed this morning to check the weather and the ticket situation, I half-hoped for an ominous forecast of rain, or a single ticket in the far reaches of the upper reserved, indicating very little chance of using the courtesy pass this afternoon. But the Weather Channel told me that any precipitation for the day had already passed through, and Mets.com told me that I could have two tickets in the orange field-level seats if I wanted to pay $167.

But things started looking up as we made our way from the house. Casey and I went our separate ways at Secaucus, where she took the Northeast Corridor line to Trenton and I awaited the next Penn Station-bound train. Mine happened to be a train of the new double-decker cars -- a first for me heading into the city, or on a weekend -- and as I sat down on the left-hand side of the train, facing the platform on which Casey had been standing, I saw she too had the luxury of two-story cars, and would get to enjoy it five times as long as I would for my 10-minute trans-Hudson traverse.

My train luck didn't transfer with me to the E, which went local through Queens instead of the much more efficient express, but I got to Roosevelt Ave. with enough time to walk from the back of the platform to the front to ride the first car of the 7 the final six stops to Shea, getting some nice photos of the blue ballpark as we approached.

My comped seat, as usual, was way up in the upper reserved, but row B, which does make a difference. And once there, I scanned the starting lineups for each team -- my smile growing ever wider as I went through the Braves' lineup and over to the Mets. No Yunel Escobar, the talented young Atlanta shortstop. No Chipper Jones, the long-time villain in the Mets' battle against evil. And on the Mets' side, no Luis Castillo, the 32-year-old slap-hitting second baseman with two bad knees and a fat, four-year contract that the Mets should already be regretting with every downward chop at a fastball and each four-hopper to second base with runners in scoring position. Carlos Delgado was still in the lineup, but at least he drove in a run in this game ... albeit on a dribbler up the first-base line that Mark Teixeira probably should've let roll foul, or charged harder for a play at the plate. (And later, on the throw Tex did make home, he was given an out by the home-plate umpire, even though it looked like Angel Pagan slid in safely before Brian McCann got the tag down.)

It was nice to see the Mets bunch their hits together in the third inning for a four-run rally, but some insurance would've been nicer. On Friday night, when Jair Jurrjens lost his cool with the umpire's strike zone and walked four in a row, he provided all the Mets' runs in a 6-3 loss. They had two hits at that point, too, and I later found out that that's all they'd get for the game. Though they managed a few more hits after their only run-scoring frame today, they're going to have to put up more crooked numbers on the scoreboard if they want to put together any kind of winning streak.

Hopefully, they'll find some magic against John Smoltz tomorrow. The chances aren't good, but perhaps they're due. They're due for a six- or seven-game winning streak (the Pirates arrive for three beginning Monday, and then the Mets head to Arizona, where they've had great success the past three years; though with the D-backs' solid pitching staff, I'd be happy starting off with one win and going from there). The Phillies have been fattening up on weak pitching (the Pirates) and child-like ballparks (particularly their own), and the Marlins are playing over their heads. If the Mets can keep the Braves down and start another four-game winning streak on Philadelphia when the next series starts, the division lead will come back to them. But first they've got to start hitting.

Shea Goodbye: 79 to go

Aaaaaaand ... breathe ...

Now that feels better.

Glad to see the Mets show some patience and hold off on swinging at pitches thrown nowhere near the strikezone. Kyle Kendrick -- who's soft-tosser Paul Byrd, only 15 years younger (and without the control) -- should not be beating top teams with patient hitters, and the Mets didn't let him do it to them. They needed this. They needed a win to get the Phillies out of their heads. And they needed Mike Pelfrey to build some confidence and have a solid start to his 2008 campaign.

There are a lot of Mets fans at work who are down on Pelfrey, who see nothing in his future with this team. I'm not there yet. This is definitely his do-or-die year; he has to show he's ready to pitch consistently at this level. Will he ever be a No. 1 starter? Probably not. But he can be a capable, reliable middle-of-the-rotation piece, if not a decent No. 2.

Here's hoping Wednesday night was just the start, for both Pelfrey and the Mets.