There were two free agent signings prior to the season that I thought, unwittingly, ended up filling similar roles on their teams. Jake Odorizzi signed with the Rangers as one of their first few pieces of the mega-rotation they now have, and Jose Quintana signed with the Mets to help their own mega-rotation that was forming with help from Kodai Senga and Justin Verlander. What linked Odorizzi and Quintana, apart from their decade of work, was that prior to the season they both got injured, and they would both miss several months of the season, meaning that they would both essentially become depth rotation options upon activation.
And it played into the feeling of 'well why overpack a rotation and make somebody relieve games in September if they're not in the main pack?' Going into the season, the Mets were working with Scherzer, Senga, Verlander, Carlos Carrasco and Tylor Megill, with David Peterson already existing as a depth option. Quintana being injured did not sink this rotation. Same with Texas; Odorizzi being out didn't put a dent in the plan to use a rotation of Jacob deGrom, Nate Eovaldi, Jon Gray, Andrew Heaney and Martin Perez with Dane Dunning as the depth option when deGrom got hurt [not if. WHEN.] Both of these signings weren't intended to be failsafes, but that's what they'd be.
I equate Jose Quintana's first half to something like a sci-fi movie, where a character is put in cryo-sleep and promised to wake up in a palpable future, only for something to go wrong and end up waking up in the midst of a wasteland. Quintana was promised to supplant a super-rotation with some of the best in the game on a competitive team. Quintana was activated on July 20th, as the Mets were already under .500 and in 4th place, and as Verlander and Scherzer were both on the way out. And since they left, Quintana has been one of the pillars of the rotation. He's been fine, with a 3.05 ERA and 43 Ks in 10 games, but he was never supposed to be this integral to this rotation. Verlander and Scherzer were supposed to take on the brunt of the work, now one's back in Houston and the other's injured himself again in Texas.
And speaking of Texas, Scherzer and deGrom are both out for Texas and that's barely put a dent in their rotation plan, as they're still using a solid group of Eovaldi, Dunning, Gray, Heaney and Jordan Montgomery. Martin Perez is now the depth man. And even more crucially, Jake Odorizzi has not been activated. Not only is Odo still hurt, but the team hasn't out-sweated their backup plans to prevent from running out of signed guys. The trade deadline did help with that somewhat, but they're very lucky that Gumby is still healthy, and doing well.
And really, that's the difference right there: the Rangers have the better team, because they've focused more on durability, and based a number of backup plans, including keeping Dunning pegged at sixth and then switching Perez to that position, off of what they trusted of their pitchers. The Mets had less backup plans and more 'if this doesn't work we'll have to go with this'. That's why we're at the 'David Peterson and Joey Lucchesi start games' portion of the season. Aside from Senga and Quintana, this rotation is a mess of visions, and there's no straight line to draw from.
The Mets may have bought their way out of the picture. Cohen is thinking of letting the team grow, and hopefully the pitching staff has time to do so.
Coming Tonight: He's been playing for 15 years, and he's still got some spark left in him.
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