Fernando Nieve to DL; Cory Sullivan to Bigs

Not much to say about Nieve.  His peripherals were terrible, and if it weren’t for his Jorge Sosa esque first couple of starts, Jon Niese would already be here. Still, he has never really gotten a fair shake in the big leagues (just 143.2 career innings), and has the stuff to make him a serviceable reliever or starter elsewhere. Best of luck to him.

Taking his place will be Cory Sullivan. Sullivan, a seventh round pick for the Rockies back in 2001, is yet another player in the Angel Pagan/Jeremy Reed mold. It’s mind-boggling enough to watch this team’s free-fall. To watch them lose with just two players (Daniel Murphy and Jeff Francoeur), who have any reasonable chance of improving is becoming more boring by the day . No wonder why so many average fans seem psyched about Niese’s performance lately.

What’s more interesting is why Sullivan got the nod over Nick Evans. Jerry Manuel’s argument that Sullivan is “more versatile” than Evans in bunk.  This year, Sullivan, a natural center fielder, has played center almost exclusively for the Bisons. In fact, over his entire major league career (355 games), he has played just 27 games in left and 14 in right. In six seasons in the minors, he played just 47 in right and 57 in left. Since 2007, he played a grand total of eight games in the corner outfield spots. Glancing over his defensive stats, he is not particularly good in the outfield period. 

This tells me that the Mets think Gary Sheffield should be back any day now, and don’t want to take the trouble to promote Evans and send him down before Saturday (when Niese will start).  If the Mets once again (purposely or not) underestimated Sheffield’s injury, however, this costs Evans another oppurtunity in the majors for a team that is more or less done and needs to find out about its’ young talent.