Bobby Parnell came on in relief for the Mets during a game with the Astros earlier this week and hit 102 mph on the gun. 102. I'd never seen that before. Earlier this year, Tigers righty Joel Zumaya pitched in a game against the Angels and hit 101. I was very impressed at the time, but I also wasn't surprised a few weeks later when Zumaya's elbow exploded in a gruesome scene at Target Field in Minnesota...
A man's arm is not designed to generate the kind of force it takes to hit triple digits on the radar. But watching Bobby Parnell pitch this season has me believing both that he's destined to be one of the greats, and that he'll have longevity. I know I may be getting a little ahead of myself with this. Parnell has not really been tested in too many 'high-leverage' situations, and he's melted down in several key spots when he's gotten the call. Still, sometimes you just get a feel about a guy. I remember having the same kind of feeling about Lenny Dykstra when he was called up in 1985. He just had that somethin' somethin' about him. He homered in his first game as a major leaguer. I think it may have even been in his first at bat, and I believe it was against the Reds, maybe off of Mario Soto. I was watching the game at home on WOR Channel 9. Steve Zabriskie was doing the play-by-play with Ralph Kiner and Tim McCarver. Where is Steve Zabriskie today I wonder? When Dykstra hit the ball out, he motored around the bases like Lou Brock, no slow home run trot for him, and I was hooked right away. It kills me that Dykstra turned out to be such a douche. I loved him so much as a ball player. I had a feeling about him the first time I saw him play, and now I have the same kind of feeling about Bobby Parnell.
Parenll throws extremely hard, but he looks so effortless doing it. He's tall and lanky, so he's not like a Jonathan Broxton or Bobby Jenks type who muscles the ball up to the plate, relying on the fact that he weighs 300 pounds to generate all that energy behind his pitches. I could actually imagine a Zumaya-type injury happening to Jenks, but not to Parnell, who unleashes the ball free and easy, with a live arm and perfect mechanics. He just lets the pitch happen. The night after Parnell threw several pitches at 102, Gary Cohen noted that both clubhouses were buzzing with talk of Parnell's velocity and his stuff. Parnell throws his hard fastball with serious movement, tailing away from righty batters and boring in on lefties. There are those who say he needs more seasoning, perhaps as a setup guy, before he becomes the team's closer. That's horsehit. The guy's ready to get a shot. He's 26 and just entering his prime. Why wait? My hope is that he will seize the opportunity that's presented itself with the Francisco Rodriguez controversy, step into the closer's role, and stay there for good. Bye bye K-Rod.
Watching Parnell over the last few months of the season has gotten me me thinking about other relievers in Met history, going back to the mid 70s, when I first became obsessed with baseball. Parnell throws much harder than Tug McGraw, of course. Maybe he's not as fiery as McGraw was, but that's a good thing. This is not a slight against McGraw, one of the great figures in the history of the Mets. But there is a difference between being fiery and being a great competitor. They are not the same thing, though sometimes they overlap. Much as I appreciate fiery guys like Larry Bowa and Wally Backman, their kind of explosive temperament is probably a handicap at the end of the day. I've developed an aversion to fiery guys playing on my team. Fiery means loss of composure and focus. I prefer silent bulldogs, like Roy Halladay, Cliff Lee, or John Lester, guys who intimidate you with their seething intensity and confidence, but rarely show any prolonged outward emotion. Again, it's too early to say anything definitive, but I feel that Bobby Parnell may be one of those silent warrior types.
Another thing Parnell has going for him right now is that the Mets have absolutely no shot at making the playoffs. I was reading a blog this morning that cited a computer generated analysis showing that the Mets have less than a 1% chance of playing in the postseason at this point. This means there will be little pressure on Parnell when he comes into games for the remainder of 2010. Nothing is more dangerous than someone who's got nothing to lose. This is part of the perfect storm that's formed for Bobby Parnell. No pressure means he can relax, perfect his repertoire of pitches, experiment, learn, and build up his confidence for 2011 and beyond.
I think of the Mets teams I grew up with during the mid 70s. What grim years they were! Those teams had even less likelihood of making the playoffs than the Mets do today. I can remember going to Shea Stadium during the period from 1976 to 1980. There
used to be less than 10,000 fans in the stands at a lot of these games. I attended one such game with my dad, probably in 1978 or 1979. Mets against the Expos. The 'spos were actually prretty good back then. They had Tony Perez, Gary Carter, Chris Speier, Ellis Valentine... The game was probably in mid September because the field was all torn up from the Jets playing at Shea as well. The stadium was so empty. I could hear the players chattering in the field. It was depressing to be a Met fan in those years, even more depressing than it is now, but I bet it was ok for certain types of players, especially relief pitchers, guys like Skip Lockwood and Bob Apodaca. They could come into games that meant nothing, be relaxed, and make a living playing baseball. 
Things changed starting in 1983. Think about how much easier things are for Bobby Parnell than they were for relievers like Jesse Orosco or John Franco. Those guys were junk ballers and spent significant chunks of their careers on Mets teams that were expected to win. They had to deal with serious pressure and their own limited abilities, the exact opposite of Parnell's circumstances. He throws 100+ mph fastballs and has no pressure right now. What Franco and Orosco had, and what Parnell now has the opportunity to learn, is pitching smarts. It's one thing to uncork a fastball at 102, another thing altogether to mix in a change up, cut the fastball, or just put the heater in a location where the batter can't put a good swing on it.
Parnell also doesn't strike me as a guy who is easily rattled. He seems grounded and poised. The Mets have had too many easily rattled closers over the last ten years. Remember Armando Benitez? The guy would come in to a game, blow his huge fastball by the first two batters with no problem, but then the slightest little thing would happen and he'd come unglued. A bloop single, an error, an infield hit or a walk, and next thing you know he's giving up tape measure home runs and the Mets lose the ball game. You want your closer to be a guy who's mentally tough, a guy who can get out of bad situations, not one who falls apart the minute something bad happens. I watch a lot of Angels games, too, and this is what scares me about the prospect of Fernando Rodney becoming the closer for the Halos He throws pretty hard, though not nearly as hard as Bobby Parnell, but what does it matter when he loses focus so easily and responds poorly to pressure? How many times have I seen him walk the bases loaded this year? Too many.
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