Most Hated Mets Reliever Since Benitez?

Guillermo Mota is not only the worst relief pitcher on the Mets, but one of the worst in all of baseball. Mota has, for instance, the second worst earned run average of any National League reliever who's pitched at least 40 innings, and context-sensitive metrics like Win Probability Added show him as one of the dozen worst in the league. It's almost physically painful to watch him pitch; a call to the bullpen for Mota is always a renunciation of the hope of success.

Anyone who follows the Mets can set the scene: With a game close or tied, Mota ambles in from the bullpen. He takes the mound. He starts sweating. He nervously looks around the infield, as if Jose Reyes might present him with advanced technology from the future to help him get major league hitters out. He throws a pitch 10 inches wide of the plate, his elbows and knees flailing all over the plate. He bounces a pitch in the dirt; runners advance. Behind in the count, he lobs a pitch thigh high and dead center at about 60 mph. The ball flies into one of the gaps or over the fence and soon enough Mota, after somehow getting an out or two, is coming off the mound, looking as if he had taken the abuse in the first place only because he'd been threatened with physical harm.

Mota is probably best known for throwing at Mike Piazza's head over a period of years, at one point starting a highly entertaining spring training brawl by doing so, and for being one of the more famous players to serve a 50-game suspension for using steroids. Because of this, because he is terrible, and because the way in which he is terrible makes people want to gouge their eyes out with grapefruit spoons, he is easily the most hated Mets reliever since Armando Benitez.

This is too bad; no one ought to hate any ballplayer, even Pete Rose, let alone Guillermo Mota. Still, the sentiment is understandable, even inevitable. The worst part of the Mota experience is the terrible certainty his presence on the mound lends all observers that he will find a way to do something wretched, and this is something the Mets insist on amplifying by repeatedly bringing him not only into close games, but into the tensest moments of close games.

Sunday's game against the Phillies will add immeasurably to the Mota legend as the perfect Mota moment. It wasn't that our man took the loss in a humiliating debacle of a game in which the Mets made six errors while losing their seventh straight against Philadelphia. This was obviously bound to happen if he entered the game. It was instead the mere fact of his presence on the mound that was so surreal. Guillermo Mota, on the hill, in a tied game, with legendary Mets killer Pat Burrell and defending MVP Ryan Howard due up! What could be more perfect?

This sort of thing happens all the time. Subjectively, the impression of any Mets fan would be that Mota is used exclusively in tied games with people like Ryan Howard and Albert Pujols due up. This isn't actually true, but it's surprisingly close. In his last 10 appearances heading into last night, for example, he entered two tied games, two games in which the score was within two, and two more in which the score was within three. He allowed at least one base runner in every one of these appearances, and in five official innings he allowed five runs.

There can be no rational explanation of why Mota is still used. He can't throw a strike, when he manages to throw one it gets hit, and despite being given every opportunity to round into shape, he's simply gotten worse as the year has worn on, giving up crucial run after crucial run and showing no evidence of improvement. This isn't a case where a superficially impressive pitcher with bad results is skating by on appearances, or a case where someone with a superficially good ERA is getting by despite throwing cream puff pitches. Mota is as bad as he looks, and looks as bad as he is.

One might wonder why Willie Randolph keeps going to the well as it offers up only toxic waste; one might offer up such alternatives to Mota as Ron Darling or the first random bush league catcher with a decent knuckleball who gets within 10 miles of Queens. By now, though, such points are irrelevant. You can't reason with nature. Mota has transcended his sport and become a blind, malignant, uncontrolled force, no more to be reasoned with than a hurricane or lightning storm. If he has not been stopped by now, he never will be. The only thing left for Mets fans is resignation.

tmarchman@nysun.com