CLOSING TIME!
Familia huge weapon for Mets
TERRY Collins had no other desirable options in Game 5 of the NLDS, so he needed Jeurys Familia to serve as both setup man and closer at a moment of crisis, which was fitting for this season.
Familia has been the oneman bailout for bullpen plans gone awry for the 2015 Mets from the outset of spring training through Thursday night at Chavez Ravine. Collins needed six outs and didn’t believe Noah Syndergaard — who had thrown more than 100 pitches in warming up four different times — could give him more than the seventh inning. And his faith in Tyler Clippard and Addison Reed was, at best, skittish.
Even before the first pitch — imagining just this scenario — Collins had conceived in his mind to ask Familia for the first sixout save of his career. Now, the young righty was actually doing it.
Like this season, Familia was up for new challenges. He was better than that. He faced six Dodgers in a onerun game and retired all six, never permitting Los Angeles to even imagine a rally. Like this season, Familia actually kept getting better and better. The last five swings of the Dodgers season — by A.J. Ellis and Howie Kendrick — were swings and misses,
Familia was in the middle of a celebratory dog pile. There is a word for that in the Mets’ world in 2015: Perfect.
The Mets simply would never have gotten close to that moment without Familia. With all the power starting pitching and a renaissance by Curtis Granderson and a stirring arrival by Yoenis Cespedes, you would not have to work overly hard to make a case for Familia as the Mets’ MVP.
Remember, the plan of winter was to attack the late innings with power righties Jenrry Mejia, Bobby Parnell, Vic Black and Familia, along with power lefty Josh Edgin. Mejia was the designated closer, the man he replaced, Parnell, was viewed as the safety net.
But Edgin was lost to Tommy John surgery in spring and Parnell was slow to return from the procedure — and was never close to his previous form. Sandwiched between suspensions for testing positive for illegal performance enhancers, Mejia appeared in seven games. Black never appeared in one.
Even the reinforcement plans buckled. Alex Torres pitched his way off the roster and Jerry Blevins suffered a left arm fracture and then fractured it again. Clippard faded down the stretch and Reed was only available in August because he passed through waivers, which means no one in the sport was willing to take him for even nothing.
So if Familia weren’t physically, mentally and emotionally capable of closing in April and October, who exactly would be doing it? The Mets knew he had the arm for the job, well, they always knew he had the arm.
Familia was signed for the arm. Omar Minaya and one of his top lieutenants, Sandy Johnson, signed Familia after seeing him throw just two innings in Melido Perez’s complex in Nizao in the Dominican.
“He was throwing 9293 [mph] as a 17yearold, so you could imagine that getting to 9697,” Minaya said. “We liked him as a starter, but down the line figured he could relieve if he had to. He had great strength and arm quickness and threw a heavy ball that was hard to square up.”
That heavy, fiery sinker has remained Familia’s main weapon as he navigated from starter to reliever in the minors, from setup man to closer in the majors. He had toyed with a splitter in bullpen sessions, but did not deploy one until an Aug. 12 outing against the Rockies.
And, as one scout said, “he was good to very good, but what has made him devastating is the split.”
Because it is a devastating split. No one throws it that hard. No one. His regular season average on that pitch was 93.1 mph — the second hardest was 89.8 by the Reds’ Jumbo Diaz. Against L.A., Familia averaged 93.9 with the pitch tumbling hard and late out of the zone.
“There is no reason he shouldn’t be confident and calm with that kind of stuff,” said one scout who saw a lot of Familia recently. “It is hard to imagine that he will not establish himself as one of the best closers in the game, if he is not there already.”
Where would the Mets be without him?