I told myself that I wouldn’t write anything else about the Mets until they had played 40 games–a quarter of the season. It is still arguably a small sample size, but certain horrifying patterns have emerged.
When I left for vacation on April 24th, the Mets were playing OK and actually had a winning record I think. As soon as I was gone they lost six straight and proceeded to stink at virtually all 
levels for over three weeks. They didn’t hit, most of their pitchers were awful and they cost themselves games with lousy fielding. They were utterly hopeless and hard for even me to watch. The Mets aren’t good enough to recover from a terrible stretch of baseball like that, since it is impossible to really imagine this team going on a long winning streak. They will probably play better than they have recently, but the best you can really hope for is 70-75 wins at this point. The season is effectively over for them and the only real question is whether the Phillies will be bad enough that the Mets can battle them for an ugly third place finish in the NL East. They can thank the utter futility of the Marlins for the fact that they will not finish last. A few thoughts on the debacle so far:
Matt Harvey make the Mets worth watching every five days: He is just a wonderful pitcher. He reminds me (and lots of others) of a young Tom Seaver. As a Met fan, there is no higher compliment. The Mets not only have a chance to win on the days that he pitches, there is a chance that you are going to watch an extraordinary pitching performance. I’m assuming that the Mets will cut him off when he reaches 180 innings or so, since there is no point risking his future by having him pitch in meaningless September games. Since I am a Mets fan and feel like the team is cursed, I worry that he will be hit by a bus or something.
I wonder if David Wright regrets signing that long-term deal? I really feel sorry for him. The Mets line up is just so awful that I cannot see why the other teams pitch to him at all. Despite that, Wright has had a good, professional season. It is fun to watch him play. In fairness, Daniel Murphy has turned himself into one of the better second basemen in the NL. But beyond those two, there isn’t much there.
Who is the worst player on the Mets? Ike Davis is certainly the biggest disappointment, since he looked like a young power-hitting first baseman who could be one of the Mets’ core players moving forward. But now he looks totally lost as a hitter and cannot touch off-speed pitching. On a real team, he’d either be benched or sent to the minors, but the Mets don’t have anyone who is even OK who could replace him and I think they figure that, with the season already gurgling down the drain, they might as well see if this is just a long slump or if they need a new first baseman going forward. Either way, having him in the middle of the line-up, often behind Wright, just kills them. Meanwhile, Lucas Duda is doing a poor imitation of Adam Dunn (all walks, home runs and strikeouts, combined with poor fielding). It’s beginning to look like my earlier comparison of Duda to Ron Swoboda was unfair to Swoboda. And the sad thing is that he is probably their best outfielder, unless it is Rick Ankiel, who wasn’t good enough to play for the Astros, the worst team in Baseball, or Marlon Byrd, who is probably washed up but at least looks like he knows what he is doing even if he can’t quite do it anymore. Predictably, John Buck has sunk back to back-up catcher level after his great start, for which he gets a lot of credit. But it will be months before D’Arnaud is recovered from his foot injury and ready to be called up, so we are stuck with watching Buck’s stats slowly sink toward the Mendoza line. As for Tejada, I haven’t given up on him and he is at least young, but he looks more and more like a back up infielder than a starting shortstop on a decent team. Valdespin looks like he has some talent, but it seems like he is detested by the team and probably needs to be traded.
The really frightening thing is that the Mets don’t seem to have any hitters in the minors who look like future starters. They don’t even have the kind of guys who put up great stats in the low minors before they are exposed by pitching at AA or AAA (I’m talking about you Alex Ochoa and Fernando Martinez).
Pitching remains the hope: Jon Niese shouldn’t be the second best pitcher on your team, but he is pretty good and hopefully by next year, he won’t be the number two starter. Marcum, Gee and Hefner are all at various levels of pitchers with mediocre stuff who need to be perfect to win. Marcum has done it in the past and seems to be coming around after his injuries, although he is a good bet to get injured again. Gee is just a back of the rotation guy who can only rationally be expected to pitch well once in while. Hefner is the devil you know. He probably isn’t any better than the so-so pitchers in the minors, but you know what you are getting with him and he is only holding a place until one of the good young prospects is ready. Zach Wheeler seems likely to join the Mets some time this summer, which will be the end of Hefner’s career, unless Marcum gets hurt again. Behind Wheeler are Montero and Syndegard and maybe Mejia, so there is some real hope in the long run.
The relief pitching has been OK, considering that too many of the starters have been knocked out of games far too early and the bullpen has been crushed by overuse. Just replacing Frank Francisco with Bobby Parnell has been a major upgrade and Francisco has contributed to the upgrade by being hurt all year. The rest of the bullpen has been competent or better overall, particularly Lyons, Hawkins and Rice (at least until Rice’s arm falls off). As far as I can tell, they seem to keep Robert Carson around for comic relief (Seven home runs allowed in eleven innings!!)
If the season wasn’t already shot, you’d fantasize about bringing up Wheeler and maybe some of the other pitching talent down below and having a good pitching staff to make a late-season run, but it is hard to see the offense ever being competent enough for good pitching to make a difference this year.
Ya Gotta Believe????
nickflewis 