Mack - Sunday's Ramblings

The wife and I celebrated out 45th wedding anniversary yesterday by going to Savannah, Georgia and having a steak at Ruth's Chris steakhouse. We didn't get home until the eight inning of yesterday's game, but I went online and caught up by reviewing the inning by inning, batter by batter breakout of the game.

My first observation was how more healthy the lineup looked. Wilmer Flores and Kevin Plawecki were back in the lineup and the goals for this team increase greatly when two guys like this replace players like Danny Muno and Anthony Recker.

The second observation was the four home runs hit (two by my good buddy Granderson) which always makes playing this game easier. 

And thirdly, the Mets scored six runs and the Mets starter gave up only three runs in seven innings. 

It'll get a little bit better by the Giants series coming up. Travis d'Arnaud will return, replacing Plawecki as the starting catcher. I give in to the majority on this site that call for the best defensive catcher to be the backup and that would be Recker. 

The other move will be the return of 2B Dilson Herrera which will give the Mets some added depth at second base. If chosen, Ruben Tejada could move to the bench, or move over to third base and force Eric Campbell to the bench. Either way, keeping Herrera in Queens (especially through the period that Daniel Murphy is hurt) seems like the wise move.

What next?

Well, for starters, this is a pretty good start for a 10 day period. 

All of you are going to have to accept that any additional offense for this team is going to have to come from their primary players in their lineup. Guys like Juan Lagares, who is starting to look totally healed... Curtis Granderson, who hit two home runs on Sunday... Wilmer Flores, who returned to the lineup and hit his 9th home run of the season... and Michael Cuddyer, who hit safely in his 12th straight game. THIS is where the offense has to come from and placing them in a lineup that includes Lucas Duda, Herrera, and d'Arnaud give them seven legitimate 'bats' to string together some hits and create some runs to support their pitching staff.

Lastly, the return of the 5-man rotation allows for 60% of the starters to be prime cut starters (Matt Harvey, Jacob deGrom, Noah Syndergaard). My educated guess is, even with the limted offensive resources on this team, 70% of the starts from these three guys will bring you victories. Now, all we need is half from Bartolo Colon and Jonathan Niese and the team is back in the race.

A very crucial home stand coming up... the Giants, who's W-L record almost mirror the Mets in a race for a potential wild card slot... the Braves... and Toronto. The Mets need to bear down and go 6-2 (worse case scenario: 5-3) here to put some distance between the other teams in the National League.

Draft night tonight...

I'll write in the morning who the top guys are that are left on Day 2 for the Mets to go after.