Mack’s Morning Report – 6-21-15 – Random Thoughts

Good morning.

It’s becoming more evident every day that Sandy Alderson has relaxed his projected exile of relief specialist Jenrry Mejia and will allow him to return to the Mets bullpen in the first half of July. I’m sure the plan will be to add him to the mix with Bobby Parnell, as the seventh and eighth inning guys before Jeurys Familia comes in to mop up.

This will be the plan on all games the Mets are leading after six innings. From there, the rest of the pen will be used in blowouts, be them games the Mets are leading or losing.

The important thing here is to understand that the primary goal will be to limit the young starter arms to six innings. The year’s getting late guys and most of the Mets starters are under innings restrictions. This whole playoff race isn’t going to go anywhere without a winning bullpen plan and whether or not Mejia is available for the playoffs doesn’t really matter.

The Mets, if they got past the one game wild card game, would frankly only be using three starters in the next series anyway. There would be plenty of innings to go around for two of the starters, Bartolo Colon and pick one of Matt Harvey, Jacob deGrom, Noah Syndergaard, or Steven Matz.

As for Dillon Gee, I see no action at the end of the 10 days it takes to close on a deal for Gee and the Mets will most probably send him down to Vegas (even though they took his number away) to work on his game. Frankly, this would be a perfect chance to convert him to a long man that would be needed come August and into the playoffs.

This leaves Jonathan Niese, who the Mets will continue to try and move rather than embarrass him with a demotion to the pen.

The sad part here is there seems to be plenty of pitching to get where the Mets want to go. There just isn’t anyone that wants to be in the bullpen.

Mack Ade 

It seems to me that the Mets have forgot how to win baseball games on the road. Maybe it's the mindset. Some teams just get their fur up more when they are playing on their own turf.

Everything turns bad when you haven't had a hit in the first four innings. You start playing your position completely different than you would if you had a, oh, let's say a 5-0 lead.

One error seldom costs a team a game, unless it is 0-0 in the 6th inning and you botch a double play that leads to a two-run home run.

We've gotten used to Wilmer Flores making his share of errors... it's still far from one of the leaders in the league... but the botch by Dilson Herrera the other night was just one of those things that happens. Replay show that the ball came off the pitchers glove and bounced funny. It easily could have been called a hit, but it still created a bad situation because... wait for it... the Mets were both run-less and hitless at this point in the game.

I remember a few years ago when the Mets used to come out of the box in the first innings with offense. I miss those days.

I hope SA and TC slot Daniel Murphy up second, followed by d'Arnaud and Duda.

I want to get back to having a lead in the first inning.

ESPN 

There are reports coming out of New York that Matt Harvey is even getting more surly as his New York Mets career continues. 

Supposedly, he's had it with the New York beat press, who have one job and one job only... come up with a question that will generate an interesting answer that will help sell newspapers.

The latest was when one of them asked him, after his superb outing against Toronto, if he felt he was at a crisis point in his career. Harvey called it a 'bullshit question', refused to answer it, and ended the gathering right then and there.

Just so all of you know... the Mets can't determine who works at what newspaper, nor can they prevent them from coming into the clubhouse and representing that newspaper. This is a union issue. If you have a union card, you're in the clubhouse.

The Mets have tried to have certain reporters removed in the past (cough... Rubin... cough) and it just doesn't work that way.

What the Mets could do is get a press secretary that is under 100 years old that could control this situation a little better than it's being done right now.

Harvey is a handful and will be a handful until well after he someday becomes a New York Yankee. The New York press need to learn to stay out of the way of this guy.

Mack Ade

I'm still having a real hard time with the Mets giving away Dillon Gee's number while, technically, he is still a part of this organization. What a cold friggin move against a guy that busted his ass for parts of six seasons and produced a 40-37 record.

A really un-class move Sandy.

The picture i have here was one I took with Gee's original number. He always was a class act that came from a class act family. Both he and his father always treated me and this web site with respect.

I wish him well and I hope he finds a team that will treat him like the gentleman he is.

Thank you Dillon for your hard work as a member of the New York Mets. I look forward to you coming back and beating the hell out of them on the mound.

ESPN 

It was great to see Zack Wheeler stop by in the clubhouse before Friday's game against Atlanta and give his spin on his rehab program. He said everything is on schedule and he should begin a throwing program in 'about a month'.

Folks, there's going to close to a two year period between starts and that's if everything goes okay here. Trust me, think conservative here and pencil him for opening day 2017. Anything earlier will be bonus time.