Mack’s Morning Report – Thoughts on The 2005 Playoffs

  

Good morning.

The Mets playoff season is already far past where I thought they would be. I had no plan on writing about any Mets playoff series other than the one they would have the honor of playing against the highest paid team in baseball that just happens to have the top two starting pitchers in baseball. That would have been clearly enough for me this season.

First on the Dodgers…

I offer both congratulations and condolences to manager Don Mattingly, who I do expect to move on from the glitz and gleam of Los Angeles (possibly not by choice).

I have nothing nice to say about Chase Utley so I’ll leave it at that.

P Zack Grienke has opted out of his contract,  SS Jimmy Rollins, P Brett Anderson, 2B Howie Kendrick, and P Jim Johnson are free agents while additional players that could opt out are 2B Chase Utley, P Bronson Arroyo, P J.P. Howell, and P Joel Peralta. The 2016 version of this team should be much different, plus it should be dominated by some of their younger players (like the Mets) like OF Yasiel Puig, C Yazmani Grandal, SS Corey Seager, and OF Joc Pederson (though many feel that Puig will never play in Dodger blue again).

But enough of the Dodgers.

Here’s my random thoughts on the Mets right now:

The Mets played this series basically without any production from either 3B David Wright or 1B Lucas Duda. My guess is ‘The Captain’ and his contract will not become an issue next season, but Duda could be banging his head right now that he walked away from the negotiations table before the season started. The Mets may want to consider signing a two year stop gap until prospect Dominic Smith becomes ready. Yes, Duda can hit come long home runs, but he seems incapable at times of doing little else.

(While we’re on the subject of stop gap first baseman, did you ever consider resigning one of your top players (and, so far, playoff hero) for a couple of more years to play there? No one bleeds orange and blue more than Daniel Murphy and, IMO, he’s easily worth half of what the Dodgers pay Kershaw.

You get the best of both worlds. You can call up heir apparent Dilson Herrera, who you hope someday can hit as well as… err… Murphy. Murphy plays his best defensive position and his all-star bat remains in the lineup.)

Yes, the Mets are a little short right now on experienced middle infielders; however, they might want to consider moving Murphy to first for the Cubs series and inserting Kelly Johnson on to second base.

The Bartolo Colon out of the pen thing seems to be working and I would expand that to more use of Jon Niese, even if it was to only pitch against one batter per game. You’re not going to do anything to hurt these two guys arms at this point in both the season and their career. They both easily represent two of the best twelve pitchers on the team and would be perfect set up men for any combination of Addison Reed, Tyler Clippard, and Jeurys Familia.

Matt Harvey is set up to start both game one (10-17) and game six (10/24). Steven Matz goes in game two (10-18) and game seven (10-25). My guess is that Noah Syndergaard will pitch game three (10-20) while Jacob deGrom will pitch only game four (10-21).

And lastly...

The Mets paid Bobby Bonilla more this season ($1.2M) than any of their 4 NLDS starters (deGrom, Syndergaard, Harvey, Matz)