Talking' Baseball - Question 9 – So Now What?

This one’s simple.

So far this season we have seen injuries to Lucas Duda, Travis d’Arnaud, Yoenes Cespedes, Steven Matz, Seth Lugo, Matt Reynolds, Astrubel Cabrera, Brandon Nimmo, and Juan Lagares. They join David Wright in the training room.

The starters are keeping this team at around the .500 level but we’re running out of bats.

So… where do we go now?

Tom Brennan says - 

Send everyone that's injured to a healing service.  We need everyone back yesterday.

I would sit Jose, sit Grandy, and play whoever is on the roster in their place.  I'd run Rivera and Lagares out there and hope for better offense and in Lagares better defense.  Until Cespedes is healthy enough to return.

I'd love Rosario to be called up, but the conservative Mets will bring up Reynolds instead.

Peter Hyatt says -

It was a suspension of nature  that Travis almost made it through the entire month of April without injury.  Anyone see Cespedes' method of running to second on the play in question??  Injuries:  I hope that this leads to more time for Conforto and that he takes advantage of it.  I also wonder if we may see Amed Rosario if he continues to hit AAA along with Dom Smith?? Whoever wrote about the contact time clock is likely correct.

Casey Wentworth says –

We have to remember that in 2016 it was the "much feared kid call-ups" that rounded out this team into better shape.

So far in this very early 2017 season, Michael Conforto (one of the much feared kid Mets by this management team) is already showing that he is ready to make major contributions to this team's overall offense and that not so kid TJ Rivera may be next to step up. We will see, do not be surprised here.

Amed Rosario and Dominic Smith are hitting exceedingly well right now at Vegas as well. However, I would not rush either one up here quite yet because if you really look at, 2016 was each of these two kid players offensive step up seasons, and fine wine needs to age just a tad always.

So what I might do now...

I agree, that there really isn't a AAA NY Mets kid starter lighting the world afire at AAA. I do not see a potential one or two starter there (for future here) in the making. I do see a couple of really promising relievers there in Vegas though, namely Kevin McGowan (R) and Dave Roseboom (L) and this is worth watching because rarely a season goes by without a MLB team needing another reliever or two to aid with injuries there or to tweak things. I am watching these two.

As far as starting pitching is concerned, I do so miss Big Bart, I have to admit. It wasn't always pretty but Bart could get it done. I might soon consider stretching out Hansel Robles into a starter again. I don't think that his potential is currently be realized as a reliever. I do think that both his experience at this MLB level and his MiLB starter success exhibited from MiLB may warrant this idea. Wheels pitched well as of late and really here overall, not too many Mets starters have been blown out of the stadiums. This is a good thing. I wouldn't worry so much about the pitching. To me, it is still the stabilization of the NY Mets offense that needs tweaking.

Without Conforto leading off, this team has no lead off batter on it really anywhere at all. Granderson is best utilized in the five slot. However, I feel that Curtis, Juan, Neil, Jose, and even Lucas have all sort of gotten off to a slow beginning to their respective seasons. Of this grouping though, I think Neil and Lucas should be alright and their respective ships will be righted.

I have been quietly waiting and watching Gavin Cecchini (2B at Vegas) the start of this AAA season. He is leading off there but has not tore it up yet, as I believe he will soon. The reason I am waiting on Gavin is because his heating up there and making a call up here could solve some current issues with this parent NY Mets ball club. With Gavin hitting, he could possibly slot into second moving Neil over to third base. He could also be considered towards the top of the Mets batting order, if case need be. So far I do really like  Conforto leading off. He seems to have responded to this opportunity quite well and sometimes the excitement generated by a younger player's success does serve a team well towards supplemental inspiration.

A few weeks ago, I felt that I had given this blog a really strong idea on how to set the eight-man starting players and subsequent batting order. What I really still like looking back the most was that I had both Curtis Granderson and Jose Reyes coming in two to three games a week for player rest/substitutions off the bench. Their roles would be diminished by this (I do realize) but I felt that because of their age it may better optimize their playing ability and allow for a few of the most worthy younger NY Mets to see if they were ready to step-up and into a starting role. I think that besides Conforto, soon we could be seeing Cecchini and hopefully Brandon Nimmo (when healthy again) making such an emergence here as well. The topic of player rest/substitution is one that this NY Mets team really needs to address and grasp onto soon. In this way, several good things could quite possibly be accomplished much the same way as the 2016 NY Mets experienced by need towards the end of season.

Tom Brennan says –

Where do we go from here? Aside from the obvious move, calling Tim Tebow up, I think we promote Amed Rosario as soon as possible to replace Jose Reyes, who is utterly lost at .097 with zero RBIs through the Mets' first 17 games.  Those numbers are so bad, it is hard to picture them being an aberration. If he is willing, send him to Vegas to see if he can rekindle the Reyes magic.  But the team is offensively challenged, none more so than Jose, who has been worse than awful.

I would not call up Dominic Smith yet - I think he needs 300 plate appearances as an insurance policy against major league failure.  Hopefully Bruce can handle 1B competently and safely until Duda and Flores return.  Use TJ Rivera there vs. lefties.

Play Conforto and Lagares more, and hope for the best.  Give Grandy a few days off per week.

Too early to make trades for hitting, in my opinion.

And pray someone gets hot.  Or several someones.  This .218 stuff through 17 games is unacceptable.

Imagine if Trea Turner were not hurt and was hitting like 2016 - the Mets would already be buried.  Bats, wake up.

Reese Kaplan says –

Short term injuries are the bane of every coach in every sport.  You can't make plans for the long term because you don't know how bad (or how accurate) the dreaded "day-to-day" prognosis really is.

While you can't really do anything about the long termers like Matz, Lugo, Nimmo and Wright, it might make sense to take an exceedingly cautious route and use the new 10-day DL rule in order to bring your roster back close to a full complement of players.  Take Yoenis Cespedes, for example.  He's had hamstring issues before and we've seen how long guys like Nimmo, Reyes and Cespedes himself have been sidelined with them.  Isn't it better to tread water for 10 days now and bring up someone who can play rather than trying to exist with a 1-2 man bench?

Duda is also not a stranger to injuries.  He had issues in the spring and what makes you think rushing him back won't make him alter his swing to compensate for the pain and weakness of a hyperextended elbow? For once they did the right thing and DL'd him.  I swear it sometimes feels like they don't want to foot the bill for the flights from Vegas for the cavalry.

Now in this case you may have a simple solution.  Both Kevin Plawecki and Rene Rivera have on occasion played 1st base.  Even if a healed Travis d'Arnaud or Wilmer Flores is available, you might want that third catcher around for the 1B duty in a pinch. 

The person who benefits most from this plethora of injuries is Mr. Reyes who otherwise might have been headed to bench duty or the unemployment line.  Now he has health going for him and is the only middle infielder who can man 3 positions should something happen to either Asdrubal Cabrera or Neil Walker. 

Richard Herr says –

As of this report, which is about 5 days before it gets posted and prior to any medical exam results, the Mets are down 2 first-basemen and one outfielder on the main squad. Also there's another outfielder on the 40-man roster who's down (Nimmo). So, last night Bruce played first base. The solution that pops up in my head (if, in fact all of the injured guys need to go on the DL) is to shift Walker over to 1st base and plug in someone like T.J. or Cecchini at second. That reinstates 5 available outfielders on the parent club.

There are other considerations like bringing up Amed Rosario, or Dom Smith. Everyone puts up a hew and a cry that they need to have a full year in AAA before they can be ready to play in the bigs. Please pardon my old and failing memory, but it seems to me that all the way back in '15 the Mets brought up some guy DIRECTLY FROM AA BALL! I think he did all right playing through the rest of the year and the playoffs and the World Series.  Hit a couple of home runs.

There are also some people who are saying guys shouldn't be brought up, and they are talking about things like Super 2 players, and 55 games in the minors, and some other financial term like Arbitration 2, and all sorts of stuff that has me confused. I decided to get things straight in my head, so I went to see what Wikipedia had to say about the New York Mets. They said, and I quote here, "The New York Mets are an American professional baseball team." I'm sure they straightened that our for me, because with all that other talk by those other people, I was gaining the impressions that THE METS WERE SOME SORT OF EFFING SAVINGS AND LOAN ASSOCIATION! 

Christopher Soto says –

It really is becoming quite the pain in the butt that the Mets are sustaining all these short term type injuries…..not from a performance standpoint….but from a roster manipulation standpoint. Teams are limited to 40 players on their MLB reserve roster. Anytime you want to make an addition to that 40 man roster…..someone needs to be exposed to waivers, thus allowing another MLB team to steal them. Therein lies the problem….If the Mets were sustaining major injuries….you would just move the player to the 60 Day DL and poof open roster spot issue solved. But these are all minor short term issues.

Sure, there are plenty of bodies in AAA but who are you going to drop off the 40 man roster to add these guys? The Montero/Gilmartin/Sewald combo are the only healthy arms available for call up until Lugo, Matz, and Goeddel get healthy so not them.  On the position player side, top prospects Amed Rosario, Gavin Cecchini, Brandon Nimmo, and Wuilmer Becerra are occupying 4 of the 6 slots, leaving TJ Rivera and Matt Reynolds (who’s also hurt) as the only MLB ready available for call up…..and you’re not going to drop any of them either.

At this point, the Mets need to try and bear the problems at hand and try to fight through this annoying minor injuries.