8/16/17

Tom Brennan - WHEN A LOSS IS A WIN


Tom Brennan - WHEN A LOSS IS A WIN

Sometimes you win when you lose. 

Did you get that feeling last night?

Our best arm, Jake D, was OK but not at his best against, frankly, a dangerous Yankees line up.

So he lost.

Tom Seaver used to kill everybody - except hard-hitting Pittsburgh and Big Red Machine teams.  Sometimes he controlled them, sometimes they got to him.  It happens.  Tip of the cap to the Yanks. 

Forget the Yanks, even the best teams most times still lose 60 or more games each year - that's baseball.  You lose a lot.  Jake is really good, but can't win them all.  Especially when 3 key bats (Bruce, Duda, Walker) were just moved, which weakened the opponent the Yanks beat last night.

However, the future success of the Mets has much to do with whether the new kids in town - Amed Rosario and Dominic Smith - are as good as advertised AND can handle pressure.


I would call going into Yankee Stadium and having Smith hit an opposite field 2 run shot off Sonny Gray a WIN.


And Amed hitting a 2 run shot off of Greased Lightning Aroldis Chapman a WIN.  Kind of like that time Mike Piazza took 100 MPH Billy Wagner deep in a key spot years back.

Because it is an indicator that we have the key shortstop and 1B positions on the Mets in great hands, with inexpensive, cost-controlled players that give the Mets financial flexibility.

I am not saying the 2 won't have growing pains - but maybe they won't.  Success can accelerate the trend to more success, and last night, both were successful.

So we lost - but we won.  You can't always say that. 

And we can still win a very good draft slot this year with losing, and that can become winning.  After all, we lost just enough in recent years to be able to draft Smith and the magnificent Michael Conforto

Yes...Losing can be painful, but later it can become a win. 

2 comments:

Reese Kaplan said...

Yet Smith was pinch-hit for last night as a show of confidence by his manager...

Yeah, yeah...lefty against lefty...and the anemic Jose Reyes did get a pinch hit...but in the long term I think it would be important to show some confidence in a guy who homered after less than a week in the majors than telling him, "Thanks for that. Now go sit down and let the big boys play."

Tom Brennan said...

True, Reese. My guess is Terry was trying to avoid Jake taking the loss. Question: does this team need to throw inside more?