Reese Kaplan -- If You Fail to Plan, You Plan to Fail

There’s an old axiom attributed to Branch Rickey that luck is the residue of design.  That philosophy may make some sense when you’re talking about someone’s success in business or their chosen career by working hard, being in the right place at the right time or identifying something unique that consumers wanted.  However, sometimes bad luck is just that.

Take for example former first rounder Dominic Smith.  Yes, he did himself no favor by arriving late to his first spring training to impress his new manager.  That’s on him.  However, the foot injury that followed was simply a matter of bad luck.  When it happened, any vapor-thin hope of him supplanting scrap heap pick Adrian Gonzalez was obliterated.

He followed that up with a somewhat lackluster season offensively in AAA for the Las Vegas 51s.  Although he’d gotten into better shape than ever before, the opposition woke up to his pull tendencies and started shifting on him regularly.  He has not yet figured out how to combat that defensive alignment.  As a result his batting average plummeted from .330 in 2017 to just .258.  More alarmingly the power was down and the strikeouts were up.  He had 76 in 337 ABs whereas last year he had 87 in 457 ABs.  Then he hit 16 HRs and drove in 76.  This year he has just 6 round trippers and 41 RBIs.

The Mets brought Smith back from AAA where he’d been forced to learn to play the outfield on the fly due to the emergence of Pete Alonso.  When injuries forced their hand they reached into AAA and brought him up to the big club where he made a game-costing error which set back his future opportunities with the big club. 

Like he did last year, he seemed to show more HR power than was advertised and recently put a couple over the fence.  He got rewarded with a rare start at 1B, his natural position, to see how he handled it.  Going into next season the Mets are indeed unsettled there with Wilmer Flores, Jay Bruce and Pete Alonso as competitors for the position. 

Then Lady Luck showed her vengeful side once again and Dom Smith was shelved with an injury, tightness in the groin area perhaps from running out a fielder’s choice.  Fortunately this time it appears to be minor and with his pinch hit yesterday he's up to .333 since his mid-August recall and this September recall in his very limited playing opportunities.

The Mets on the whole are considered by many to be unlucky in terms of injuries.  To be sure they’ve had more than their fair share, including DL stints this year by David Wright, Rafael Montero, Travis d’Arnaud, Anthony Swarzak, Todd Frazier, Jay Bruce, Yoenis Cespedes, Jason Vargas, Kevin Plawecki, Juan Lagares, Michael Conforto and others.  Still, they use that excuse of simply being bad luck which results in their second straight season of a losing record. 

However, their mirror opposites out in the left coast, the Los Angeles Dodgers, have had 38 separate DL stints to the Mets 28.  They sit just 1.5 games behind the Rockies for the Western Division crown with 3 weeks to make up that ground.  It’s got to be more than luck that propelled them near the front of their division, because losing players to injury didn’t derail their plans.   

Therein lies the difference and brings us back to Branch Rickey and the residue of design. What did the Mets do to plan for the probability that some of their key players would miss significant chunks of the season and what did they do when it actually happened? 

Let’s start off with a positive note.  The injuries gave at-bats to people who otherwise were role players on this team – Brandon Nimmo and Wilmer Flores – and both have flourished.  However, that’s where the good news ends.

Instead of looking to acquire longer term solutions from other clubs by executing trades, the club did what it’s done and failed while doing for each of the past few years – they went scrap heap picking.  We already mentioned Adrian Gonzalez.  Then they got the released Jose Bautista who foundered around the Mendoza line for way too long.  

Then they thought they had lightning in a bottle with the released Austin Jackson who started off absolutely on fire.  However, since that hot start he’s gone just .213 since mid-August.  And there are whispers they want to bring him back!  Then there’s Jose Reyes.  Enough said.

The Dodgers, by contrast, went out and obtained both Manny Machado and Brian Dozier.  They added veteran closer Ryan Madson to support Kenley Janson.  (Granted, Madson is having a bad year this year but has a solid track record).  They have their own feel-good role player story with the slugging of Max Muncy.  The difference is they went out to get real players to address real needs and are within a whisper of first place.  Do you see a design difference?

I recently went through a debate with some Mets fans regarding the somewhat encouraging signs from the latter part of the season.  They were celebrating it and I was suggesting that it is, in the long run, a bad thng.  Now I’m not necessarily talking about tanking to secure top draft picks because for every Bryce Harper there’s a Gavin Cecchini.  No, I’m talking about playing the folks who could possibly be a part of next year’s team from whom you don’t have a lot of data and eyeball observation as to whether or not they’re viable for the future. 

Towards that end, I can see the rationale behind playing Jay Bruce at 1B.  It’s less stressful to his plantar fasciitis-affected feet, it increases his flexibility for defensive alignments and it opens up trade possibilities to other clubs who may be full in the OF but need someone capable of playing 1B.  I get that.  I also get the financial rationale (though I don’t agree with it) of waiting out the service time clock for Pete Alonso.

What I don’t get is Austin Jackson playing or Jose Reyes playing.  I want to see Dom Smith when he’s healthy.  I want to see Wilmer Flores’ bat in the lineup.  If you have to play both of them in the OF, so be it.  If you want to sit McNeil against a tough lefty as was done last week, play Flores at 2B.  Now is the time to evaluate since you are not going anywhere.  Yes, it’s nice to win ballgames but it’s a marathon and not a sprint.  For once it would be good to see some planning taking place.