Mack - Observations

Good morning.

I decided to change my Sunday FWIW post to one of observations the previous week in both baseball, in general, and particularly the Mets. It will begin with what I see on the past Sunday up to this week's Saturday. I can do this. It's my blog.

There's not much we can say about Sunday's thrashing by the Braves. The only good news, to me, is this kind of loss happened this early and showed some areas we need to work on early in this season.

Both the starters and middle relievers show there are adjustments needed to be made. I wasn't surprised at what I saw (different see) from Corey Oswalt. I've said a number of times last year that his only future in major league baseball is as a middle reliever. Rick Porcello, simply put, was a mess. We can not win anything this year unless we get quality starter pitching past Jake deGrom. And middle relief looks like the same problem we had for years here.

Yes, the bats are soft right now, but pitching might be our Achilles heal this season.

I awoke Tuesday to a three home run win against Boston. Buy, this was not the Red Sox I remember. The pitching alone has been decimated in one season.

Speaking of home runs, there were like 346 of them on Monday, which blows away the theory that pitchers are first ready when the season starts. One of those drones calling the game on ESPN said this was because of the difference of temperature from April to late July. Sounds like a good theory. I always thought that pitchers could prepare better in the off-season with maintaining a season like training schedule. Batters to me just couldn't duplicate game like conditions. I know of no batting case that can produce a 93 mph sinker, or a 95 mph fastball, with late movement. That being said, what was produced on Monday throws this theory out the window. With lots if sink.

The Mets inked catcher Bruce Maxwell to a minor league contract. Maxwell was a heralded second round pick in the 20212 draft by Oakland, out of Birmingham-Southern College.

Maxwell was a reserve catcher for three seasons with Oakland before being released. Some say this was done after the combined events of being the first player to kneel while the Star Spangled Banner was played and the fact that he wound up in the clinker for felony assault, 

He went down to the Mexican League in 2019 and produced a very impressive stat line of /325/.408/.559/.967, with 24-HR and 112-RBIs. This was the first year since his last year in college that he showed this kind of pop.

I'm sort of confused with this signing. The Mets already have four catchers on their 60-man squad, and have Ali Sanchez, Patrick Mazeika, David Rodriguez, and Austin Bossart waiting in the wings in Syracuse. Makes no sense to me.

No matter how hard I try, I can't build a viable lineup using Defensive Runs Saved (DRS) as the main factor. The addition of Jeff McNeil's sub-par performance in the field so far just adds to the agita one feels when a ball is hit, either in the infield or left field (don't get me started on J.D. Davis). Pete Alonso is no Keith Hernandez but you just can't keep sailing balls out of his limited range. 

In my opinion, the Mets are going to have to keep generating excess runs in order to turn this into a great season.  

Lastly. After one tenth of this season comes to an end, I have to share with you how underwhelmed I am with the results so far. The starters have been okay at best, the pen is still a mess, the defense still sucks, we still haven't found a decent closer, and our hitting has no urgency to it.

I see no reason to elaborate.