Tom Brennan - THE METS WITH AND WITHOUT YOENIS CESPEDES

First of all, the Mets will be better without the Wilpons, and better with Mr. Cohen, that much I can tell you.  

Congratulations and best wishes, Steve...millions are pulling for you to wildly succeed.

Mr. Cohen, my brother, also named Steve, wanted you and Macks Mets readers to know that he is "SO very very happy" that you are here and the Wilpons are gone.   I think we both feel that with a few key tweaks, this team could be real good - for real long.

Now, on to my topic du jour.

Yoenis Cespedes did prove helpful to the Mets in the season opener with his game winning home run.

After that, he had one other big contribution: 

He left the team. The former La Potencia became La Departia.

He ended up going just 5 for 31 when he bailed.

He sure did the Mets a favor.

After that first game win, the Mets were 1-6 in games he played in.  

2-6 in games he played in, but 19-20 in all other games, despite horrendous pitching by and large.

Cespedes was 3 for 24 over his last 6 games.

Worst of all, he was holding back the prodigious one, Dom Smith.  

Through August 1, the day of Cespedes' last game, Smith was just 2 for 9 (with 5 RBIs, though).  He was not playing nearly enough.

Since then, Smith is playing regularly, and is arguably baseball's best hitter over that span.

Team-wise, over the first 9 Mets games, through Cespedes' last game (his 8th), the Mets hit pretty well, 81 for 313 with 38 runs.

But 4 of those were against baseball's worst pitching staff, the Red Sox.

In 5 of those games, they scored just 8 runs.

Since then?  Thunderous offense.

The pitching has sabotaged this team, not just Cespedes, and the RISP hitting for players other than Mr. Smith has been quite weak.   But the Mets are better off without Cespedes,

Maybe he can land elsewhere in 2021 a la Matt Harvey in KC in 2020, and try to revive a very stalled career.

I was excited to see what he could do in 2020.

Now, I am excited he is gone.  His 2015 was a thrill, says, B.B. King, but now....THE THRILL IS GONE.  Cespedes is gone, and with that, we have one less reason to have the blues.