In the second of this 5 part "what went wrong" series, I look at what went wrong after nearly winning the World Series in 2015. Why, in the ensuing 5 seasons, was one wild card game loss the best they could do?
In part 1 of the series, I covered the 2016 failings.
Today? The failings of 2017.
The Mets finished 27 games behind the Nationals, with just 70 wins.
The key reason?
STARTERS MELTDOWN
Bulked up Noah Syndergaard's torn muscle early in the season was a real dagger; he went just 1-2.
Jake's ERA was inflated but won 15 of 25 decisions. Combined, they had 38 starts.
The rest of the starters in the other 124 games? You had to ask, didn't you? OK, I'll tell you.
Matz, Gsellman, Lugo, Pill, Milone, Montero, Harvey, Wheeler, Flexen and Wilk combined overall in starts and relief to allow a staggering 480 runs in 685 innings, or a gosh-awful 6.31 runs per 9 innings for those 10 dudes.
Keep in mind that 685 innings equals 76 nine inning games, or nearly half of all innings for 2017.
Matz and Harvey were falling apart, Wheeler was struggling mightily upon returning, Lugo and Gsellman were mediocre, and Pill, Montero, Milone, Flexen and Wilk were a combined "awful."
It is hard to overcome as much starter adversity as they did - and they certainly failed to meet that steep challenge.
The Mets knew going into the season that Harvey and Wheeler were iffy commodities. They didn't know that about Matz and Thor. But knowing the status of Harvey and Wheeler, they should (one would think) have done more to buy a stud starter that off season, rather than hope everything would fall into place. But that sort of strategic spending was not part of the Wilpon M.O.
The starting pitching scrum caused the Mets to reach into their minors non-depth, and the resulting call up of Paul Sewald went a very unhelpful 0-6 in relief. In case you were wondering, 0-6 guys are season killers.
HITTERS:
The hitters were solid enough in 2017, except for the struggling debut of the now-lethal Dominic Smith (.198 in 167 at bats, albeit with a sign of his power to come).
CONCLUSION:
The Wilpons hoped for the best with the starting rotation, but instead got a worst case scenario. I am not sure that even a very serviceable starter added pre-season would have allowed them to wade through the sea of injuries.
Some seasons get away from you, but not getting another serviceable starter and then having the tidal wave of injuries sealed their fate for 2017.
Even if the Mets had re-signed Daniel Murphy and stuck him at first base in 2016, preventing him from again being a lethal force for the Nationals in 2017, the Mets would not have been able to cut too much into their 27 game deficit in 2017 with the Nationals.
2017 was a true bummer after a World Series appearance in 2015 and a brief WC appearance in 2016.
It had me and my brother saying to one another: "What did we expect? These are the Mets, after all." Perhaps you've said that yourself over the years. Perhaps far more times than you ever thought you would. Like I have.
NEXT ARTICLE:
Where they didn't do enough in 2018 to climb back into real contention after a clunker of a 2017.
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