8/5/21

Ray Savage - Plan For Next Year

 


SAVAGE VIEWS – Season’s Over – Plan for Next Year

August 5, 2021

Time to face reality.  The Mets are not going to make the playoffs this year.  While they hold a 2 ½ game lead over the Phillies as I write this post, the writing is on the wall.  Both the Phillies and the Braves made trade deadline improvements that improved their clubs.  It appears that the Mets will head into September in third place having relinquished their first place standing.  If we can’t beat below average teams such as the Pirates, Reds and Marlins, how can we expect to compete against the good teams of the NL West?

Of course, hope springs eternal. We will welcome the return of Jake and Thor to shore up the pitching staff.  And there are other arms on the way to strengthen the bullpen.  But, it will fall short.  The lack of timely hitting will continue to doom us.  It’s really puzzling when you look at the starting eight.  Individually they appear to be good to great players but, for whatever reason, don’t mesh as a team.  And, let’s not forget, the starting pitching, so good prior to the All-Star break, has declined precipitously. 

If we continue on this downward spiral and fail to make the playoff, major changes will be in order. 

SANDY AND ZACK

Time to bring in a new management team to right this ship.  The Kumar Rocker fiasco is just the latest in a series of blunders that have put the Mets on the wrong path.  Say what you want about Brodie Van Wagenen, but he did rebuild the farm system by drafting wisely.  Brodie probably would have had a back-up plan by drafting a HS athlete committed to college who could be wooed away with a large signing bonus in the event Rocker was not signed.

I definitely did no care for the Javier Baez trade.  He is an all or nothing player who will dazzle on occasion and let you down more often than not.  I fail to understand why any pitcher would throw him a strike.  Baez will swing at everything thrown his way.  The idea that we will hand him a long-term expensive contract is ludicrous. We already have one bad contract in Lindor.  The worst part was having to surrender our only true CF prospect in PCA.

If we sign Baez to play second where does that leave McNeil – left field maybe.  McNeil is not an adequate third baseman.  Wish we could have landed Trea Turner instead.

LUIS ROJAS

Failure to make the playoffs will mean that the team has underperformed two years in a row.  I understand the argument that these were two difficult and unique years.  However, someone should pay the price.  I wanted Rojas to succeed but his team has fallen short. 

MAKING OVER THE TEAM.

We can’t keep parading out the same players and expect different results.  Except for deGrom, Alonso and perhaps Nimmo and McNeil everyone else should be made available.  We really need to upgrade at CF and third base at the very least. 

Going into the season my hopes were high.  I thought we had one of the best offensive teams ever to play for the Mets only to be disappointed once again.

Sayonara 2021.

Ray

3 comments:

Mack Ade said...

Ray

I hope last night's win begins a road back for you.

Your weekly post will be missed.

Anonymous said...

At First

I honestly thought that I was reading "Michael Savage" (of SF fame), and not our beloved Mets' writer Ray Savage. His article started out a little too negative sounding even for me the eternal contrarian here. But within a couple of sentences of reading on, I concurred once again with Ray.

I agree on Javier Baez.

By trade deadline, I was hoping for a starter with a solid record of accomplishment who could fill the constant injury gaps created here, and then a batter/fielder who was electric but professional, and consistently so.

The pitcher part (to me) was probably Jose Berrios or maybe Max Scherzer. While the batter part was someone like Ray suggested in Trea Turner, because the 2021 NY Mets had battled consistency and batting average the first half and needed to stabilize.

The team was underperforming offensively first half.

It was due to Covid 19 concerns, and maybe too other things that I am not fully aware of just being a Mets' fan. There was a "something" in the air I felt. Maybe JD's three errors game, how dare he! Off with his head! Like "Prince David" had never had those games in his career. The constant whining regarding Mets' CF Brandon Nimmo supposedly not being good enough defensively there, which is baloney because through 51 games played (43 starting) the man has "ZERO ERRORS" in 2021. So give this baloney a rest will you all please. The guy is a stud Mets' player and deserves all our respect. Try to name a better Mets' centerfielder ever. Mookie? Lenny? Lee? Come on people!

Trea Turner maybe was the better target for the trade deadline than Javier Baez was.

He was hitting a .322 BA with the Nationals, with a .300 career BA, and had a one year $13.0 million contract expiring at the end of 2021. The Nationals were selling off and this would have been nice getting trea. But we had Jeff McNeil on second here already, and so what was the big urgency need there at second base anyway?

Plus, I am not a big fan of some of these (sort of) unbalanced Latino players we seem to collect here for some unbeknownst reason to me. If this behavior somehow sparks a team to play better baseball, then fine I guess. But to me it is just sheer immaturity and I am getting sick of it here actually. Just play the game. Play it hard. And let your effort speak for itself.

As far as Kumar Rocker goes.

Again, he sort of reminded me of another "Jenrry Mejia debacle" forming especially after the NY Mets did not do their sufficient homework on the guy, and fell in love with him too quickly sort of reminding me of the NY Knicks' brass with their very brittle center Mitchell "Alley-Oop" Robinson.

Centers kind of sometimes do need to be able to put a shot in the hoop (once and awhile) from outside the six-foot range. It is part of the game too.

On Manager Luis Rojas

In all fairness, grade undetermined at this time.

He has made some mistakes that have hurt this team in 2021, but not the "deadlier ones" like past managers here have. I'd give him to the end of 2021, then see.

I just cannot stand analytics in baseball, not all the time at least. I like managers who just seem to always trust their baseball instincts, much better. A manager (to me) can overuse analytics I think. Not everything is computer predictable.

It's baseball man, baseball! Go with your learned experience and gut reads.

Anonymous said...

On Covid 19 / Delta Variant

This stuff will impact all of sports and on every level of play.

There just simply isn't enough strong and conclusive information out there to be found unfortunately. But we have to stay wise and continue to research anyway, until more can be concluded by our medical leadership.

Here's an interesting article I just found today that may inform.

https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/delta-infections-among-vaccinated-likely-contagious-lambda-variant-shows-vaccine-2021-08-02/