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| Even this guy might not be able to fix Carlos Carrasco |
Since I last wrote here, the New York Mets enjoyed a pretty good opening series in Miami, followed by a very bad first game in Milwaukee. The Mets have now navigated a full turn through their starting rotation. While Kodai Senga showed promise of being a good MLB pitcher in his first time pitching here in the States, Carlos Carrasco did nothing to alleviate the concerns I had about him heading into the season. Every pitcher in their bullpen has pitched at least once, with Dennis Santana already appearing 3 times.
For the position players, new Mets Omar Narváez and Tommy Pham enjoyed hot starts for their new clubs. On the other hand, Eduardo Escobar — who desperately needed one to hold off the calls for Brett Baty to replace him — has managed one single in his first 17 PA while amassing 9 Ks. Escobar has a couple of games left in Milwaukee to find something at the plate. If he returns to New York on Thursday still looking completely lost at the plate, he's likely to be the recipient of the fan displeasure that Darin Ruf escaped with his release from the Mets.
As I sit here writing this on Tuesday afternoon, Baty was taken out of Syracuse's game with an apparent hand injury. I obviously have no idea how bad it is, but if it takes Baty out of action for a while that might take some immediate pressure off of Eduardo Escobar, but he needs to show that he still has a pulse at the plate nonetheless.
And so it goes in baseball. Unlike sports which proceed at a more leisurely pace, once the baseball season begins, you're fully immersed in it. It's even more the case this year. The Mets don't have their first day off until Friday. It always strikes me, after 5 decades of being a fan, how you experience the thrill of Opening Day and then slide directly into the middle of another baseball season.
It's tempting to go out on a limb extrapolating from what is still just a handful of games. We do our best to avoid those sports talk radio takes in this space. A couple of weeks from now, Eduardo Escobar might be red-hot at the plate, and Carrasco might reclaim some of the velocity that he seems to have misplaced so far. One of my favorite things about baseball is that it demands a longer attention span than most popular entertainment does these days. All we can fairly say about what we've witnessed so far is that it gives us things to keep an eye on going forward.
But the way Carlos Carrasco pitched in Milwaukee on Monday night was exactly what I hoped not to see out of him in the early going. Carlos managed to pitch pretty well without premium velocity last season, but it certainly gave him less margin for error, particularly against good opponents. To see Carrasco's velocity dip even more his first time out was disheartening.
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Things definitely got real quickly for this year's Mets. While we went into the season with great optimism, hoping for repeats of many of last year's solid seasons from many of the players, the back-to-back beat downs from the Brewers elevated some of our greatest fears.
ReplyDeleteIs the pitching staff too old? Both Scherzer and Carrasco seemed to lose energy quickly. The combination of age and pitch clock was compounded by the 1-2-3 innings that gave them no time to rest and recoup between innings.
Is the lineup too thin? Last year the lineup put tremendous pressure on opposing pitchers by working counts and finding ways to get on base. Clutch hits scored many more RISP than prior seasons. That came despite the fact that there wasn't much pop in the lineup other than Alonso and maybe Lindor. It may be tough to out-homer the Brewers, but we need to start outscoring teams if we want our pitching staff to survive the whole year.