Reese Kaplan -- Doing Nothing Is Never a Recipe for Baseball Wins

If not for Justin Verlander pitching like, well, Justin Verlander, the Mets management and fans would be either homicidal or suicidal with the way the club has been playing lately.  While it's possible to look at ailing and broken pitching staff as the culprit, the fact remains that they simply are not hitting like professionals and that very long stretch of ineptitude has to change.

Let's put on our thinking caps for a minute and consider what could be done.  Note the word is "could" and not "will" or "should" in explanation of how wholesale changes theoretically affect the outcome both now and in the foreseeable 2024 and beyond future.

Fix the DH

No one seems nearly as polarizing a figure as big Daniel Vogelbach.  He's well liked by his teammates and frankly is one of the few positive signs on the club if you look at OPS as an exclusive tool for evaluating player performance.  The fact is, however, he is not delivering runs.  He's not putting the ball over the fence.  He is not getting hits with runners in scoring position.  He can't run a lick and there is nowhere for him to play on the field.  At his $1.5 million salarly the old Wilpon way of thinking would be that he's a great value.  No he is not.  He was brought here to tee off on right handed pitching and to work towards at bare minimum 20 HRs.  He is doing neither.  It is time for him to go.

The right side of the DH quandary is even worse.  We tried Darin Ruf.  We tried Tommy Pham.  We tried Eduardo Escobar.  We occasionally even tried moving Mark Canha from his LF position.  We witnessed a game or two with Pete Alonso getting a partial day off from on-the-field defensive duties.  It is not working.  This phenomenon is not relegated to the current cold streak.  It has existed for more than a full season given the dearth of offense in 2022 and the trend continuing in 2023.  We have seen far enough.

Right now there are hitters in AAA tearing it up yet not getting a call to the majors.  There is no reason for Mark Vientos to continue to demonstrate he knows how to hit and not being recognized for it.  Either promote him and assign him to be the DH or trade him for someone who can take over that role.  Doing nothing is just so Wilponian it hurts. 

Fix the Catching

Everyone acknowledges that catching is a skill that's particularly punishing on the body.  Everyone also would agree that if your body hurts then you are likely to develop bad habits to compensate which will negatively affect your productivity in the batter's box as a hitter.  We all saw James McCann fail to deliver during his Mets tenure.  Then we brought in Omar Narvaez to fill the gap and help tutor Francisco Alvarez when he later in the season got promoted.  We all saw what happened to those best laid plans.  Then this week we found out that Tomas Nido is having vision problems and hit the IL himself.  That leads to the latest Johnny Un-Bench promotion, Michael Perez.  (For those folks not fully familiar with his performance metrics, suffice to say he'd make the unseeing Nido look like Mike Piazza by comparison.  

What's particularly funny right now is that the player everyone ridiculed when the Mets signed him, Gary Sanchez, may be the best of the lot to back up the promoted-too-soon Fransisco Alvarez.  Although he's never been known to hit for an average nor demonstrate great skills calling games, he is a bonafide power hitter and has a cannon for an arm.  Both of these attributes in addition to his ability to speak Spanish should help provide support to the young catching phenom who is starting to hit the ball after adjusting to the new level of pitching in the major leagues.

Fix the Outfield  

You have Brandon Nimmo doing just fine.  Starling Marte has been too good for too long to give up on him prematurely.  Left field, however, has been a wasteland as has the substitute outfielder selection the Mets have tried.  There is no one in the minors ready for a promotion to the majors to replace primarily Mark Canha.  The best way to handle this issue is to make newly minted second baseman Ronny Mauricio into your every day second baseman and last year's batting champion Jeff McNeil into your every day left fielder.  Essentially that move would add power that Canha is not providing in the form of free swinging Mauricio.

Fix the Bench

Here's where it gets tricky.  You have a slew of players outlined on Friday that includes the aforementioned Vogelbach, Nido, Escobar, Canha and others who are not performing.  You can add Luis Guillorme to that list.  The question becomes whether this slew of bad investments perpetuates itself by playing highly irregularly yet somehow corrects what hasn't been working, or do you need to make wholesale changes here?  The problem, of course, is that unless someone is a bonafide backup player who is accustomed to that role and will not be whining about not being in the starting lineup every day, it's difficult to deal with second tier players as if they were fantasy baseball studs.  

One approach that can be tried is to identify particular skill sets you need and hope to find players who can deliver in that regard.  Tim Locastro is a great example of someone who can play the outfield and run with abandon.  He has those skills to offer and speed almost never goes into a slump.  Similarly a home run threat in Sanchez is certainly preferable to the drawing-a-walk threat some of the incumbents provide.  

After that it gets sketchy.  Veteran White Sox infielder Danny Mendick is on the 40-man roster and could be a right handed replacement for Luis Guillorme capable of playing three infield positions and showing both power and speed.  Perhaps it is time to bundle up what isn't working like Guillorme and Vogelbach to clear some bench space with minor deals.  Don't overpay like was done for Darin Ruf, but taking low level minor leaguers or lesser veterans who could assume a more productive role could work. 

Pitching is another problem for another day...for now it's the frustration of continuing to do nothing when what you have isn't working that is causing many of us to reach for the antacids (or something stronger).