Paul Articulates – How did we get here?

The New York Mets have the highest payroll in baseball right now – an estimated $330M for the opening day roster, and who knows where it will be by the end of the year.  Of that amount, a whopping $127.6M is being spent on the opening day starting rotation: Scherzer, Verlander, Senga, Quintana, and Carrasco.  Of course, one has been out for the first half of the season and some of the others have spent time on the IL, but every Mets fan can attest to the fact that we are certainly not getting the expected return on that investment.  As of Sunday night, the team sits in fourth place in an underperforming NL East at 31-35, 9.5 games behind the Braves and six games behind the Miami Marlins with their $92M payroll.

So what happened?  Was this a failure of the leadership, failure of the management, failure of the players, bad luck, or a combination of all the above?  I have some theories, and I’m sure that everyone reading this post has some too.  Let’s think through this.

1) The $127M+ investment in starting pitching has clearly been a bust.  OK, no one could have anticipated the Quintana injury so that one gets chalked up to bad luck – which is fairly common in Mets lore.  But should we have known that the duo of aces we bought for $43M apiece would have put together only 92 1/3 innings over the first 66 games with 7 wins between them?   

There are certainly a bunch of folks that would say “I told you so” because both Scherzer and Verlander are at very advanced ages for their livelihood.  But it is not that easy.  Both had shown the ability to pitch at the highest level just a year ago – in fact, Verlander won the American League Cy Young award.  When Scherzer was signed to his three year agreement, he was arguably in the top three of all NL pitchers.  

Here’s where it went wrong, and I would argue that few if any could have seen it coming.  The pitch clock rule change has dramatically changed the stamina of everyone that takes the mound; and probably more so for those in their late 30’s or early 40’s like our two aces.  The reduced time between pitches has reduced recovery time for the muscles involved and even when the pitchers are on the bench during the offensive side of the inning, things go quicker and they are back up and on the mound in much less time than in prior years.

Less stamina equates to a quicker drop in velocity and “snap” on the breaking balls, causing more hittable balls, more base runners, more runs, and shorter outings.  Max has 53 1/3 innings in 10 starts – an average of five innings and a batter per start.  Justin has 39 innings in 7 starts – an average of 5.5 innings per start.  Carrasco has 41 innings in 8 starts – once again roughly 5 innings per start.  Megill is good for less than five innings – 63 innings in 13 starts (and he’s not even old in baseball terms).

The net result of a set of starting pitchers lasting only 5 innings is a huge burden on the bull pen, because they have to fill an average of 4 innings per game.  In April, they delivered because they were fresh.  Now, they are not fresh, and although there have been some very admirable efforts by the relief crew, there have also been plenty of “bad days”.  Here is an astounding stat: the Mets have had 272 appearances by pitchers in 66 games.  That is a little over four pitchers appearing in each game.  When none of them is particularly well rested, the probability of failure of at least one of them is fairly high.  So do you wonder why the Mets’ team ERA is 4.69, 26th in MLB?

2) The Mets have invested in several very expensive impact players and a bunch of expensive supporting players who are all veterans that understand the game very well and could provide leadership to upcoming prospects.  Unfortunately, despite last year’s success most of these veterans are underperforming.  A few years ago, if you projected a lineup with Francisco Lindor, Starling Marte, Tommy Pham, Eduardo Escobar, Mark Canha, Omar Narvaez, and even Daniel Vogelbach people would have said, “This team is going to score some runs”.  They haven’t made the grade, scoring just 290 runs in 66 games which puts them 8th of 15 teams in the NL.

Of that bunch, Lindor is the most interesting story, and an entire post can be written on his career in Orange and Blue.  He was a key acquisition a few years ago, and even though the Mets gave up some talent to get him (Rosario and Gimenez among others); it made a statement that the team was committed to winning and would go big on contracts to get there.  One could argue that he has not put up the numbers to earn that big $341M contract, but he has been a very capable leader, a stellar defender, and someone who delivers with men on base.  It is disconcerting that he is currently sporting a .216 batting average but he is still 8th in the NL in RBI.

Marte was a huge factor in the Mets’ success last year and there were many that argued that the late season fade was a result of losing him to injury in September.  This year, after surgery to put him right, he has just not been right.  It is difficult to ascertain why, as he has shown the ability to run with a team-leading 18 stolen bases plus several drag bunts and sprints to cancel potential double plays.  But the hard contact at the plate is not there, and his fielding has been sub-par this year.  Without Starling in the 2 hole making things happen, the Mets’ offense is much less dynamic.

Pham, Canha, and Escobar have had their moments but there have not been enough of them and it has been very unpredictable when they will come through.  So setting a lineup has become sort of a crap shoot even though it is backed by tons of analytics covering their past performance (when they were better).  I certainly would not want to be the guy responsible for creating a lineup card with the inconsistency of these veterans.

Vogelbach is another interesting study.  He was the darling of the New York fans last year with his keen eye, twitchy at-bats, and timely hitting.  This year, however he has lost the keen eye and the timely hitting which has many calling for his dismissal.  Buck Showalter seems to be the only guy hanging on to the hope that Vogey will regain the on-base abilities he showed last year.

3) The Mets’ leadership has continued to let this all play out.  Although they have started to embrace the fact that this unfortunate season is an opportunity to get the young prospects some good experience, they still allow Mark Vientos to ride the bench way too long and have not yet pulled up a sizzling Ronny Mauricio.  

Yes it is true that you probably won’t dominate the National League with four rookies in the lineup, but it is also true that you’re not dominating without them either.  We know that baseball is a marathon and you need to use lots of patience, but with less than 100 games remaining it is now beyond the point where it is acceptable to say “It’s still early”, so the fact that the team is not buying in to some significantly new approach implies complacency.  That may be OK for a small market team, but it is unacceptable for the highest paid team in baseball.

In summary, there has been a mix of bad luck, failure to anticipate the impact of a rule change, unpredictable underperformance of veteran players, and an unsettling lack of urgency to drive a change in direction.  Mets fans are justified in feeling frustrated right now.