Reese Kaplan -- Looking Back and Looking Ahead for 2023 Season

During the All Star Break many of us normally go through a bit of diamond withdrawal without having the game we love so dearly readily available on television nor on radio.  This period of forced escape from balls and strikes is perhaps welcome to other around us like our family who sometimes might feel as if the slap of a leather coated sphere into a leather glove is sometimes seemingly more important to us than the sound of a loved one's laughter.

This year in 2023 is a little different in that this time around people might actually be looking forward to baseball's break.  Mets fans road into this season on high in which anything short of a World Series championship was not going to matter much at all.  Obviously the outcome of games this year are not anything like Steve Cohen, Billy Eppler nor millions of fans saw in their wildest nightmares.  Consequently a long week away from the game may be just what the doctor ordered.

With the game considering the All Star Break the unofficial halfway point of the season, it's often a time to look both back at accomplishments and failures from the first half while concurrently looking at what to expect from the second one.  I will try my best to refrain from the big "F" part of that reminiscence so you can enjoy this interval without the need for strong drink, over the counter painkillers nor intervention by professional therapists.  Then we will look at the plans and expectations for the second half in various iterations.

What Went Right During 2023's First Half?

Little by little Japanese rookie Kodai Senga has worked his way into the hearts and souls of Mets fans who are much more accustomed to Japanese fizzles like Kazuo Matsui and Tsuyoshi Shinjo.  For once it appears the team got it right and at a rate of $15 million per season they will be happy for the remainder of this season and four more years to follow at what will be regarded as bargain level pay.

The trade for little known Brooks Raley meant very little to the fans when it was announced but the fact is other than him being left handed with one outlier good season on the back of his baseball card no one knew what to expect.  It now appears that 2022 was not just a lucky performance but that Raley late into his baseball life fixed whatever it was that was broken and he is probably pushing to replace Adam Ottavino as the 8th inning guy leading to...

Senior bullpen statesman David Robertson has done nothing to dissuade anyone from the front office's late acquistion who became the closer out of necessity when Edwin Diaz danced his way onto a 2023 hiatus.  Robertson has not wavered and is delivering stunning work albeit with far fewer save opportunities than people might have expected by this point in 2023. 

The surprising promotion of Grant Hartwig to the big club didn't erupt into fireworks or the reverence reserved for top draft picks.  Yet all Hartwig has done in his brief trial at baseball's highest level is excel.  His numbers are stunning.  He's appeared in 8 games, pitched 11.1 innings, holds a 0.79 ERA, won a game, lost a game and is holding opponents to a .189 batting average.  Yes, his strikeouts could be higher and walks lower, but fans actually enjoy seeing this 25 year old rookie called into a game.

What more can be said about top prospect Francisco Alvarez and his forced 2023 promotion to the majors due to injury to starting catcher Omar Narvaez?  He's slugging his way into contention along with Senga for Rookie of the Year contention while demonstrating he's been a quick learner when it came to improving how he handled the pitchers defensively.  Fans are happier about this farm family promotion than they've been about anyone in quite some time.

While Brandon Nimmo may have been snubbed for a deserving All Star appearance, he's showing with his bat, his legs and his glove an all around performance level that fully justified his new offseason contract making him a Met for the foreseeable future.  Center field has often been occupied by AAAA types in the hopes of hitting, running or fielding strong enough to look past the other attributes not happening.

What Can Fans Expect During the Second Half?

There's a crowd of folks hoping to see the Mets make up for the disastrous 2023 midyear transactions and see the Mets pull out the stops to provide the missing pieces that could jumpstart the club's recent win streak to propel them into contention.  Clearly they need help at DH and in the bullpen while other clubs have players they might want to move that wouldn't cost as much for rental as they would for a full year's service.  This crowd is hoping to see Eppler wave his magic wand.

At the other end of the spectrum are folks who acknowledge that the probability of October baseball ranks right up there in likelihood as buying a winning lottery ticket.  For the people who tend not to speculate on such things, there's hope instead for a great selloff of expiring or short term contracts to contending clubs in exchange for fuel for the Mets upper minors to help propel the team into longer term contention than a wild swing at a quick fix for 2023.  

Coinciding with a selloff which has 2024 and 2025 as its expected seasons of reward, there are a number of folks deserving of promotion from the Syracuse and Binghamton rosters which will help the club get a couple of month long term look at how they respond to the highest level of pitching and batting against them.  Fresh faces always draw an interest when they come with a glitzy minor leage stat sheet, so this increased Uber bill will likely regenerate some of the lost enthusiasm for the club.  

Perhaps the toughest thing to see in the second half of this woeful season is more losing.  However, the question is whether it is a mortgage the future approach where more prospects leave Metsville for the team's 2024 hope to unearth a not-so-hidden gem to turn the year around.  The other approach would be to accept the price of importing new rookies and promoting in-house rookies who may not help much in 2023 but could lay the groundwork for what should be a better long term outcome in 2024.  

So what do you think was best about 2023 and what do you foresee for the remainder of the year?