Paul Articulates – A very alarming issue

The New York Mets have been in an awful skid lately, and you didn’t need me to tell you that.  As of last night’s ugly home sweep by the Dodgers, the Mets have lost 25 of their last 35 games.  Now 55 games into a 162 game season (34%), this $328M team is on track to complete this season with a 65-97 record.

There are teams that have been snake-bitten on losing streaks where anything that could go wrong would go wrong and all one could say is, “That’s baseball”.  This isn’t one of those teams.  These losses, and particularly the most recent ones, were given away by poor execution.  Case in point – in Monday’s loss a 2-0 lead turned into a 2-5 loss in the late innings driven by an inexplicable three double play ground balls not turned into double plays in the same inning.  There have been fielding gaffes, base-running gaffes, weak at-bats with runners in scoring position, and of course pitching mistakes.  I have also seen evidence of a lack of full effort, but that is subjective so I will not introduce it as evidence.  These losses were self-induced failures in winnable games that were close in the late innings.  

If the Mets had a veteran manager, the crowds would be amassing with torches and pitchforks ready to run him out of town.  Instead, very little has been said about Carlos Mendosa’s culpability in this failure.  After all, it is the players that have failed to execute.  But at some point, the mental state of the team has to be influenced by the leadership.  At some point there has to be a tear-it-down house-on-fire team meeting where the latest mishaps are just not accepted.

There are two major reasons that I take such a harsh stance, and none of them has to do with “I’m mad because my team is unsuccessful”.  I’m pretty used to unsuccessful sports seasons, so I can get over that.  What I think is particularly alarming is this:

1) The team has built a long list of talented prospects who have been moving through the development system.  Some (Alvarez, Baty, Mauricio, Vientos, Scott) have already made it up and others are on the verge.  These players may have great skills, but if they are exposed to such a desperate, losing mentality that currently exists in this clubhouse, they are not being trained as winners.  The winning attitude is a deep-rooted psychological mindset that doesn’t have a switch – it gets diffused into a player’s psyche over a long period.  The converse is also true, so this current team’s performance is training a losing attitude in the youth that holds our future.

2) People like to talk about 2024 as a transition year.  Yeah, we’ll be competitive and maybe contend for a wild card.  But next year we’ll go out into the free agent market, purchase some big talent in the right places with Steve Cohen’s money, and come out with a winner.  Guess what, folks?  Big talent doesn’t want to come to a loser.  The players see what is going on.  Juan Soto will not abandon the Yankees to wear Orange and Blue for any amount of money if it looks like this is a perennial 4th place team.  The same goes for the “next Yamamoto”, Corbin Burnes, and the rest of the big names.  If the 2024 Mets don’t look like a team on the cusp of success, they won’t attract the pieces to make it reality.

Now that you are as alarmed as I am, let me say that there is still a light at the end of the tunnel.  This is reversible.  The poor hitting in key situations just needs an adjusted approach.  I hope our coaches are smart enough to be working that right now.  The defensive mistakes are being made by players that are capable of so much more – so it is not time to start spring training all over again it is just time to get people’s minds right so they are focused on execution.  It is also not the ballpark (sorry Tom).  The Mets are currently 4th in the National League in home runs and some of the ones they have hit (Lindor’s on Monday, Nido’s on Wednesday) would have been difference makers if the defense had just executed.

The bullpen is not right.  Edwin Diaz has not found it yet, and maybe his newly diagnosed “shoulder impingement” is his reason.  But the rest of the pen has been among the bright spots in the first third of the season and they are suddenly coming apart.  This is where Mendoza needs to learn a hard lesson.  He was way too quick with the hook in the early season and now that constant day-after-day routine of throwing 4-5 relief pitchers is catching up with him.  I had warned earlier in the season that our starters needed to be contributing more than five innings and that has now become the latest problem.  To fix it, Carlos has to let the starters throw more in the warmer weather and he is going to have to go to a six man rotation to lessen the wear on them.  This is easily done with Megill and Peterson back and a very capable Jose Butto just a phone call away.

This team must have a big wake-up call right now.  Mendoza or his seasoned bench coach John Gibbons has to give the message to the individual players – you are part of the solution or part of the problem.  The latter group will be gone by August 1st.