Paul Articulates – Mets risk assessment

The Mets are flying high right now.  At 42-24, they have the best winning percentage in the National League, ½ game behind the surprising Detroit Tigers for the best in baseball.  Alonso is mashing, Soto is shuffling, and the Mets’ pitchers have continued to hold down opposing offenses with the best ERA in baseball.

So why am I not dancing in the street with the other Mets’ faithful?  Well, I had a long career in project management, where you spend all your time developing contingency plans for the next thing to go wrong.  So I am worrying about the next thing that might go wrong for the Mets and what should be done to mitigate the problem.  I am sure David Stearns is thinking about similar things.  

You see, baseball is a long game.  We are 66 games into a 162 game season (40%) so there is a lot of time left.  In a game of ebbs and flows, we are flowing now but at some point we will ebb.  That could be due to injury, slump, matchups against the wrong team at the wrong time, or any number of bad luck scenarios.  Some issues that could arise are predictable.  Let’s talk about one.

The bullpen has been brilliant thus far.  Their 2.91 ERA is the second best in all of baseball, and they have won 14 games for the team.  However, they have also thrown 241 innings, which is a lot for this point in the season.  Fortunately, there has been enough good pitching in the pen to allow Carlos Mendoza to spread those innings out so no reliever has thrown more than Brazoban’s 36-2/3 innings.  

But the fact that they have to cover 3 and 2/3 innings per ballgame concerns me because arms wear thin as the season gets long.  I am sure Jeremy Hefner would love to send them off on vacation for a week to rest.  Especially when we begin a 3-game series against the Washington Nationals who have only scored 11 runs in their last 7 games and have a team batting average of .239.

The Mets faltered in 2023 when they overtaxed their bullpen in the beginning of the season.  We certainly would not want to see a repeat of that debacle.  So what are some mitigation strategies that the Mets could employ to save those arms?

1) Starters go deep.  We are beyond the dangerous cold-weather months where arm problems can arise from the heating and cooling cycles each inning.  Carlos can have a less aggressive hook, particularly against low scoring teams like the Nationals.  And with the offense that has been showing in the last few games, there should be some healthier leads for the starters to work with.

2) Keep long relief in longer.  Paul Blackburn showed how this is done last night.  He recorded the Mets’ first four-inning save since 2008.  It helped that the game was a blow-out, but we have a few people like Blackburn and Butto that can go multiple innings, so rather than remove them too early for a favorable lefty-righty matchup, the wise path may be to leave them in to save those one-inning guys that always seem to be throwing.

3) Bring fresh arms in at every available opportunity.  The Mets have done well with call-ups to relievers like Brandon Waddell, Justin Hagenman, and Kevin Herget.  Take advantage of every rule in the book to bring guys like that in for a couple games to eat some innings.

4) Six man rotation.  The idea of going to the six man rotation originally was considered to give Kodai Senga the extra rest he was accustomed to earlier in his career.  But as we approach the dog days of summer maybe the entire staff can benefit from an extra day of rest.  With Sean Manaea and Frankie Montas coming through their rehab starts now and Blackburn already on the active roster, there are enough quality arms to effectively implement a six pitcher cycle.  

This would not only help the starters, but it would allow pitchers to go deeper into games as mentioned in the first step.

So let’s respect our team health by taking steps to maintain it.  There is still a long haul in front of us, and this roster is good enough to keep winning if they stay healthy.