Tom Brennan - My Delightful Saturday AM Post

YUMMY, DELIGHTFUL SATURDAY TIDBITS 

NEWS OF THE DAY: 

Mets DFA Paul Blackburn and call up Nolan “Ryan” McLean to start today.

Sorry, all you Blackburn aficionados. Time moves on.

So, where does this NY Mets team find itself, several days after the brutal Brewers beat down?

Did the “everything tends to even out” slogan win out, the “treading water” one, or the “please put me out of my misery” one?

Where exactly are Lucas Duda, Danny Muno, and Omar Quintanilla when you need them most? 

Tommy Milone, anyone see him? We need an 0-3, 8.56 guy from 2017 to return.

The Braves Came to Citi to Face the Amusin’s This Week.  

“Amusin’s?” 

No Joke, Said Joe Biden.

The highly desperate Mets came face-to-face with their long-time nemesis, the Braves, this week.

On Tuesday AM, pre-series, I noted that the Braves were coming in with: 

“No Acuna, no Riley, no Schwellenbach, no Holmes, no Sale. And Kelenic, another Mets busted pick, is not there either, hitting a dreadful .214 in 304 AAA at bats, with a mere 4 HRs, after hitting .167 early on this year with the Bravados, appearing all washed up at age 26.  The Mets are facing a heavily damaged Braves team this week.  Can the Mets rebound from their simply awful last 2 months?” 

No. They outscored Atlanta 19-5 by early in the second of the three games, and everyone thought the Mets could sweep. Yeah, but they ended up losing 2 of the 3. 

The bottom of the line up remained somnolent, even inept. 

Cedric the Entertainer is NOT entertaining. 

Helsley stunk it up the rubber game. He was supposed to be great, right?

Arriving behind the Braves come the Seattle Mariners, winners of 8 of 10 and with a better record than he Mets, the Team That Raleigh Built. 

Big Cal arrived on scene with 45 HRs and boosted that to 46 with a titanic shot on Friday night.

How did it go? Well, the Mets led 6-4, before unsurprisingly collapsing in a dung heap thereafter.  

Loss, loss, loss, loss…..

We’re all at a loss.

Anyway…

Not on the Mariners team is Brennan favorite and Mariner prospect Rhylan Thomas, who is hitting .309 in 414 at bats with their AAA affiliate, and somehow has one more K (23) than steals (22). 

If the METS still had Thomas, Tony the Tiger Taylor would be LONG GONE.

NY POST WRITER MIKE VACCARO AND I AGREE:

He wrote on Friday:

Beat the Mets 

This isn’t just a phase: 

Mets are a bad team until they prove otherwise

“It never stops. It never ends.  The losses, they come spinning past in a blurry rush now, all shapes and sizes, all manner of misery.”

Back to me:

Seems pretty obvious, huh, once readers remove rose-colored glasses.

They shouldn’t suck this bad…but they do.

You dedicated watchers, please let me, a non-watcher, know when it changes.

Thank you.

I do know that the Mets peaked at 45-24.

Since then, during the subsequent 53 games, they reeled off a 7 game win streak at one point.

In all other games since that exuberant 45-24 start, excluding the 7 game July win streak, they won just 12 of the other 46 games.

How is that even possible?  I dunno, but IT IS possible in Metsville.

Heads should roll.

And, as the Mets’ pen causes us to hide in bomb shelters….

Remember Houser and Vasil? They are a combined 11-5, 2.30 on an otherwise dreadful White Sox team.  (Whoops, Houser got dealt to the Rays and that hasn’t gone well, so that damages my analogy a bit).

Ex-Met Eric Orze?  2.72 ERA in 31 Rays outings.

And Jose Butto has a 0.00 ERA since being traded.

Ahh, you never know how decisions will pan out.

After all, Drew Gilbert is a rip-roaring 1 for 18 so far in his post-Mets days.

The Orze-led Rays have used just 25 hurlers, nearly 20 fewer than the Mets.

The Mets’ chief competitors, the Phillies, have used just 24 pitchers.

Hey, I didn’t sign “non-Omar” Manaea and Montas-uma’s Revenge.

David did. 

For a mere $109 million, plus luxury taxes galore, he signed them.  

Hey, it’s only money and another blown season, right?

The Mets are still in WILD CARD position by half a game. 

Who thinks they’ll make it?  (Crickets)

CALLIS/DYKSTRA MLB TOP 100 UPDATE:

Guess who in the vaunted Top 100 are numbers 20, 30, 37 and 44 now?  

Messrs. Benge, Jett, McLean, and Tong.

Tong, IMO, should be 20-25 slots higher, of course.

But 4 Mets prospects in the Top 44?  

Usually, if the Mets have 4, they are 78, 86, 92, and 99.

THAT 4 IN THE TOP 44? It ain’t shabby, Crabby.

Speaking of “singles hitter” Jett Williams:

42% of his career hits have been for extra bases.

A higher rate than Francisco Lindor (38.6% of hits for extra bases) in his MLB career. 

I guess that makes Lindor a singles hitter, too, then.

JON SANTUCCI - THE SUPERBLY SUPERB

Santucci the Superbly Superb entered last night’s AA start at 3-0, 3.33 ERA since his promotion from Brooklyn, and last night, he was BRILLIANT! 

No earned runs, great control, 11 of his 16 outs were by strikeout. 55 of 84 pitches for strikes. 

He may be edging past Sproat in starter prospect ranking? 

I say yes, he has.

PARADA WAS A GREAT FIRST ROUND PICK

He is hitting .310 with 8 HRs and 39 RBIs in his last 187 at bats? Really?

Just 4 errors and 7 passed balls. His 19% caught stealing rate is normal.

Without him, too, Jonah Tong is just another guy throwing a rock around.

Great draft pick, that Kevin Parada fella, right?

REMARKABLE THINGS, GOING INTO FRIDAY NIGHT ACTION…

The St Lucie Mets were a remarkable 33-12 in their last 45 games.

Binghamton was a truly remarkable 70-29 in their last 99 games.

Syracuse was a remarkable 30-12 in the second half.

And the NY Mets have remarkably sucked for the last two months.

SOMETIMES, PRACTICE DOESN’T MAKE PERFECT

One of the Mets’ 2 DSL teams trailed 12-1 in the middle of the sixth inning.  The D-Mets had made EIGHT errors.  

It was their game # 54 on the season. A little late in the campaign to make 8 miscues in the first 6 innings.  

Why am I even looking at that?  Like watching a train wreck on video.

Somebody stop me, please!

BEATLES AT SHEA, 60 YEARS AGO TODAY…

If they played one song to portray the hapless Mets, it would be HELP!

CURSED?

Paul Articulates this AM, in response to Reese’s article, wrote:

“ This year's team seems cursed. There is no reasonable explanation why so many random failures would cost games, so therefore there is no reasonable person/persons to blame.”

In February 2024, I wrote the following article about “the Mets Curse”:

But…it feels to me like, year after year, the Mets are cursed:

Edwin Diaz’s freak and utterly bizarre injury kept the Mets out of the playoffs in 2023, and entirely blew up the fairly high risk Mets 2023 plan of adding aging veterans for a slug-out with the Braves.  A healthy Edwin, Verlander, Scherzer, and Quintana, as it turns out, might have added 20 wins and still resulted in the Mets falling short of the Braves slightly for the division, but could have brought the Mets the crown. Instead, Edwin’s freak ACL tear was the first huge tear in the ultimate tear-down of the season.

CURSED? METHINKS YES.  MAYBE YOU THINK, AHH, COINCIDENCE.

Today, while reading Reese’s 7:00 AM article, was actually the first time I watched the video of Edwin Diaz’s injury. Before today, I never did. I knew it would be too upsetting. Sickening. The announcer kept saying, Oh, no…oh, no…oh, no. My thoughts exactly, about Diaz, who was my beacon of hope for this Mets team. Bizarrely struck down. No one else in the WBC “Classic” was, and of course, it wasn’t a baseball injury, it was a bizarre, freak, celebration injury. It was a “Mets injury”. 

It leads me to conclude:

This franchise is cursed. 

Someone in 1986. struck a deal with the devil then to secure that crown. I wish they’d told us they did that, as I would have dropped the Mets and done something more productive.

Unconvinced? What about the death of Brian Cole, who easily could have been the Mets best offensive player ever, even better than David Wright, as this 2013 SI headline indicates:

THE BEST PLAYER YOU NEVER SAW: 

IN CLUBHOUSES FROM CLASS A TO THE MAJORS, EVEN SUPERSTARS SUCH AS ALBERT PUJOLS STILL SPEAK IN AWE OF THE PROMISE OF BRIAN COLE

Think of those near-miss Mets teams from 2000-2007. The Mets May have won 4 championships in those years with Cole as the every-day star outfielder.

Now, in 2024, we can’t even get to the first spring training game without their ace being injured and opening the season on the IL for who-knows-how-long with a shoulder injury; perhaps their best rookie of 2024, and very possibly a line up regular, missing all of 2024 with yet another freaky ACL injury; and Peterson likely missing 30% to 50% of the season after freak hip surgery.

Hope gets ripped out of our chests, truth be told.

Cursed.

David Wright?  Freak back disability. No? Name me a list of players whose backs shortened their careers in the past 25 years. Then divide by 30 teams. Then screen out the marginal and mediocre players. Who else is on that list but David Wright.

Hey, Mets fans, you love superior pitching? OK, I’ll give you a guy who will win TWO Cy Young’s.  But here’s the catch…he’ll start all his games, but average 10 wins. Then he’ll fall apart physically. He, of course, will be…A MET.

Sometimes, there is Mets mercy. Divine intervention, perhaps. 

Satan doesn’t want to make it too obvious. Case in point?

Mets’ best slugger ever? Pete Alonso. 

So what happens to him? His truck is hit by another driver at high speed and Pete’s truck rolls over 3 times. Pete walks away from a near-death experience. Iron Man that he is, he shrugged off what had to have been whiplash and plays like nothing happened. Thank heavens he was wearing his seat harness. “This horrific incident saw his Ford F250 pickup truck get side swiped at a stoplight, before flipping over several times. Thankfully, Alonso came out unscathed, but the experience alone was extremely chilling for him, and left his truck smashed to pieces.