Cautious Optimist - It Hasn't Been Pretty

 

A confession

The Mets are off to a terrible start.  Really, they are.  Is it as bad as I am going to make it out to be in what follows?  I doubt it.  But it is bad.  Oh, the confession.  I have always been emotionally connected to how the Mets have performed.  Probably to an unhealthy degree.  But it's worse now that I write about the Mets, and I have spilt a lot of ink endorsing the path I understood the Mets to be on.  Not just that, I found myself something of a fanboy. So when the Mets play as poorly as they have, I am not only distressed and unhappy.  I feel let down: betrayed.  That's the confession. 

That said, everything I say in what follows, I believe to be true.  I am genuinely horrified by what I've seen so far from this team. and the thought that it might continue throughout the season is a nightmare I am unprepared to handle.

On the other hand

It's too early to draw conclusions about how the season will pan out for the Mets.  Nevertheless, the team's performance to this point provides no basis for optimism that this story will end well.  The recent 1-5 homestand is something of a punctuation point on the season so far 

If the question is, what's the problem, the obvious answer is, which one. 

You can't fix the problem without figuring out first what the problem actually is and what its cause is (or causes are).  If you misdiagnose the problem, you run the risk of exacerbating it.  If you fail to identify its cause, how can you hope to eradicate it.  

Unfortunately, eliminating the cause of the problem may not lead to solving the underlying problem.  There are many different ways of causing the same problem!  And just as many ways of failing to solve it.

When it comes to this year's version of the Mets, the most frustrating thing for fans is that -- to this point - many of the most significant problems that dogged the team last year have lingered, and, if anything, gotten worse.  To this point, the changes in position players and coaches seems more a case of moving deck chairs on the Titanic than anything else.

Persistent Problems

There are at least two categories of persistent problems: those that persist in spite of substantial changes in personnel and coaches; and those that persist in part because some of the personnel responsible for last year's problem remain in place.

Let's begin by identifying several of the persistent problems before considering them in order.

1. Inability to hit with runners in scoring position.

2. Defense

3. Starting Rotation

4. Bullpen

5. Manager's Performance/ Team DNA

Inability to cash in runners in scoring position

The 2026 Mets have simply not produced with runners in scoring position.  This is half of a larger problem, a part of which is an inability to get runners into scoring position.  This begins with getting on base and continues with moving runners along.  The overall offensive numbers are down from last year.  On base percentage is down; batting average is down; stolen base attempts are down, runners in scoring position who are left on base per game is up, extra base hits (in total and individually, i.e. doubles, triples and HRs)/game are down.  And more.  The Mets were not great offensively last year, especially in the clutch or with RISP generally.  They are worse this year in virtually every category.

Of course, a team doesn't have to be great offensively to have a good year.  They will need, however, to be better defensively, which is a combination of pitching and fielding.   It's hard to judge overall fielding performance.  For example, the 2025 Mets finished with .986 fielding percentage, which was the league average. On the other hand, they committed 63 errors compared to a league average of 49.  Errors contribute negatively to run prevention, but there are ways of preventing runs that have nothing to do with reducing errors.  

A less than eye-popping defense

I think it is fair to say that the Mets fielding defense has not been crisp to this point, in part a result of a number of individuals being forced to play out of position, e.g. Baty in right, Bichette at 3rd and anyone and everyone at 1st.  It is hard to fathom that the Mets have no actual 1B on their roster while currently having two natural 3B, another who has previously played 3B (Mauricio), while starting someone who has been a lifelong SS whose only other infield position had been 2B (Bichette).    The defense is not just a work in progress, but, at the moment seems more like a Spring Training  experiment.  It is early, but this is not how one would prefer to go into the season.  It could have gone worse, and may well have, had the Mets faced a harder early schedule.

The current infield alignment -- such as it is -- provides a very good example of the general claim that there are lots of different ways to fail.  Ostensibly, this team is stronger up the middle than last year's team, but weaker at the corners.  Bichette moving to 3B from SS is not akin to Rodriguez doing so for the Yankees.  Rodriguez was at least Jeter's equal at SS, if not better, and so his was an adjustment to a new position,  the angles and speed at which the ball got to him were the most important obstacles to his performing well, not his arm or his ability to cover the ground or handle the short hop, and bunt plays, which were among the obstacles Bichette has had to face, some of which would have followed him to any position on the infield.

I have expressed the view before that it is a cardinal sin defensively to make two moves rather than one, when doing so makes you weaker at both positions.  Baty had made himself a better than average defensive 3rd baseman and moving him out for Bichette, who is decidedly less than average defensively at the position, makes the team worse defensively both at third and at whatever position Baty is being asked to play on a regular basis.

The Mets played all last year with something of a defensive liability in Pete Alonso at 1st base . A defensive liability on balance, Alonso was not without some defensive excellence, e.g. digging throws out of the dirt.  Second base defense was barely adequate as well.  This year's team, allegedly built around run prevention, features a better second baseman, a bevy of marginally worse and considerably less experienced first basemen, the same SS and a considerably worse 3rd baseman.  

I am excited (and surprised) by Alvarez's offensive improvement, but he is not a defensive asset.  I have my doubts about his ability to call a good game.  He's a work in progress, but the comparison with Torrens' defense is far from encouraging.

 Starting Rotation

In many ways the bullpen and starting rotation are, for me, both the most promising and the most disappointing units on the team  With the exception of Peterson, who seems to have inherited the Tylor McGill malady of having at least one inning every game blow up on him, the remainder of the starters have been very good and at times downright impressive -- which is not to say that they have solved the problem that last year's crew created.  While last year's rotation was both individually and collectively unable to pitch deep into games leading to overburdened and eventually burnt out bullpen, this year's group has improved about 1/2 inning's worth in their starts,  leaving the bullpen with fewer innings to cover  I worry that this improvement will be fleeting.  

If his last start is indicative, Senga is not likely to offer consistently deep starts if he continues pitching on regular rest.  He's provided more than ample evidence that he is at his best -- which is really quite excellent -- on more rest than the norm for others.

Senga can be brilliant.  He has an extraordinary assortment of pitches, but every one of them works off his fastball.  In his three starts on 'regular rest', his fastball velocity has dropped consistently, so much so that in his last start, he barely threw his four seamer, let alone deployed it to set up his other pitches.   Hitters waited on the breaking balls and laid off the ghost fork ball.  When Senga can't beat you with the fastball at least once an at bat, he has no comparative advantage to exploit.  

Holmes is a 5+ innings pitcher as is Peralta.  Senga is a 6+ innings pitcher on 5 days rest.  Who knows how many innings/game he can be counted on when he is asked to take the ball on less rest.

McLean is the ace of the staff, or is he?

ou may recall the following basketball joke.

Q: Who was the last person to hold Michael Jordan to under 20 pts/game?

A: His coach,  Dean Smith.

I'm sure you get the point.  

McLean will never become the ace until he is treated as the ace.  That doesn't mean letting him throw 125 pitches.  It means holding him accountable for getting himself out of jams of his own making.  No manager should see his job as protecting his player's from failing.  Failing is part of their development.  You want them to fail, if they must, in the context of a safe and supportive environment.  It's not all that different from how parents should address their children's accountaiblity and autonomy .  You can't prevent your kids from pain, harm and disappointment.  And a manager shouldn't even try to do so.  

Bullpen

With the exception of Edwin Diaz, last year's bullpen was a mess, one of such magnitude that it had a multitude of causes: overuse, injury incompetence, and especially the disastrous performance of the starting rotation. This year, the bullpen has been uneven at best.  There are structural issues that may emerge later in the year if we can't get good performances when called upon by some of our top tier minor leaguers who will join the major league team from time to time.  And it will be worse if Peterson and Manaea don't come around.

Setting the problems the starting rotation creates for the bullpen aside for the moment, the bullpen (over the first three weeks of the season) was structurally unsound -- no matter how well it would have performed, and at times, did.

Williams has done well as a closer, but he is not a 'lights out' closer: more a Hoffman than a Rivera.   The Mets had no long relievers last year; this year they have two.  With two long relievers, the team began the season (in cold weather, with starters not yet stretched) with an effective day-to-day bullpen of 6 pitchers, two of whom have proven inadequate to the task -- Garcia and Lovelady --  both  recently DFA'd

Considering that closers rarely pitch other than in closing situations that leaves a bullpen of 3 day in, day out relievers, in addition to a one inning closer who could in principle pitch 2 out of 3 days.  Overuse of the bullpen, especially this early in the season when starters haven't been stretched out sufficiently, is certain to follow.   

It gets worse. To minimize the extent of the overuse of the day to day relievers, at least one, if not both of the long relievers -- Myers and Manaea -- would have to be used in high leverage situations,  sometimes off schedule.  Alternatively, Lovelady and Garcia would be put in situations they were not suitable for.  The worst approach would be using both the long relievers and the least suited for high leverage usage -- the former off schedule, the latter at all.  This is what the manager ended up doing,  

The underlying problem was structural and not of his doing.  Still, his decision making approach ended up weakening the pens' ability to perform optimally but turning one unavoidably suboptimal outcome into two.

We simply do not have enough relievers who can be called upon regularly who can be trusted to perform to a reasonable standard.  Maybe that will change.  Minter's return should help, if healthy and adequately ramped up. , and he will be a substantial upgrade provided he is healthy when he returns.  I don't believe anyone should count on Kimbrel finding a fountain of youth.  At best, he will be serviceable -- which is nothing to sneeze at!

No team with championship aspirations can afford to have any relievers whose best use is mopping up.  The situation is a function of the widespread practice among managers to minimize the extent to which starters face the opposing lineup a third time.  

In the case of the Mets, the situation is worsened by the obvious fact that one of the starters needs an additional day of rest more often than not, and a manager who has shown himself to have an itchy trigger finger.  If we have to live with both of these features of the team, we have to plan for it.  And that means we will have to treat the 6th and 7th innings of most games as high leverage situations.  Everyone in the pen has to be up to the task of meeting the moment.

Bullpens are historically unpredictable.  The relievers the Dodgers were initially counting on,performed especially poorly.  Yet they won the world series.  Hopefully we find help from our minor leaguers and can pull off a trade or two at the deadline to bring in higher level reinforcements.

Manager

The construction of the roster is on Stearns, not Mendoza.  Just think what a mess we would be in had Stearns not acquired Peralta and Myers.  Which is not meant as praise.  It is more a reflection of where the pitching staff Stearns had assembled prior to the late in the offseason trade with the Brewers would have looked like. 

The manager has overworked the bullpen, especially, Weaver and Myers.  I don't know what he is doing with Manaea, or what one would do with him at this point. He has put Garcia in high leverage situations and used Lovelady, while he was with the team, as if he were the Everready battery man.  His approach to the starting rotation is puzzling at best.  He kept Peralta in to help him get a win, but he pulled McLean, his. purported ace to be, when he faced adversity of his own doing when he reached the 'magic mark' of 100 pitches.  Isn't the real issue, not the number of pitches as such, but the demand, the stress of the circumstances under which they are thrown?

And hasn't Senga provided enough evidence that if he is to be moved to a 'regular rest' spot, he should be eased into it.  Last Saturday, he not only barely threw his four seamer, he barely had one to throw.   I'd pitch him with additional rest right up through the All-Star game and reevaluate his usage then.  This is clearly a case in which it makes sense to be cautious.

We have a manager giving his catcher and center fielder days off as they work towards being able to provide high quality performance over a full season, yet he can't give Senga an additional day off in spite of all the evidence suggesting that that day may well make all the difference in the world to his performance. 

The way a team plays reflects its manager's temperament.  The Mets are playing without a sense of urgency.  They seem listless.

Let me put it another way.  We gave up a number of potential home runs in the offseason through trades (Nimmo) and free agency (Alonso).  I was all for it.  On the other hand, I took the changes to mean that we were going to find another way to score runs -- and to do so throughout the lineup.  I thought we were going to play a different style of baseball: work the pitchers, waste good pitches, make contact, put pressure on the defense, have them on their heals, use our speed to move them out of position, making them defensively vulnerable.  Isn't that what you thought too?  Where is the energy? The pressure?  The fun?  We look resigned to every defeat, and satisfied to move on to the next game.  I don't know anyone who has gotten what they have aspired to attain by accepting anything less.  

Every player in every sport has to learn to cope with adversity.  Managers have to as well.  Part of doing so is a matter of temperament, an ability to remain calm.  Mendoza is terrific when it comes to calm in the face of adversity.  The leader can't panic, and he doesn't.  This is an important team-facing attribute.  Players don't want to see panic in the manager's eyes.

On the other hand, the real point of remaining calm is to stay clear headed so that one can address the situation thoughtfully.  Managing through adversity provides the opportunity for the manager to actually add value, to be the source of additional, sometimes unexpected wins.  So far, over two plus years, Mendoza hasn't shown that he can do that.  Even the magical run two years ago was triggered by leadership among a handful of the players, not the manager.  

I wish I could say that the manager is not part of the problem, but I have no basis for that judgment.  I am, alas, pessimistic.