Well, well, well...where to begin?
First there was the sweep of the Detroit Tigers that was a long overdue three day period in which the Mets looked like a first division ballclub after a year long bottom-of-the-barrel scraping to try to stay out of last place.
Then came the first game against the Yankees and it was a, “Oops, here we go again!” moment when the club not only lost the game but also had their de facto ace starting pitcher to a batted ball that fractured his fibula. It was almost as if the baseball world was not going to allow the Mets and their fans have even a 4th day of positive feelings.
But what happened next no one anticipated. The Mets won games 2 and 3 of the Subway Series to take the bragging rights for the Citifield based side of the annual rivalry. There were a lot of Mets fans who became giddy about that and planned how best to needle and otherwise humiliate their Yankee fan rivals with the results.
From there the Mets moved onto Washington, DC to face the Nationals. As a club that typically doesn’t hit the upper echelon of the NL East, many felt the Mets would be able to build upon their Bronx Bomber momentum. For awhile it appeared more of the same old/same old performance but then the club blew it’s late game lead and fans were heading towards the edge of an elevated ledge.
When the 12th inning arrived with a runner on second base the Mets fans were hoping for at least a base hit to drive in the 7th run to take a 7-6 lead over Washington. Nowhere did anyone imagine the club would proceed to have a record setting 10-run outburst before the Nationals recorded the third out. At that point the club opted to use Craig Kimbrel for the theoretically game winning bottom of the inning. Although he allowed a run to score, the Mets finished the game with a 9-run margin of victory. Now that one felt like it was early season champagne worthy.
Going forward the Mets have made a few personnel decisions as they gear up for life without Clay Holmes and bullpen needs that extend beyond the since dispatched Joey Gerber. The starting pitcher promoted for Wednesday’s game was a bit surprising when instead of former New York Met Jonah Tong or fast rising Jack Wenninger, the club opted to promote short term lefty Zach Thornton to take that start as it fell on his day of regular pitching assignment. Thornton is not a flame thrower but he has shown great control and for now no one knows if he’s a David Peterson-like secondary pitcher with an opener preceding him, if he’s here as a long term temporary solution or is he around long enough for Tobias Myers to get stretched out to handle at least 5 innings as a starting pitcher. Nowhere did anyone suggest Sean Manaea was an option, so here we are.
The other change made which involved needing a roster spot after moving AJ Minter to the 60-day IL was the somewhat unexpected arrival of 29 year old right hander Daniel Duarte, a refugee of minor league and foreign ball who has had mostly positive results wedged around a couple of missed years due to injury. In Syracuse over 12 games he owns a 2.60 ERA so it’s not the weirdest idea in the world to test him out. It’s not as if Gerber and a multitude of others in AAA seem like major difference makers.
17 comments:
Minter just joined both the Kodai Senga and Frankie Montas fan clubs. You pay, I don’t play.
Last night started beautifully then turned very ugly. Keystone Kops. The bottom 4 guys in the Mets line up, with no hits, while the top 5 had 10, has been an all too frequent occurrence in many Mets seasons. Benge is absolutely on fire.
Benge .400/.455/.533 over last 15 games. Wow.
Benge sprays the ball, is rarely overmatched and at this early stage of his career nevertheless performs as someone who lets the game come to him.
McLean had a terrible game. I doubt I was the only one who noticed, but on the vast majority of his breaking pitches he did not complete his follow through. His right side did not get all the way through the motion and as a result his sharper breaking stuff ended up inside to righties and outside to lefties. When his body compensated it did so by throwing across his body which led to hit batsmen and really bad control. He lost control of his release point overall and ended up trying to guide the ball rather than pitch. It is clearly something that is correctable, and have no doubt he will put in the work. He needs to throw more strikes and not treat his arsenal like a buffet menu. You can't sequence correctly when you are throwing a little bit of everything you've got. You've got to focus on what's working and likely to work best against particular hitters. It's a one on one match and your arsenal gives you weapons but you have to brain your way to success, batter by batter, with the pitches you have a good feel for on any given day. Sometimes you won't have much of a feel for any of them. Last night sure looked like one of those nights.
Also last night was a comedy of errors without the laugh track. Put it behind and move on. But as fans we should be mindful that the club has not played a lot of clean games during the winning month of May. They still have work to do to tighten things up.
Good sign for Bichette though. I can see why Morabito has trouble with righties while mashing lefties. His upper body opens up fractionally early. I took video off the TV from behind the pitcher camera location; not the perfect capture of course. I wouldn't change anything mechanically, and just work on a drill of throwing him all different kinds of pitches on the outer half of the plate in batting practice and directing him to hit those pitches to right center or over the 2B head; then CF, then LF and repeat over and over until he learns the different feel required to keep the lead shoulder into the swing and what it feels like to release the energy in different directions. he should be fine and able to develop into a good hitter against both lefties and righties.
You are supposed to win games when they start off 5-0 and your ace is on the mound
I have been waiting for a dominant outing by McLean. Plenty of ones with too many pitchers and tons of foul offs.
Then came this clunker.
You can kiss away the ROY
Daniel Who? Does he play first? Time to stop building a team with parts from the scrap yard.
Paul, I would love to see the Mets use 2026 as a platform to develop their future:
1B - Vientos
2B - Ewing
SS - fill in until Lindor returns
3B - Baty
OF - Soto, Benge, Morabito
C - defensive specialists
SP - McLean, Thornton, Scott, Wenninger, Tong
You've given up on Ewing already?
Brutal game last night. Started off so well…
Minter pitched a clean inning in Syracuse last night. Young started as well. Two injured players on the mend?
McLean must learn from last night. His coaches as well.
I think the best chance one has of seeing most of those players is to take a trip to Syracuse :-). Again, I am certain to be in the minority on this, but if Tong doesn't develop a pitch along the horizontal plane, I simply don't see him as starter -- forgetting the stress he puts on his lumbar spine. He may be an effective back of the bullpen reliever but then the lumbar spine issue would be even more worrisome as he would have to pitch more often.
Scott has yet to win a major league game but we can agree that's not all his doing. Still this is his first year back from TJ and pitchers who blossom after the surgery report that they feel more confident and less fearful of the injury in their second year back -- which makes sense. I believe Santucci has better stuff that would play at the major league level than everyone on the A list other than McLean. Wenninger and Thornton feel more like glue pitchers that help tie the rotation together: keep the ball in the yard; allow the defense (what defense?) to make a play, induce weaker contact and move the game along and keep the team in it. Every staff can use pitchers like that. We don't have a true ace yet and don't think we will from the existing home grown talent.
Vientos will certainly have his chance to show this year as Polanco isn't going to come back anytime soon. Baty will have a bit less time as Lindor will find a way to play sooner rather than later, and probably too soon. That would move Bichette back to 3b. If, however, the team was committed to seeing what both Baty and Vientos have, then the thing to do would be to move Bichette to second, make Soto the full time DH at least until the end of June and have the 3 rookies patrol the outfield. No need to rush Ewing to 2nd B yet if you feel you need to figure out exactly what you have in Vientos and Baty. Semien becomes your defense first utility infielder.
I don't see Vientos, Baty or Alvarez as core players on a championship roster. Not ours; anybody's. But for those who disagree about Baty and Vientos, you should want the Mets to find out which one of us is right no later than the end of this season, because lots of decisions going forward depend on the answer to that question. My view is that Baty is potentially a 26th man in a McEwing role that eliminates the need to roster a 5th outfielder and Vientos is potentially part of split DH situation and also a back-up at 1B. I don't see them as core players going forward. They are better than what we otherwise currently have, but that should not be the standard.
If you thought you would have a 1B from the minors ready to play the position at a major league level both offensively and defensively by 2028, would you rather have Vientos in the interim period or even Goldschmidt? My view is that you would want Vientos only if you thought he was the answer for the next 5 or 6 years, not the next two. And I feel similarly about Baty but for his versatility. Of course I could be wrong on one or both of them, but whether or not I am should be something we know by season's end if not the trade deadline.
No
Trade Bo for prospects
Play them daily in 2026 to prove their worth
Apparently the Minter move was more like an accounting strategy. His being moved to the 60 day IL allowed for the Duarte move while not impacting Minter's eligibility to return to teh Mets on May 25, which we can expect he may well do. The only problem is that we may then have too many pitchers on the roster, so dropping Melendez would not alleviate the situation≤m .
Trading Bo will cost lots of money because he has unilateral options for this year and the next and no team who wants him, say the Phillies will be willing to pick up the bulk of that liability. It would reunite him with Mattingly and maybe they would give him an extension as they had planned on giving him a long term contract before the Mets swooped in. But I thought the Mets swooped in partially to prevent him going to the Phillies and also why would the Phillies do that until they have to, when they can get the Mets to pay for a large part of next year as well as this year. Who else would be interested? Maybe the Red Sox? No one is going to give the Mets first tier prospects with him having the option this year that he could exercise and they would want the Mets to pay a big chunk of next year if he didn't exercise the option. I just don't see the return on a trade that makes sense. He's not going anywhere would be my guess. Neither is Robert nor Polanco. Three signings and none tradeable this year or next. That's not good management of assets by Stearns: two done in by injuries that were always predictable, and one by opt outs in each year. At this point, it's best understood as minimizing the extent to which you have to pay costs going forward. Don't exercise team option on Robert; maybe Bichette continues hot play and opts out, or you better make good use of him this year and next. He has to opt out after next year or risk looking for a long term contract at 31 off whatever he has done with the Mets for 3 years. It's all up to him, unless the Mets pay him a lump sum to opt out this year -- which makes little sense. If he doesn't perform well for the rest of this year, he'd want to come back and prove his worth knowing that it is in his interest to opt out thereafter. Polanco ain't going nowhere this year and he's ours next year and perhaps tradeable at some point during the season for pennies worth of prospects on the dollar. Really poor asset management.
2nd base
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