The Strat-O-Matic Mets

Remember when you were a kid playing the paper and dice version of Strat-O-Matic baseball where you could pit your team against another team and see whether or not your decisions were better than those of your opponent?  I wasn’t a Strat-O-Matic player, but I had a game with a similar concept that allowed me to do pretty much the same, but had available player cards for other teams from different eras.  It would allow you to see how the 1969 Mets might fare against the 1927 Yankees (not well!) 

The games came to mind after looking at what’s going on in Las Vegas with the AAA 51’s.  Not only did they have a night with back-to-back-to-back-to-back home runs, but they’ve got nine hitters with batting averages of .290 or better (including the recently promoted Wilmer Flores).  Brandon Allen, Andrew Brown, Eric Campbell, Juan Centeno, Allan Dykstra, Zach Lutz, Anthony Seratelli and Taylor Teagarden are all helping to contribute to a league-best 25-10 record putting them already 7.5 games out front in first place.  While the starting pitching hasn’t been quite as dominant as had been hoped, recent good outings by Noah Syndergaard, Rafael Montero and Jacob de Grom give strong hope for the future as the pitchers adjust to the thin air of the PCL.  The pen has had 4 credible arms – Vic Black, Joel Carreño, Miguel Socolovich and Zach Thornton. 

Then I took a look at the Mets lineup which featured Ruben Tejada, Travis d’Arnaud, Chris Young and Curtis Granderson all struggling near or below the Mendoza line.  Their pitching has also struggled a bit lately, including Bartolo Colon, Zack Wheeler (until his last start) and Jenrry Mejia (despite a 1 run performance on Friday, he was lifted before finishing the 5^th inning).  The bullpen before Friday night was in its second slump of the season with few if any of the relief pitchers seemingly able to pitch for another team. 

So the question I pose is could the 2014 Las Vegas 51s regularly beat the 2014 New York Mets?  Pitchers might improve getting out of the desert, but batters would likely regress.  How much they’d regress is debatable when juxtaposed against the current Mets squad.  While some of the offensive prowess could be written off against the hitting environment in the PCL, the fact remains that Wally Backman has this crew performing at a higher level than ever before. 

That leads to a second question.  How much of a player’s performance is attributable to a player’s self-motivation and innate talent, while how much is the result of coaching and mentoring?  Are the current Mets players simply not that good or are they not lead by an effective manager?  The truth is probably a combination of both. 

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