Craig Mitchell -- The Enigma that is the 2014 Mets

Slowly but surely the Mets are turning into one of the biggest enigma’s in baseball.  Everyone knows the Mets have some of the best young pitching in the majors. Some of those pitchers are with the team or have been with the team. Some are coming soon. Taking that into consideration, it’s the supporting cast the Mets currently have to support their pitching that is the issue. So, I will not be addressing the Mets pitching in this article.

The Mets weren't quiet this off season. They made some moves. Just like Sandy Alderson promised.  For the most part, the moves haven’t worked out. The offense has struggled this year from the get go.  From top to bottom the Mets only have 2 or 3 position players performing up to expectations and only one that is exceeding those.  The big imports Curtis Granderson and Chris Young are both struggling. Granderson has shown flashes of providing the offense the Mets thought they were paying for. But for the most part Granderson is struggling to get his batting average out of the low .200’s.  Recently Granderson has been walking…a lot.  He is a power threat and a run producer and opponents prefer to walk him than give him anything to hit. How can you argue with that strategy?  The Mets have struggled tremendously with runners on base. Why pitch to a known run producer if you can pitch to someone who’s liable to hit into a double play.

Speaking of double plays, Travis d’Arnaud would know about that. Since coming back from his concussion, d’Arnaud has posed no offensive threat what so ever. Friday night

against the Giants he grounded into two double plays. To be fair, no one expected d’Arnaud to be Buster Posey, but he was expected to compete. d’Arnaud has been an anchor the Mets have a carried in the bottom of their line up all season. The Mets have been patient, and frankly he is a good catcher and handles the pitching staff well. But d’Arnaud needs to produce.  Modest expectations had him batting about .265 with 12 homers and 55 RBI this year. Those numbers don’t seem reachable at this time. d’Arnaud, the key component of the R.A. Dickey trade, has appeared over-matched. Experts agree he has a great swing and say he should produce. But so far, d’Arnaud is being overmatched and overwhelmed by big league ball.

The struggles of Chris Young are well documented. Young hurt his quad coming out of the gate this year, but

even so the Mets don’t really have room for him.  His import seems questionable at best. Alderson claims the signing of Young was a “insurance” in case Juan Lagares didn’t pan out.  Alderson explained what he was hoping for was a batting average of .240 to .250. As of Saturday morning Young stands at .196 in 45 games.  Young hasn’t seemed to be an answer at the plate or in the field and most Met fans are calling for him to be sent down or released.  Young is obviously not a part of the Mets future. With Lagares on the DL, Matt den Dekker is getting the majority of the starts in center. Seeing Nelson Cruz lead the majors in homers and RBI doesn’t help Mets fans with their opinion of this signing.  But it is obvious, Alderson’s judgment is being second guessed rather openly on this signing.

Left field, well, has been a clown car. Eric and Chris Young have appeared there. Granderson has played there when Bobby Abreu has started in right and Eric Campbell and Anthony Brown have played there as

well. For an offense that is desperate for consistency many wait for Eric Young to return and spark the top of the lineup. But Young was only batting .220 with a .315 OBP. Young is better served as a jack of all trades or a utility player. The Mets don’t have a veteran pure left fielder on their current roster to fill that void.  Anthony Brown has shown nothing but the ability to hit the past two years and has played an excellent left field.  For a team struggling to score, the Mets could do a lot worse than inserting Brown as the left fielder for a week or two and see how he performs.  Brown has power and has 7 homers last year in 150 at bats and 2 in 33 at bats this year.  He doesn’t cost 7 million dollars but is worth a shot, especially if the team is struggling.  Terry Collins has shown a resistance in giving someone like a Anthony Brown or an Eric Campbell a prolonged look.  It’s baffling. It seems, Collins would rather throw a struggling veteran into the mix than a younger person with a hunger to prove more.

But, not everything Collins tries fails. The Mets stuck with Ruben Tejada way longer than most fans would have liked. Lo and behold Tejada is coming around. He hit 2 home runs on the past road trip and his batting average is climbing and his defense has been solid.  That’s not to say the Mets wouldn’t be better off if they had Stephen Drew at short since opening day, but as of now, Tejada is serviceable at short. His presence isn’t hurting the team and his offense has helped the Mets win over the past 10 games.  Go figure.

The leaves David Wright, Daniel Murphy, Juan Lagares and Lucas Duda. Wright is stuck in the middle of a under-performing line up.  Wright’s average is in the 280s and has only hit 4 homers and has driven in 32 RBI.  While not over-matched, Wright has no protection in a weak line up. Ike Davis used to give Wright some protection. While Davis struggled often, his power did intimidate opposing teams and thus gave them in incentive to pitch to Wright rather than chance Davis run into one and put two runs on the board.  The clean-up position since Davis left has been filled by Chris Young, Daniel Murphy and a struggling Curtis Granderson. The Mets have given other teams very little reason to pitch to Wright.  Instead they pitch around Wright in hopes that he chases a bad pitch and gets himself out or walks and they take their chances with whoever is batting 4 ^th that day.  Lucas Duda has yet to bat clean up since the Davis trade. Duda leads the team in homers and is 2^nd (to Wright) in RBI.  He bats 6^th.  Duda, unquestionably is the Mets biggest power threat and is still be coddled for unknown reasons by Collins.  I’m not saying Duda is the answer to Wrights power shortage. But installing him in the clean-up spot can do nothing but help Wright see some better pitches and get better at bats.  Duda is on track to bat about .245 with 21 homers and 80 RBI. Not an all-star, but acceptable numbers at first. He may still pick up in the 2^nd half and his defense has also been acceptable.

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Murphy has had an all-star caliber season. Whatever good the Met offense has been doing, Murphy always seems to be a part of it. Going into Saturday’s game he was batting .296 with 4 homers and 23 RBI. The only slam on Murph would be the perplexing base running blunders he’s made this year. On the bases Murph has made several key mistakes and running gaffs that have tarnished a really good effort so far.  Perhaps, again, it’s another case of a player trying to do too much.

Juan Lagares has had an outstanding season. The only problem is, he can’t stay healthy and in the line-up.  Lagares is arguably the best centerfielder the Mets have

ever had and his bat is picking up.  Currently batting .288 with 2 homers and 18 RBI, Lagares has so far exceeded expectations.  His defense alone is a force and he has singlehandedly saved many runs with this amazing defensive prowess.  He is the Met centerfielder of the future. It took Terry Collins two months to figure this out. Actually, I’m not confident he has. If Lagares comes back and goes 1 for 8, we may see Young in center again.

So, you have Wright, Murphy, Duda, Lagares playing up to, or close to acceptable levels.  The jury is out on Tejada and Wilmer Flores is an unknown quantity since he is only spot starting at this point. But his 6 RBI day against the Phillies is promising.  Bobby Abreu has been terrific. Oddly, his contributions are probably due to dispatched hitting coach Dave Hudgens who thought he could help the team. He was right.  The rest of the lineup is either underperforming or is just plain terrible. This is clearly a team with playoff quality pitching.  The fault lies with the front office. Bring quality players in and get a quality product.  The fault also lies with Terry Collins. Collins has proven over and over again that he is incapable of putting his best 8 players on the field to support his pitching staff. Collins needs choose a right handed line up and a left handed line up and stick with it. Collins handles every game situational.  No one aside from the 4 players playing up to par get a chance to get hot and Collins is infamous for sitting hot players and cooling them down.

Alderson would like to win 90 games. With the present coaching staff and manager that’s a pipe dream. Given a coaching staff and manager who know how to get the best out of his 25 roster spots it’s a long shot as well, but doable. The Dodgers did something similar last year. The addition of Yasiel Puig, turned their season around.  At this point in the season there’s no way without major changes the Mets go 62-37 the rest of the way. The Mets indeed are an enigma. To solve this puzzle, the answer is clear to everyone, except Alderson and Collins.