Tom Brennan - Series Part 4 of 5: WHAT WENT WRONG WITH THE METS FROM 2016-2020. TODAY? 2019

2015 may not have brought a championship, but it was an exhilarating final 3 months.  

Mets fans hoped for shrewd decision making to make this sudden, brief state of happiness stretch into the years ahead.

Instead, all we got was one losing wild card game in the next 5 seasons.

As my brother often texts me, "TYPICAL METS."

(Until the Cohen Era, of course)

Well, 2019 is part 4 of this 5 part series, and the Mets got close to the playoffs with 86 wins, but close don't really count, do it?

HOW DID THEY GET SO CLOSE, BUT MISS?

Well, Jake deGrom won a 2nd Cy Young, Pete Alonso set a major league record with a colossal 53 homers, and Jeff McNeil was terrific, hitting .318 with remarkable power.

THAT TERRIFIC TRIO, PLUS A WELL RUN FRANCHISE, SHOULD HAVE GUARANTEED US FANS A PLAYOFF SLOT.

But this was the 2019 edition of the Wilpon Mets.  

How foolish to think Jake's, Pete's, and Jeff's heroics would be enough with the Wilpons.

This is the year the Mets made a big Brodie VW splash with his Edwin Diaz and Robby Cano mega-deal, but those two cratered in 2019, as Diaz lost his way from his surreal 2018 performance, and Cano's injuries greatly damaged his performance.

Jed Lowrie's $10 million contract, to acquire a guy to inexplicably further jam up a talented, crowded infield, turned out to not be problematic in one sense: 

While it hurt the entire season, as he got just 7 hitless at bats, at least it helped the infield not be too jammed.   

At the time of his signing, my brother and I both wondered: Why not spend that Lowrie dough on a pitcher instead?   Well, more on that later.

Wilson Ramos was a nice enough pick up, and J.D. Davis was a huge and potent hitting surprise.  Even Amed Rosario followed a bad first half with a strong second half.  And Zack Wheeler began to pitch like everyone thought he could, and Dom Smith showed marked improvement over his 2017-18 struggles.

But, without Cespedes, and for other spots like back up catcher, the Mets rummaged in the "Wilpons are Very Cheap Bargain Bin."  

That got them the likes of Hechavarria (.204), Nido (.191), Gomez (.198), Broxton (.143), Altherr (.129) and the hitless Tejada and Haggerty (0 for 13).   Combined, in true Mets' subs-can't-hit-at-all fashion, they went 83 for 464 (.179).   

That's a whole lot of gosh-awful, playoff-missing offense.

The main starters were durable, so only 8 starts needed to be made by the likes of Flexen, Lockett, and Font.  Good thing, too, as those 3 cheapies threw 67 starter and relief innings and allowed 50 runs.  Not a winning runs-to-innings ratio there.

In the bullpen, Diaz unfortunately failed in 2019, and another acquisition, Familia, was terrible.

But the big problem again was having MANY crappy minimum wage relievers - SO MANY TERRIBLE ERA'S WELL ABOVE 5.00.  

Message to new management (not that I think the new regime will need my advice here): 

Lots of 5+ ERAs = missing playoffs.    

And that Lowrie $10 million could have gotten REAL pitchers.

CONCLUSION:

Those horrible and all-too-abundant fill-in starter and cheap pen arms, and the slew of cheap non-hitting hitters, had to have cost this Mets team 10 games, minimum.  

Spending $10 million on Lowrie rather than pitching was downright foolish.

They missed the playoffs by just a few games.  

The team that did squeeze in, the Nats, won the World Series.

"Cheap" kills seasons.  

It has killed many Mets seasons.

It sure killed this one.