Reese Kaplan -- Mike Puma's If These Walls Could Talk Part 8 of 9

In Mike Puma’s closing chapters of If These Walls Could Talk: New York Mets he hits upon a few issues very familiar to anyone who follows the team.  Sometimes the news is good, sometimes the news is bad, sometimes it’s a mixture of both.  Whatever direction it’s going to take, Mets fans can assure you that it will indeed be weird.  

The 2017 version of Noah Syndergaard bulked up to a body builder level working on improving his core.  He joined a special gymnasium with other athletes to develop the level of muscle he was seeking.  It was suggested he was less Thor and more Incredible Hulk when he arrived that February for Spring Training.  Now anyone who follows baseball knows that the regimen of running, swinging and throwing involve the use of flexibility in the muscles, not pure size.  As a result, the upcoming lat injury for Syndergaard was not fully a surprise.

When he arrived in Florida the team was highly concerned about his physique and the ramifications it would have on his lat muscles going forward.  He sought out a specialist and another trainer to evaluate him and the news was not good.  They told him his off-season workouts were indeed overdone and he had put himself at high risk for a lat tear. 

 

Just before an April 30th start against the Nationals he was diagnosed with bicep tendonitis, but he brushed it off and refused to go for an MRI which would confirm or deny what was suspected.  He started his next game and during a sequence pitching to Bryce Harper he grabbed at his midsection which turned out to be the actual timing of the lat muscle tearing. 

 

During the 2016 season the Mets were in a scrambling mode to justify their decision to let 2015 postseason hero Daniel Murphy walk away and sign with the in-division rival Washington Nationals.  Sandy Alderson said, “I told Murph himself it was a mistake not to keep him.  He had such a good playoffs and then in the World Series was pretty much shut down -- offensively, shaky defensively -- and I think we kind of thought, ‘Here’s the old Murph re-emerging,’ but he continued to hit for Washington.”

The Mets Director of Baseball Operations, Adam Fisher, opined, “Hindsight completely 20/20, you trade Lucas Duda and put Murphy at first base.  That is a better fit and you could still get Neil Walker to play second.  A few years of (Murphy) as your first baseman and you’re looking real good and that alleviates most of the issues.”

To try to fill the void the Mets concentrated on former Kansas City Royal Ben Zobrist.  He was capable of playing capably all over the field and could hit quite well.  He came to New York, toured looking for real estate but inevitably wound up taking a $56 million deal to play for the Chicago Cubs. 

 

It was also during this season that Sandy Alderson passed out at a press conference and later revealed that his cancer had returned.  It required him to step away from the front office to have surgery and then take the time necessary to recover.  In his place the Mets were managed in the front office by the two-headed GM substitute team of J.P. Ricciardi and John Ricco at the Nashville winter meetings.   

The thinking among the Mets braintrust was that there would be a third head in that GM team -- Paul DePodesta.  Unfortunately for the baseball team, he resigned after the 2016 season when an opening evolved for him to shift his skills to football, becoming the Chief Strategy Officer for the Cleveland Browns. 

 

During this season the Mets got the surprising (and financially beneficial) news that Michael Cuddyer opted to retire.  He felt he was not performing at his best and rather than spend the season in the DL, he left a lot of money on the table and trotted off to Minnesota to join other former players as the core of an advisory group to help present and future Twins become better at what they do.  

Another highlight (or lowlight) of this season came in a series against the Los Angeles Dodgers when the feelings were still tense after Chase Utley’s slide broke Ruben Tejada’s leg.  Noah Syndergaard was on the mound when Utley came to bat and he threw a pitch behind the hitter which is particularly dangerous as it’s natural instinct to step backwards on anything that looked like it was coming inside.  He was immediately ejected from the game which led to an infamous Terry Collins tirade which was caught on audio with him cursing out umpire crew chief Tom Hallion.  After disagreeing with what Hallion had to say, Collins was caught saying, “You fucking motherfucker!”  Needless to say, he was tossed as well.

Another memorable moment from that season occurred not on the mound but at the plate when then 42 year old Bartolo Colon lofted a long fly ball off James Shield deep into Petco Park which cleared the left field fence.  It was the oldest a player in major league history had ever hit his first home run.  The players in the dugout quickly vacated so Colon would return to an empty bench as a gag suggesting the homer was no big deal and not worth acknowledging.  Colon had a great year, finishing it with a 15-8 record and an ERA of 3.43.  He made the All Star team and at year’s end left the Mets to sign for another try at age 43 with the Braves. 

 

The Mets infield took on a different look after signing Asdrubal Cabrera as a free agent to play shortstop for the club.  Then after two months into the season the club again lost David Wright due to health issues and they turned to familiar face Jose Reyes to take over at third base once he was released from the Rockies following his domestic violence suspension.  

Midway through the season the Mets lost an underperforming Matt Harvey when it turned out he developed thoracic outlet syndrome.  Then in August both Jacob deGrom and Steve Matz were placed on the IL for the remainder of the year.  Pitching was extremely weak for the team with unexpected faces joining the five-man rotation.

The Mets finally did obtain their 2015 target, Jay Bruce, but he slumped very badly upon arriving and was thrown out at the plate in a game-losing inaction by manager Terry Collins who had much speedier players like Brandon Nimmo available to pinch-run.  Rumors started swirling that Collins would be fired and after his terrible tenure for seven years it was clear it was long overdue.  

The club surprisingly rallied in September to get into a Wild Card playoff game against the San Francisco Giants.  The Mets started Noah Syndergaard who had an awesome year going 14-9 with a 2.60 ERA.  They would face World Series hero Madison Bumgarner and they matched zeros for seven innings.  Addison Reed was good for the 8th inning but then Jeurys Familia was reached for a game winning three runs in the 9th.  The Mets were one and done.

J.P. Ricciardi felt that Collins was better than perceived.  “I think we hired the right guy.  In fairness to Terry, they weren’t good clubs that we gave him.  We had financial limitations, they were coming off the Madoff stuff and Sandy was really just trying to straighten the chairs on the Titanic a little bit.  Terry was the right guy at the time because he wanted to manage again, he had experience, we knew it was going to be rough.  Terry was a good soldier.  He took the bullet.  He knew there wasn’t a lot of talent and knew there was going to be some struggles and he put up the good fight.”

At the year’s end the poor in-game decisions, the disobeying of wishes from the front office and the constant losing had made Collins easily expendable.  He actually did the team a favor after the final game by resigning rather than go through the humiliation of termination.  Needless to say, like his stints with Houston and Anaheim, the team got immediately better with a change in regime.