ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER LOSS FOR THE METS
It is now May 1, and the crew is screaming “Mayday Mayday.”
The Mets cruise ship has been taking on water rapidly, as this season has gotten off to a titanically bad start.
Luke Weaver got his BS in college, no doubt, because he blew a big save yesterday, and that is no BS.
AJ Melendez was having a GREAT Offensive day, so what did Mendoza do late in the game? He brought in Slater to pinch hit for him. Slater failed.
Anyway, another day another loss.
Syracuse won two games.
AJ Ewing? Has had one heck of a three game stretch in his triple AAA debut, with 7 for 12, a walk, and no Ks, and we may want to start to think that he might just be ready. Probably premature. Maybe not.
Ryan Clifford is not ready. Why? In Syracuse’s DH sweep, he was 0 for 7 with 5 Ks. 44 Ks on 28 games.
Jack Wenninger was great - bring him up.
Lambert pitched well in relief, Ross did not.
Binghamton hit, and won. Parada had 3 hits, edging him closer to .200.
Brooklyn won 2-1 on 2 late runs. Antonio Jimenez is not hitting much, but did steal home.
St Lucie gave up lots of runs again. Peña and Guzman had fine offensive nights.
Let May begin!
12 comments:
My guy Randy Guzman has 4 doubles and 5 HRs in his last 14 torrid games. Promote him to Brooklyn soon. Or Queens, what the heck.
It was very depressing to wake up to the worst team in MLB. However, now that it is May, the horrible month of April is behind us. Will things turn around? Will the trip to the west coast give the team a reset?
Whenever I hear West Coast, I shudder.
Ewing also had two great catches in a row in centerfield
Jon, I would call him up soon. I think he’ll do better than Benge.
I have been following Ewing and researching him as most of you have. He has great BB instincts and may well have the best bat to ball skills in the organization.
There are always things to learn and he is not yet a complete player, but there is no reason to think he can't continue learning at the major league level. He's a different kind of player than Benge. What he would bring to the Mets is something they desperately need, a genuine leadoff hitter in front of Soto. Soto's selectivity at the plate will also provide him with ample opportunities to steal and change the way the Mets are playing.
I also read an interview with one of the Mets hitting coaches, and while I do not expect any coach to be forthcoming in such circumstances, I was shocked to see that the views expressed when discussing working on fundamentals literally had nothing to do with working on genuine physical fundamentals: like the following: explaining that the body should be understood as housing a system for recruiting, transfering and releasing energy; that when you discuss how the body works you looking at how to get pressure from the ground that translates into energy that is entering the system, that while everybody will have variations, the global principles apply: you have to use your feet to properly to move your pelvis properly, etc. that you have to coordinate the movement of your arms with the movement of your upper body; and least discussed generally you have to learn how to load your wrists (and the levers created thereby) to match up the loading pattern with your release pattern. This all requires deliberate practice, not repetition as such. And it needs to be engrained so that you can then focus on everything else. After that you want to always be teaching pitch recognition through drills, and so on. the rest is just a bunch of banalities. There is no one way to stand or to move. But there is for every player better and more effective ways to move for them; I can't bear to watch them hit. They often go up to the plate and they are not bringing tools with them adequate to do the job at this level.
When you've hit rock bottom (jeez I certainly hope so) what do we have to lose? Also when does the boy genius have to answer for this mess?
While the big team struggles (circles the drain even) the farm system hasn’t (SSS, of course) covered the org in glory either thus far this year. Not many offensive players in the upper minors other than Ewing are off to a start that screams “ready”. Hopefully Reimer gets it together. But if Ewing hits like this in AAA for a couple more weeks, it’s not impossible we see him sooner than later.
They need you as a hitting coach, Jules.
Ken Singleton was off to that kind of minors start and got called up early. Hopefully Ewing, too.
Very kind of you Tom, but I don't think I am up to the task. In all honesty, I could be helpful on some fronts, which would make more sense in the off season. Just to explain some things to the hitting coaches about movement patterns. I would say that any well trained coach could explain some basics of movement patterns and identify where power leaks occur. The most basic ideas can really move the ball forward (no pun intended). Once someone understands that a swing, say, is a series of pieces that have to fit with one another, and that there are ways in which one person's compensation is another person's basic motion, you free everyone up to get out of the mind set of right and wrong to one in which you are looking to create the most efficient and repeatable and effective swing you can for each person. All the other jazz is noise until a person realizes it isn't about criticism; it is about finding the pattern that fits the hitter.
I will add one thing. I did some videos a few weeks back one of which was on how to shallow the bat path through ulner deviation and rotation. They have to work together because UD is a shallowing move and rotation is a steepining move of the bat. Getting the right blend is what levels the swing overall.
That said, I did indicate that Aaron Judge had in fact shallowed his swing in this way. And that is basically right, but I have now seen so many videos of the person who taugh him this move that I feel I have to show one of his videos in comparison to another one I will do showing two things about what he does that are, by my lights, simply not correct and certainly not desirable, as while I don't think anyone should hire me as a hitting coach, I wouldn't want them to hire Schenker (I believe that is his name but I could be wrong). He shallows the bat primarily through left hand/left forearm pronation or right hand/right forearm supination. Both will shallow the bat but at the cost of adversely impacting the arm structure (as I will show in the videos). This has the impact of raising the lead arm above the pec while driving the trail elbow toward the trail hip/pelvis. The latter is acceptable, the former not so much and the net effect may well be to increase the launch angle. It isn't the same motion as dropping the right shoulder and raising the left which you can easily see how that would lead to something of an uppercut swing, but it in effect has the same impact on the relationship of the trail arm to the lead arm while reducing the radius of the swing as well, and potentially influencing the path of the swing. More on Tuesday I guess.
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