Cautious Optimist -- The Irony of it All

 

There is little resemblance between how the Mets performed before the All-Star Game (ASG) and since.  Before they were often unwatchable and nearly impossible to root for.  Ever since they have been a reliably good watch and pretty easy to root for. 

The dramatic improvement hasn't put an end to the complaints or the worries.  It's just changed the content of the complaints and the worries, both in ironic ways. 

My how things have changed

For the first two weeks of the season the goal was to make the playoffs.  Soon thereafter the goal of the fans was for the team to stop losing and to start playing competently and professionally.  Not long thereafter, the fans' mood turned considerably darker: trade everyone on the team other than the core around which they could plan their future resurrection; fire everyone who had a hand in creating the mess that the season had quickly become, notably Mendoza and Stearns. 

To a significant degree, the FO obviously agreed with the fan base.  By the ASG Mendoza was fired, but Stearns retained. By the trading deadline, Stearns managed to ship off a sizeable number of players though few, if any, of those traded were even a little bit responsible for the catastrophic season the Mets and their fans had been experiencing.  

In fact, the unit decimated by trades, the bullpen, was unquestionably the best performing group of the lot.  

The core was retained, though its membership increased in size to include Ewing as well as Benge, Scott and Thornton as well as McLean.

By the trade deadline, fans could take solace in the belief that their voices were heard, not entirely however.  If Cohen were to be believed, Stearns was on as firm a footing as ever.  Many of the culprits responsible for poor play on the field were still around:  Bichette, Senga and Manaea in particular.  Still the team had appeared to have turned a corner. 

All that remained was to identify a goal for the remainder of the season and execute on it.

The Goal Changes 

The loss of much of the bullpen meant that the team would be unable to hold many of the few leads the putrid offense would be able to secure.  Lindor's inevitable slow start upon his return from a long stay on the IL and an unexpected injury to Soto would insure that the top of the line-up (the only identifiable offensive strength of the team) would continue its season long slumber.

The offensive ineptitude would be further guaranteed by the continued appearance of Semien, Baty and Vientos in the line-up.  Better still, the presence of Manaea and Senga on the staff would produce both predictable losses the team having to rely on and an overworked bullpen, already significantly weakened by the deadline trades.

Every team has goals as does their fan base.  With so much already gone wrong and so much drek remaining with the promise of more to come, a new goal emerged:

     keep losing enough to ensure that the Mets would qualify for a top 6         pick in the upcoming draft.

If the Mets fell out of the top 6 they would fall to at least 17th given the penalty associated with their payroll (one might have thought that losing as much as they had and playing as poorly as they had would be embarrassing enough a penalty, but the Mets spent so much to accomplish that feat that the league rules allowed for an even worse penalty).  

The league rules meant that the Mets would have to lose sufficiently and embarrass themselves even more than they had already in order to secure a top six pick rather than the 17th or later pick.

Finally, a goal that was decidedly attainable.

The team Stearns had built over the offseason was nowhere near capable of attaining the pre-season goal of a deep playoff run.

But trading well performing relievers as well as a surprisingly effective starter in Clay Holmes, Stearns had managed to put together a team (or better, stitched a team together) more than capable of losing with impunity over what remained of the season.  A goal and a team up to the task of achieving it.

Not so fast, for what good would obtaining a top 6 player do if the coaching and development staff that would control his fate were as inept as they appeared to be. 

As badly as the Mets had performed in the first half of the current season, their minor league affiliates for the most part performed even worse.  Just a year ago the Mets farm system had risen from the ashes to a position in the top third of the league.

For reasons that have never been transmitted publicly, the FO decided to relieve most of those responsible for the turnaround in the standing of the farm system of their duties. New coaches and developmental staff and programs replaced them, and the results were simply atrocious for the first half of the season.

Once again the Mets organization had found itself fighting at cross purposes.  Losing would be easy, nearly guaranteeing a top draft talent to build around.  But in true Mets fashion the organization appeared to have replaced a develpment group and program that had just wrung up a major triumph with one that had managed to outdo the major league counterparts for incompetence.

The draft choice would be secured, but almost certainly to no avail.

How very Mets.  

The Irony of it All

Which, I hasten add, did nothing, if not remind me of a truly wonderful joke I may well have shared with you at some point already. It's so good, it's worth repeating.

Comedian: My people are often described as pessimistic: always expecting rain on even the most sun-drenched days. But this characterization, though nearly universal is in fact mistaken.  My people are a fundamentally optimistic group. To believe otherwise is to misunderstand the nature of optimism.

A pessimist, we agree is someone who looks at the world and sees nothing but carnage, starvation, lack of housing, poor health, hostility everywhere, economies that do not serve their people and drain their treasuries, and concludes, 'things couldn't possibly get worse.'  

In contrast, my people are optimists in that upon seeing the world precisely as the pessimist does respond instead, 'Don't be such a pessimist, of course they can.'

And so it has come to pass that all that is good has somehow made things immeasurably worse. 

Manaea has performed to the level of an acceptable back of the rotation lefty starter and has been a positive force in the clubhouse, a mentor to the young starters, an advisor to the manager. 

Going into the second week of August, no one would have thought we even needed a closer.  What would the point of having someone set aside to hold leads?  What leads?  And why would you want to protect them, should they, by accident, no doubt, occur?

Sporting an 0-8 record at the time, it made perfect sense to save Senga for the 'closer' role.  He wouldn't let us down.

But of course he has.  He has saved game after game, and in the course of doing so has become something of a workhorse in the bullpen.

The rest of the bullpen, stitched together on the fly, has exceeded expectations.  

The team is playing complementary baseball.  When the entire staff imploded in Miami allowing a dreadful two touchdowns worth of points, the offense responded with an equal number of touchdowns and a two point conversion.

And Bichette, the guy who the Mets pivoted to when Tucker took his decidedly good, but by no means, delicious talents to LA, the guy who performed so terribly in the first half of the season that the only reason he wasn't traded at the deadline was that taking on his contract would have been irrational for any team, has turned his season around, and is looking much more like the player the Mets thought they were getting than Tucker has looked like the player the Dodger's thought they were getting.

And the middle of the order -- which more often than not consists of Bichette, Benge and Young -- a guy everyone wanted the Mets to trade, a rookie who would not have made the OD roster had Tauchman (remember him) not been injured during the last week of Spring Training) and a journeyman 1B who would not have been playing regularly if at all had Polanco not been sidelined for pretty much the entire season -- has performed solidly if not spectacularly, hitting and driving in runs, providing a competent link from the front to the back of the line-up

But not just that:  the CF who provided an extraordinary spark in the lineup when Lindor was out and who at the ripe old age of 21 has laid claim to CF for at least the next couple of years, would never have gotten a chance had Robert not gone down with a series of injuries.

And what about Torrens, who has taken over a bit more than half of the catching duties since Andy Green took over as interim manager.  

Torrens has hit 7 home runs, slashed .333/.407/.750, and has struck out fewer than 10 times.

In contrast, Alvarez has hit fewer home runs, slashed .195/,346/.379 and has stuck out over 40 times.

The Mets have won roughly 50% of their games with Torrens behind the plate and about 33% of their games when Alvarez is.

The other defensive metrics are even more shocking.

Only Semien has managed to remain mediocre offensively and defensively throughout the transition.

Andy Green

There is little to say here.  No matter what he has been given to work with by the FO, Andy Green has performed extraordinarily.  He has a quiet, commanding presence, sets a terrific tone in the clubhouse and on the field, is honest, transparent, informative in his post game meetings with the media, and is balanced, not stoic.  He has a feeling for the game and the players.  The team reflects his basic characteristics.  I don't know what else can be said about him.  The performance on the field speaks for itself.

So What Now

Bad enough that the pre-season goal for this year never had a chance of succeeding, but the goal that so many have pivoted to as a second half of the season replacement -- one built on a foundation of reliably bad play  augmented by the trade of just about everyone who had played well -- is clearly in jeopardy.  

What should have been a layup has become a half court shot at the buzzer.

Does that make the season a total loss with both the pre-season and mid season goals kaput?  Not by my lights.  I've had my share of complaints in good times and bad.  It just doesn't make sense to complain about winning at this point-- especially when the team has done so little of it for so long.

My goals for the team are straightforward

I am going to root for the Mets to win every game, but more importantly, for them to perform professionally as they have in the past two months.  I am rooting for a winning culture to emerge, for optimism to replace gloom.  I could care less about the difference between the 6th and 17th pick in the draft.  

I don't believe that you can have too much talent.  So I will grant that ex ante the #6 player is likely a better player (i.e. has more potential) than will be the #17 player.  But there are too many variables that impact ultimate performance and too little difference between the two draft positions to be as concerned as so many Mets fans are about the team falling from the top 6.

In my opinion, the biggest issue is determining which year we should be targeting for the start of a largely uninterrupted run of deep playoff runs and occasional world championships.  (While continuing to fill gaps and clean up problems in the FO operations and minor league development staff.)

No complaints from me if those goals are met.  I have my worries and concerns.  My worry:  I have not abandoned my gripes about how to teach movement patterns in both pitching and hitting, especially the misuse of available technologies).

I worry about how the Mets will respond in devising a roster for next year should Bichette decide to opt out.

I worry about what Cohen will do with both Semien and Polanco.  I know what Hedge Fund managers would do with their portfolios under these conditions.  But surprisingly (to me) Cohen has not been as committed to closing positions, buying back puts he has sold, when the evidence is clear and the trajectory clearer still. 

I am not in the business of predicting what Cohen will do, but I can indicate what I would do if Bichette stays or goes, and explain why; and I can indicate what I would do with Semien and Polanco.

But that will have to wait for the next post.

Ever the optimist -- whatever that means!