Freddy Peralta pitched six innings of shutout ball on Tuesday night, giving up only four hits and striking out six with a fastball that topped out at 99.4 mph. If that invokes feelings of pain for you, you are not alone. Peralta’s mysterious performance drop while with the Mets is still very much unexplained. The Milwaukee all-star who tanked for the Mets this year at 5-9 with a 4.99 ERA, a 1.48 WHIP, and a significantly reduced fastball velocity was traded to the Tampa Bay Rays at the deadline because he showed no potential to help the club. Once in Tampa, he did a complete turnabout, pitching to a 3.25 ERA and going 5-2 in 10 starts.
Marcus Semien, Luis Robert Jr., Ryan Helsely, Cedric Mullins, Gregory Soto; the list of good players that significantly underperformed in Queens goes on and on as you look back over the years. Each one invokes a painful memory of crushed expectations and a team left pondering how to patch all of the holes.
Of course, we immediately blame the General Manager for the decision to bring these players to New York, but we can all acknowledge that the names were all once associated with success. In the case of Luis Robert Jr, it doesn’t take perfect hindsight to realize that the guy had injury problems all during his career, so it was easy to project more. But with a Peralta, there is not a smoking gun. People are still asking Freddy and all the coaches that surround him what has changed. There are really no good answers.
On Monday I wrote about my favorite subject, the mental aspect of this game. It holds true here as well. There is something about coming to THIS city and playing for THIS team that cripples confidence in many players. Is it the weight of the heavy expectations among Mets fans to finally reach the ultimate prize of a world series victory? Is it the combined stress in a locker room filled with players facing the same oversized objective?
Whatever it is, the ownership needs to recognize that there is a quality within a player that must be present before that player is added to this team. Statistical dominance is not enough. Fan accolades, seasonal awards, championship rings, none of them are enough. All the successes of the past can be obliterated by a different environment and a different form of situational pressure. Mental toughness matters, and I am talking about 95th percentile mental toughness, not the league average.
A look at the current Mets roster reveals some players that seem to have it.
Carson Benge began the year under the spotlight of being a highly touted prospect and hit .192 in April. That is the pinnacle of adversity. He responded by surging to the point that he is a serious candidate for rookie of the year based upon a .313/.394/.479 September.
AJ Ewing came to the team without the same high expectations, performed so well that he quickly found himself in the same crosshairs of media attention, slumped, and then recovered with a .309/.380/.481 September of his own. Both of these players were relentless in the field as well as at the plate.
Francisco Lindor overcame huge fan backlash after his slow start and infamous “thumbs down” incident by becoming a steadying roster influence and a clutch hitter in games that mattered.
Juan Soto seems completely unfazed by media attention, fan reaction, or negative team momentum. He just gets up and rakes.
Somewhere in the mental makeup of these players is the quality that the Mets need in all nine positions of the lineup and five slots in the rotation. They don’t all have to hit .300 or clock radar gun speeds of 100mph. They just need the ability to summon the will and the clarity of mind to perform when the going gets tough. They need to play for the love of the game and the thrill of the competition. Maybe the scouts and the front office execs are not close enough to observe what this looks like. Maybe they should hire Keith Hernandez, Al Leiter, or Mike Piazza to screen potential acquisitions – they had this quality so one would think they could recognize it in another player.
When the front office decides to trade or DFA a player, they need to know if they are giving up someone that “has it” even if their numbers are down, or someone that “doesn’t have it” regardless of their numbers. Mets fans love to lament the trade that gave away PCA, but a similar trade sent away Jared Kelenic who had similar hype and he turned out to be an entirely different value. I expect that the difference lies within the helmet, not anywhere else.
I will be watching closely as the re-opening of trade season (end of WS) and free agent signing window (5 days after end of WS) arrive to see what the Mets have in mind. Think it through, guys. The fan base is getting restless.
15 comments:
To me, the mental part of a player’s game falls solely on the player, not the General Manager.
You can't fault a GM for signing someone who has done well in the past. What is he supposed to do? Sign players that are coming off bad seasons?
All a team can do is try to build the best team they can afford.
The Mets did.
The Dodgers did.
The fans don’t help, do they? Too many stupid loudmouths who can’t wait to rip into somebody..
Stearns did not give sufficient weight to this when they failed to pursue Pete, who loves the cheers and is deaf to the boos.
Freddy might have been trying to play himself into a trade deadline deal to a contender, and then turn it back on. If so, it worked. And his next contract will be bigger for it.
Freddy should have gone to Hollywood.
Or was that Frankie?
I get confused...
Freddy goes to LAD next year, probably. Why? Why not?
Briefly, Freddie changed more than attitude in Tampa: release point, lost the slider in favor of the curve, changed his windup and delivery and gained a few miles on fastball. However, is still a 5 innings pitcher mostly and currently has difficulty locating fastball. Good for him though.
Stearns mistakes was not re: mental health; it was re: physical health
Meanwhile, Milwaukee up 3-0 on the Dodgers with struggling Shohei. Brewer dynasty, given they have a 100+ win team and a terrific pipeline of talent?
I think there are always external/observable indicators of mental toughness and no reason to think that a GM's team can't be educated in looking for them.
Here's one for pitchers: What happens to you when there is traffic on the bases, or you don't have your best stuff. There is clearly a difference here between someone like Thornton or McLean on the one hand and our Megill brother on the other.. Hitters: do you adopt your approach to the circumstances.
There so much more. The one thing you can't trust is what people say about themselves. If you've got it, you don't say it
Back to Milwaukee and Stearns: maybe he should have stayed put.
“David Stearns stepped down as president of baseball operations for the Milwaukee Brewers in October 2022 because he wanted to take a mental break, spend time with his family, and step back from the intense day-to-day demands of running a Major League Baseball front office.
• Need for a Break: Stearns noted that the job required "complete and total commitment" and stated he wanted to take a "deep breath" after leading the team's baseball operations since 2015.
• Advisory Transition: Rather than leaving immediately for another club, he initially moved into an advisory role with owner Mark Attanasio to help with the transition, with general manager Matt Arnold taking over the top leadership position.
• Later Career Move: Though he initially stated he had no immediate plans to join another organization, he eventually left Milwaukee completely in September 2023 to become the president of baseball operations for the New York Mets.”
No player had more stress and pressure than Stearns had. He comes to his hometown, to run his favorite team. Like he said early on, he cannot go to his neighborhood bagel shop for coffee and a bagel without being bombed by questions and advice.
He made plenty of mistakes, he made plenty of bad moves, but he also upgraded quite a bit of the infrastructure and the minor league coaching.
I’m ready to lay off him and see if he learned anything from the past two years, but I also believe that he did waste too many resources and his ego did interfere.
Just don't send him here. It would be a repeat performance.
All things he could have done in NY. I can't imagine that the pitching coaches failed to recommend those changes at some point. I think it is all on him - not being big enough for the moment.
I would love to put McLean in the mentally tough category, yet I still see those innings where he falls apart and can't recover. That is a hurdle he needs to get over. I would love to see him develop the self-correcting awareness of his mechanics that Jacob deGrom had.
Great comments today. Everyone seems to acknowledge that the players themselves have as much to do with their performance stability as the coaches do.
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