The Mets were playing the Brewers Saturday night.
I had recap.
I went to see “Superman” with my family — a movie I’d already seen.
I did that because I’d reached the point where I can’t stand this team, which right now combines a deep-rooted cruddiness with a magnetic attraction to disaster. Knowing they’ll find a way to lose and wondering how they’ll do it was starting to infect the rest of my day, and two hours of the determined optimism and indefatigable sunniness of James Gunn’s “Superman” felt like exactly what I needed.
Which it was! We walked out of the theater and for a minute or so I completely forgot the Mets were playing.
And then I remembered and we turned on the MLB Audio feed for the drive home. The Mets were up 4-3 in the bottom of the seventh, with Ryne Stanek on the hill, nobody out and a runner on first.
Yes, that’s when I tuned in — sometimes the jokes really do write themselves.
You know what happened next — or if you don’t, you’re better off and I’d strongly advise you to stop reading now.
Lineout to shortstop. Ball off the right-field chalk that bounced into the stands, sending runners to second and third. A grounder to shortstop where Stanek got in the way of Francisco Lindor‘s throw home, forcing Lindor to take the out at first as the tying run scored. Enter Ryan Helsley, who got a grounder to Ronny Mauricio, who muffed an in-between hop to give the Brewers the lead. Helsley got William Contreras to line out to Juan Soto — only, incredibly, to have the out nullified on a pitch-clock violation. Contreras then clobbered Helsley’s next pitch into the stands, and the Mets were dead.
As a friend noted on Bluesky, I should have seen a double feature.
(Yeah, Pete Alonso tied Darryl Strawberry‘s franchise home-run record. Don’t really care right now.)
Going to the movies was a smart move. Returning to the reality of the Mets was a deeply dumb one, a lesson they rubbed my face in by giving me the so-far worst 10 minutes of a rapidly decaying season.
Honestly, I should find a movie to see Sunday. Why should I watch this team? Why should you? Why should anybody?
The Mets’ vaunted lineup hasn’t hit in weeks (they struck out 12 more times Saturday night), and the response of David Stearns isn’t to fire coaches whose failure is statistically obvious but to serve up happy talk about a process that pretty self-evidently isn’t working.
But it’s not just the nonexistent offense that’s gone rotten. The defense has collapsed (particularly Lindor, who’s having an inexplicably horrible year), there’s only one reliable starter, the newly acquired relievers have mostly been terrible and the previously employed ones have been taxed beyond their capabilities. If there’s a way to lose, these current Mets will find it — whether early and limply or late and tragically.
There’s no urgency and worse than that, there’s no accountability — which sure isn’t something I expected from a business run by Steve Cohen.
Until there is, why give this team any of your time?
Contreras’s HR after the third out was nullified due to a pitch-clock violation may have been the most Metsian thing I have seen in the 60 years of my cursed fandom. You just knew that was going to happen. Congratulations, Ryan Helsley, you are now a True Met.
“There’s no urgency and worse than that, there’s no accountability — which sure isn’t something I expected from a business run by Steve Cohen.
Until there is, why give this team any of your time?”
The most frustrating thing about the Phony 4 being unable to hit, is that nobody can really do anything about it. Not me, not you, and not Eric Chavez. And it happens every year, which is utterly amazing. Maybe we can get rid of Nimmo, somehow, but failing that, it may be the end of OUR road with Pete, who becomes more vulnerable every season, including this one. If anyone has any other suggestions, I am all ears.
Regarding our 4 or 5 inning starters, virtually every team is teaching this. From the first pitch through the 80th pitch, just throw as hard as you can until your arm blows out.
This needs to be torn down and started over, but that would require all new draftees to learn to pace themselves and be able to throw complete games again, which is infinitely more successful than the way teams are doing it today. It will take years to undue all the damage, but it will be worth it in the long run.
Still not seeing here enough blasting or mocking of Mendoza who has been terrible all year and, like Buck two years, must be sent packing after this season. Could cite many, many blunders and wrong approaches for months but just look at this weekend, with Taylor not running for Marte and setting up bullpen for disaster with mis-use or over-use (game to game and also for rest of season). Senga still not “stretched out” and look at last night: Montas only throws 72 pitches setting up 5 innings of bullpen–where you’ve already used one of best relievers as an opener! Guaranteeing Stanek in a clutch situation and overworking new guys. He is managing in a panic, even if we won a couple games now there is no hope for future with starters not pushed to go more than 4 or 5 innings and bullpen sure to collapse from overuse. But hopefully the image that will end his job is keeping Taylor–who can’t hit a lick–and then not using him as pinch runner to “save him for an 11th inning” will stick.
Then add on supremely overrated Stearns doing nothing about adding big hitter at trade deadline, not to mention signing Montas and Blackburn etc. etc. Refusal to call up McLean and Sproat. (God, call up Jett or Benge from AA and give them a week, they can’t be worse than what we are trotting out there and guys have jumped from AA before.) The mirage of a deep bullpen Stearns supposedly created–we will note that Brazoban gave up 7 runs in one inning last night in AAA.
No Mets team in the last three decades began the season with more earned goodwill with their fans than this one, and they have gone out and burned through every ounce of that goodwill now, to the point where, in the span of three months, they have gone from one of the most beloved Mets teams to one of the most loathed.
As for the David Stearns ethos, PROCESS is always more important than RESULTS, and tomorrow is always more important than today.
So there’s nothing wrong with watching an 0-2 fastball down the middle, because they are adhering to the process preached by hitting guru Eric Chavez.
Starting pitcher only goes four innings? No problem. Jeremy Hefner has survived three different managerial regimes as pitching coach, the pitching lab is king, and it’s more important to save those pitchers’ arms and keep them bubble-wrapped for a future than never comes.
Not pinch running Taylor for Marte has to be the most glaring, dumbest move by Mendoza, whether the game ended that way or not. That it did was just bad luck for Mendoza.
And his reasoning, saving him for future innings, only compounded the incompetence.
And virtually nobody, here or in the media, says a word about it.
I’ve been a Mets fan for almost 60 years, and there are major gaps in my ability or interest in following the daily “ups and downs” of the team, but I think I have probably watched about 75-80% of the Steve Cohen years, and I don’t remember a period of a very good team having the bottom fall out like this one during that time. If it’s not reversed, and having watched Cohen’s style of management throughout this period, I feel certain there will be accountability during the off-season. He’s a good businessman because he doesn’t overreact to any one situation, but takes time to analyze and make decisions outside of the heat of the moment.
If and when that analysis occurs, Cohen and Stearns will have to dig deeper into why this collapse occurred, and should consider the following, and it could also be a blueprint for reversing this disaster in the making:
1. There is an explanation for Lindor’s difficulties, and it’s one we’ve all mostly seem to have forgotten, including me: his broken toe. Anyone who’s had one (I have) knows that the only true cure is rest. And yet other than a random day or two, Lindor has not rested. This worked last year with his injured back, but if you recall, he DH’ed for about a week, while Acuna and Iglesias filled in. Nobody is Lindor, but we didn’t lose a lot, particularly on defense. While Iglesias is gone, the Mets should get Acuna up here ASAP, put him at shortstop, and shuffle whoever they can to and fro from Syracuse until Lindor is truly ready for the stretch run. And then they need not worry about who will be their pinch-runner, either.
2. Nimmo has been shuffled around the lineup so much that it’s impacting his hitting. He’s versatile in his hitting approach, but he is at his best when he is a leadoff or second hitter, a true table setter, and is misplaced as a power RBI guy ( although he can certainly do that as well). He has the type of long-run preparation and training style (he works all off-season on one or two aspects of his game like base-running or playing deeper in the outfield, or learning to swing at good pitches earlier in the count). This is what turned him into the player he’s become. Put him at leadoff or second in the lineup, and leave him there. He’s not a clean-up hitter.
3. Luckily, we have a true clean-up hitter in Alonso. Leave him there, for G-d’s sake, pay him what he’s earned and keep him, and quit moving him around in the lineup too. Be prepared to live with his periodic slumps as all the best power hitters have them, including Aaron Judge and even Ohtani. We will not find a better player for this role or a harder worker.
4. Mendoza is a good manager who had a great first year but then fell victim to the sophomore slump and great expectations ( not unlike Willie Randolph) and the bad baseball luck of injuries. If the Mets and Cohen truly want to be the East coast equivalent of the Dodgers, they must cultivate Mendoza and allow him some grace after this season, whatever happens. Any new manager of any operation or group of people requires this from his or her senior leadership. To have sustained success,
stability is critical, and Mendoza, despite his baseball knowledge, is a very new manager. He’s made some puzzling decisions recently, but during a prolonged slump like this, everything is under a clouded microscope.
4. I think we’ve all noticed the difference in attitude of the team from last year; where is the fun, the joy, etc.?
It’s partially an absence – no Iglesias, no Severino, and the pileup of injuries – but the Mets should not ignore the possibility of dissent in the clubhouse, and if it’s there, they need to address it immediately. And senior management cannot make the mistake of taking a “plug and play” approach, as they have tried to do with the rotation – Montas and Holmes are not Severino and Quintana. They are different people who may or may not be suited to the roles of veteran pitchers having put-of-nowhere successful seasons.
5. The rotation needs to be set at this point in the season. If that means calling up whoever from the minors, so be it, but that decision has to be backed up by keeping a stable rotation barring injuries. It is not the time for “try-outs;” if someone is ready for the majors, he’s ready, and that includes being ready, if necessary., to pitch in a pennant race. No throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks.
6. As fans, we need to stop finding scapegoats; it’s easy to be nostalgic, but even our legendary players ( Seaver, Piazza, Strawberry, Gooden, Hernandez, Carter) had sometimes prolonged slumps and were booed. Soto is a bit of an odd duck, it seems, but he is a great player who has the potential to be an all-time great Met, like those above and others. Whatever happens during the remainder of this season, we should not turn on him as we did on Beltran (how did that work out?) because of a tough first year or one bad decision on the field. If the Mets turn this season around, or if they don’t, Juan Soto is not going to be the only reason why for either outcome, and a sour relationship with the fans will have longer-term impacts.