OK, show of hands. Back in February, who’d have taken ending April 15-8 and in first place by 4 1/2 games?
Yeah, I thought so.
And yet here we are in the opening hours of May and everybody’s unhappy.
The bullpen’s gone to pieces. The bats haven’t been productive. And most glaringly, the defense up the middle has fallen apart.
Thursday’s game [1] started off happily enough. The Mets put two men on in the first but came up with nothing when Daniel Murphy [2] scalded a ball straight at Bryce Harper [3] in right. No matter: In the second they went to work against a discombobulated-looking Stephen Strasburg [4], following doubles by Wilmer Flores [5] and Kevin Plawecki [6] with a Curtis Granderson [7] single for a 2-0 lead. Come the top of the fourth and Jacob deGrom [8] was cruising, looking much stronger than he had against the Yankees. He walked Denard Span [9], giving the Nats their first baserunner of the game, but no worries: Yunel Escobar [10] hit the Platonic ideal of a double-play ball to Flores. Five seconds later it was two out and none on, and —
SCREECH.
Ahem. Wilmer started to toss the ball to Murph while still corraling it and it squirted free. Two out and none on became its ghastly inverse. By the time the inning was over it was 3-2 Washington, all runs that shouldn’t have scored. Two innings later deGrom got whacked around and left down 5-2. Some shoddy bullpen work made it 8-2 if anyone was still paying attention. Meanwhile, Strasburg had settled in and the Mets were hitting balls with authority — and in woeful proximity to Nationals fielders.
So much for that unbeaten record at home — and for the giddiness of last week. I warned you [11] it would happen, but it still hurts: That 11-game winning streak feels like something that happened a century ago, for fans in bowler hats to admire by the light of gas lamps.
The rest of this post was going to be an examination of Flores and a call for patience, albeit one made through gritted teeth: Can he play shortstop at the big-league level? (Too early to tell, but we all have a bad feeling about this.) Does he deserve more rope? (Yes — 40 games is generally considered a fair test.) Can he add more at the plate than he’ll subtract in the field? (Insufficient data but the early returns seem promising.) Was it fair for the cash-strapped, perennially Plan B-less Mets to thrust him into the responsibilities of shortstop? (No.) Are the fans who booed him tonight at Citi Field clueless cretins who should be kicked in the shins? (Definitely.)
With everyone still grumbling about the game, the Mets announced a roster move, and it isn’t one of their recent bench-dog-for-bullpen-cat swaps. Rather, they’re recalling Dilson Herrera [12].
Which made me happy, despite the attempt to be patient.
No, Herrera’s not a shortstop — putting him there would be unfair to two players instead of just one. But he is a second baseman, and Daniel Murphy hasn’t exactly covered himself with glory defensively in 2015 either. The smart money is that Herrera will spent the rest of David Wright [13]‘s absence at second, with Murph moving over to third and Eric Campbell [14] — who’s looked overexposed of late — going to the bench. (This isn’t meant to insult Campbell — he’s smart and a good asset, just probably not a big-league regular at this stage of his career.)
That leaves Flores at short, and we’ll see how that works out for the next week or so. So yeah, it addresses half the problem. But I find myself liking that the Mets aren’t waiting around until that hot start cools into nothing. They’re moving with a sense of urgency we haven’t seen for a while. Which isn’t the same as moving with a sense of urgency and the pocketbook of a major-market team, but one step at a time.
Dilson for a week and then we’ll see. Not the most stirring slogan, perhaps, but preferable to where we were a couple of hours ago. And hey, we are still 15-8 and in first place. You just said you would have taken that, remember?