There’s a post to be written about how the rest of the season is a chance for David Peterson and Tylor Megill — your last two Mets starters down in Baltimore — to show they belong in the starting rotation, to demonstrate that they’re more than just fill-ins for now-traded Hall of Famers, to add a new dotted line to their Family Circus plot of wanderings between prospect and suspect.
And you know what? The Athletic just wrote it. You should go read it.
I’m not going to write my own because a) it would be duplicative and b) it would depress me. The Mets lost, as they’ve done routinely of late and seem likely to do routinely in the future. They’ve been reduced to the role of Generic Opponent, a sparring partner for good teams with something to play for. That’s quite a fall from World Series contender, the status they were handed by prognosticators in February and March and finally surrendered in June.
Quite a fall. It happens, and honestly I’m glad it can happen, because baseball would be a lot less interesting without Cinderella teams and wicked stepsisters getting their comeuppance — which is, let’s face it, is what our outsized payroll and underwhelming results mean we are. What rankles is finding myself left to wander the wreckage for two more months, compelled to remain by duty and habit and a stubborn love of both baseball and — despite it all — my dumb, deeply dysfunctional team.
Being stuck in this slow-motion train wreck rankles. It will continue to rankle. And so you can expect eruptions of pique, retreats into nostalgia (nailed by Don DeLillo as “a product of dissatisfaction and rage”) and occasional refusals to engage whatsoever. And nights like this one, where I let those getting paid to chronicle disappointments do the heavy lifting.
“I’m not going to write my own because a) it would be duplicative”
That shouldn’t stop you. I don’t have a subscription to The Athletic. Even if I did, their writers aren’t you and Greg. I read your blog.
“my dumb, deeply dysfunctional team”
Figuring this out and fixing it is what I’m looking for the rest of the way. While the Mets were good last season, their hallmark was smart, sound baseball. Yet with largely the same core of players and same manager, the team has mysteriously suddenly become, as you say, dumb and dysfunctional. At this point, the whole team–the core veterans, not just the rookies–should be focused on restoring the smart, sound baseball that impressed us last season. Or else, just as the collapse of last season carried over into this season, this season’s miasma will carry over into next season.
The core of the team that was supposed to be a contender is still intact. They should not look this bad. At the least, the Mets should be losing despite the core players, not because of them.
It’s one of the damnedest things I’ve ever seen. It was like someone threw a switch, and that wonderful, sound, winning baseball team just ceased to exist. The rest of this season is going to tell us a lot about those veteran players, and what their Mets future is going forward.
It was mentioned in this space a few days ago that this was a great opportunity for Peterson and Magill to step up and show their wares, but that was just whistling through the graveyard, as both of these guys will continue to prove they stink, Peterson’s 4 innings nothwithstanding.
Cohen’s ‘automatonic’ leadership is good in business where passion does NOT exist and cold-hearted plans are a virtue, but not good in baseball, where hope IS a plan, and DOES spring eternal for many if not most baseball teams and fans.
The Hitting Coach was changed to a guy with a more analytical approach, and this has ruined Nimmo (and others), who is being asked to be another Babe Ruth.
Not Buck’s fault, as he famously said a couple of weeks ago that “You do what you are told.”
Cohen is not above lying or breaking the law in business, as evidenced by his 1.8 billion dollar fine. And if he can do that, he would think nothing of lying to us or his ballplayers.
We did have a chance this year, with Quintana coming back. It might have been aggravating, yes, but instead it is meaningless and embarrassing. I would argue the former is better.
With the inevitable collapse of some of these teams, in this case Miami, Cinn., and Arizona, and the return of Quintana, if Cohen had kept the team intact, we would have had a more than decent chance, provided our core players stepped it up. And with Alonso being healthy again, it could have happened.
Sigh……
I agree with SJ that the sell-off was sensible. I also admit Cohen’s decision wasn’t a no-brainer.
In their history, the Mets have made play-off runs from further behind in the standings, albeit the 3rd wildcard in this case.
At the trade deadline, the Mets were on the fence at 50-56. On one side, the 40-win MLB teams were non-controversial sellers. On the other side, the next NL team up from the Mets were the Padres at 53-55, and they stayed the course as buyers at the trade deadline. (The Guardians were also at 53-55, but that was only 2 behind the 55-53 AL Central leader Twins.)
Entering today, the Giants (who are only 3 behind the Dodgers for the NL West lead) and Phillies seem fairly stable for 2 wildcard berths. But I can’t say that about the Reds (only 1.5 behind the Brewers for the NL Central lead), Marlins, Cubs, Diamondbacks, or Padres in the scrum for the 3rd wildcard berth. As designed, no team’s running away with the 3rd wildcard. So am I sure that the Mets would not have woken up from whatever’s happened to them since last September and made a 2-month run to the play-offs, which they’ve done before? I don’t know that.
But with the Mets sitting on that 50-win fence, I accept Cohen’s reasoning behind ‘repurposing’ the money he already allocated to his long-term goal of turning the Mets into a team like the Dodgers or Braves that sustain year in, year out success with strong farm systems. With that goal his priority, I understand why Cohen bought prospects and balked at becoming a buyer by spending another elite prospect like Crow-Armstrong to rent a Baez or thinning the organizational depth like the Mets did last season. With the poor performance of the team up to the trade deadline, the Mets would have needed to be buyers like the Padres in order to justify a decision to stay the course against Cohen’s long-term goal for the team.
Note: The Mets were 48-54 on July 27th, the date Robertson was traded as the 1st step of the sell-off. Adjust the won-loss records and the rest of the point holds with the same teams ahead of the Mets in the scrum for the 3rd wildcard.
The strategy of breaking up the team in order to improve the farm system is questionable. Players are not stocks and bonds, and fans are not shareholders. Anyway, the Mets were not so far out of the wild card race to justify destroying the team and the rest of the season for some possibility of success in the future. I hope I’m wrong and these prospects turn into solid major leaguers if not stars. But I think, despite the supposedly low probability that the Mets had of making the playoffs at the trade deadline, they should have continued to hold the line and compete. Now that they are non-competitive, I hope the remaining players can still salvage some self-respect in how they play the rest of the season.
“The strategy of breaking up the team in order to improve the farm system is questionable. Players are not stocks and bonds, and fans are not shareholders.”
I don’t get it. What’s the logical relationship between these 2 sentences?
All great points, Michael in CT.
If this were a young, scrappy team on the rise, their youthful exuberance could have propelled them to go out and have fun, and prove themselves to themselves and to their fans by winning a few games and going out on a high note.
Instead, this is an experienced team who is decimated and disillusioned, who may just go out there and play out the string. Plus they have ZERO pitching, be it starters or relievers.
I would not blame Alonso if he chose to stay quiet and head for the door.
We would have had a better chance of making the playoffs this year and next, rather than having any of these new acquisitions be any good whenever.
The deadline strategy was utterly sensible. Playoff odds were 12%, which meant a 6% chance of making it past the WC round. Against that, a 100% chance of getting a bunch of serious prospects in trade.
Maybe the worst thing about this awful season has been the self-pitying tone of so much fan commentary and the corrollarry mean-spirited skewering of the team’s best players. Lindor is now leading all NL shortstops in fWAR this year(second in MLB by a hair to Wander Franco). By that same measure, he has been the 7th most valuable position player in MLB since 2021. Yet Met fans hate him. Amazing.
99.9546543267754% proof that stats can be misleading.
Lindor’s season has been an extreme disappointment.
As Lindor famously put it when being led around by the nose by Baez:
‘Thumbs Down.”
It’s easy to hate on Lindor, but he is the least of the Mets’ problems right now.