Given the ebbs and flows of a entertaining yet maddening season, perhaps we’ve lost track of a simpler formula to make sense of the 2024 Mets: They need to outhit their mistakes.
The rotation is pedestrian, a bunch of No. 4 starters with ceilings as No. 3s. The relief corps is spaghetti at a wall. The defense, while much improved from the early days of the campaign, is just adequate.
That puts it all on a lineup that’s potent but streaky. Francisco Lindor [1] started out the season encased in a block of ice (which makes it hard to swing a bat), but has been an MVP candidate once thawed. Brandon Nimmo [2]‘s season has been a long march of dismay. Pete Alonso [3] has been productive overall but clearly regressed as a hitter. J.D. Martinez [4] has been a great clubhouse mentor but hot and cold in the lineup. Jeff McNeil [5] has combined an inert first half with a so-far sizzling second half. Francisco Alvarez [6]‘s sophomore season has been largely frustrating. When those hitters and their colleagues are clicking in sequence, the Mets can blow teams out of the water; when they’re out of sync they flail and fume while hoping an iffy pitching staff survives another day.
The lineup clicked in sequence Friday night, erupting for six runs in a thoroughly satisfying fourth inning against the Marlins and Roddery Munoz [7], who’d muzzled the Mets effectively in two previous appearances this year while getting cuffed around by pretty much everybody else in baseball.
McNeil fought his way through a long, tough AB before getting a slider that didn’t slide and whacking it into the seats for a 3-2 Mets lead. Harrison Bader [8] didn’t need his pink Crayola bat in drawing a walk. Lindor bounced a ball over Jake Burger [9]‘s glove that chased Bader home and saw Lindor wind up on third.
Exit Munoz, enter George Soriano [10], who hit Mark Vientos [11] to bring up Nimmo, whose trademark cheerfulness has been much reduced by a long slump and a recent bout of illness. Soriano’s inaugural offering was another slider that didn’t do what its name suggests; Nimmo crushed it into the Soda Salon and the Mets were up 7-2, a lead they wouldn’t relinquish [12] thanks to seven strong innings from Sean Manaea [13] and a tidy two from Jose Butto [14].
Your recapper was driving up to Connecticut and listening through MLB Audio, so I have nothing to offer about Players Weekend flourishes beyond Bader’s bat, which was lovingly described by Keith Raad, or about Daniel Murphy [15] joining the SNY booth.
I’ve loved baseball on the radio for decades and rarely if ever see it as a step down from getting to watch on TV, but an MLB deal with Audacy has seriously damaged the digital version of the radio experience. (Additional demerits for Audacy’s deeply stupid name.) I’m not talking about dropouts and pauses, which are largely a product of cell reception and not on Rob Manfred and Co. But MLB Audio is maddening even without that, it’s Audacy’s fault, and that is most definitely on MLB.
The cuts to commercial breaks are mistimed 90% of the time, with the announcers vanishing while reminding you of the game situation. That’s bad; what’s worse is that the ad inventory is pitiful. The same four to five ads run in crushingly heavy rotation, rapidly turning a showcase for a product and/or service into an ordeal that would be highly effective in a CIA black site.
Every year there’s an ad — or three, or four, or nine — that wears out its welcome within a week and comes to elicit pleas for mercy. This year’s offender features Tiki Barber hawking underwear designed to be comfortable for men. That’s how an adult who doesn’t need a drool cup would describe this product; the actual ad is a barrage of not very clever references to balls and boys. I’m sure this would make a 12-year-old boy howl with laughter until he knew every syllable and became bored (a point he’d reach very, very quickly), but my reaction is that I will never, ever, ever use this product. If I were rescued naked from a house fire and someone gave me a pair of Tiki Barber’s supportive briefs, I would hand them back and insist that I’ll do fine with a hastily constructed breechclout of half-burned newspaper.
I’d also like to punch Tiki Barber in the face. That would end badly but be worth it.
Enough about Tiki and his boys and back to the Mets trying to outhit their mistakes. That formula is usually discussed derisively, with the not terribly hidden implication that a front office only did half its job.
Now that it describes the Mets, I’m inclined to be a little more charitable. This was always supposed to be a transitional year, with the Mets pivoting from mercenaries (some of them in uniform elsewhere but still on the payroll) to homegrown talent; a key question coming into the season was whether the Mets took half-measures, hoping to be competitive when they should have opted for a full teardown.
As it’s turned out (at least so far), their own performance, National League parity and the allowances of the wild card era has left them fighting for the bottom wild-card rung. It’s not the same as arriving a little early — last summer’s ballyhooed import prospects have mostly struggled or been hurt — but the outcome is pretty similar, and has left me thinking of this season as a free spin of the roulette wheel.
The pitching staff isn’t going to get magically transformed; if anything, innings woes are going to put it in further danger. So the Mets better continue to outhit the inevitable mistakes.