Today in “If you don’t have anything optimistic to say, don’t say anything at all..”
Saw this ‘car’ in the players parking lot as I was leaving the game on Tuesday night. Who do you think drives this one?
Pictures/Fashion From Last Night’s Game
The Council of Fashion Designers of America were at Citi Field yesterday to debut their new Mets collaboration.
The line, which features a variety of jerseys, Henley shirts, trail jackets, tanks and t-shirts by the likes of Billy Reid, Yigal Azrouël, Rogan Gregory for Loomstate, Scott Haan and Jeff Halmos for Shipley Halmos, will be sold exclusively at Citi Field from July 24, and is available now for special pre-order at online concept store Edition01.com.
If you’re looking for something different in the area of Mets apparel, this might be a way to go. I’m not really into fashion myself, and would probably stick with something from The 7 Line, but some of this was interesting looking.
<click below for more pictures, including game/Mets stuff>
The Mets Will Still Finish Above .500
No team has ever been as bad as the Mets are playing right now. It’s foolish to think that this stretch is more representative of the team than the previous 80 or so games that came before it, where they were playing fringe-playoff level baseball. The Mets will turn it around soon. Someone will get really hot with the bat, someone else (maybe the Diamondbacks) will get really poor pitching. The randomness of baseball will fall in the Mets favor and they’ll win some of these games.
It might be too late, especially considering the Mets have lost five starting pitchers to injury and ineffectiveness (Schwinden, Batista, Santana, Gee, Pelfrey), to make the playoffs, but they can still have a good run the rest of the way. You never know when a playoff spot falls into your lap. The Tampa Bay Rays were 6.5 out at this point last year, and 9 behind the team they ultimately beat out for the spot. Ultimately it’s about playing good baseball to keep yourself in a position to capitalize on opportunities to make the playoffs. This is why full rebuilding mode rarely works out; by the time the team has been rebuilt, it’s full of it’s own set of maybes and what-ifs that leave you wondering if they’re good enough. Building a baseball team is a very fluid process full of dozens of unseen pitfalls for even the smartest of general managers.
So if you’re one of those fans or writers that looks at winning streaks with a “This will never last” attitude, and are quick to tout preseason guesses to the Mets record whenever they struggle, pipe down. Preseason predictions are merely something used to fill columns and pass the time while we wait for the season to start; no one should take them seriously, particularly not over a 90-100 game sample of real data. Similarly, if you were treating this season like a rebuilding year and didn’t count the results.. pipe down. It’s okay to have no expectations, you believe what you believe, but it doesn’t make you a better fan to stubbornly ignore the actual purpose of the season. Playoff teams sneak up on you all the time, and the Mets had plenty of opportunity to seize a hold on one. Just because you’ve decided that 2014 is the first year the Mets have a chance to compete and Sandy Alderson is some magical genie that will defeat all the unpredictable ups and downs of prospects, players, and injuries doesn’t mean we should ignore 2012 and 2013 and all the random excitement it brings. These are not exhibition games.
The Mets will get back to their winning ways and rattle off a nice winning stretch of games. They very well might yet finish above .500. It’s not even completely out of the question that they win nine of 10 games and shrink the wild card lead. It’s not a given that the wild card teams are all going to play as well as they’ve been playing. It’s not even a given that the Nationals will continue their 96 win pace. That’s a lot of wins. While things aren’t looking great now, everything’s still just a solid win streak away.
Preview of September
Here’s what Citi Field is fixing to look like for most September games.
Citi Field Needs a Beer
Whether or not you believe the season is over or if the Mets can come back from this recent slump, I think we can all agree that we need another beer to watch right?
I was at the game Friday night where it rained half the night and was breezy and pretty chilly. I walked up to the Craft Beer Dugout and the first thing I thought was “A nice porter would really hit the spot right now.” The Mets do not sell any dark beers, not even Guinness. The closest option is probably the Leffe Brown, and that’s an import.
There are plenty of other cool summer evenings, and there are cold games in April, September, and maybe even in October some years. A nice roasty porter or stout would really be a great option for those games. Brooklyn Brewery makes a dry Irish Stout that’s very tasty, and you could even re-brand it the Daniel Murphy Stout.
The lack of a broad variety is park of what keeps the competitive Citi Field Beer from being a true champion. I suggest Sixpoint Diesel.
Mets Bullpen: Worst Ever, or Just Bad?
I’m not trying to defend the bullpen, because they haven’t been great and have been giving a lot of close games away lately, but it I keep hearing people talk about how it’s the worst bullpen in the league and how horrible it is and that’s misrepresenting it a bit. The National League league average for bullpens is 3.85 and has been a little worse, 3.98, in June and July. The Mets are at 5.00. That’s what makes it look really bad.
These seven guys in the bullpen are not fully responsible for all those numbers. So the bullpen the Mets will have available to them tonight is not the epic failure it’s being made out to be. Manny Acosta, with 33 runs allowed, is still tops in the National League among pitchers with no starts. Now, you can’t discount those runs because clearly someone else would’ve given up some in that role, but it does seem worth nothing that the non-Acosta relievers are pitching to a 3.77 ERA. The bullpen with Manny Acosta in it was posting a 5.54 ERA. Since the last time he appeared in a game, the Mets bullpen has posted a 4.07 ERA.
That certainly isn’t record-setting bad. It’s a bullpen that will close out games when you have a good starting five and an offense that can score runs. The Mets have been struggling with consistency in those other departments lately and that’s a bigger problem than the bullpen. Another thing in the Mets bullpen’s favor is the defense. They don’t make a lot more errors than average, but the plays not made or double plays not turned can be problems as well. I’m sure we all have nightmares about some of these games where the Mets gave the opposition four or five outs to work with. Balls falling in that an average defender would catch means a higher ERA for the pitcher despite his best effort. Sometimes it’s just bad luck, as with the hit and run last night, but other times it’s a bad read or bad positioning.
Of course ERA isn’t the perfect tool for evaluating relievers so it’s probably not safe to say they’ve been only a tick worse than league average lately. They’ve allowed 33% of inherited runners to score, with or without Acosta, and that’s good for second worst in the league behind only Philadelphia. League average is 28%. Sometimes those runs apply to other relievers, but sometimes they’re hurting the starters ERA and don’t show up in my calculations above.
So while the bullpen hasn’t been great the extent to which it’s struggled has been over-stated lately. Even the average bullpen around the league is is going to give up a run roughly ever seven outs. That’s usually at least one run a game.
The Mets Margin For Error
It’s pretty obvious the bullpen needs to be better. That’s not to say it’s as bad as it’s made out to be, because it’s not. They’ve changed a lot of the faces in there, including losing Manny Acosta who was responsible for roughly 6 gazillion runs. The bullpen was actually decent in June and I think a case could be made that the Mets under-performed.
The trick is to maximize the wins when you’re doing well, and minimize the losses when you’re not. The Mets had a historically awesome June with pitching, but didn’t capitalize as much as they probably should’ve. Now the Mets are experiencing a little bit of a struggle, and they’re failing to steal any wins. There were plenty of games available for the Mets to steal. That Atlanta series was full of opportunities where one fly ball, or one more strike gets them a win. Where a grounder two feet to the right results in an out and a Mets win. Last night Moore hit a home run that was within a few feet of where David Wright flew out. Josh Edgin walked the leadoff batter, and a stolen base meant that the easy single he gave up cost them a run. Bobby Parnell got Adam LaRoche to ground into the game-ending double play..except the hit and run was on and Ruben Tejada had vacated his spot to cover second.
None of these things excuse the Mets in any way. They’re struggling, and often when you struggle the margin of error is so small that the smallest turn of bad luck can be the difference. The Mets need to win some of these games, but the bigger issue is making sure one stolen base or badly placed grounder doesn’t destroy the entire game. That means scoring more than zero runs through the first 25 outs. I’m not going to start criticizing effort or preparation because I’m woefully unprepared to analyze that from outside the clubhouse, but the Nats pushed the envelope and made things happen and the Mets didn’t. Baseball is hard and sometime it’s just bad luck, but you lose that benefit of the doubt when it starts happening time after time. The Nats bullpen preformed as badly as the Mets did, they just had the benefit of the last turn at-bat. They have a nice lead in the NL East that makes it easier to stomach, and aren’t on a losing streak.
The Mets have now pressed their backs so hard against the wall that you wonder if they’re in a gravitron with the sports reporter vultures circling the clubhouse. While late July is hardly do or die, if the Mets don’t pull out four of six from the Nationals this month, it’s hard to see how they could climb back into the race without some help. A bench right-handed bat and a reliever or two are not going to make a big enough difference. The Mets will sink or swim mainly on the guys they’re playing right now, barring some crazy acquisition by Sandy Alderson like Justin Upton. They are now 3-8 in July after having a winning record in the first three months. They have 14 games left this month. If they can go 10-4 they’ll probably have managed to erase this early swoon, much less than that and they risk pushing themselves to far against the gravitron wall.
These Mets Are Not Finished
The Mets have been bouncing around between just good enough and mediocre for most of the season now. They’ve been unable to take that next step to great, but they’ve also never fallen off the cliff towards bad and it’d be foolish to read into their current state, again, as the beginning of the end unless you’re more concerned with your preseason predictions being correct than with how the Mets are actually doing.
There are plenty of times that if the season were to end the Mets would’ve been in the playoffs. Some as recent as four games ago. Losing three to a division rival is a rough way to start the second half, but it’s hardly the end of the world. The Mets are actually only 4 and 5 against the Braves this year. Those first three games are as important to the standings as these last three. The Mets will clearly need to made some adjustments, play better, and have some better luck to win more games. These are all things the Mets have proved able to do. R.A. Dickey and Johan Santana are human, apparently. Everyone slumps.
Everyone streaks too. Santana and Dickey will have other stretches of dominance. Other players will get hits, pitch well, catch the ball and beat the opposition. The Mets will win again.
If I were to judge this Mets team at this point, I’d say it might be a 50% chance they make the playoffs. If the season happens to end while they’re on a hot streak, they’ll likely be in. If not, they’ll likely miss out. The margin of error may be that small, which was also the case in the series in Atlanta. The Mets number one goal for the second half is to create situations where they have a margin for error. Multiple run leads when the bullpen is struggling. Less walks so that one error or poorly defended ball doesn’t lead to runs. Most importantly, getting into playoff position and building a lead so every loss isn’t a possible elimination event.
Drop The Expectations For These Mets
You’ve been hearing it all season long. The Mets are talked about with some variation of the caveat “They’ve been exceeding preseason expectations”. Adding this implies that those preseason expectations are more important than the results so far. It seems to suggest that we shouldn’t take what we’re seeing seriously, because a lot of talking heads in the offseason didn’t believe and guessing that this is all an illusion rather than a progression helps protect their opinion of themselves.
Not everyone thought the Mets would lose 90+ games though. I thought they’d be above .500, and I’m hardly the only one even if we’re in the minority. Rich Coutinho is another who’s been very upbeat on this team and his coverage of the team has a been a lot fairer and balanced than many of his contemporaries. The Mets aren’t exceeding our expectations, but are making good on the promise we saw in them.
Still, this was all March talk, and it’s now July and the second half. The Mets ARE in contention. They are winning baseball games and scoring a lot of runs and pitching well. It’s well past time to stop talking about what we thought about this team in March and start thinking about what’s going to happen going forward. We can’t pretend that it’s okay if the Mets fall short because we didn’t think they could do it. That’s a defeatist position from the outset. Baseball seasons are not linear progressions and no matter how much you believe in the process there is no guarantee that next year will be better than this year. It’s time to stop thinking about the carrot down the road, unless you’re Sandy Alderson who needs to consider all possible carrots, and start fighting for the carrot that’s right in front of us.
The expectations for this team have changed; make the playoffs. We can go back and make fun of Michael Kay and the others that predicted doom and epic disaster for this team later on. We’re beyond the point of celebrating that we don’t completely suck, it’s time to push the bar higher. We’ve got ourselves a pennant race, and there is no reason we should accept failure. None. Let’s sit on our couches, head out to Citi Field, see the Mets on the road and root and cheer and scream, and stress and enjoy over what’s going to happen over the next couple of months. That’s what being a fan is all about. Maybe they fall short, as most teams do, but don’t count them out before it’s over like so many did before the season even started.
Rotation After All-Star Break
All-Star Break coming up after the Cubs series and I think it’s worth a thought about how Terry Collins will line up his rotation coming out of it. There are a couple of things to consider here, including getting Dickey as many games as possible, the impending division match-ups, and the two pitchers coming off shoulder surgery.
So I’d definitely start R.A. Dickey the first game back against the Braves. This also ensures he’ll pitch against division-leading Washington in the second series. I’d then pitch Jonathon Niese and Dillon Gee. Give Johan Santana the extra days off, which amounts to skipping a start, and have him start the series against the Nationals on Tuesday, 11 days after his start tonight.
No one’s asked this question that I’ve seen, and maybe it’s because no one dreamed Santana would throw this many innings, but I’m starting to wonder if the Mets would prefer he didn’t throw 200 of them this year. He’s on pace for about 196, and this is probably the last opportunity the Mets will have to give him a little break before a pennant race. Starting with the Nationals series, the Mets will play 20 games without a day off across five cities and three time zones.
Skipping Chris Young the first time through after the break gives him some rest as well, and allows the Mets to have Santana, Dickey and Niese lined up to pitch five of the six July games against the Nationals.