For the the New York Mets, it’s no cliché - it really is the best and the worst of times.
Since Matt Harvey first popped out of the minors and into the minds of daydreaming Mets fans late in the 2012 season, the franchise has rolled out Zach Wheeler, Jacob deGrom, Noah Syndergaard, and finally Steven Matz, the locally born Long Island lefty who lit up Queens during his Sunday debut. They’re all studs, and if they all continue develop at the rate they’re projected to, they’d all be at or near the top of almost any rotation in Major League Baseball. To have one or two hurlers of this quality emerge at once is great luck - to have five players (four at the moment - Wheeler is out for the season with Tommy John surgery) all who could be a legitimate franchise ace, just doesn’t happen. Short story - it’s a once-in-a-multiple-generation set of starters.
This is all too much for the baseball gods, who know full well that giving a team this much starting pitching talent is enough to push the world off its axis. Naturally, they’re doing their best to level things out, and so these Mets “can’t hit a lick”, baseball speak that’s usually more of an exaggeration than reality. In Queens however, it’s the bitter truth, and consistent catastrophic offensive failures have led to a 27-34 record since New York got off to a flying 14-4 start.
The Mets have just one single offensive player contributing right now and that’s Curtis Granderson - the ex-Yankee slugger posted an OPS of over 1.200 the last two weeks. The rest of the Mets are making the offensively starved title-winning Los Angeles Dodgers teams of the 1960s look like the ‘27 Yankees, and that’s probably a bit of an understatement.
“Shortstop” Wilmer Flores’ early-season slugging is long gone. Michael Cuddyer, who left Monday’s game with a knee injury, hasn’t driven in a run in over 30 games. First baseman Lucas Duda is passive and power deprived. Outfielder Juan Lagares is posting an OPS of .200 over the past two weeks (that’s not a batting average, it’s slugging percentage plus on-base percentage). Catching prospect Kevin Plawecki is talking his lumps in place of the perpetually injured Travis d’Arnaud. Franchise third baseman David Wright has missed most of the season with spinal stenosis and won’t return until after the All-Star break. Utility infielder Daniel Murphy, who can actually hit, only just returned to the lineup after an extended absence.
It’s a laundry list of offensive offense, (a two-week team slash-line of .175/.254/.271/.526) ineptitude (in 20 games they’ve scored one or no runs) that’s unusual even for the Mets, and we’re talking about a franchise that has no home-grown batters in the hall-of-fame.
Mets fans’ skulls are splitting, knowing that despite their offense they’re just a couple of players short of competing for the World Series right now - not in 2016, 2017 or 2018.
With a stacked pitching rotation that are currently using six hurlers to limit the innings of their young arms, a lockdown closer in Jeurys Familia and a middle relief group of reasonable quality, the Mets are in nearly every single game they play. They’ve racked up the second-best home record in baseball, but somehow their offense is even worse on the road, and so they haven’t won a series away since 10 May. If the Mets could’ve figured out how to play .500 ball away from Flushing they’d be two games ahead of the Washington Nationals in the NL East.
How do the Mets get better? Well, that could all be down to the performance of starter Jonathan Niese, who rather incredibly has become the most vital player on the roster. That’s because the lefty hurler, who is pitching well despite his bloated ERA, represents one of the key trade chips General Manager Sandy Alderson has to help his team reach the playoffs for the first time since 2006. And in case you’re wondering, trading one of the young starters is 99.9% out of the question.
So every start Niese makes between now and the 31 July trade deadline has potential post-season implications - if he falters his value drops. Potential suitors were watching on Tuesday, including the Chicago Cubs, a team that has built their young team around hitting, the polar opposite of the Mets.
The Cubbies faced Niese, who for the right price, could make up a key portion of the Cubbies rotation as they bid to win their first World Series title since 1908. Niese surrendered just one run over seven innings while other teams such as the Dodgers and Toronto Blue Jays checked in on the hurler from afar - the Mets would likely demand a high-end shortstop or left fielder in return.
Meanwhile, New York lost 1-0 for a fourth time this season, compiling just three hits against the Cubs’ Kyle Hendricks, a pitcher who had been rung up for 10 runs over his previous two appearances.
On Wednesday New York played another 11 innings while failing to score a run again in a frustrating 2-0, extra-inning loss. You get the idea you could watch their line-up play for weeks without witnessing a runner crossing the plate.
“We’ve looked at a lot of things and nothing’s working,” Mets manager Terry Collins on Wednesday.
That needs to change now because the Mets are desperate for any kind offensive help. Even still, Alderson said recently that because of a variety of reasons, including parity across MLB, many teams have yet to make players available. When they do, Alderson said that the cash strapped Mets, who doled out their annual check to Bobby Bonilla on Wednesday, are “willing to overpay” to bring in that offensive piece - perhaps Cubs shortstop prospect Javier Baez, Milwaukee Brewers outfielder Carlos Gomez, or infielder Alex Guerrero or outfielder Andre Ethier of the Dodgers - the latter three have big league salaries. He also said the Mets have one big move, rather than several to remedy the situation - the bar is already touching the floor even before trade conversations get serious.
It’s a baseball sin to squander this kind of starting pitching and Alderson needs to get creative because the upside is staring them in the face. If help does arrive and Wright and d’Arnaud return from their ailments and stay healthy, the Mets could soon find themselves in a position to sneak into the playoffs where their pitching will make them an extremely dangerous opponent.
Otherwise the young starters will eventually crumble under the strain of pitching with virtually no run support, slide to a sub-.500 record, and face another wait until next year’s offseason, something Mets fans know a thing or two about.
