The Mets are in a bit of a spiral. In classic Mets fashion, many people can’t even seem to figure out what the problem is.
One day it’s a flat performance from the position players that will derail the season. The next day it’s injuries. On the third day you might hear that it’s all Taijuan Walker’s fault, even though the struggling All-Star pitches just one out of every five games.
Lots of things have gone wrong for the Mets, especially in the past three and a half weeks. On July 9, the Mets awoke with a 45-36 record, four games up in the NL East. They had just taken three-game series from the Yankees and Brewers. Seven games with the rotten Pittsburgh Pirates came next. The Mets found a way to lose four of those seven games. Thus began a 10-13 stretch that has put their playoff odds — which previously seemed ironclad — in jeopardy.
Although the offense has gone dormant for some of this period, the bats are not entirely to blame. In fact, in this 23-game stretch, the Mets have improved upon their yearly averages in several statistical categories. They’re striking out less frequently, seeing upward ticks in batting average, on-base percentage and slugging, and according to FanGraphs, also swinging at fewer pitches out of the strike zone.
For the season they’re hitting .235/.314/.384, ranking 19th out of 30 teams in batting average, 17th in on-base percentage and 25th in slugging. Since July 9, the Mets’ slash line is .256/.335/.440. They’re hitting better than they have for most of the season, the wins just aren’t coming.
If we shrink the sample size a bit, yes, things look worse. The Mets have not scored more than five runs in a game since July 21 and it’s gotten very bleak for a few individuals. Michael Conforto was briefly benched after an 0-for-13 skid and Kevin Pillar is currently riding a 3-for-24 wave.
“You’re not supposed to be thinking at the plate,” manager Luis Rojas said of Conforto’s mental struggles. “I think he’s thinking too much at the plate, and that’s causing him to be in between. So we want to brush that off.”
“He’s going through a hitting struggle, but we feel he can make an adjustment and be hot soon,” Rojas said of Pillar.
Better hitting would obviously help, and J.D. Davis, James McCann and Dom Smith have hit recent rough spells at the dish as well. But for a team that’s been slightly better on offense and still losing, the pitching deserves some inspection.
Part of the pitching woes is the front office’s doing, as they watched their team lose a bullpen game to the Pirates, drop another game that was started by Robert Stock, and even after bringing in Rich Hill, did nothing to prevent Jerad Eickhoff from starting on the 27th.
The hunt for starting pitching should have happened right after injuries to David Peterson and Joey Lucchesi. Instead, acting general manager ultimately Zack Scott hoped for good injury news and tried to fix a ramshackle rotation with a 41-year-old.
Last season’s World Series participants reminded the baseball world that there’s no such thing as having too many good players. Bringing a fully capable player off the bench or pushing a very qualified starter to a long relief role means that the team is in great shape. Pitching Jerad Eickhoff means the opposite.
In June, owner Steve Cohen said that surpassing the luxury tax by one or two million dollars is “stupid” and “if you are going to do it, you are going to do it.” He did not do it, and since July 9, the Mets’ starting pitchers have a 5.42 ERA. They’ve been much worse as a unit than the offense has during this time frame.
Around the same time, the Kumar Rocker debacle showed that the front office may not have totally shed its Wilponian mindset (or budget) yet.
Similar thinking was on display at the trade deadline, when the Javy Baez pickup provided a nice distraction from the fact that the team’s pitching has been teetering on the brink of disaster for an unsettlingly long time. There were certainly available pitchers on the market, ones that the Mets could afford. While fans have started literally falling asleep during the Mets’ at-bats, it’s the pitching that has made things so dire.
A cold stretch with the bats is part of the game, but don’t let the results of the last few days fool you. The Mets’ 115 wRC+ since July 9 is the second highest in the league and tells us that the offense has been 15 percentage points better than the average team.
Allowing seven or more runs five times, thrice letting the opponent hit double digits, is a much greater issue. The Mets have done that over the last 26 days. With Jacob deGrom still watching from the sidelines, Walker navigating his first difficulties as a Met, and rookie Tylor Megill and recovering Carlos Carrasco still a bit of an unknown, the pitching deserves far more scrutiny than the mercurial offense.
