Yoenis Cespedes and the replace-Mets are not enough

As of this morning, the Mets’ record stands at 36-30. They’re in second place in the NL East, six full games behind the Nationals. It’s not where we hoped the team would be at this point in the season, to say the least. The team has been dealing with under-performance, and the injuries are reminiscent of that ugly early summer of 2015. We don’t like to think about that June and July of 2015, and we don’t like to talk about it.

Here’s the thing, though: the 2015 Mets were 36-32 on this date last year. A worse record, sure, but also a team on a downward spiral and choking on the remnants of an unlikely 11-game winning streak early in the season. That team was sitting atop the NL East ahead of a disappointing and injured Nationals team, but the writing was on the wall. The injuries were too much to handle. It was all crashing down.

This season was supposed to be different. The common thinking heading into it was that this was a deeper and better prepared team. It was not only better prepared in the sense that the young players were a year older and a year wiser, it was a team that could absorb injuries better than its 2015 version.

We knew the Nationals would be better, but so would the Mets. Both of those statements turned out to be true. Unfortunately, the injury bug has once again claimed significant playing time from Mets starters and the replacements aren’t up to the challenge. The depth is certainly better than last year, but you can’t replace three of your cornerstone players for months at a time and expect anything more than what the Mets have received. No team can do that, but it’s time for the Mets to acknowledge that they’ll need better players at more positions than they’d maybe hoped.

What does that mean? It means that the team’s plan to pair a league average or slightly better offense with a dominant staff was good on the surface but poor in the context of the current roster. This strategy should work more times than not, with the amount of success dependent on variables like yearly individual performances, but that assumes somewhat good health from the players on the roster.

Injuries are going to happen, of course, but it’s clear that two of the Mets’ key players in Travis d’Arnaud and David Wright can be counted on to miss significant time each season. Pair that up with less expected health issues with players like Lucas Duda, and we now see replacement-level (or worse) players with significant playing time. That negates the whole balance of superior pitching and average offense. A team-wide slump and some hiccups on the pitching staff make for some extremely bad stretches of baseball, as we’ve seen recently.

Compounding the issue is the fact that the team is littered with average or slightly better than average starters with nary a superstar position player in sight. The closest they come is Yoenis Cespedes, who may have his best season ever this year, but will probably be gone after the season. This means that when your solid regulars go down for long stretches, you don’t have the high-impact players to hold the fort with the replacements. You have average players who are, by design, individually less than the sum of their parts playing with lesser players that again throw the entire balance off.

In short, a roster full of solid regulars is less resistant to weather long-term injuries than one with a couple of star players. The Mets currently have four starters on pace (maybe) to contribute as solid regulars (2.0-3.0 fWAR) or better this season: Cespedes, Neil Walker, Michael Conforto, and Curtis Granderson. Remember that WAR is a counting statistic, so during the season it can go up or down depending on performance. The last three on that list have seen significant ups and downs this season, so what they ultimately end up contributing is still up in the air.

In the absence of players like Wright and d’Arnaud, the team needs a Danny Valencia for extended periods and not a Kelly Johnson. That’s simply an example since Valencia has been discussed, though perhaps not a great one because of his over-the-top performance. The point is that the team can’t hope to tread water with near-average regulars while retaining nothing but replacement-level or worse backups with the amount of time these regulars will likely miss due to frequent injuries.

Great pitching and average offense should keep the Mets in the thick of things and, as we saw last year, hot stretches of offense to match up with that pitching can propel them to great heights. That formula is rendered useless when that average offense can’t stay on the field and the replacements aren’t good enough to hold the line for extended periods. If the Mets aren’t going to invest the money in several above-average starters that can periodically carry the offense when inevitable injuries occur, they need to ensure that their replacements are closer to average than replacement-level. Right now, that isn’t the case and the team is fading fast.

Will Sandy Alderson simply look to temporarily plug the holes again as we approach the deadline, or will he resign himself to the fact that the roster simply wasn’t complete when taking into account somewhat expected injuries and make the necessary upgrades?