How on earth is this beat up team In a playoff chase? Didn’t the wheels come off?
The stark truth is that the tires blew out a long time ago, but we’re still driving along on rims, sparks flying all over. 2016 has been a snake-bitten season, much like 2009 only replace Fernando Tatis with Kelly Johnson and these guys, no matter how many injuries, slumps and bad breaks they encounter, just refuses to quit.
Coming off a 2015 NL pennant, expectations were sky high in spring training. Yoenis Cespedes was coming back and we had one of the best pitching staffs in baseball. We had four young studs on the rise, all with playoff experience, plus a fifth on his way back from Tommy John surgery. Early in the season we had discussions on Mets360 about how Bartolo Colon might adjust to the bullpen once Zack Wheeler came back in June. We also talked about how guys like Travis d’Arnaud, Michael Conforto, Juan Lagares, and Lucas Duda were poised to break out.
With nine games left in this very long season, this season is concluding in a manner we never, ever could have seen coming. Injuries have ravaged this roster. We’ve played most of the season without two of our top starting pitchers, our captain and first baseman. Other players joined the DL midseason for shorter stints – Jim Henderson, Yoenis Cespedes, and, of course, Travis d’Arnaud. Juan Lagares went down next. Sophomore star-in-the-making Conforto forgot how to hit. Curtis Granderson suffered the worst slump of his career, topped by the redundant Jay Bruce who looks like an overmatched hasbeen since we traded an important prospect to get him for the stretch run.
Following a bad second half start, the Mets seemed to right the ship in late August and early September, before another rash of injuries took over. Soon, Steven Matz, Jacob deGrom, and Neil Walker saw their seasons end prematurely. Wilmer Flores is hurt, Cabrera and Cespedes are playing on bad legs. The big five is now down to the big one with Noah Syndergaard, the lone young gun to avoid the DL, joined by 43-year-old Bartolo Colon and a parade of triple A pitchers to form a patchwork rotation A team of “replaceMets” led by journeyman acquisitions and unheralded triple A players helped make the team relevant and keep them in contention chugging into late September. We can’t beat the last place Braves and the overworked bullpen is taking a beating. Hot hitters are cooling off. But along comes another hero – this time Asdrubal Cabrera. There is just no quit in this team.
Sneaking into the playoffs as a wildcard this year would be great to see – a few more games to watch, more excitement at Citi Field and some extra revenue for the organization to spend in the off-season. Realistically, the best we can hope for is to win the wild card and take our lumps against the Cubs. How could this beaten and battered team compete with a stacked team on its way to 100 plus wins? Miracles can happen. This is the Mets. If a rag tag team can blow up the death star, this feisty bunch, held together with chewing gum and spit, might just have the spirit, the moxie and the magic to go all the way. You’d be crazy to bet against these guys. Let’s go Mets!
TDA was out of action for nearly two months and that’s described here as a shorter DL stint. Everything’s relative, I guess.
Start getting loose, Matt, I hear TC is planning on using you out of the bullpen tonight.
If I was a lefty he might let me face Howard.
While I think the “don’t quit” element is overstated at times — the Reds are the only team I’ve seen this season that mailed it in and played selfishly — there’s no question that this team is all in.
And say what you want, but TC is managing his ass off.
I think those things are connected.
They get knocked down, they get up again.
Usually when a team is tagged with the “never quit” label it’s because a different and often surprising player becomes the nightly hero. But when you look at the boxscores it is Cespedes, Asdrubal, or Granderson stepping up and a bit of T.J. Rivera.
The bigger surprise is the mileage the team has gotten from Lugo and the other starters who have stepped it up after losing Harvey, Matz, deGrom and getting nothing from Wheeler.
It’s heartbreaking to see Cespedes and Cabrera hobbling around out there but without them in the lineup the team is doomed. Eric Campbell? James Loney? Uggghhh.
If they get into the playoffs, and if they win the WC game, at that point anything can happen. We’ve seen in previous years teams that scrape their way into the postseason beat supposedly more talented teams in the divisional round and LCS.