It was clear from the onset of the ball game that Matt Harvey did not have his best stuff tonight. He gave up his seventh home run on the season already, which is an issue that becomes more and more pressing with each start. Harvey surrendered six runs on eight hits over 5.1 innings pitched. Harvey also allowed three walks in that span, which is also a concerning number. My gut feeling is that Harvey is still recovering, and is trying to fight through the rough patch. He will get stronger over the course of the year, he just needs to bring his mojo back to the hill. His confidence will help him finish batters off, something he has struggled with thus far.
On the offensive side on the ball, the Mets were once again reliant on the long ball to provide the runs on the board. A two run home run and grand slam by Jay Bruce and a solo shot by Asdrubal Cabrera was all the Mets offense could muster. Michael Conforto stayed hot by contributing two hits, and Neil Walker added a double and a hit. T.J Rivera and Juan Lagares each contributed a hit as well. A seven game hitting streak concluded for Jose Reyes.
The Mets bullpen continued to struggle tonight as they gave up 3 runs in 3.2 innings. A combination of Josh Smoker and Fernando Salas gave up the runs, while Josh Edgin and Paul Sewald both made clean appearances. There is also slight concern over catcher Travis d’Arnaud, who left the game due to a sore right wrist. It was a tough 9-7 loss for the Mets, who will attempt to bounce back tomorrow night against the Braves, when Jacob deGrom will take the hill for the Mets.
Salas hasn’t been the same this year and while he was used a little aggressively in the beginning, it wasn’t too bad. His problem may stem from missing spring training with a visa problem and so this is his spring training.
It’s rediculous that the Mets have lost so many players to injury, and I don’t believe that luck has anything to do with it. Branch Rickey said “luck is the residue of design”, and I’m a big believer of that, so I believe there is a real problem with the medical staff of the Mets coupled with lack of rest planning for all players.
Salas was absolutely fantastic in the first week and a half pitching 7.2 scoreless innings with an 8/2 k/bb ratio.
But the problem is that he was so heavily abused to start the season. He pitched in 7 of the team’s first 10 games – a full season pace of 113 games – which is mind boggling and more than just “a little aggressively” as you perceived.
It was the team’s first ten games, but it wasn’t always consecutive days.
4/3: 1 inning
4/5: 1
4/6: 1
4/8: 2/3
4/9: 1
4/12: 1
4/13: 2. That’s the 7 2/3.
Then:
4/15: 2/3, 3 earned runs, 2 homeruns allowed
4/18: 1, 1 unearned run
4/20: 0, 1 earned run. 1 HR allowed, then two more hits but they didn’t score
4/26: 1, 2 earned runs
4/30: 1, 3 earned runs
There were off days and while I admit the usage was not optimal, the usage since then should have given him a chance to regroup; he was used 5 times in 17 days. What I said is this is his spring training and therefore, missing spring training may have caused his arm to not be strong enough so this is his dead arm period that all pitchers go through the last week of so of spring training.
People seem to get the fact that SP are not as strong early in the season, cold weather, etc.. and need time to build up stamina. Why wouldn’t this logic apply to relievers as well? And like you said, Salas missed a good chunk of spring training so he probably wasn’t as strong as well because of that too. So how doesn’t 7 games in the first 11 games not qualify as abuse? We would never ask a SP who say misses 2 months, makes one rehab start of 45 pitches and bring him up to the majors and force him to throw 120 pitches in his first 3 starts.
Projecting 10 days of “heavy” use — seven innings pitched — across an entire season is absurd & meaningless.
On Salas, I distinctly recall that you hated the trade when it was made and felt that Erik Goeddel was just as good. We parried back and forth on that one.
Anyway, you were right in the sense that Salas has been an erratic, up and down reliever over his career. But when he’s right, he can be very good.
I wonder if he’s hurt.
The “abuse” stuff is overstated. Or at least the language, with its built-in accusation, is misleading. The Mets starters have not provided depth. Understandable with Wheeler, coming off two years inactivity; less so with everyone else. There are simply too many bad pitchers in the pen, guys who can’t be relied on in a close game, guys who can’t get outs in a bad one. The ripple effect has been problematic.
If the starters can’t go 6-7 innings on a regular basis, the season will be shot, since everything is predicated on top performances from the starters.
That’s a very optimistic reading of Matt Harvey, and boy do I hope you are right.
He had nothing last night. Not a single pitch was crisp. No bite, no sharpness.
It was worrisome.
The Mets are built on their starting pitching. An average starter goes 6 innings and the Mets are supposed to have above average starters. This has been the failure.
If these starters would go 6+ innings then the Mets follow with Blevins, Reed and Familia and it should result in a successful night. It all starts with the starters.
TC plays match ups so relief pitchers other than Reed and Familia usually don’t pitch a full inning. It is part of TC’s all hands on deck philosophy. In the 7th inning a match up may be necessary but anytime before that appears to me to be a recipe for future bullpen burnout. TC has been managing like this all along and has a had success with this style but with the starters no longer giving him distance then maybe he should reevaluate and manage the pitching accordingly.
Jay Bruce is a professional home run hitter RBI man, who is a previous all star, only 30 years old and has turned you to be what Alderson initially traded for.
All true.
On Bruce, my issues with him were never in isolation, but within the context of this team, this specific roster. The wrong piece.
On an offense that lacked a diversity of weapons, SA doubled-down on “the approach.” On a club that lacked speed and defense, SA ignored it. Too many duplications with Granderson & Duda also on deck.
But, yes, Bruce is a good player and it still amazes me that no one saw his value at $13 million during the winter. I was in favor of picking up the option and moving him — figured it would be easy — a net plus.
If not for a freak injury with Lagares, Conforto starts the season in AAA. That’s called: the worst plan ever, and something I hated from the get-go.
Despite everything he’s done, I still believe that Bruce was the wrong move for this team, the wrong way to manage these resources. But that’s nothing against Jay Bruce the individual, who would be a good #6 hitter for many clubs.
BTW, isn’t it time for another “Kevin Long: hitting guru of the 21st Century” article? It’s been a solid month.
In responding to an article a couple weeks ago, I wrote how disapointing the starting pitching had been exactly because the total innings pitched is insufficient for a group of supposed #1s and #2s. That concern is amplified more than ever as you rightly point out Metsense. Right now I cannot judge how strong the pen is given the total work load and the skipper’s penchant for playing matchy matchy even with 4+ innings to cover on a nightly basis. This team leads with pitching. Our starters are failing to do their job, which like dominoes, goes right down the line everywhere, negatively impacting everything.
My grade for starting pitching is C-.
2017 would be over were it not for Jay Bruce. Last year he did not move his family to NY. He has an infant that he could not see. He moved from hotel to hotel weekly. We are seeing the Jay Bruce we expected…now where the hell is everyone else for a brand new season?
Respectfully, I think the grade thing is misguided. The emphasis is off.
There was a plan in place, debated and agreed upon by the organization over the winter.
In short, “Let’s do everything we can to keep our starters healthy.”
(An aside: How’s that working out?)
That translated into a lighter workload during ST, with pitchers logging fewer innings than in the past. Also there was the idea of staying pretty strict when it comes to pitch count, certainly in the first month of the season. The idea was to keep the starters healthy and strong so they could finish the year with a positive push toward the playoffs.
What was missing from that plan was the obvious counterpiece: bullpen quality and depth.
Starters were always key to the season, and yet the plan was not to push these starters early. Six innings was going to be about it in many foreseeable cases. In addition, the Mets were featuring Wheeler in the rotation, who hadn’t pitched in two years. And Harvey, coming off a second significant surgery. And Gsellman, a rookie. And deGrom, who wore down in 2016. They were not going to ride these guys hard in April. Period.
To go along with this plan, the Mets absolutely had to feature a strong bullpen, since so many games are decided in the later innings — otherwise you negate the strength of the starting pitching. And yet the bullpen in 2017 was simply a repeat of the 2016 pen, minus Familia.
Josh Edgin and Josh Smoker have never pitched full, successful seasons in the majors. We all know about Montero. And Gilmartin was abysmal in 2016, and in ST of 2017. Between the four of them, you have one good year.
In military terms, it was like carefully planning an attack, but neglecting to ensure stable supply lines for food and replacements.
I can’t kill the starting pitchers for failing. The plan was flawed from the beginning.
As I also write before, the “soft start” for these pitchers has not been innings, but in pitches. We continue to see lack of command and control and 20-pitch inning after 20 pitch inning. If these guys were tossing even 15 pitch innings on average thats 90 pitches for 6. The Mets believe errantly that the “kid glove” treatment begins in February. In fact, these guys need to monitor much more closely off season training.
The starting pitchers are failing to do their job. period.
I believe that there is over monitoring of pitchers in the MLB these days. Pitchers are still getting injured, and are less accustomed to going deep into games.
Where is everyone else?
Chris, other than Walker who really is better than he has played, who can you really say has surprised you this year? Cabrera isn’t a .320 hitter as he was the last seven weeks. Granderson we all know was MIA all last year only to get hot for the last month and make everyone forget his abismal 2016. We were all worried about Duda’s back, but he hyperextended the elbow. TDA is actually better, and so is Conforto. It can be said that even though Cespedes is hurt, Conforto has replaced his production, especially since Conforto was expected to be in AAA as Jimmy pointed out. So the truth is, this team is just a poorly constructed roster that is poorly managed and put all its eggs in the “pitching basket”, but the eggs are breaking and no other options exist.
Alderson should step down as GM and be the CFO because his body of work as GM and talent evaluator has been poor, his manager should be thanked and given a parade and gotten rid of, and we should look to integrate some youth on this team and actually build a real winner, not a patchwork team from year to year.
Everyone seems to be afraid of trusting youth, but as we look around baseball, more teams have had success by implementing their young players and using the veterans as filler pieces than the Mets’ way of implementing 30+ y.o. veterans and using their young players as filler pieces.
Just have to disagree that TdA is better. He’s hitting .203 and has had only two good games at the plate which I can remember. And he is clearly a liability behind the plate as well. It’s not just his throwing (which is likely league-worst) but he does a very poor job in consistently blocking pitches in the dirt. Seems like he gets lazy and tries to backhand balls he should be sliding over and smothering.
Conforto, on the other hand, certainly looks like our best all-around player and right now, it’s not even close.
The way the Mets have been set up has not worked thus far, and they are heading down hill fast.
Good news is deGrom goes tonight. He’s our only starting pitcher who’s been both healthy and consistently good. I think we all assumed we have at least 3 of those.
I believe Harvey will be a better Pitcher in 5-10 games.
He has absolutely no command. His Climb the Ladder fastball is belt high. His “Takeout Slider” is hanging middle in. He doesn’t own his Changeup or his running 2 seemer. He’s pitching to a pattern that he remembers…but he cannot execute.
He has Velocity…I believe he has Better ahead.
Its worse than that. his arm angle has dropped and it looks like he has moved to the 3B side of the rubber. He was basically cross firing to get to the outside facing righty hitters.
Right now his delivery is a hot mess
He needs to adjust after his injury. I think he will eventually adjust, sooner rather than later.