The Luis Rojas farewell tour racked up another loss, as the Mets fell to the Brewers, 8-4, on Sunday. Milwaukee swept the three-game series, sending the Mets to their 10th loss in their last 11 games.
The Mets jumped on top early, as Francisco Lindor homered in the first inning to give them a 1-0 lead. But the early-inning troubles continued for Carlos Carrasco and by the third inning he put the Mets into a 5-1 hole.
But unlike other games, the Mets actually showed a pulse in this one. A two-run double by Javier Baez in the fourth inning cut the deficit in half. The Mets pulled within a run thanks to a pinch-hit RBI single by Kevin Pillar.
However, the good feelings ended there, as Jeurys Familia came on in the bottom of the sixth. Familia allowed a walk and a double, putting two runners in scoring position. Then the Mets’ defense let them down, as both Jonathan Villar and Lindor committed errors, which allowed three runs to score in the inning.
The Mets put two runners on in the seventh inning but could not score. They then went quietly in the eighth and ninth to end the game.
The bottom of the order went 1-16, including an 0-4 from Villar, in addition to his error. Villar now has two hits in his last 35 ABs. That’s, um, not good.
There is little life in this team and as Keith Hernandez aptly put it – they are playing like a second division team – an old reference to the lower tier. The appear to just be playing out the string and when they fall behind they can’t come back. Let’s give some credit to the Brew Crew who are having a great season and despite the Cards winning 16 straight, have clinched their division and have made the playoffs 4 straight years. We’ve never done that. For 2022 we need Jake and Thor in the rotation. We also need to dump some of the fundamentally unsound players like Villar, who has had some good games but has suffered through defensive lapses and might be the worst base runner in the game. Still like a crazy person I sit and watch them. And next year with a better health climate, I hope to again attend some games. Met fans are simply glutens for punishment. Ya gotta believe.
Amen on Villar. He’s been praised all year as a savior of this team and the leader of the bench mob that kept the team afloat when they were decimated with injuries, and he had a stretch where he was hot with the bat, but his fielding has not been good, and like NYM said his baserunning has been about as bad as I’ve ever seen. With RISP, Villar has 108 plate appearances and a slash line of 186/262/196 for an OPS of 458. He has 1 extra base hit in those 108 plate appearances. I don’t need to see him back next year.
Another minus for Rojas as manager is that he keeps running Villar out there. Why not start Guillorme at 3B sometimes?
Villar has struck out in 26% of his plate appearances this year. I wonder how many times with RISP? My memory is telling me lots of times. (Lindor, for one, has struck out in 18% of his plate appearances this year.)
Steve, if you go to the link Brian provide below you can see all of the team’s stats with RISP. Villar has struck out in 34 of his 108 plate appearances with RISP.
Thanks, Bob. As I suspected, Villar was terrible (RISP K% of 31).
Also, bad was McCann (29%.). And JD Davis (37%) and Baez (34%) were awful, albeit in few PAs.
Conforto (20%) was “better” than I anticipated, although I remember a lot of weak grounders by him (SLG was .366 in these situations).
BobP , where did you look up the stats on individual players re RISP? I have been looking everywhere. Thanks
go to baseball-reference.com
Click on New York Mets
Hover over batting and pick batting splits
Scroll to “Bases Occupied” and click RISP
https://www.baseball-reference.com/tools/split_stats_team.cgi?full=1¶ms=bases%7CRISP%7CNYM%7C2021%7Cbat%7CAB%7C
Great! Thanks very much, Brian!
Thanks Brian!
At this point, I hope the Mets continue to lose. Right now, they have the eleventh worst record in MLB, which means that if they sign a top free agent, who rejected a qualifying offer, they will forfeit their first-round pick and possibly others. But that would not be the case if they can fall into the bottom 10. Given the Kumar mess and the lack of depth on the farm, they need to keep those draft picks.
Regarding international free agency, I remember Sandy remarking during his first tenure as Mets GM that it was better to go for quantity than quality, that is to sign a lot of cheaper players than going after those with the highest ranking. His reason being that it was virtually impossible to predict how good a 16-year-old would become. I hope a new President of Baseball Operations will take a different approach.
Villar had a better season than I thought he would. At stretches he was one of the more dependable players, offensively and defensively. But his clock ran to a month ago. Maybe he could be ten pounds lighter and that might have helped his stamina.
Really, only Nimmo improved this season. Alonso maybe stayed even, but his lack of clutch hitting has gotten under my skin. When Pete walks to the plate with two out and runners on base, I have very little hope. Dom and McNeil were huge disappointments. JD’s season was squandered. McCann is decent defensively, very weak hitter. Lindor is worth about half the money they paid him… now we’re stuck with him and gotta hope for the best. Conforto just bombed… very disappointing. Gotta hope for an eventful off-season… we fans should petition Steve Cohen for a complete overhaul.