Middle relievers could be the biggest weakness in a Mets playoff push

The New York Mets are playing their best ball since their eleven game win streak early this year. They have won six straight and are 18-6 since July 31st. During the recent hot streak, their starting pitching has been good but not great. They’ve had outstanding contributions from Logan Verrett, Bartolo Colon and Jon Niese.

Their young stars haven’t been so solid. Jacob deGrom and Noah Syndergaard combined for 12.2 Innings pitched and eleven earned runs while striking out 18 batters over the last week. The offense, however, was able to bail them out in a surprising twist.

As a team, the Mets bats have come alive scoring 64 runs in the last six games. While that is spectacular, it is against weak teams in well known offensive-friendly stadiums like Coors Field in Colorado and Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia. Before they began to heat up, the Mets struggled against the beater teams like Tampa Bay, Baltimore and Pittsburgh earlier in the month.

While the team has enjoyed a six-game winning streak going into the final game of a four-game series in Philly, it raises an important question. Which team will we see as the dog days of August come to a close and the playoff stretch of September heats up? Is this the real Mets or are they closer to the team that struggled to scrape out wins against the better competition?

There’s no doubt that the starting pitching will return to form as the thin air and the band-boxes fade into the distance on the schedule. The offense will level off with the veterans stepping up into the productive roles of timely hitters that they are mostly known for.

The back end of the bullpen with Tyler Clippard and Jeurys Familia is strong, though overworked a bit recently. They will, most likely, settle in. That last statement depends on one very important and forgotten factor: the middle relievers’ ability to shorten the game. Specifically, there are three pitchers who are worrisome: Hansel Robles (3.76 ERA, 3-2), Carlos Torres (3.83 ERA, 4-5) and Eric O’Flaherty (7.18 ERA, 1-2).

While there is certainly a chance that the team will address this need as soon as September 1st when the rosters expand, it’s even more of a certainty that manager Terry Collins will continue to rely on these three. He will allow them to do the same amount of heavy lifting that they’ve done for the time they’ve each been here, respectively. That is a bulk of the load from the bullpen innings.

For Robles, that has been 40.2 IP in 42 appearances with seven holds and two blown saves. His season began in late April and after getting himself going in May, he’s worked hard at improving his ERA all season. He’s shown that he can be very good. He has four outings this season of more than an inning without giving up an earned run, including a few weeks ago against Pittsburgh.

When he’s bad, however, he’s unreliable. He’s had eleven appearances of an inning or less in which he’s given up one or more runs. In addition, he’s 11/24 in allowing inherited runners to score. That leaves 17.3 IP in the remaining appearances. In those, he held the opposition scoreless. That’s about half of the time .Of the three pitchers, he’s the one that can be trusted most in a close game.

Carlos Torres has been the heaviest lifter of the three, being with the team the longest.In his 50 appearances, he’s thrown 49.1 innings. Like Robles, Torres can be hit or miss too. He’s had a total of six outings in which he’s pitched more than an inning without giving up a run. He’s also had five appearances in which he’s given up runs in an inning or less.

He’s 6/22 in inherited runners scoring. On seven occasions, he’s given up two or more runs. More often then not, he gets the job done, but he has struggled quite a few times this year where other members of the bullpen have had to strand his runners.

The least reliable of the three is Eric O’Flaherty. Since his arrival at the beginning of the month, O’Flaherty has been dreadful. He’s had nine total appearances. Of those nine, two were an inning of scoreless pitching and two were one batter faced without any damage. That leaves five outings where he’s given up all of his runs or seven runs in three total innings.

He’s supposed to be a lefty specialist but left-handed batters have a .233 AVG against him this season. That’s not very dominant. He’s even worse against right-handers. He just hasn’t been what the team has needed. If they keep him around and Collins continues to go to him against lefties or for several outs in the middle innings, the Mets will continue to give up key runs.

Yesterday a fellow writer here at Mets 360, Dan Kolton, wrote an interesting article about the Mets’ chances for a deep playoff run. While it seems to be a very logical assumption at this point that this team is capable of one, a deep run would be contingent on how the middle innings are played.

We can’t expect or assume that the starters will be able to consistently pitch seven to eight innings per playoff start and then hand it over to Clippard and Familia for the win. The playoffs are all about close games. They are all about utilizing your strength and overcoming your weaknesses.

At this point, the middle part of the bullpen that is responsible for only a handful of outs is that weakness. The Mets have a few solid options for long relievers, especially in the playoffs. It’s the short innings that will make or differentiate a good run from a bad one.

Against the playoff contenders of the NL this season, the Mets have a bad record. They are 0-7 against the Chicago Cubs, 0-6 vs Pittsburgh, 3-3 against San Francisco, 3-4 vs the St Louis Cardinals and 4-3 vs the L.A. Dodgers. With the exception of a 5-0 shutout vs the Cardinals and a 15-2 shellacking of the Dodgers, all the wins against those teams were close.

Most of the losses were just as close too. Usually one or two runs were the difference for either side. In almost all of those cases, it was the middle innings that made the biggest difference in deciding the close games. If the ball is in the hands of one of these three in October, it’s going to be a very uncomfortable situation.

This is a team that made several moves in order to make 2015 the year to take the Mets seriously. For a team that has such high aspirations of going far into the postseason, it would be a very alarming trend to see game after game get close when it doesn’t need to be as a result of inefficiency in the middle innings.

While it’s easy to say that the hitters parks the team has encountered lately could be just as much as fault with the poor middle relief as it has been a help to the middle of the Mets order, it’s a red flag that points to an obvious weakness that this team needs to overcome.

They are far from catching anyone off guard anymore. Teams know the New York Mets now and they have a simple game plan to beat them: outlast the starters and beat up on the front end of the bullpen. All of the potential playoff teams are more than capable of executing this plan.

The Mets must counter this. Continued quality starts and high scoring games are a great remedy, but they are not as common in October as they are in August. When one considers the talent on this roster right now that could potentially be gone in the winter, it’s painfully clear that this is an even more important September to this franchise in the long run than they have had in many years.

For this team to be truly successful in reaching the postseason and making any type of deep run, they have to strengthen this part of the roster even more than they have. Otherwise, this year could be a one-and-done in more ways than one.