A disappointing Spring Training

It has been a very disappointing spring training. Spring training is a time to prepare and ready the team for the season. Terry Collins did not taken advantage of the opportunities to get players accustomed to different positions. It was announced that Flores was to be the backup first baseman to Duda. He received one start at the position. d’Arnaud and Plawecki were supposed to get some training at the position. That never happened.

Conforto was to get some reps in right field so that the outfield alignment would be Cespedes, Lagares and Conforto when Granderson gets rested. Conforto never played a game out there. Collins had a notion in Spring Training of starting his gold glove winning center fielder in left and his gold glove winning left fielder in center field and found a few opportunities to field this alignment in a few games. Fortunately, this idea was abandoned.

As a armchair analyst, if I were experimenting with the outfield alignment, I would have looked at Cespedes in right field to utilize his strong throwing arm. The other experiment I would have tried was giving Walker some reps at third base. Wright is the most fragile starter and if he should go down to injury then the best major league ready position player in AAA is second baseman Dilson Herrera . If Walker had the ability to move over to third base, it would allow a Walker, Flores, Herrera mix to cover for an injured Wright while still allowing Flores to back up at first base and shortstop. The lack of reps at first base by Flores and no reps by Walker at third base indicate that Campbell will be getting more in season at bats than he deserves.

Spring Training records are not supposed to mean a thing but it should send up a yellow flag when the team doesn’t post a victory over a two week period. During the last week of Spring Training, most of the regulars or roster players should be playing in order to be close to “game ready” on opening day. Last year the talk in Spring Training was about getting out to a fast start during the first 31 games. That attitude contributed to a World Series appearance. This year the attitude was to stay healthy and not to worry about the losses because the Mets will start the season at 0-0. It is not the attitude that their chief rival, the Washington Nationals, have. They feel that they have something to prove and have been described in the media as “hungry”.

The opening roster has Jim Henderson beating out Eric Goeddel and Logan Verrett beating out Sean Gilmartin. Goeddel and Gilmartin had a good year in 2015 but it appears that Henderson and Verrett are better players. The Mets did take their best twenty five players North. They did not increase the versatility of these players in spring training as was planned.

The record was not the reason for the disappointment. It was the lost opportunity to prepare for injuries and the perceived complacent attitude of the team that made Spring Training 2016 a disappointment .