Last month I took stock of the NL East with the Mets having been atop the Division for some time, despite a modestly over > .500 record and a +2 run differential. That was good for a four-game lead on the two chasers, namely the Braves and Phillies. One concern I expressed was that a four-game lead given the amount of games remaining in the rest of the season against NL East rivals meant the race was much closer than being in first place for month after month really intimated. Well, another month has past and pretty much little has changed tactically for the big three with ambitions for winning the division. The Mets are still four games up and are -2 in run differential, but a lot of the landscape has changed heading into August and September, traditionally the best months of baseball the team plays.
One of the memorable things we witnessed in July, and which portends well, was the re-emergence of Pete Alonso as a monster in the box, clubbing 10 of his 23 home runs in July, and now with a real chance to lead the league in home runs another season considering the injuries to present “Junior” leaders (Fernando Tatis and Ronald Acuna), and the move of Kyle Schwarber to the AL. (As an aside, recent acquisition Javier Baez is tied with Alonso for homers). It was such a delight to watch Alonso put on an unbelievable display in winning the Home Run Derby at the All Star Game, and perhaps attach significance to that as a catalyst. It turns out Alonso hit 40 % of his July homers before the Derby, so he went to Colorado on a roll.
Given the unevenness of games played this season with all the rain outs followed by strings of of double headers, it was worth checking to see if this barrage really was a departure from the previous months. Sure enough, in the previous three months, Alonso homered in 25 %, 12%, and 21% of the games, while July reached 39% of the games. I looked at Alonso’s RBI rate too, which was significantly increased by comparison. That’s excellent news for a team that had been struggling to score. In reviewing all of his dingers in July, it is cool to report that Alonso is locked in, crushing all parts of zone. Let’s hope this is just the appetizer and not the meal.
The other (lack of) excitement for July was the most remarkable trade deadline seen in some time. Both the Cubs and Nationals, recent World Series victors, established the newest monkey-see monkey-do pattern to team development: it’s ok for a big market team to literally tear it all down and rebuild. The Mets did little to really help the team for the final push, acquiring Rich Hill, then Javi Baez and a starter sent to Syracuse. Meanwhile the main competition made quite a few moves to better for the final push. In LaLa Land, the Dodgers clearly want to win another World Series, following the adage “prospects are cool, but parades are cooler.” It is beyond reason to expect that players coming off long-term injuries (Carlos Carrasco, Noah Syndergaard) can just show up as if nothing happened. Add the extended loss of Jacob deGrom, and one can’t help but wonder why high-end starting pitching was not more part of the plan. Instead, the team traded yet another first-rounder for a shortstop; wait didn’t the Mets just franchise a shortstop a few months ago? Oh, never mind.
Although the Mets played quite a few games in July, only 6 were against the NL East, and entirely against the Braves. Unfortunately, in only winning two of those games, no ground was gained. This leaves quite a bit of division play remaining. The good news is the Mets tend to be pretty strong in August and September and Alonso is on a roll. The bad news is deGrom is on the shelf for at least another month and we are in negative territory for run differential. Despite all this, the Mets remain a modest four games up and have stayed there through thick and thin. Perhaps just enough is going right to outpace the moves made by the competition in order to survive the division and make a run in the “anything can happen in the post season once you get there” sweepstakes.
Am I the only Mets fan on here who is now angry? 3 reasons.
1 – We’re lucky to be in first place because the rest of the division has also gotten hit by the injury bug, yet we made very little effort to shore up the rotation which is clearly on life support as we enter a critical month. deGrom is a big question mark, Walker looks spent and Stroman, who didn’t pitch last year, has never been known for durability. Ideally we move to a six man rotation for a while to keep these guys fresh, but the depth isn’t there. Scherzer, Berrios, Gibson, Heaney, Lester, Duffy, Anderson all changed teams and others like Kelly, Davies, Pineda, Maeda, were available. The best we could do was 41-year-old, 4-inning pitcher Rich Hill?! The trickle down from the thin rotation is that the bullpen is overworked.
2- How is it that the Yankees get Anthony Rizzo for a box of donuts and get the Cubs to pay his salary while the Mets have to give up our future CF for Baez?
3- What the hell just happened with Kumar Rocker? I need answers. We were lucky enough to have this future ace fall into our laps and then we screw it up? If he needs TJ surgery like every other young pitcher, so be it, we’ll wait an extra year. If we had serious injury concerns (shoulder maybe), we shouldn’t have drafted him. A lot of speculation, but I’d like to know what really happened here.
Right now, our strategy seems to be, let’s make it through August (not optimistic given the tough schedule and thin pitching) and hope the cavalry comes in September for the stretch run. If by some chance deGrom, Syndergaard and Peterson (not to mention Lindor) are all healthy and no one else gets hurt, this team could be super exciting. Don’t like those odds.
I agree on all of your points Matt:
1 – Quite honestly in the days leading up to the deadline I would have been OK with the Mets standing pat, with maybe some minor tweaks like some bullpen depth, but I was thinking that with Hill being added, Carrasco coming back and deGrom looking like he was about to be back that we had more than enough. I don’t know what the Mets knew about deGrom but it seems like they announced that he would be out for a while right after 4pm on Friday. I understand why they would do that so as to not lose negotiating strength, but if they knew that they would be missing him for a while, there were opportunities to go after other starters and they should have done something.
2 – You are right on here. We traded for a good player, but as a rental player, is he going to give us that much more of a chance at winning a WS? Why do we get fleeced for a #1 pick when other teams give away low level talent.
3 – With Rocker, I have no idea what’s gone on here. Could this be some kind of ego thing between Alderson and Boras?
Matt, I hear ya buddy.
A couple thoughts came to me in the past week. One, the FO and Cohen don’t believe this year is “the push”. The Mets really find themselves rather accidentally in first, against a juggernaut NL West. What would need to be leveraged to get on par with the Giants or Dodgers? More than what was comfortable perhaps. Two, there is a classic Aldersonian of overplaying the cards in hand. Yes, how many times have we heard about the guys coming off IL almost like an FA signing. I dont believe it for a second. Syndergaard, Carrasco, deGrom, Lindor cannot be counted on returning as if there injuries didnt occur. Dont bank on a September invasion.
As far Baez goes, the Mets also are getting salary relief to the point of paying Baez pro-rated league minmum. I hated to see Crow-Armstrong leave, our second center fielder (why do the Mets hate center fielders?) lost to trades, but he is getting shoulder surgery, so maybe they are not confident in his capacity to live up to the scouting afterwards? Maybe they love Nimmo so much they are ok with extending him.
The Rocker fail is an embarrassment for Tanus and the scouting team, and the Mets overall. To lose out on a top 10 first round pick is bad optics acorss the board. Hell, if its TJ surgery, they could have eaten the 6M and just moved ahead.
I don think the team is investing in the ’21 Mets as potential WS winners. I see the FO as happy with results regardless of outcome, and thinking ahead.
The sky if falling again in Metland….
The Rocker miss was a big disappointment, given him falling into the Mets’ lap, but they are getting the #11 pick next year, so this in not a complete loss…just one pick lower one year down the road. Right or wrong, something clearly scared the Mets.
I would not have dealt the #5 prospect for an AAAA starter and a rental. Alderson/Scott essentially told the public last week that they felt they “had” to do something to show support for the team, and I will venture to guess that the owner was applying some passive/aggressive pressure to do something…kind of like the good old days when Jeff made Alderson part with Fulmer to get Cespedes.
I’ll root hard until the end of the year, but the team took a big combo hit losing deGrom for much longer and not being able to swallow the huge price tags on pitching controlled beyond 2021. I can live with them falling short and figuring out the offense this winter…I would have preferred to do it with PCA still in the fold, but we’ll have to live with it now. The one further mistake they can make is becoming enamored with Baez over the next two months. He is very talented, but I don’t see him as the elixir for this league bottom offense.
The last I looked, the Mets were in first place and ahead by 3.5 games. Looking at the schedule they should go 15-14 for the month of August. It will depends if the Phillies or the Braves are hot but I do expect the Mets in first place on September 1st. Alonso has found his homerun stroke and should hit 40.
Berrios was the play at the deadline especially with the deGrom injury. The Baez trade made sense with the Lindor injury although the price was steep. Hill fills a need. The easier September schedule and a healthy deGrom and Lindor should make the Mets divisional champions.
I like this Metsense – until a division rival can cut the Mets lead below 2 games (which only the Nats did before Schwarber got hurt), we’re still the favorites. Anything can happen in the playoffs if pitching and defense shows up.
That being said – I wanted more out of the deadline. It was clear we needed another starter and a live bullpen arm because sending out Banda and Hartlieb in important innings aint gonna cut it when you’re trying to keep a game close late. The Braves got Rodriguez for not much at all and that would have helped us enormously. Apparently the price tag for Maeda was also too high for Scott’s liking. According to Fagraphs, no team’s odds of making the playoffs or winning the division were hurt more than the Mets, partly because of what we did and didn’t do, but also because the Braves and Phillies both improved (The Braves way more in my opinion). Still – the team has proven over and over this year not to count them out, and just when we’re all expecting the usual Mets slump, they pull out an apparent season saving victory. I’m a believer until they make me a non-believer.