One of the fundamental questions you have to ask yourself as an MLB manager is: How do I want to win the game?
Tonight, Luis Rojas answered that question with: Bullpen. Reminiscent of the scene in “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade,” when they had to pick which cup was the holy grail, the bad guy picked the wrong cup and his face melted away – which prompted the knight to say, “He chose poorly.”
Taijuan Walker was cruising, having thrown just 68 pitches thru six innings. The first guy up in the seventh reached base on an error and the second guy reached base on a pop to the outfield that was in the air long enough that someone should have caught it. With lefties coming up, Rojas went to the pen and Aaron Loup. Walker was not happy about being removed.
That’s been a good move most of the year but it wasn’t tonight. Brandon Crawford hit a two-run double that turned a 2-1 deficit to a 3-2 lead for the Giants, a margin that held up for the rest of the game.
The Mets hit into five double plays and twice left the bases loaded, including in the ninth inning, when the Giants tried their best to give the Mets the lead. Brandon Belt dropped a foul pop that was not ruled an error but could have been. And Brandon Drury hit a fly to the outfield that the left fielder dropped when he collided with the center fielder. But Francisco Lindor popped out for the second out. After Brandon Nimmo walked to load the bases, Pete Alonso hit a ball to second base to end the game.
At this point of the season there simply isn’t a “good” loss. But Tuesday’s loss was painful due to the offensive ineptitude against a scrub pitcher and tonight’s was frustrating because a starting pitcher for the Mets who was cruising was removed to play matchups. And the offense, let’s not forget how awful the offense is on a regular basis.
68 pitches. Didnt see the game, but this is bad. Should have left him in, especially after his bad streak. Painful to hear about this. How does August rank with the worst months in Mets history?
Look, at least we know what our team is, so it gives us ample time in the off season to make big changes.
Fire Alderson. Everything about the way he runs an organization is a failure from baseball operations, human operations, and baseball philosophy. The reason the team cant bat isnt beciase of Rojas, its because of the bankrupt approach to the game Alderson has. I gave him the benefit of the doubt early on, but its the same ol same ol rubbish. We fired Chili Davis for some ding dong that knows zero about baseball and zero about hitting, and is installing a philosophy that is worthless.
Fire Alderson Now.
So if I’ve got this right, as of the moment, we could have back-to-back picks in next year’s draft. We’ve got the Rocker compensation pick plus we’ve got the 12th worst record in the majors at the moment.
It’s the same sad story about not knocking runs in almost day after day after day. Management and coaching staff need to go and be replaced with more experienced and successful people. Rojas in game decisions should not be this bad this late in the season. If we hit then more of his gaffs would be covered up but they are front and center nearly every game. By Sept 1 we should bring up the farm hands and let’s see what they got. Great show case for some off season moves.
Yeah, the Mets poor hitting magnifies all fielding, base running, pitching and managerial mistakes.
But Walker needed to be kept in. He had gotten Crawford out twice (3rd time through the order analytics was speaking to Rojas?) and had pitched well to two batters in the inning who should not have been on base. And his pitch count was really low. And Crawford hits LHP well.
Would Rojas have pulled deGrom in a similar situation? I doubt it. So why pull Walker, who was pitching like deGrom in this game?
Since you mentioned September, i just wanted to point out that this year
1. the AAA season goes until the end of Sep this year because of the late start
2. September roster sizes are now capped at 28 players.
Thanks for the clarification. At least that move by MLB makes sense. Otherwise you have the top teams bringing up another dozen players on 9/1 which makes them even more dangerous to play. It also helped improve the playoff wannabe teams like our Mets. I’d like the August trade deadline to be reinstated as that let teams deal within their league for a boost in personnel who would still be eligible to play in the playoffs. Lots of recent year changes should be dumped.