With a team full of stars, upstarts, redemption stories and even an overweight folk hero, this Mets team is a lot of fun to root for, especially since we’ve been sitting atop the National League East since early April. However, in spite of all this team’s talent and grit, we currently cling by our toenails to a slim two-game lead in our division. That heat we feel on our necks is the breath of the World Series champion Braves who keep introducing new stars as quickly as their veteran players depart via free agency or land on the injured list. Every time that team from Atlanta seems to hit a bump in the road, they shift into high gear.
This Mets team has seen some adversity too with a number of injuries to our rotation, and more recently, a few bruises to our lineup too. A dugout that includes a steely-eyed skipper, valuable bench pieces and some smart coaches have helped keep us on track. Unfortunately, this same level of confidence can’t be found beyond the outfield wall in the Mets bullpen. Of course, closer Edwin Diaz has been spectacular all year and setup man Adam Ottavino has been consistently good. The problem is, in the modern day when starting pitchers rarely go beyond seven innings, two good relievers isn’t nearly enough.
The front office should have done a better job of bringing in reinforcements at the trade deadline beyond Mychal Givens, but that’s now water under the bridge and we have to play the hand we’ve been dealt. While Givens has been a solid reliever his whole career, he’s never been dominant. And, despite a strong first half with the Cubs, he’s been uneven with the Mets thus far and hasn’t given the Mets coaching staff or nail biting fans a reason to be confident in him so far.
Along with Givens, other candidates to bridge the gap from starter to Diaz include Seth Lugo, Trevor May, and Drew Smith. At times over the past few years, all three have been very good, but none of them consistently so this season. Lugo looks much better of late. His inconsistent first half could maybe be chalked up to adapting to his new delivery. Notice how he now short arms the ball, perhaps in an attempt to protect his partially torn ligament in his walk year, though that’s just MattyMets speculating. In his last few outings, Lugo’s stuff looks more like vintage Lugo with high-spin breaking stuff and high-movement fastballs. Hopefully, he keeps it up, because May has not been the reliable strikeout machine he was in Minnesota since he came to New York two years ago. Both May and Smith, who should be back from the injured list soon, have a bad habit of coughing up home runs.
Meanwhile, lefty Joely Rodriguez, who looks good about every third outing, has no one’s confidence. The other options the Mets have brought out all season courtesy of the Syracuse AAA shuttle have been very unimpressive, except for Colin Holderman who we traded away for Daniel Vogelbach. That leaves one wild card option to be the 7th inning savior – Tylor Megill. The 6’7″ righty got off to a great start this season before an arm injury shut him down. Megill is working his way back for the stretch run and playoffs and the Mets have said they plan to bring him back in a relief role. Megill has an explosive fastball and can rely less on his secondary pitches, not to mention put less mileage on his arm, as a reliever. A move to the bullpen might be just what the doctor ordered and what the team needs.
Whether it’s Megill, Lugo, May, Smith or Givens, we need one or two of them to really step up and protect that achilles heel of a 7th inning if we’re going to hold off the Braves and win the NL East. #LFGM
They certainly missed the boat by not bringing in an established reliever to add to the mix. I understand that most were rentals for the remainder of the season and the asking price was pretty steep in most instances. Hard to be satisfied that we are only in year two of the 3 to 5 years Steve Cohen rebuilding era because we do have enough talent to potentially win the championship. Hate to be this close to potentially lose out when our bullpen arms give up a ridiculous home runs late in the game. Megill will be a great addition to the pen as will one or two of our other starters once we get to the playoffs. It’s also shocking that the new norm of a quality start is getting six innings from your starter. That makes the old-fashioned pitchers huge amount of complete games even more impressive. If we can get 7 innings from Max, Jake and Bassitt we will be in good shape. And Lugo has rebounded well in his last 6-7 appearances and to me he is the key to getting to
Diaz. Looking for a win tonight behind Bassitt. LGM.
NYM6986 – That’s the other thing. Okay, we can’t expect too many complete games any more. But we should be getting 7 more often out of this veteran rotation.
I’m very disappointed in Billy Eppler’s trade deadline. The Braves are set up to be a playoff team for the next 5 years. We’re in win now mode with a bunch of key pending free agents and an older rotation. I applaud keeping an eye on the future and holding onto prospects, but Atlanta went out and added a second closer to an already strong bullpen. What we gave up for Darrin Ruf was a lot more than what many teams coughed up for quality relievers.
I also think Eppler could have found a trade partner for Dominic Smith.
Agree on unloading Smith even if he was on the injured list at the time. Braves minor league system is much stronger than ours. Still applaud holding on to top prospects even if our intent is to trade some of them in the off-season and get much more value than being held hostage by crappy teams trying to move their valuable players. we should have landed a better bullpen arm as that would have better solidified our chance for a WS win this year.
My opinion is that making it a requirement for a 7th inning – by definition your third-best reliever – guy to be “dominant” is unrealistic.
Since the All-Star break, Lugo has been in 16 games and has a 1.69 ERA, a 1.188 WHIP and has limited opponents to a .557 OPS. I’ll take that all day long from my third-best reliever.
Even if you think we should look at what he’s done all year long rather than just the second half, Lugo is a fine third reliever. The average MLB reliever has a 3.87 ERA, a 1.274 WHIP and opponents have a .692 OPS.
Lugo has a 3.24, 1.220 and a .656, respectively, in those three categories.
He’s better than average across the board for the year, has been much better in the second half and has a history of good relief performances in his MLB career.
Diaz is great, Ottavino is a veteran having a very strong season, Lugo is coming on strong and might be better than Ottavino right now.
For the playoffs, you have Mychal Givens, Drew Smith, Trevor May and whatever SP gets bumped from the rotation vying to be your fourth-best reliever. Oh, and there’s the possibility that Tylor Megill and/or David Peterson might be in the pen, too.
The weak link is Joely Rodriguez. But Buck just needs to use him as a LOOGY – he doesn’t need to get innings from him in the playoffs. Sure, it’s harder to utilize a guy as a strict LOOGY now with the 3-batter rule. Harder, yes. Impossible, no.
My opinion is that the pen is fine. I’m much more worried about the ability of the offense if Alonso isn’t firing on all cylinders than how the pen will perform. Hopefully, Alonso got his bad streak out of the way and it’s nothing but mashing from here on out.
I also think that the pen is fine and Brian’s excellent comment touches on all points that make it fine.
The offense could be better with another RHB. They could call up Vientos to fill that role when the rosters expand to 28 in September to see what he could do with a limited pinch hitter / sometimes DH role. They don’t need three catchers on the roster and Perez has two options.
BrianJ – Escobar has not approached his usual level of performance and we’ve been desperately missing another thumper in the lineup. He should have been it. Hopefully he either comes back strong or Baty really starts slugging. Vogelbach/Ruf/Naquin is an improvement over Smith/Davis/Jankowski but we still lack an ideal #5 hitter to protect Pete.
Mr. Megill, here for art thou?
Vientos and Mauricio for Hader, that could have beeb done…
Yikes. Have you seen Hader?
I hear ya Brian, but I take Matt’s thoughts to heart. The thing is the team cannot throw 21 outs every night (as much as I have written about this over the years). One evolution of the game that doesn’t get a lot of attention outside of “grind at bats” is the intentional strategy to run up pitch counts. In the past the game was about pitching and hitting, not fouling off to get to the relievers.
Consequently the ball cant be starter —> Lugo —> O —> Diaz. We’re left with what to do with Joely, Givens, and May who basically suck, but have to be thrown. This causes a problem on a regular basis. Im hopeful for Megill and Peterson to displace 2 of those three, but who knows.
I contend that it’s more of an issue in the regular season than it will be in the playoffs. While there will be fewer days off this postseason, there won’t be 17 games in 16 days requiring lots of innings from the bottom relievers. There will be off days and there will be losses and there will be wins by more than 3 runs (we hope)