Zero-cost moves the Mets should make immediately

In a lot of years that the Mets weren’t very good, they just didn’t have a lot of talent. It’s no fun losing but it doesn’t hurt as much when you know the other teams are simply better than you. In a lot of years that the Mets weren’t very good, you could blame injuries. It still wasn’t any fun to lose yet you kind of understood why the team was losing. And then there’s this year.

Yeah, in April when the majority of starting pitchers were sidelined for one reason or another, you could blame injuries. But essentially, they’ve been healthy the past two months and the record has just been lousy. Part of that is sequencing – when they hit, the pitching stinks. When they pitch, the hitting stinks. But that’s not the big reason the team is losing. It’s probably the third reason, behind guys with a track record not producing and a bullpen that was poorly assembled.

We saw in 2021 a team with a bunch of guys in their 20s not hitting. This year it’s both guys in their 20s and their 30s. May was the proper time to be patient, to wait for positive regression. Perhaps the beginning of June, too, was the right call to show restraint. But we’re clearly at the point where playing the same guys over and over again and hoping for different results falls into the old saw about insanity.

So, what can Buck Showalter do?

The first thing is to reduce the playing time of Starling Marte and Jeff McNeil. It’s a whole lot easier for the Mets to succeed if Marte plays like he did in 2022. After 74 games this season, Marte has been a replacement-level player. That’s right, he has a 0.0 fWAR. What do you do with replacement-level players? If you’re smart, you replace them. And before you parrot what you hear from the TV announcers, Marte is not back, he’s not been hitting great the last 3-4 weeks, like they tried to tell us for the umpteenth time last night.

In his last 24 games, Marte has a .260/.290/.354 line in 101 PA. While that’s better than he did the first six weeks of the season, everyone needs to stop kidding themselves that Marte’s been good. He’s been lousy and not only does Showalter play him every day, he’s bumped him back in the second spot in the lineup, where that lousy OBP and no power gives me bad Doug Flynn flashbacks.

And while Marte plays every day, Mark Canha, a player who’s been truly useful here lately, has been busted to a part-time role. In the same time frame as Marte’s .644 OPS mentioned in the previous paragraph, Canha has a .265/.383/.449 line but in only 60 PA. That .383 OBP would be quite helpful batting second in the lineup. But when Canha does play, he bats in the lower third of the order.

Showalter should flip the roles of Marte and Canha, playing Canha nearly every day and batting him second. Marte can be the guy to play versus LHP and to give Canha an occasional day off. Late in games, he can be inserted as a pinch-runner, much like Tim Locastro was back in April when the Mets were winning.

Which brings us to McNeil.

It’s amazing how little grief both Marte and McNeil get, both from the broadcasters and fans alike. Both are good guys, easy to root for them to do well. But while there may not be a solution for Marte’s woes, the Mets need to get McNeil to stop hitting grounders to the right side of the infield. Yeah, that may be easier said than done. It’s impossible for me to believe that the coaches aren’t trying things in that regard.

But you know what they haven’t tried? Giving McNeil the week off that Daniel Vogelbach got earlier this month. Since his return, we’ve seen Vogelbach be – for him – more aggressive at the plate, with an aim to hit more balls in the air. Before taking a seat on the bench, Vogelbach had a .639 OPS. Since his return, he’s slashing .273/.294/.576 in 10 games and 34 PA. His OBP has cratered but it’s been replaced with significant power. And that’s been a tradeoff very much worth making.

Imagine if McNeil looked to mimic Vogelbach’s fly ball approach. Maybe he doesn’t have the power to produce a .303 ISO, like Vogelbach has in this brief sample. Or maybe he does. But it’s time to stop being excited about inside-out swings on balls he should be lifting in the air into the gaps with authority. It’s time to stop looking the other way on infield popups. And beyond a shadow of a doubt, it’s time to stop accepting weak grounders to the right side.

Luis Guillorme and Danny Mendick can platoon while McNeil gets his time off.

On the pitching side of things, we need to see Showalter lean on his starters to give the team more innings. The goal should be not to use someone outside of their three top-relievers in a high-leverage spot. We need the manager to embrace 120-pitch outings from his starters. It doesn’t mean that every start has to feature that many pitches. But if a starter goes 115, 112, 88, 103, 122 over a five-start span, that’s perfectly fine.

Yes, we need to protect arms, especially high-dollar ones. But there’s little reason to be so overly-cautious with veteran pitchers. If the Mets had the pitching-equivalent of Francisco Alvarez, a highly touted 21 year old, it would be one thing to break out the kid gloves. But these guys over the age of 30 shouldn’t be treated like a Faberge egg. And with how uninspiring five of the eight relievers are, it’s only more urgent to go to the whip with these veteran starters.

And while Showalter gets high marks for giving his relievers proper rest, he needs to augment that with the idea that you look not to pitch all three of your “A” relievers in the same game, if possible. Yes, there are games where it cannot be avoided. But there are games where it can.

Finally, Showalter needs to back off the devotion to matchups. Brooks Raley is quite capable of pitching to RHB and this year he’s been more successful versus righties. Perhaps with veteran T.J. McFarland on the roster now, he can be used as the lefty specialist. But Raley needs to be treated as if he was a righty reliever. And he needs to supplant Adam Ottavino and be considered the team’s primary eighth-inning man.

Some may consider the above-listed moves as rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. And perhaps that’s true. However, in a period where we’ve exhausted patience waiting for guys to produce at their Baseball-Reference page level, these are all common sense moves that cost absolutely nothing to implement and which might have a positive outcome. And if they don’t, then the Mets can proceed with the big sell off at the trade deadline.

Many people were disappointed with a loss in the Wild Card round after last year’s 101-win campaign. They felt the early exit rendered the great regular season worthless. That’s not a completely unreasonable take. But I’m blaming all of the people who felt that way as responsible for this year’s 36-44 Mets. Perhaps this is what the fanbase needed to fully appreciate how special last year was.