The top 10 bad things for the Mets in 2023

As sure as the day destroys the night and two follows one, if you write a column about the top 10 good things one day, a column on top 10 bad things will come next. And while there wasn’t much disagreement on the order of things with the good column, my guess is that people will object to the order presented here. And that’s okay. There was so much bad news that we can reasonably disagree on the order of importance. How much bad news was there? Enough that we’re going to have 11 items listed here!

So, here’s my take on the 10 11 worst things to happen to the 2023 Mets:

Tied for 10th. Pete Alonso’s second slump & Daniel Vogelbach’s start – In the first four years of his career, Alonso was extremely consistent of having one bad stretch of around 80 PA. And in 2023, from 4/22-5/15, he had 86 PA with a .606 OPS. But then from 5/30-7/20, Alonso had 140 PA with a .554 OPS. The Mets went 17-24 in this stretch. They fell below .500 and never reached that level again. During this stretch, Alonso was hit on the hand by a pitch and likely returned too soon, wanting to help the team. We can applaud his desire to play when he wasn’t 100% ready. But with the benefit of hindsight, we can say the club would have been better off if he missed another week and then played in some rehab games before returning.

Meanwhile, Vogelbach started the season with a .639 OPS in 143 PA before he was given some time off. He came back being more aggressive and looking to hit more balls in the air. And that was very successful, as he had an .819 OPS over his next 176 PA. Vogelbach lost playing time down the stretch despite his productivity, as the Mets looked to give youngsters the ABs, instead. But he has no one to blame but himself for that. If he wasn’t so passive at the start of the year, perhaps the Mets would have done better.

The injury-related, second slump from Alonso was far, far more of a detriment to the success of the 2023 Mets than the start by Vogelbach. Read that line again for emphasis. But it’s painfully obvious that if Vogelbach’s name wasn’t here that people would lose their minds. It’s not a fight that appeals to me to have for the 100th time, so as an olive branch, here he is.

9. A lousy first four months for Jeff McNeil – Coming off a season where he won the batting title and posted a 5.7 fWAR, a lot was expected from McNeil. And for two-thirds of the year, he was a disappointment. In his first 443 PA, McNeil had a .648 OPS and a .073 ISO. He’s turned things around since then, which keeps him from being higher on this list. Perhaps that’s being too kind to him.

8. Max Scherzer’s rough start – With two starters opening the year on the IL, the Mets needed Scherzer to step up. Instead, he got off to a lousy start, one affected by the pitch clock, a ridiculous suspension and a neck injury. After his start on 5/3, Scherzer sat with a 5.56 ERA. He pitched better after that but there were too many poor starts mixed in with his good outings.

7. Trades for 50 cents on the dollar – Steve Cohen made the decision to punt on 2023 – and possibly 2024, too – in order to restock the farm system. There are two questions at play here. First, was it right to give up on this season and possibly the next? Second, did they get enough of a return? We won’t know the answer to either of these questions for at least another year and most likely after that. If the Mets maintain a $300 million payroll, make the playoffs in 2024 and the players acquired become stars, well, Cohen will look like a genius.

The Mets had their best month in July, when they went 14-9. They finally had all five guys in the rotation they expected to have and the lineup was better with Alonso and Vogelbach past their bad stretches. But it was thought that there were too many teams ahead of them to make a run at the Wild Card feasible. Turns out that the final playoff team will have no more than 85 wins, which means the Mets would have had to have gone 35-22 from 8/1 to the end of the season. They would have had to have played as well in the final two months as they did in July.

But the decision to punt was not as bad to me as the return for the old pitchers. My opinion is that Luisangel Acuna is overrated, an opinion formed when the deal was made and then supported by his .621 OPS in 167 PA once he left the hitter-friendly Texas League. Drew Gilbert found the missing BABIP points that Acuna lost and performed very well for Binghamton. Yet he was considerably worse before that. Ryan Clifford struggled mightily, too.

Without a doubt, the Mets’ farm system is better now than it was on 7/1. But my opinion is that the players they got for the old pitchers are future contributing members, not stars. Furthermore, my belief is that Billy Eppler did the best he could but was constrained by the no-trade clauses. The question in my mind is if the Mets could have gotten a better return if they waited until the offseason. Maybe, maybe not. But my take is if this was the best return possible, the prudent thing to do would have been to say no.

6. The option reliever strategy – This looked bad when first executed and the reality turned out even worse than we expected. Seriously, what were the odds that the Mets would use 12 pitchers with this strategy with at least 10 IP and not one of them would be even league-average? And that doesn’t even include Sam Coonrod and his 9.45 ERA because he didn’t pitch enough innings. This was a colossal failure all the way around. It doesn’t rank higher only because of the effectiveness of David Robertson, Brooks Raley and Adam Ottavino, which kept the pen from being a total disaster.

5. Edwin Diaz missing the entire season – Many people might feel this deserves to be higher. But the fact is that before Robertson was dealt, the Mets won the overwhelming majority of games when they had a lead after seven innings. Losing Diaz didn’t hurt in the ninth inning. It hurt in the sixth and seventh when they had to use those option relievers. Besides, everyone acts like Diaz was some lock to replicate 2022. But he’s never had back-to-back dominating seasons in his career. Shoot, maybe we should put this one ninth and move McNeil up to five.

4. The terrible production from third base – This is mostly Brett Baty but none of the eight players who saw time at the hot corner for the Mets this year distinguished themselves. The MLB average for 3B this year was a .717 OPS. The Mets finished 29th in the majors with a .592 OPS. Baty was better than that with a .624 mark but that hardly qualifies as a success. Who would have guessed that Mark Vientos and his .645 OPS as a third baseman would be the best 3B on the team?

3. Justin Verlander’s start – The Mets gambled that the 40-year-old Verlander would stay healthy and he didn’t. Instead, he came down with an injury at the end of Spring Training and missed the first five weeks of the year. And then after seven games, Verlander had a 4.85 ERA. He posted a 1.95 ERA in his next nine starts but it wasn’t enough for the Mets to keep him.

2. Jose Quintana’s injury – Quintana missed 3.5 months. The loss of an effective pitcher was bad enough but his absence contributed to Carlos Carrasco making as many starts as he did. A full rotation and Carrasco gets pulled before making 20 starts. And unlike Scherzer and Verlander, Quintana came back and was effective right away. His absence was longer and ultimately more damaging.

1. Everything to do with Starling Marte – It was a terrible year for Marte, who had offseason surgery and never seemed right. The Mets needed Marte to be productive, a point that became painfully obvious last September, as their 2022 collapse coincided with his injury. But they allowed wishful thinking to trump reality. Marte should have been dropped in the order and then moved to the bench much, much earlier than he was. But nobody in the organization stepped up to be the adult in the room to make this tough choice until it was too late. There’s a lot of misfortune on this list. But at the end of the day, this one takes the top spot because the Mets shot themselves in the foot with how they handled it. Marte doesn’t get a free pass. But the Mets should have pulled the plug on this before he got 341 PA at a 73 OPS+.

*****
(Dis)Honorable Mentions – The results of Carrasco. The decision to sign Omar Narvaez. The early-season results of the depth starters. The handling of Jose Butto, Joey Lucchesi and Denyi Reyes.