Turning misfortune into success
Morning Dose: Wednesday, September 18
☀️ Good Morning:
Mets fans are used to things going wrong; they aren’t used to misfortune turning into success.
Paul Blackburn gets scratched moments before returning from the IL? Tylor Megill resurfaces and turns into Zack Wheeler. After his six-inning performance on Tuesday, Megill has a 1.69 ERA since taking Blackburn’s spot in the rotation.
MVP candidate Francisco Lindor hurts his back? Pete Alonso responds with his own clubhouse plea and drives in five runs on three hits, while Jose Iglesias continues to shine.
The Mets decide to sell at last year’s deadline? The pitchers they traded away end up injured, and one of the prospects they acquired is already contributing. Luisangel Acuña announced himself to the major leagues on Tuesday with three hits and his first home run.
There are less than two weeks left in the season, and it’s the Braves, not the Mets, blowing games against inferior teams. It’s Arizona dropping two straight to a last-place club.
Rub your eyes, put on your glasses, adjust your focus, the Mets wake up this morning as the second wild-card team, jumping ahead of Arizona by a tiebreaker and building a two-game lead on Atlanta. If they could somehow overcome the Padres, we could have a home playoff series at Citi Field in a few weeks. Perhaps the stadium would be more full than it has over this recent homestand.
We have plenty to talk about, including a breakdown of Sean Manaea’s success.
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🍎 Leader in the clubhouse
The Mets have pretty much been an unstoppable force since Francisco Lindor called a players-only meeting in the wake of a disastrous series against the Dodgers. The Amazins were 22–33 at the time, throwing gloves into the stands, another sell-off at the trade deadline appeared to be coming, the playoffs were nowhere in sight.
“That allowed me to hold guys accountable, and for them to hold me accountable as well,” Lindor said of the meeting. “We looked at each other in the eyes and said, ‘We’ve got to go. We’ve got to get this done. We’ve got to do whatever it takes to make sure we are moving in the right direction. And we’ve got to start by looking at each other’s process and holding each other accountable’.”
Players-only meetings happen in every clubhouse. The White Sox have had them. It doesn’t always lead to success. Lindor made sure his meeting did by setting an example of the field. Led by his MVP play, New York has gone 61–35 since that “Ra-Ra” moment.
On Monday, after learning Lindor would be missing a few days with his back injury, David Stearns and Carlos Mendoza decided to call another team meeting, as first reported by Joel Sherman. This one Pete Alonso took centerstage, making a passionate plea to his teammates to secure a playoff spot so they could finally celebrate together.
Alonso then went on the field and delivered three hits, including a three-run home run in the sixth inning to break the game completely open.
He now has 10 career games with five or more RBI, tied for the most such games in baseball since the start of the 2019 season (Nelson Cruz) and tied for the most such games in Mets history (David Wright), via Sarah Langs.
🍼 Baby Mets
Remember when the Baby Mets were a thing? Well, they are back!
In a game Francisco Álvarez smoked his third home run in the past week, Luisangel Acuña stole the show with three hits at the bottom of the lineup.
The rookie shortstop made an error early in the game, but made up for it with his bat, turning three pitches down in the zone — a splitter, curveball and sinker — into three hits, including his first career homer.
“We know he’s got the talent,” a Mets source told SNY’s John Harper of Acuña. “We’re hoping he’s one of those guys who raises his game at the highest level. He has the ability to do it and he looks comfortable with the bright lights.”
He looked pretty comfortable under the bright lights on Tuesday.
“I’ve never played in front of so many fans and especially so many passionate fans,” Acuña admitted after the game.
While Citi Field was far from packed, the crowd brought an electric intensity to the game, cheering the loudest when the scoreboard showed the Braves had lost to the Reds again.
Acuña got a small taste of playoff-like baseball in New York. It’s only going to grow from here.
👏 Finding your best self
When the Mets originally signed Sean Manaea during the offseason, most people were hyped about his added velocity and sweeper potential.
Working as reliever for the Giants, the long-haired hurler swapped out his slider for a sweeper to earn an eye-popping 45% whiff rate in the month of August. While he moved away from his sweeper when switching back to a starting role in September, the prospect was there that he could have another deadly pitch in his arsenal.
Fast forward to the offseason and Manaea spent time at Driveline learning he wasn’t utilizing his torso properly in his delivery. After making some tweaks, his four-seamer jumped from 91.2 MPH to a peak of 97.2 MPH. Driveline Director Chris Langlin explains the evolution in this video.
If I told you back in February that Manaea would be closing out the following September with an 11-5 record and 3.26 ERA, you probably would have guessed it was the product of a four-seamer with more zip and a breaking ball with nasty sweep.
You would only be partially correct.
As made evident with his shorter hair this season, the 6-foot-5 left hander isn’t afraid to make changes. Perhaps his greatest skill is his ability to adjust, whether he’s transitioning from a reliever to a starter, making mechanical adjustments with his delivery or altering his pitch mix.
It’s the combination of all of these things that has led to a breakout season.
🔷 MECHANICS: Let’s start with how he is throwing the ball. As detailed by The Athletic a few weeks back, Manaea used a front-row seat to watching Chris Sale pitch against the Mets to pick up some key notes about his delivery. Manaea had given up five earned runs his previous start, striking out only one batter. He had looked looked good several starts before that, but he wasn’t satisfied.
After watching Sale, as detailed by The Athletic, he lowered his release point to make his delivery quicker and more deceptive. Steve Gelbs showed how Manaea used advice from pitching coach Jeremy Hefner to exaggerate the motion of throwing across his body by warming up to a catcher.
🔷 CHANGING IT UP: The left-hander also adjusted the grip of his changeup, as he explains here. After struggling to find a feel for his offspeed stuff early in the season, it has turned into an absolute weapon over his last several starts. The new grip has helped him achieve more drop and a touch more fade, leading to a 31.8% whiff rate in the month of August, a major jump from the teens he averaged earlier in the year.
You can see how his changeup and mechanics looked early in the year when opponents were smoking it all over the field:
Versus this past week:
Improved mechanics and grip leading to more movement and better location.
🔷 PITCH MIX: Another key to Manaea’s success has been the resurrection of his two-seamer. After abandoning it over the past two seasons, he is throwing it 43% of the time this year. Rather than leaning into a four-seamer he struggles to command regularly at higher speeds, he has used his two-seamer to throw strikes and pair with his four-seamer that he is back to throwing around 92 mph.
Manaea is following a trend across baseball where pitchers are realizing the benefit of having multiple fastballs with slightly different movement profiles, allowing them to keep hitters off balance without relying simply on velocity.
🔻 This breakout season will lead to Manaea opting out of his contract after this season, an outcome the Mets will take considering it means the veteran left-hander has pitched like an ace.
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⚾️ SHUTDOWN STUFF: Tylor Megill’s secondary stuff had a slightly different shape on Tuesday, his Curveball a few MPH faster, and thus, losing a few inches of drop, while his slider had a few inches of extra bite and his cutter and splitter more dive. Put them all together with his fastball combination and it was plenty to keep the Nationals in check over six innings.
A key difference maker has been the emergence of a two-seam fastball, which he pairs with his 96-mph fastball to keep hitters off balance.
“I think it's helped a lot,” Megill said of developing his two-seamer, via SNY. “I think now hitters kind of have to respect inside... it keeps them honest. So I think it just elevates my arsenal a little more.”
🔥 FILLING IN: Playing second base and batting leadoff in place of Francisco Lindor, Jose Iglesias continues to make his mark, collecting three more hits and two runs scored.
🎯 UNDER THE RADAR: As the Mets offense has struggled in-between individual outburts like Tuesday, Tyrone Taylor has become a steady presence in the lineup. He added two more hits last night and is batting .375 over his last seven games.
🗓️ UP NEXT: The Mets will go for the sweep with Jose Quintana (9–9, 3.91) on the mound against southpaw DJ Herz (4–7, 3.70). Herz has allowed only one earned run over his past two starts and has held opponents under three runs in nine of his past 10 outings.
📸 WILD CARD SNAPSHOT: At this point, reaching the playoffs is paramount, whatever way it happens.
But I can’t help but look at the seeding and wonder if the Mets are truly better off with the six seed, matching them up with Milwaukee in the Wild Card Series, instead of the five (or four) seed, which would pit them against the hottest team in baseball since the All-Star break (San Diego) and a potential NLDS date with the Phillies (instead of the pitching-starved Dodgers, who seem likely to finish with the second seed).
Food for thought, but for now, the Mets will try to sweep the Nationals to maintain or build on a two-game lead over Atlanta.
The Braves schedule ahead looks relatively easy, but “give-me” wins have been hard to come by for them. They have lost all four games against the Reds this season, two of three to the White Sox and five of eight versus the Nationals. That adds up to a 6–14 record against very beatable teams.
🕷️ Find headlines for all of your favorite teams at SportSpyder, the number one source for sports news links.
◾️ Shohei Ohtani hit home run #48 in his quest for 50 homers and 50 stolen bases. He currently sits at 48 for each.
◾️ Astros star Jose Altuve was ejected for taking off his left cleat and sock in trying to prove to the umpires he had fouled a ninth-inning pitch off his foot. His replacement, Grae Kessinger, ended up scoring the go-ahead run in the 10th in a 4–3 win over the Padres.
◾️ Royals shortstop Bobby Witt Jr. became the first shortstop in major league history with multiple seasons of at least 30 home runs and 30 stolen bases.
◾️ Old friend Carlos Carrasco was designated for assignment by the Guardians.
🔗 Would Francisco Lindor Be More Valuable to the Dodgers Than Shohei Ohtani? by Kiri Oler, FanGraphs: “Summing up the projected WAR totals and comparing to the team’s actual WAR reveals a 3.0 WAR increase overall when adding Lindor and subtracting Ohtani. The largest gains come on the defensive side of the ball, where moving Lux off second base in favor of Rojas, adding a full season of Lindor at short, and getting more innings from Betts in right lead to an improvement of almost 19 defensive runs above average (including all positional adjustments). Given that the run environment this year sets the bar at approximately 9.7 runs per win, the improvement on defense basically accounts for two-thirds of the increase in team WAR.”
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There are just too many games left for me to care about playoff positioning. At this point, just rack up as many wins as possible so we can pop some champagne.
Win today; it'll be nice to have a 2 game cushion going into the Philly series.