Good Morning,
It was a brutal weekend for Mets fans, with the team getting swept by Philadelphia, falling from first to third place, and culminating in a Zack Wheeler act of brutal dominance against them.
We’ll catch you up on all the latest news, and chronicle how the wheels came off this season. But first, let’s recap last night’s action.
⚾️ IN SHORT: Zack Wheeler dominated, spinning a complete game, 2-hit shutout while striking out 11. Wheeler looked every bit the staff ace the Phillies envisioned when they signed him to a long-term deal: after giving up a leadoff double to Brandon Nimmo, he retired 22 straight Mets before yielding an 8th inning walk. Taijuan Walker pitched well and deserved better, going 6 innings and giving up 3 solo home runs — which would have been outs in most ballparks — to take the 3-0 loss. [Box Score]
🔑 KEY MOMENT: With only 7 hits combined for both teams, the first inning fireworks were the difference in the game. Jean Segura hit a fly ball that drifted over the wall in left center and after Bryce Harper struck out, JT Realmuto popped up to right with the second Citizens Bank Park homer of the day.
3 TAKEAWAYS
❶ BAEZ INJURY: Javier Baez grounded out to lead off the 5th and couldn’t run to first, leaving the game with left hip tightness. In 9 games as a Met, the officially “day to day” Baez is hitting .176 (6-for-34) with 13 strikeouts.
❷ NIMMO LONE BRIGHT SPOT: Nimmo had both Mets hits, a first inning double he ripped down the right field line and a ninth inning single to center. The SNY broadcast crew — Keith and “the other Gary” — highlighted a change Nimmo made at the end of last season to switch to a lighter bat to improve his ability to catch up to hard throwers. The change looked to pay off yesterday as Nimmo was the only hitter able to barrel up Wheeler’s fastball.
❸ “SILVER LINING”: After stranding 17 runners on base the first 2 games of the series, the Mets only left 3 runners on base against Wheeler. (That’s a snarky way of saying there were hardly any baserunners in this game.)
🧑🏫 SOUND SMART: In his first 7 games since being traded from the Cubs to the Giants, Kris Bryant slashed .385/.448 with a 1.064 OPS. No reason we’re mentioning that. Just putting it out there!
⏭ NEXT UP: The Amazins have a much-needed day off before opening a 3-game series at home against the depleted Nationals. The series is a chance to get off to a positive start of a tough 13-games-in-13-days stretch, including a 3-game series at home against the Dodgers and then a late Sunday night flight to the West Coast for 7 games against the Padres and Dodgers.
MATCHUP: Carlos Carrasco (0-0, 3.24 ERA), who’s looked solid, is scheduled to start Tuesday against Paolo Espino (3-3, 3.66 ERA).
📉 STANDINGS: The Mets are now 56-55, and find themselves in third place, 2.5 games behind the surging Phillies.
🐐 FARM AID: While the big club can’t hit, Mets prospects are slugging lately, especially Brooklyn teammates Francisco Alvarez and Ronny Mauricio:
👓 UNCLE STEVE: With the team in a steep decline, Steve Cohen traveled to Philadelphia to speak to the players on Sunday. “I visited the players in the clubhouse,” he tweeted before the game. “They are ready and in a good frame of mind for this game.”
ROJAS: With little else he could say, Luis Rojas praised the pep talk, saying, “He just came here and connected with the guys. He has a really good relationship with a lot of the guys and he came here and he was just connecting with each one.”
🗣 MESSAGE TO FANS: Rojas and Pete Alonso both pleaded with the team’s supporters to believe in the squad. While Alonso said fans should not just believe but “know” the team will turn things around, Rojas said, “Nothing more than positive support will help the players play at their best, knowing they have the fan base behind them.”
🍎 REHAB: 1B/OF José Martínez (remember him?) played his first rehab game since tearing the meniscus in his left knee before the season started. He went 0-2 and played three innings in right field for Low-A St. Lucie.
How did we get here?
On June 16, the Mets were 35-25, five games up on the second place Phillies, and the top of their rotation was as formidable as any in baseball with Jacob deGrom, Taijuan Walker, and Marcus Stroman combining for an 18-8 record and 1.69 ERA. Had it been the short season of 2020, that would have been all they needed. The Mets would have been in the playoffs and one of the prohibitive favorites to challenge the Dodgers for the National League pennant, given a rotation designed to dominate a short series.
But it’s not 2020. The Mets have to play 162 games this year. And so here we are on a Monday morning in August talking about a third place team.
Rewind back to that June 16th night, as the Mets won their third game in a row and eighth of their previous ten, and it was like this team was just getting started. deGrom appeared to avoid serious injury after being pulled early in consecutive starts, both Michael Conforto and Jeff McNeil were due to come off the injured list within the next week, and Carlos Carrasco’s debut was on the horizon. At 10 games over .500, it seemed as if the Amazins had weathered an unlucky and choppy start to the season, surviving a multitude of injuries thanks to incredible pitching, and were ready to run away with the division.
Instead, they lost six of their next eight games, scoring 13 runs during that stretch, while being shut out four times and losing three games in which they allowed two runs or less. It was one of several instances when the offense has gone missing, regardless of who has been in the lineup. This weekend was the seventh time the Mets have scored a combined five runs or less in a distinct three-game set. And yesterday marked the eighth time they haven’t mustered more than two hits in a game, the most in the majors and only three shy of the all-time record (held by four teams, including the 1965 Mets).
And as the offense sputtered in June, a significant development emerged across baseball: umpires began checking pitchers for foreign substances. Coincidentally (or not), around that time, Taijuan Walker suddenly lost rise on his fastball and hasn’t been the same since, Edwin Díaz started coughing up runs and leads in bunches, and the one consistent force who had proved immune to the sticky substance crackdown, Mr. deGrom, ended up on the injured list with an unknown timetable for his return.
An offense that was as fragile as papier-mâché could no longer hide behind a lights-out pitching staff. As the injury bug continued to reach every corner of the roster, starting with the back of the rotation and working its’ way to the top, the Mets were forced to rely on spot starters who weren’t up to the task, and a team strength suddenly felt like a weakness. After earning wins in 20 of their first 60 games, Mets starters have only won four games since June 16, while the team has gone 21-30 during that time to fall into third place.
So if you’re wondering how the Mets ended up 56-55 after starting 35-25, the high-level story is contained in the paragraphs above. But we are still missing a key point that sums up the entire season: As hard as the ReplaceMets have tried to keep things afloat, the 2021 Mets suffer from a fundamental flaw: their best players haven’t produced or haven’t been healthy enough to produce on a consistent basis.
Sounds simple, right? Because it really is that simple.
Coming into the season, if someone told you that both Michael Conforto and Francisco Lindor would miss significant time, and when they did play, would falter at the plate, and that Edwin Díaz would have an ERA over four, and that Jacob deGrom would miss at least 10 starts, what odds would you have given the Mets to make the playoffs? If your answer is “Zero” you are like every other person who is reading this newsletter and coming up with a number in their head.
Nobody would put the Mets in the playoffs if they knew their best players weren’t going to be healthy or produce at their normal levels.
While Bryce Harper has a .983 OPS to carry the Phillies on his back to the top of the division, and as offseason target George Springer is finally healthy and hitting dramatic home runs to help the Blue Jays get back in the race, the Mets’ top hitters are struggling to stay off the interstate over the past two weeks. That is, if they are playing at all.
The good news for the Mets is the same as the bad news for their 35-25 start: the season is 162 games long. There are still 51 games to be played. Believe it or not, the Phillies will lose a baseball game again. The Braves have seen several winning streaks quickly shift into losing streaks this year. The NL East is still the NL East, even with the reinforcements added at the deadline.
While FanGraphs has dropped the Mets’ odds to win the division to 20.2%, they only have the Braves, Phillies, and Mets separated by two wins in their projections, or a small enough margin to make it a free-for-all for those three teams down the stretch.
Sure, it’s anyone’s race, but the National League East will be decided by the health and production of the Mets’ best players. Can Conforto build off some moderate success over his last few games? Will deGrom return to the rotation sooner rather than later? And what about Lindor? Can he put together a final month of the season that matches his career output? How many more home runs will Pete Alonso hit? Is Jeff McNeil just getting started?
Again, it sounds simple, but if the Mets’ best players are healthy and able, it’s hard to count them out, no matter how bleak things look today. While it seems unlikely for that to happen, as we mentioned at the top, there’s almost an entire 2020 season worth of games ahead. A lot can still happen.
🔗 Mets’ brutal weekend ends on even worse note, by John Harper, SNY.com: “If this turns out to be the road trip that wrecked the Mets’ season, which seems very possible, then it ended in fittingly haunting fashion, with old friend Zack Wheeler burying his former teammates with one of the most dominant performances of his career, adding insult to their injurious state of implosion.”
🔗Abysmal Mets road trip ends with even more misery, by Mike Puma, NY Post: “The scary part for the Mets is they might not even be close to rock bottom. An abysmal road trip ended Sunday with this beleaguered bunch managing all of two hits against the Phillies’ Zack Wheeler, who sent the Mets home bloodied with a 3-0 loss at Citizens Bank Park for a seventh defeat in eight games.”
And… we leave you with Pete Alonso’s plea to the fans of New York:
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Great summary - however this has happened the past 5 years in a row - very predictable with the current roster.