☀️ Good Morning:
NOTE: My daughters have the week off from school, so we are taking a mini vacation to visit friends. Therefore, the newsletter might publish a bit off schedule this week.
Sooner or later a depth starter and middle reliever was going to give up a bunch of runs, especially without sound defense behind them, and that’s what happened on Tuesday.
For all of the attention on Juan Soto and Pete Alonso, who both homered last night, Francisco Lindor continues to struggle.
After going 1-for-5 with two strikeouts, leaving three runners stranded, Lindor’s OPS sits at a dismal .632, and he has one hit in 13 at-bats with runners in scoring position. Worst yet, he has committed four errors, a few proving extremely costly, like the one last night that led to the Twins’ first two runs.
🗣️ “It’s unacceptable what's happening right now,” Lindor said of his mistakes. “It’s unacceptable. I gotta be better. It's not to the standards the Mets have, it's definitely not to the standard I have for myself. It's been 2 games already that cost the team.”
It’s too early to worry about the 31-year-old shortstop at this point. We will bookmark a deep dive into his early struggles for a later date when, hopefully, they become obsolete.
THE BIG NEWS on Tuesday centered on the roster. Griffin Canning will miss his scheduled start due to an illness.
That leaves the Mets in a tight spot trying to making their pitching work in a stretch of 13 consecutive games without an off day. Justin Hagenman is expected to pitch this afternoon in his first major-league game. It’s unclear if he will start, or if he will pitch following an opener. There are roster implications, which we will discuss next.
☕️ Grab your *second* coffee for your morning dose of Mets Fix!
🤸♀️ Roster Gymnastics
The Mets have lasted nearly three weeks into the season without making a roster move beyond the ones dictated before the season started due to a slew of injuries.
They have to get creative in managing their roster over the next few days after losing Jose Siri to a fractured tibia and Griffin Canning, the scheduled Wednesday starter, to an illness.
The Mets had hoped to make it to Friday before calling up an extra starter, opening up the possibility they could promote one of José Ureña or Brandon Waddell, if not top prospects Brandon Sproat or Blade Tidwell. But since none of those arms will be rested before then, they have to look elsewhere.
When Blake asked me last week on the podcast if I thought the Mets would call up a sixth starter to help them through this stretch of 13 straight games, I said, No. I thought a bullpen game made more sense for two reasons.
They didn’t have an obvious candidate on the active roster they could remove to make space for such a pitcher. Plenty of fans would like to see Danny Young replaced, but since he is out of options, the Mets would risk losing their only lefty not named Minter to waivers (more on this in a bit).
While calling up a starter would save a few relievers from pitching an extra day in a bullpen game, it also meant losing a reliever for 15 days by optioning him to the minors.
A few things have changed since then, and now the front office has to work their way around them.
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