The Metropolitan: A chilly reaction
Mets mourn Chili Davis’s firing, while Jake has injury scare
Good Morning,
Despite not playing, it was a busy day for the Mets as Jacob deGrom had a medical scare, drama surrounded the firing of Chili Davis and an inaccurate rain forecast proved beneficial to the Mets.
We’re also excited to share an excerpt about Mets castaway turned Dodgers star Justin Turner, from the new book If These Walls Could Talk: New York Mets by Mike Puma.
But first, let’s catch you up on a busy day of Mets news.
🌧 POSTPONED: Yesterday’s game in St. Louis was postponed due to rain and will be made-up as part of a doubleheader starting at 5:15 PM EST this evening. As we will explain in a bit, the Mets lucked out from the weather report (the rain never actually came), as the bonus day off allows them to reorganize their rotation and rest a tired bullpen.
😮💨 PHEW: Mets fans were holding their collective breath when news dropped that Jacob deGrom had been scratched from his start yesterday due to “side pain.” However, an MRI later revealed there is only inflammation in his right lat (instead of a strain).
BACK SOON? The Mets released a statement indicating deGrom will “refrain from throwing for the next few days” and manager Luis Rojas said they will determine when he can make his next start after that.
NO IL: Instead of backdating a potential IL stint to May 1, the Mets did not place deGrom on the Injured List, which is a promising sign that they expect him to make his next start soon.
🍪 COOKIE CRISP: Earlier in the day, Carlos Carrasco pitched six innings in a scrimmage and appears extremely close to returning. Rojas said he will likely face some kind of competition that will “probably be one of our affiliates” before he returns to a major league mound.
🍎 ROSTER MOVES: In preparation of yesterday’s postponed game, the Mets called up starter Jordan Yamamoto — who was originally scheduled to pitch in Triple-A Syracuse’s first game — and optioned RHP Sean Reid-Foley to Syracuse as a temporary measure to make room.
BULLPEN: The Mets had planned on starting Miguel Castro in place of deGrom yesterday. While Yamamoto was on his way to St. Louis, it’s unclear if he would have arrived in time for the game, had they played. Meanwhile, the rainout and call-ups turn a tired bullpen into a rested one with everyone except Jacob Barnes and Robert Gsellman having two days’ rest now.
More fallout from the Chili Davis firing…
😢 UPSET: A day after the Mets fired hitting coach Chili Davis and his assistant Tom Slater, several Mets players made it clear they weren’t happy with the move. News of the change broke just before midnight EST on Monday and Pete Alonso said he found out about it on social media while eating a postgame snack at his locker.
🤔 CONFUSED: Alonso told reporters the decision was “confusing” to him, even after talking to general manager Zack Scott about it. According to Joel Sherman of the NY Post, the Mets decided a change was needed due to “lack of individualized plans, mechanical adjustments and authoritative instruction in the meetings.” The front office considered making a move after the offense looked putrid in their 1-0 loss to the Red Sox last week, but decided to wait.
👎 LINDOR’S SLUMP: Davis told the NY Post he “probably” would still have a job if Francisco Lindor wasn’t mired in a terrible slump. Lindor told reporters the firings “broke my heart” because “maybe if I would have been hitting a little more, maybe [Davis] would have had a job.”
📊ANALYTICS: General manager Zack Scott told the players the same thing he told the media about the decision, indicating that it wasn’t about the past 23 games, and more about the team’s overall approach to hitting.
LAUNCH ANGLE: New hitting coach Hugh Quattlebaum is aligned with the front office in understanding the importance of focusing on the swing plane and attacking the pitch from the proper angle to optimize the launch angle of the ball and hit it in the air. The Mets have the 8th highest ground ball rate in baseball, and Lindor has seen his own ground ball rate spike this season.
CIVIL WAR: “All the things that analytics does in hitting, it helps formulate our game plan and approach plan,” Alonso told reporters yesterday in discussing the Mets’ approach to hitting. “But I know that as times keep going on, the game stays the same. I mean, the game's been the same since the Civil War. And I think when you get in that box and you think about numbers, percentages, the pitcher is going to win 10 out of 10 times.”
🍎 MINOR LEAGUES RETURN: After the entire 2020 season was cancelled due to the pandemic, Minor League Baseball finally returned last night. All four of the Mets’ affiliates played. Most noteworthy, top prospect catcher Francisco Álvarez was a career-best 4-5 at the plate with a double and a walk.
⏭ NEXT UP: In Game 1 of the doubleheader, Marcus Stroman will return to the mound after leaving his previous start early due to a tight hamstring. He had volunteered to take the ball yesterday in place of deGrom, which is an encouraging sign that he is feeling good and a team-first mentality that you love to see. The Mets have not announced a starter for the second game of the twin bill, but presumably it will be the newly promoted RHP Jordan Yamamoto. Left-hander Kwang Hyun Kim will start the first game for the Cardinals with RHP Johan Oviedo getting the nod in Game 2.
How Justin Turner Got Away From the Mets
An excerpt from Mike Puma’s new book, If These Walls Could Talk: New York Mets
Justin Turner is still trying to get over the Mets punting on a surprisingly competitive season. It’s several years after the fact, and Turner has emerged as an All-Star third baseman with the Dodgers after a nondescript Mets career as a utility infielder. He’s at his locker in the home clubhouse at Dodger Stadium reflecting on the great friendships he formed with the Mets, but it’s clear he was frustrated about the manner in which the organization was run.
“The hardest one for me was 2012; we were a few games out of first place going into the All-Star break and we had the worst bullpen in baseball,” Turner said. “Maybe a couple of middle-leverage arms helps us play more meaningful games down the road and we basically had a meeting and were told, ‘This is who we are, we are either going to win or lose with this group, we aren’t making any trades.’ We came out of the All-Star break and went [1–10], so I think looking back on that it was probably one of the harder things to deal with during that time.”
“If we make a couple of moves for a couple of small bullpen arms and get some help down there, maybe we are playing meaningful games in August and September. That was disappointing because they were basically in a holding pattern, waiting for the cavalry, waiting for the Harveys and Wheelers and they didn’t want to do anything. They didn’t care if they won or lost basically because they were waiting for those guys.”
These were lean payroll times for the Mets, in the aftermath of Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme in which team owners Fred Wilpon and Saul Katz had a reported $500 million invested at the time of Madoff’s arrest in 2009.
Turner was driving to San Diego, about to represent the Mets at a Players’ Association meeting following the 2013 season, when he received a phone call informing him he had been non-tendered by the club. A 28-year-old infielder, Turner had slashed .280/.319/.385 in a backup role for the Mets and expected to return.
“Standing up in that Players’ Association meeting and introducing myself, ‘Justin Turner, I just got non-tendered an hour ago,’ wasn’t fun,” Turner recalled in 2019.
The Mets, and the rest of baseball, couldn’t have foreseen what was coming next. Turner signed a minor league deal with his hometown Dodgers and suddenly became a force. He hit .340 in his first year with the Dodgers and then improved his launch angle, averaging 21 homers over the next three seasons, which included an All-Star appearance in 2017.
“He basically came out of nowhere like a J.D. Martinez, but I don’t think that would have happened with us, just because we didn’t have the same playing opportunity,” [Sandy] Alderson said, before conceding that David Wright’s spinal stenosis that shortened his career might have provided an opening for Turner. “But I am happy for Justin, we didn’t see that.”
“There was another trade we made, right after my first year, Angel Pagan, and he went off with the Giants, good for him, so there were a couple of those that got away. But I don’t think in Turner’s case it was foreseeable, because actually Omar [Minaya] had claimed him off waivers from the Orioles the year before I got there, so this was a guy who had bounced around.”
Wayne Krivsky was actually the driving force behind Turner landing with the Mets, after a stint with the Orioles. Krivsky had just arrived to the Orioles’ front office in 2008 as a special assistant when he was asked to help complete a trade with his former team, the Reds, who had fired him as general manager earlier in the year. The Orioles were trading catcher Ramon Hernandez to the Reds for utilityman Ryan Freel and players to be named later. As somebody who knew the Reds’ farm system, Krivsky was asked to recommend players to Orioles general manager Andy MacPhail who would complete the deal. Krivsky didn’t have to give the list of supplemental players a second look.
“And I said, ‘Andy, I have got to tell you: Go get Justin Turner,’” Krivsky said. The following season, Krivsky was working under Minaya with the Mets and happened to be in the office the day Turner was placed on outright waivers by the Orioles. “I told Omar that we had to grab Justin Turner, the Orioles were making a mistake,” Krivsky said. “This guy could do some things, he could hit, he was versatile. He could play all over the diamond and he was a very instinctive baseball player. That is how he ended up with the Mets.”
Turner was a popular player in the Mets clubhouse and wasn’t shy about voicing his opinions, even jabbing team COO Jeff Wilpon in front of spectators on a back field at spring training. Turner had arrived early to camp for workouts—paying his own way—and Wilpon questioned why he wasn’t wearing the same garb as his teammates.
“I had an orange shirt and everybody else had a blue shirt on,” Turner said. “I made some smart comment like, ‘You’re not paying me to be here, I am going to wear what I want to wear. As soon as I am supposed to be here, on your dime, I will wear whatever you want me to.’”
During the season, Turner would receive occasional phone calls from Wilpon.
“He asked me to change my walk-up music, because I think his daughter wanted to hear certain songs,” Turner said, noting that he complied.
“The boss tells you to do something, and it’s hard to say no.”
This excerpt from If These Walls Could Talk: New York Mets by Mike Puma is reprinted with the permission of Triumph Books. For more information and to order a copy, please visit Amazon,Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org, or TriumphBooks.com/WallsMets.
⚾️ Yankees fans greeted the Houston Astros as you would expect, playing for the first time in front of fans since Houston’s 2017 cheating scandal was revealed. The Yankees won 7-3 and held Public Enemy No. 1, Jose Altuve, hitless in four at-bats.
⚾️ Ronald Acuña smacked his league-leading 10th home run in the Braves’ 6-1 win over the Nationals.
⚾️ Reds reliever Amir Garrett was suspended seven games and fined an undisclosed amount for “inciting” a benches-clearing incident with the Cubs on Saturday. Garrett taunted Anthony Rizzo after striking him out, causing tempers to flare. Cubs SS Javier Baez was also fined.
🔗 Inside the Mets’ decision to fire Chili Davis and the origin of Donnie Stevenson, by Joel Sherman, NY Post: “Pete Alonso and his teammates made public the figment of Donnie Stevenson. “Donnie” was neither a broadside at Davis nor a desperate signal to their bosses. The imaginary hitting/mental skills Sherpa was designed to defuse pressure building around the deflated offense. It was good-natured. But the laughs and an uptick in offensive production could not save Davis. The wheels were in motion.”
🔗 Mets players react to Chili Davis and Tom Slater firings with sadness and confusion, by Deesha Thosar, NY Daily News: “The Mets had a team meeting at the team hotel in St. Louis on Tuesday afternoon to vent, discuss and ask questions about the firings of head hitting coach Chili Davis and assistant hitting coach Tom Slater. Of those in the room, which included hitters, pitchers, support staff and everyone who was on the team’s traveling party, only two to three players spoke up during the meeting. Pete Alonso was one of those players, and he was upset and perplexed by the decision.”
🔗 I Simply Can’t Get Enough of These Absurd Mets-Phillies Games, by RJ McDaniel, FanGraphs: “The Phillies and the Mets are both hovering, along with their entire division, around the .500 mark. Both could make the postseason, or neither of them could. These games, then, eked out by margins of an error here and an overturned home run call there, actually matter. That overturned home run call could very well have postseason implications. And as much as it is wonderful to watch players who seem in complete control of their chosen skills, the best athletes in the world playing the part, there is something profoundly enjoyable about watching a contest of skills begin to resemble something else entirely — something stranger, something just as human.”
🔗 Minor Leagues Recap: Mauricio, Baty, Crow-Armstrong, Álvarez with Multiple Hits, by Ryan Kolakowsi, MetsMinors.net
And we leave you with video of Pete Alonso’s response to the Chili Davis firing…
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People will have forgotten about the Chili Davis thing by the weekend. Twitter and some beat writers are trying to make it a bigger thing than it is. I think its natural for players to be sad about losing someone they have worked with and built a connection with. I certainly don't know the ins and outs of the relationships of players and hitting or pitching coaches but I trust that perhaps Chilis approach is outdated compared to other clubs that have evolved. Some of the Mets players are so young (Alonso, Dom, McNeil) and new to the league they wouldnt know any different but perhaps some guys (Lindor, Pillar etc) from other organizations are use to a higher level of info and help. Lets be honest with how dominant pitching has become in the last few years the batters need all the help they can get. On the other hand its entirely possible that Chili was simply the fall guy for Lindor/McCann/Smith among others drastically underperforming. Lindor has much bigger sample sizes behind him but frankly McCann and Smith do not.
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