The Metropolitan: Predictable and enraging
Mets hitters do the impossible: make deGrom's starts painful to watch
Good Morning,
Or maybe it’s not such a good morning if you’re a Mets fan. Your favorite team has scored one run in the past 21 innings (on a solo home run by Jeff McNeil, who we will talk about more in a bit). And despite holding baseball’s top offense to a measly three runs over the past two games, the Mets got swept by Boston in the two-game set.
What’s more, Jacob freaking deGrom is 2-2; in the three games he’s started in which he didn’t get the win, he’s allowed a grand total of two earned runs. This is getting old real fast.
With that, let’s recap last night’s action.
⚾️ IN SHORT: Jacob deGrom was Jacob deGrom, striking out nine more hitters to tie Nolan Ryan (1978) for the most strikeouts (59) through a pitcher’s first five appearances of a season since at least 1893. Unfortunately, he allowed a run to score because he was less-than-perfect for around 120 seconds, allowing two hits in an inning for the first time all season. While deGrom didn’t have his best stuff, what he did have was pretty damn good, surrendering just the one run and three hits over 6 innings. But the Mets couldn’t do anything on offense, losing 1-0. [Box Score]
🔑 KEY MOMENT: The Mets were able to move a runner into scoring position in the 6th, when JD Davis walked, pushing Pete Alonso (who had singled) over to second. But with two outs, Dom Smith (who started the season relatively strong but has struggled of late), grounded a tapper to the catcher. It was the closest the Mets would ever get to tying the game.
3 TAKEAWAYS
❶ DEJA(KE) VU: Jacob deGrom was masterful as usual, allowing one run on three hits, and fanning 9 over six innings. Since he was a young pitcher gutting out a win in the NLDS against the Dodgers in 2015, we’ve known that Jake can be very effective even when he doesn’t have his best stuff. And that’s what he showed again last night, failing to control his fastball down but adapting by mixing in changeups to give batters another look to worry about.
Since the start of 2018, Jake has a 1.99 ERA in 81 starts, striking out 687 in 524 innings. And during that stretch, the Mets are somehow 38-43. For his career, deGrom has now allowed 1 run or fewer in 47.3 percent of his career starts.
❷ BROKEN BATS: The Mets continued their trend of making deGrom’s opposing starting pitchers look like Cy Young candidates, striking out 15 times, and for the second time this season tallying just two hits. They scored just one run in the series — and even that was the McNeil home-run, showing a continued inability to string consecutive hits together. “The approach was just off,” Luis Rojas said after the game, about his offense. “Late on fastballs, chasing breaking balls, taking pitches in the zone.”
❸ BULLPEN STRONG AGAIN - It’s easy to get lost amid the frustrating offensive woes, but the relief corps has emerged as a bright spot in recent weeks. Last night Aaron Loup delivered a spotless 7th, Trevor May did his job with a clean 8th and Edwin Diaz continued to look lights-out with an easy 9th. That trio plus Miguel Castro and Jeurys Familia all have ERAs under 3. Over the last five games, the bullpen has allowed just two earned runs over 19.1 innings, along with a 28/4 K/BB ratio.
🧑🏫 SOUND SMART: When deGrom struck out the side in the 5th inning, it was the fifth time he’s done that this season — most in the major leagues.
⏭ NEXT UP: The Mets have their second off day of the week today, before playing the Phillies (again) over the weekend. For the third time in three weeks, Marcus Stroman will match-up against RHP Chase Anderson. Both pitchers are looking to rebound off sub-par performances last week. Anderson carries a 6.48 ERA after being shelled in Colorado last week.
When facing Philadelphia this season, Stroman is 2-0 with a 0.75 ERA, and .171 opponent batting average.
🍎 ROSTER MOVE: The Mets have claimed catcher Deivy Grullón off waivers and optioned him to the Alternate Site. Their 40-man roster is now full. Grullón has been on a wild ride from the Phillies to the Red Sox to the Reds to the Rays to the Mets over the past 8 months. He has power and a strong arm from behind the plate.
😓 DEAD LAST: The Mets are now dead last in the majors in runs scored, with an average of 3.00 per game.
👻 BOO: After an incredibly slow start to his Mets’ career, Francisco Lindor talked to reporters about being booed: “Interesting because it’s the first time that it’s happened in my career, and funny because I’m getting booed and people think I’m going to go home and just think about why I’m getting booed. I get it. They’re booing because there’s no results. That’s it. They expect results. I expect results, and I get it.
✈️ ASSIGNMENTS: The organization announced its minor league assignments yesterday. Per Michael Mayer: Mark Vientos will open in Binghamton; Ronny Mauricio, Matt Allan and Brett Baty in Brooklyn; and Pete Crow-Armstrong and Francisco Alvarez in St. Lucie.
An adjustment that could bust Jeff McNeil’s slump
🧓 by Jeffrey Bellone
The Mets need Jeff McNeil to hit. Besides the fact he has been living on an interstate where only Upstate New Yorkers should find themselves — batting .188 heading into the series against the Red Sox — throughout his career, he has been the team’s most consistent clutch hitter. His .307 batting average with runners in scoring position over the past three years is by far the tops among players who have donned the blue and orange in that time. He has only delivered on one such hit (in 15 at-bats) so far in 2021.
An area where McNeil has particularly struggled in the early going has been against inside pitches. While he did turn one into a magnificent home run in the bottom of the 9th against the Marlins earlier this month, overall, he’s only batting .200 against inside stuff, after mashing anything close to him for a .395 average last year.
In trying to correct this, you might have noticed McNeil changed his stance at the plate. He talked about it after Tuesday’s game in which he hit a home run on a pitch located middle-in.
“I’ve been cutting myself off, big time at the plate,” he told reporters. “My front foot’s been a step in front of the plate, and there’s just been no room to hit … I haven’t been taking a stride the last few games. I’ve been picking my foot up a little bit and putting it back down in the exact same place.”
We can see what he’s describing in the split image below. On the left (from early in the season), he lifts his front foot high off the ground in taking his stride, whereas on the right (from Tuesday), he keeps his foot down.
The key is the difference in how he plants his front foot as he swings: With the high leg kick, he lands closer to the plate (as he mentioned) and it causes his body to corkscrew as he pulls the barrel of the bat through the zone; by eliminating his stride, his front foot is planted centered to his body (as you can see in the right image below), allowing him to square his body around his swing.
This is called being a professional hitter. McNeil entered the season with a career .319/.383/.501 slash line for a reason. Sometimes you need to make adjustments, and even though his lone home run came on an inside pitch, he was quick to recognize that his swing was off balance.
BOTTOM LINE: The 29-year-old has hits in seven of his last nine games, building a picket fence with almost a hit per day over the past ten days. He continues to hit the ball hard, which is why his expected production on contact (or as the stat nerds call it, xwOBAcon) is in line with his career totals despite a slow start according to the box score. It seems only a matter of time before he really busts out of his early slump.
⚾️ Philadelphia’s Bryce Harper took a 97 mile per hour fastball to the face and was bleeding with a cut near the nose. Fortunately, he left the game under his own power.
⚾️ Reigning MVP Freddie Freeman was 4-4 last night in a 10-0 blowout, and then struck out against Cubs’ first baseman Anthony Rizzo doing mop-up duty.
⚾️ Minnesota’s Byron Buxton is unstoppable so far this year, going 5-for-5 last night with a homer and two doubles. He’s now batting .438 and slugging .938.
🔗 Jacob deGrom's lack of run support might be reaching new lows, by David Schoenfield, ESPN: “The Mets are 9-10, but nobody is over .500. They still have deGrom and that should -- in theory -- help them win a lot of games. Still, Mets fans are left staring at this nugget: DeGrom is the first pitcher with an ERA as low as 0.51 in a month to finish without a winning record since Fernando Valenzuela went 2-3 with a 0.21 ERA in April 1985.”
🔗 Jacob deGrom's a late bloomer. Will that affect his Hall of Fame chances? by Travis Sawchik, The Score: “He's the game's best starting pitcher since 2017 by WAR and ERA, and remarkably continues to improve in his early 30s. He's so good there is some talk about whether deGrom will have enough longevity, enough time on the field, to earn Hall of your Fame enshrinement given the obstacle of the late start to his career. Tom Tango, MLB's senior data architect, ran a Twitter poll over the weekend, and the vast majority of respondents believed deGrom owns a 75% chance or better to make the Hall. How much more must he do to increase his chances?”
🔗 Two swings that hinted at better days for Francisco Lindor, by Andy Martino, SNY: “Sad? Angry? Tired of reading about Mets’ underachieving offense and Jacob deGrom’s hard luck? We interrupt your justifiable misery by presenting two tiny moments that hinted at optimism about Francisco Lindor. Yes, one was one a lineout, and one a foul ball during an at-bat that ended in a strikeout. But slumps sometimes end in quiet victories just like that.”
🔗 Loudest noise from Citi Field crowd came in the form of boos, by Deesha Thosar, NY Daily News: “The home crowd of 8,051 fans didn’t just restrict their boos for Francisco Lindor, though he heard it loudly after he struck out in the sixth. This time the jeers were aimed at Michael Conforto, Dominic Smith, James McCann and just about anyone that didn’t capitalize with men on base – a trend that fans are utterly exhausted of seeing, especially when their ace is on the mound.”
And… here’s reigning MVP Freddie Freeman whiffing on a 61 MPH pitch from first baseman Anthony Rizzo:
Thanks for reading! Follow us on Twitter for regular updates until tomorrow’s newsletter.
And please check out our newsletter about the Knicks, too.