STILL GOTTA STICK WITH MICKEY:
Don’t ditch Mickey yet; Met roster is flawed
CINCINNATI — Let’s put down the torches and pitchforks for a minute, Mets fans. Yes, Wednesday was another embarrassment in a long history of blunders that Mets fans have had to endure. The lineup mistake that likely cost the reeling club a loss at the hands of the Reds, the worst team in the National League, is not going down as a highlight of Mickey Callaway’s managing career in Flushing.
But before you try to run him out of town because of the lineup snafu or some of his other questionable decisions — in just the first 35 games of his major league managerial career — take a deep breath and think about why this season has so quickly spiraled downward.
This team came into the season with big flaws.
Callaway’s hiring last October may have been marketed as a new era in Flushing, but that doesn’t just erase the cracks in the foundation of this team, built by Sandy Alderson and his front office.
Callaway came in and said the right things about leading men, loving and caring for the players and bridging the gap between analytics and players, but none of that can fill the holes in a poorly constructed roster. Simply changing faces of the on-field coaching staff was not going to instantly alter the years of problems with a player development system and poor drafts.
So, once you get past the embarrassment of Wednesday, strip away the mocking #LOLMets tweets and headlines, the Mets’ streak of losing eight of their last nine games and dropping like a deadweight towards .500 comes down to some pretty familiar problems. The lineup has stopped scoring runs. They head into Friday night’s series opener with the Phillies ranked 24th in the majors and 10th in the National League with a .233 team batting average and they are 12th in the league with a .684 OPS. This should not really be a surprise. A lineup that has very little speed and is constructed around power-hitters is going to go through slumps. Jay Bruce and Yoenis Cespedes are streaky hitters; they go through peaks and valleys over the course of the season. Without the ability to manufacture runs, the offense is inevitably going to endure slumps, too. Maybe a little more surprising is that the pitching has not lived up to the hype that has always surrounded it. We are seeing, with the Mets giving up on Matt Harvey, that maybe it never will. Yes, Callaway came into this job with a reputation as something of a pitching guru, having coached the Cleveland pitchers into an elite staff. Dave Eiland came to the job of pitching coach as a twotime World Series champion. But, they are working with what they’ve got and there may be some hits and misses here.
Other than Jacob deGrom, whom the Mets are optimistic will come off the disabled list on Sunday to make a start, the rotation has not been dominant. Noah Syndergaard may be able to throw a fastball 100 miles an hour, but hitters are proving they aren’t intimidated by it. Zack Wheeler is showing progress, but remember he was just learning how to pitch effectively in 2015 when he needed Tommy John surgery. Steven Matz has had his learning curve as a major-league pitcher turned and twisted by injuries. And Jason Vargas seems to be struggling to recapture the form he had under Eiland last season in Kansas City.
Heading into Friday night, the Mets’ pitching staff was ranked 11th in the National League, 18th overall. Those so-called dominant starters are ranked 12th in the NL with a 4.44 ERA. That’s a little surprising, but given that we are just 35 games into the season, I think it’s a little too quick to start pinning years of issues on the new guys.
Wednesday was bad. Mets fans have every right to be upset about a silly clerical error that cost their team a game and made them, once again, the laughingstock of baseball. Callaway stepped up and took the blame, admitted he was pissed at himself for not “quadruple” checking the lineups and rightly said they have to move on and try to eliminate silly mistakes. He knows he also has to try to lead a flawed Mets team out of this tailspin they are suddenly in. It’s a big task he was handed in his first managerial job. So take a step back for the moment and try to understand that Callaway’s mistake is not the reason the Mets find themselves in this situation yet again.