SHOOTING FROM THE LIP
Mets go nowhere without deGrom and Syndergaard being on their games, but Cespedes stirs the drink
Yoenis Cespedes is playing, but he is hurt again. This time it is a quad injury. It is always something the past couple of years. That is not his fault. It is just sports. The Mets thought they were paying all that money for somebody who would carry them for a long time, carry them the way he did when they made the trade for him in 2015 and over the last two months of the regular season made you start to think he was the MVP for the whole season for the National League. There was a reason why his former manager, Terry Collins, used to say that Cespedes had as much talent for baseball as anybody in the game.
It would have been crazy for the Mets not to throw crazy money at Cespedes when they got the chance, because he looked like as complete a hitter as Carlos Beltran had been in his prime at old Shea Stadium. Cespedes hung up numbers the way David Wright did when he was young, and hit more home runs than Wright did, many plain out of sight. Cespedes made you watch him the way you watched Darryl Strawberry when he was young, and you expected the next swing from Darryl would be one to send a baseball in the direction of Flushing Bay, or maybe the moon.
There have only been a handful of at-bats like this in all of Mets history. Cespedes became one, and quickly. Now he is most memorable for a series of injuries that have turned him ordinary at the age of 32.
There have been plenty of disappointments on the Mets since they started 111. Noah Syndergaard, who at his best has looked like an ace of his sport, has rarely looked like the comic-book superhero he was supposed to be. Until Friday night’s huge 9th inning home run against the Phillies, propelling the Mets to as big a win as they have had this season, Michael Conforto made you wonder if he was ever going to regain the form he showed last season before he went down with a serious shoulder injury (tear, posterior capsule) of his own.
Of course Matt Harvey — the Dark Knight of Cincinnati — was a huge disappointment before he pitched himself out of New York and all the way to the great Midwest, where his first start with the Reds in Los Angeles was similar to his first start for the Mets this season, back in April in Citi Field against the Phillies. And Jacob deGrom, the real ace of the staff, hurt his pitching elbow swinging a bat. In all the important ways, that was the biggest disappointment of all in this time when the Mets were in that 8-16 death spiral before Conforto and the new catcher, Devin Mesoraco, went deep in Philadelphia. Obviously the Mets have no chance to do anything without deGrom. Obviously they need Conforto to hit, unless you thought Asdrubal Cabrera was going to carry them to the postseason. But Cespedes is their star. Cespedes is supposed to be their horse. Except that he keeps breaking down, in some form or fashion. The contract for him wasn’t as long or as big as Wright’s. It was big enough. We all know what happened with Wright, who played 38 games in 2015 and 37 in 2016 and hasn’t played since and will likely never play again. If the Mets were going to spend on anybody, it had to be Wright. Then his body betrayed him, dramatically, and things went terribly wrong. His physical decline became irrevocable and now, one of the most talented young players the Mets ever had, all the way back to their beginning, is like a ghost.
At 35, David Wright is just three years older than Cespedes is right now. It doesn’t mean that Cespedes will never again carry the Mets the way he did when he got to town. It doesn’t mean that any of his injuries is comparable to the one Conforto suffered, or the stenosis that has robbed Wright of baseball. You watch him, even in the spring of ‘18, slowed by the quad injury, and think he is one swing away from going off on a rip and putting up big numbers and having the rest of the batting order organize around him.
But it is getting more and more difficult to remember the last time he did that. It is getting more and more difficult to remember the last time he was routinely great and he surprised you when he made an out in a big moment. When his agent was pitching him for a new contract after the 2016 season, the Mets were presented with all these back pages Cespedes had provided in the New York tabloids since becoming a Met. These were different analytics, showing the way Cespedes had made himself somebody to watch, and made the Mets a team to care about again.
Only he hasn’t been Back Page Cespedes much lately, if at all, in the second year of a four-year contract worth $110 million. You know what the reaction would have been around here if the Mets hadn’t paid the guy. It would have been similar to what it would have been if they hadn’t paid Wright. Sometimes things happen in sports. Maybe everything will be different, and the way it used to be, when Cespedes is completely healthy again. Maybe he will once again look like a great player, and a great investment. Just not right now.