ORIOLES GO TO 11
When Brodie Van Wagenen made his version of a splashy move this past offseason, he thought that was it; the Mets were saved. The GM plucked Rick Porcello and Michael Wacha via free agency and, no less than five hours later, advertised the team’s stacked rotation. The Mets advertised six starters in Jacob deGrom, Noah Syndergaard, Marcus Stroman, Porcello, Wacha and Steven Matz. The latter of the two were meant to be fighting for a rotation spot; now, they should consider themselves fortunate if they land in the relief corps. “We’ve had some adversities with our starting rotation and that’s no secret,” said manager Luis Rojas.
The skipper is being kind. The reality of the club’s situation, with 17 games remaining, is harsh. The Mets have one starter, one reliever who is successfully transitioning into a starter and a consistently inconsistent offense.
The Mets were held to just one run on three hits by left-hander John Means in Tuesday’s 11-2 loss to the Orioles at Citi Field. Rojas packed the lineup with right-handers in hopes his hitters would square off against Means — as they did last week. Instead, Means struck out five in six innings and not even Wilson Ramos or Amed Rosario, embedded as their eighth and ninth hitters due to their success against lefties, could save them.
But the story of the season is bad pitching from “probably the deepest starting pitching rotation in baseball” — as Van Wagenen put it — that either pulled an award-winning deep fake or seriously underperformed. In truth, it’s a mix of both.
The Mets (19-24) fell to five games under .500 and 2.5 games behind one of eight playoff spots. They will need to go 11-6 the remainder of the season to be a .500 team. But this year’s expanded playoff format could allow a sub-.500 team to sneak into postseason contention.
Wacha, is one of 2020’s antiheroes. The righthander has compiled a 7.50 ERA this season after his latest disappointing outing. Wacha surrendered five runs, four of them earned, on seven hits with three strikeouts in four innings and 71 pitches against the Orioles. The 29-yearold, who once was an All-Star and NLCS MVP, has averaged four innings per start across six performances this year.
“I think I’m just making too many mistakes,” Wacha said.
The Mets would be giving up on the season if they continued their final push for the playoffs with Wacha in the rotation.
“Right now, we gotta say yes,” Rojas said when asked directly if Wacha will remain in the rotation.
Rojas has to say yes because his hands are tied. If he demotes Wacha to the bullpen, that leaves an enormous hole in the rotation. Perhaps Matz, who has been on the injured list with left shoulder bursitis, will recover in time to pitch for Wacha. But Matz is presumably not nearly stretched out enough to go deep into an outing, and the left-hander was demoted to the bullpen after five starts. Robert Gsellman, whose 2020 odyssey included four starts before landing right back in the pen, followed Wacha on Tuesday and only made the hill harder to climb. Gsellman coughed up six runs in 3.2 innings before exiting in the eighth with what the Mets are calling a left oblique injury. By the time he left, hands on his knees in serious pain, the Mets trailed the O’s, 11-1 .
Porcello (1-4, 5.54 ERA) is another rotation liability, depending on his command on any given day. The Mets have been unable to rely on him for consistently deep starts and though he has not been as disappointing as Wacha, it’s a close race. The right-hander, though, has kept his career-long promise of being a durable innings-eater. He is scheduled to make his ninth start of the season tonight, another test for the Mets as they try to avoid being swept by Baltimore.
“We want the guys right now to stay in the rotation,” Rojas said. “We trust our guys. This is our team. We know that there’s a lot of fight in these guys. We just gotta start tomorrow. Tomorrow is a big game. We got to immediately bounce back, get a win and start getting hot like I know we can, like we feel we can as a group and finish the season strong because we do have a great chance still.”