GOIN’ BATTY
As woeful lineup leaves hopes in peril, Mets rely on Dark Knight & super friends
Chatting recently with the manager of another National League wild card-contending team, I asked if he had ever seen a roster as odd as the Mets’ — such elite pitching, and so deeply dysfunctional an offense.
The guy shot down my premise, and said he was worried about his competition. “Yeah, but you just wait,” this manager said. “With all that pitching, they’ll be right there. The Giants didn’t look great until late last season, either.”
OK, hold up. The Giants? That was an awfully generous comparison. But this skipper’s point did manage to convey a shift in perception around the Mets. Opposing teams, rather than seeing them as patsies, now dread facing, say, Matt Harvey, Jacob deGrom and Noah Syndergaard in one weekend.
That’s progress, but the season’s second half opens on Friday with one major question hovering: Is the rotation enough to overcome the offense, or will the Mets waste their pitching? We’ve all been lulled to sleep by many a Mets half-inning this year, only to be roused again when the team is back on defense, and one of its starters grabs our attention. If you have experienced this, you hardly need to see numbers, but they are striking.
The Mets are dead last in the National League in team OPS, trailing even the Phillies. The 2015 Phillies are not a major-league team. Sandy Alderson’s team is 12th of 15 NL teams in that sacred statistic, on-base percentage. It is 14th in runs scored, last in batting average, last in slugging percentage, and . . . well, you get where we’re going with this.
The pitching gives them a chance every night — and on too many nights, the offense blows it. So what can the Mets do, to ensure that the next two months bring a pennant race, rather than a fan rebellion?
It is still too early to define the team’s exact trade targets, although we know that they like Ben Zobrist, and have scouted Milwaukee (Aramis Ramirez, Jean Segura, Carlos Gomez). We also know that Sandy Alderson once went hard after the available-again Justin Upton.
We know that the GM has always been highly reluctant to trade his young pitching phenoms (although maybe not as much as you’d think; we’ve always heard he was willing to part with Zack Wheeler in 2012 to snag Upton), so barring a change in philosophy, he will be rejecting a lot of proposals before July 31.
We know that the Mets believe that they have enough other prospects to make a deal anyway. One name we have always heard from team officials to view as trade bait is Brandon Nimmo.
We know that clubs almost always view their own prospects optimistically, making it hard to predict what the Mets could actually get for a package comprised of their second tier. We know that Rafael Montero was the pitcher from the group of hyped youngsters who the team was most likely to trade. Montero’s confusing, monthslong shoulder
injury has robbed the Mets of a useful chip. We also know not to be shocked if the Mets move Jenrry Mejia.
With so many clubs able to pose as contenders this year, the trade dynamic will not congeal until the final days and hours before the deadline. The Mets, according to a person familiar with their process, are still waiting with open minds, and have ruled nothing out.
Alderson should make a deal, if it’s a sensible one. But we do not expect him to subtract impact players from next year’s team in order to shoot for a playin game. That is simply not his style. When you scream “DO SOMETHING,” this guy leans back and thinks, “Only if that something is prudent.”
Can one acquisition fix what might be the worst lineup in the league? The Mets actually have a much better offense on the roster, if some guys would only get healthy or wake up.
Lucas Duda is a 30-homer slugger who slumbered through most of the first half. Travis d’Arnaud had emerged as a big piece in the middle of the lineup, before the dings and dents accumulated.
Juan Lagares was always overrated by many fans, but he wasn’t this bad, before elbow problems and other issues undermined him. Michael Cuddyer and David Wright . . . well, maybe they’ll feel healthier next year.
Problem is, this is the year in which those young starters are thriving. An analyst as credible as John Smoltz made the rather extraordinary comment on Thursday’s Hall of Fame conference call that the Mets staff was “way better” than he and his 1990s Braves cohorts and “they’ve got more talent than we could ever have.”
Next season might bring more of the same, but it might bring injury and disaster. Such is the nature of sports, life and especially pitching.
The summer of 2015 presents a unique opportunity, one the Mets have waited a halfdecade to experience. And the bats might blow the whole thing. Much depends the next few weeks.