Mets saying nice things, but still not connecting
SAN FRANCISCO — Hours after Mets owner Steve Cohen took a shot at his underperforming offense, Mets hitting coach Hugh Quattlebaum assessed his slumping hitters pretty much the same way he has all year. The Mets are working hard. They are focused on being process oriented. He is trying to put the lineup in the best place to hit. He’s also not taking Cohen’s criticism personally.
The Mets owner tweeted, in part: “It’s hard to understand how professional hitters can be this unproductive. The best teams have a more disciplined approach.”
Quattlebaum said no one is thrilled with the results on offense. To be clear, Cohen did not suggest the Mets are slacking off. If anything, the life-long Mets fan doubling as the rookie team owner just seemed utterly baffled by the team’s lack of production.
“We need to do better. I need to do better for the guys,” Quattlebaum said. “They’re up there busting their butts literally every day. It’s not a work-ethic thing. They’re in the cages, they’re trying to stay healthy, they’re trying to do their homework on what’s going to work best on a daily basis approach-wise. It’s a constant process to try to get better.”
The Mets were slugging .364 with a .688 OPS in 23 games this season before the front office fired hitting coach Chili Davis and assistant hitting coach Tom Slater. Going into Wednesday’s game, the team had a .694 OPS, 12th in the National League and 26th in MLB, and .384 slugging percentage since Quattlebaum and assistant hitting coach Kevin Howard took over in May.
Evidently, the team’s performance at the plate has barely changed whether Davis is preaching an oldschool approach or Quattlebaum’s analytics-based ideas are at the helm.
Quattlebaum seemed to imply that the Mets are just simply unlucky at the plate, particularly when it comes to situational hitting.
“I’ve been at enough blackjack tables to know it doesn’t always happen when you want it to happen, but you gotta keep doing it the right way,” Quattlebaum said. “That’s what we’re trying to do.”
“The blend of getting on base and hitting for power is the approach that’s been preached to a lot of the guys that are here on this team,” Luis Rojas said. “They came through the minor-league system where that was preached to them. Even though the last couple of years, we had them spray the ball, make contact, put the ball in play, all those things, at the big-league level. Those guys develop in the minor leagues with the approach that we’re preaching to them today.
“Our hitting coaches right now are a little bit more thorough with data than we were in the past,” the Mets manager continued. “There’s more information being exhausted through the guys. That would be the only difference.”
Last week, after the Mets were swept by the Phillies and dropped out of first place, Pete Alonso echoed his hitting coach in that the process is working, but the hits just aren’t falling. On Tuesday, Alonso said he stood by everything he said after the loss in Philly and doubled down on how proud he is of the lineup for grinding every game.
Pride won’t put up results, and seemingly neither will Quattlebaum’s hitting tactics. Something about the Mets approach is broken; their owner knows it, their manager seems to be aware of it. But the players are putting their heads down, putting the work in, and seeing consistent — abominable — results.