Cutting- room Flor’
Errors show Amazin’s must find big league SS
ATLANTA — Wilmer Flores is doing the best he can at shortstop. It’s just not good enough. Mets management needs to make a move to get a major league shortstop. Friday night’s 53 loss to the undefeated Braves at Turner Field was a perfect example of Flores’ shortcomings. Flores made two throwing errors and was shaky on most of his throws.
His throwing error in the first on Nick Markakis’ grounder set up the second run of the inning for the Braves.
The Mets cannot have that kind of play from their shortstop. It’s not fair to the pitching staff and it’s not fair to Flores to continue to play him at this position unless he drastically improves quickly.
On the other side of the field, Andrelton Simmons was displaying his Gold Glove magic at short, especially when he went far into the hole to throw out Travis d’Arnaud, yet again, in the third inning. Simmons always seems to make great plays against d’Arnaud.
“He’s really good,’’ Terry Collins said of Simmons.
Flores is just trying to be adequate.
The Mets were sloppy, and it finished them off when the Braves scored twice in the eighth to break a 33 tie. In that inning, some fancy baserunning from the Braves and David Wright’s bad decision to try to get pinchrunner Jace Peterson coming from second to third instead of throwing across the diamond to get Simmons proved costly.
Simmons went to second on the play as Daniel Murphy was moving to back up first, even though no throw was made by Wright.
Center fielder Juan Lagares got caught being a spectator on the play, so the Braves had runners on second and third, setting up Phil Gosselin’s tworun, twoout single later in the inning to center off reliever Rafael Montero, who kept pumping fastballs instead of mixing in an offspeed pitch.
It was Gosselin’s first hit of the year.
Jon Niese gave up three runs, one was earned. A Flores throwing error in the third gave the Braves another run.
General manager Sandy Alderson needs to go out and trade for a major league shortstop, sooner rather than later.
It’s really that simple. The Mets have too much pitching talent to have such flawed up the middle defense. They have played with fire at this position before and have gotten burned. They got burned again Friday night.
Flores is thinking before he throws, and that’s always a problem.
He is a standup person and said after his bad night there were no excuses. He has to make those throws. Before the game, a scout pointed out Flores’ footwork just isn’t major league caliber. He doesn’t get his feet in proper position a lot of times, which is problematic.
After the game, Collins did his best not to overreact to the night of horrors, a night when the Mets wasted home runs from Wright and John Mayberry Jr..
“We gave them some extra outs two or three times,’’ Collins said. “At this level you are going to get beat if you do that.”
In the season’s first game, Murphy made a costly early error in Washington, but Bartolo Colon was able to pitch out of trouble.
Defense is so vital for this team, for any team this day and age.
As for Flores, Collins said: “We’re finding out. We’re running him out there and as I said before, we have to understand this guy has not played a lot of shortstop the last few years. We have to keep running him out there and see howhe is going to do. I am going to get Ruben [ Tejada] in there a game, I have to play him. But Wilmer will get back out there.’’
Essentially, this is onthejob training, and that is a tough task for any young player in the major leagues.
“I don’t think it’s in his head just yet,’’ Collins said of Flores’ throws. “He just has to pick the pace up a little bit more so he doesn’t have to overthrow some balls.’’
That comes back to footwork. E Mets.