Major League Baseball

The Mets and the boring approach

Published Jun. 25, 2015 3:38 p.m. ET

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By Jeff Sullivan

The Mets have lost seven games in a row. It’s never a good time to lose seven games in a row, but a particularly bad time is when the rival Nationals decide to win five games in a row. So it is that the Mets have ceded control of the National League East, falling perilously close to the surprisingly competent Braves. Now, if you just fast-forwarded from the start of the season to now, these standings wouldn’t be a surprise. The Nationals were supposed to run away with the division. The Mets were supposed to be okay, and the Phillies were supposed to suck. Outside of the Marlins, it seems mostly normal. But sequences of events matter, and the way the year has gone for the Mets makes this current situation feel desperate. A season feels like it’s slipping out of their grasp.

There’s an awful lot of pressure on Sandy Alderson to make a move. Alderson feels it, and he’s been in communication with other front offices. Here’s one move, that just showed up literally as I was writing the above paragraph:

"Source says #Mets calling up Matz," read a tweet from FOX Sports' Ken Rosenthal. "Two different club officials declined comment when asked. Team again could be pondering six-man rotation."

This has been coming. Fans knew Steven Matz was on the way. But, consider the first tweet response to that:

During the losing streak, the Mets have scored nine runs in seven games. They’ve had a bottom-five NL offense for the year, and a bottom-five NL offense the last month or so. Pressure isn’t on to make any move — pressure is on to make an offensively-minded move. It’s understandable, given how the Mets have looked. But it might very well be prudent for Alderson to keep on taking the boring approach. 

To quickly review the year: the Mets have squandered what they accomplished early on. Before anyone in the division played any games, the Mets were projected to go about .500. To this point, the Mets have played about .500. That misses the details, details like the early 11-game winning streak that shot the Mets to 13-3. At that point, they had about a 52% chance of making the playoffs. A few days later, the Mets opened up an eight-game lead over the Nationals, and their playoff odds topped out at 54%. And right now? 16%. They still look more or less like a .500 team, but all those things people said about wins in the bank — those were true, but the Mets gave their advantage away. They’ve erased the memory of the winning streak, a streak that made people believe this could be a special year.

A very simple rule of thumb is that things are never as good as they seem after a win, and they’re never as bad as they seem after a loss. So you can imagine the overreactions to an extended streak of either type. A winning streak makes a team feel unbeatable. A losing streak makes a team feel terrible. Right now, it feels like the Mets can’t hit anything. And, yeah, over seven games, they’ve managed a .482 OPS. The seven games before that, it was .762. This offense isn’t a good offense, but it ought to be functional. Things have gone wrong.

It is too easy to blame injuries, but it’s not like injuries are a non-factor. Consider what the Mets have been forced into doing. Injuries to Travis d’Arnaud have left the team playing Kevin Plawecki, and though Plawecki’s a good young player, he isn’t yet ready to hit in the majors. Daniel Murphy has missed time, and though it isn’t the end of the world to have to play without Daniel Murphy, his absence is a hell of a thing to combine with the absence of David Wright. So Mets fans have seen names like Eric Campbell and Daniel Muno, and the reserves have been a black hole.

The good news is that Murphy’s about back. And d’Arnaud should be out just a couple weeks. These are two of the team’s better hitters, and while no one’s really sure what should be expected of Wright, there’s talk he could return around the All-Star break, and Wright might still be the team’s best all-around position player. The Mets can’t count on Wright to provide anything. They can count on Murphy, though. And they can count on d’Arnaud. And Wright, at least, would be a fascinating wild card.

Look at the Mets, and look at the market. You can see where the Mets could be better, but the fixes aren’t simple. They’re probably not about to write off Michael Cuddyer, given his track record and given the team’s investment. Juan Lagares is locked in, as is Curtis Granderson, and obviously Lucas Duda is doing just fine. Potential options on the market are few and far between, because there aren’t many sellers, and those teams doing the selling are only going to get there because they didn’t have enough good players.

Just about a perfect fit would be Ben Zobrist, but that’s complicated by a few factors. For one, the A’s are playing better, and they aren’t totally out of it. And for two, every team could use Zobrist, and all it takes is one more aggressive general manager to shut the Mets out. The Mets have been connected to Aramis Ramirez, but he hasn’t been good. Alexei Ramirez would stand to be available, but he hasn’t been good. Maybe the Mets could, I don’t know, try to trade for Chris Taylor, but it’s unclear whether he’d be an upgrade. Juan Uribe might be available to get flipped again, but the Braves are just about even with the Mets in the standings. An intriguing idea would be Steve Pearce, who’s playing less and less in Baltimore. He could probably be had, and he was tremendous just last season, but he’s struggled this time around, and the Mets would have to buy him as a second or third baseman. Pearce might be the most creative upgrade, but there are worries there, and probably also other teams placing the same sort of call.

There isn’t much out there, and the Mets’ situation isn’t dreadful, provided they erase the black holes. Murphy coming back should help that. d’Arnaud coming back should help that. And no one knows about Wright, but if he comes back and is playable, that’s the best midseason upgrade imaginable. The Mets are still probably going to project as a below-average offensive team, but that simply isn’t their strength. They currently project to have baseball’s second-best starting rotation. Adding Matz into the picture means the Mets have too many qualified big-league starters. And if you think about Matz, while his promotion does nothing to help the offense, it does, in theory, mean the offense will need to do a little less in order to win. Runs saved and runs scored, and all that.

The Mets now probably won’t make the playoffs, and that’s hard to accept, given where they’ve been, and given that the Nationals opened up an opportunity. But you have to forget about those things and just focus on the days and months ahead. For now, the Mets are a pitching-first team with offensive help soon to come off the disabled list. The market bears little fruit, and while there are moves that could potentially help, consider this: Dilson Herrera has struggled, but he’s hit well in the high minors. Maybe he’s a quick breather from restoring his confidence and being able to help the big-league infield. There’s always the temptation to make a trade, and staying internal is less sexy, but the internal options might not be worse than the external options. Alderson might do well to just enjoy the good young pitching while hoping for health and better performance on the position-player side.

It’s kind of boring. It does nothing to satisfy those reacting to the losing skid. But what the Mets are building is anything but dull. And the pieces that might most help them offensively don’t seem to be hitting the market, especially now that the A’s are inching back toward the mix. Maybe the best move to be made would be adding Steve Pearce, but when that’s the sort of upgrade you’re thinking about, maybe it’s no worse than just adding a reliever or two and enjoying the hell out of an awesome young rotation.

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