The Mets were Back In Black last night. That and Cookie Carrasco having a nice first outing at Citi Field were the only positive headline of the game. Of course The Mets traded for Baez who will be another big bat in the lineup and VERY exciting player to watch. But that’s not what this is about. On the first pitch of the game, Carrasco gave up a very long ball. He went on to pitch 4 innings with 4Ks allowing only the one run. The expectation for Cookie was only 50-60 pitches, so I won’t get on Rojas taking him out early. That actually did make sense. I will get on Rojas for having the C team of relievers going in a 2 run game and having Banda go in for the 9th. That was a perfect situation for Trevor May or Juerys Familia to come in. Those are two guys who feed off of the energy of the crowed and that stadium was more electric that it has been in 5 years. There was a point where 15 straight batters were retired for the Mets. That is absolutely inexcusable after getting 5 baserunners in the first inning. In typical Mets fashion that resulted in 1 run.
This is not unique to last night though. July as a whole has been tough for The Mets. In July they are 12-13. A win tonight will put them at 500 for the month. The pitching did get banged up and guys like Walker-Stroman and ESPECIALLY Eickhoff. Eickhoff couldn’t even get through 3 innings in a game where they were just going to leave him in and let him wear a high number. The Mets will need starting pitching to be able to go at least 6 innings in each game. They will also have to rely on now-spotty Marcus Stroman, and seemingly to be burnt out Taijuan Walker to go 7 innings more often than not. If those two guys can get back on track, the rotation should be steady and be able to avoid those 5+ inning games to happen for the bullpen every other day.
The bats are what NEED to get going. Not sure what the average in w/RISP, but I have to think that it is safe to assume it is bottom of the league. Don’t even get me started on the inning ending double plays when theres a guy in scoring position. Baez is a clutch bat they are bringing in who does not ground into double plays a lot. He should be able to assist in those situation. But the everyday guys like JD, Pete, Nimmo, Dom. They HAVE to be able to come up big in those situations. I didn’t mention Conforto on purpose. He should honestly be benched when Baez comes to town and have McNeil play right.
Moral of the story: The pitching isn’t going to be able to hold opposing teams to 2 or 3 runs every game, that was an unrealistic expectation from the start. Now that deGrom is out and pitchers are performing to how we expect them to, the expectation has to be that we will need 4-6 runs everyday to win games. At the start of the season, it didn’t seem like a tall ask. Now that seems like an ask to climb a mountain.
A Fan With A Mic 