Poor Rafael Montero had a rough night last night, losing for the sixth time this season against the St. Louis Cardinals. While Montero wasn’t spectacular, the Mets did him no favors with another lackluster defensive effort. The Mets committed three errors behind Montero, who was charged with five runs on the night, but only two were earned in his six innings of work. T.J. Rivera committed two throwing errors at third, Jose Reyes made several bad plays at short, Asdrubal Cabrera made more at second, and Yoenis Cespedes let a fly ball drift over his head in the game. The errors just continue to pile up for the Mets, who have racked up 59 of them in 91 games, but could easily have had more last night if not for some favorable hometown scoring.
Pretty much everyone around the team realizes the defense is an issue except for the man in charge of building the roster, General Manager Sandy Alderson. Alderson has always put less value on defense throughout his career, dating back to his days as GM of the Oakland A’s in the late 1980’s, when he built a roster featuring sluggers like Mark McGwire and Jose Canseco. Ever since then, Alderson has had a strong belief in the long ball as the great equalizer, a philosophy he re-iterated in a press conference last week. When asked by reporters about the Mets’ poor fielding, Alderson said that he subscribes to the mantra of putting together a team that scores more runs than it allows. Since allowing runs is a function of both pitching and fielding, Alderson said finding better hitters is more of a priority than better defenders since fielding is only part of the equation in run prevention. In that same media session, Alderson essentially threw the pitchers under the bus, indicating that the Mets would be faring better if they got more consistent results on the mound.
While Alderson isn’t wrong about that, he is blind to think that ignoring the Mets’ pathetic defense is a good idea. The defense hasn’t been good for a few years now, but when the starting pitchers were healthy and striking out batters at prolific rate it masked a lot of flaws. Now that the pitchers aren’t racking up the punchouts and giving up more balls in play, the team’s lack of range and athleticism has been exposed on a regular basis. SNY’s Gary Cohen perfectly laid out the logical argument of why Alderson’s stance on defense is flawed, noting that the bad defense is extending innings, forcing the starters to work harder and knocking them out of games earlier. This in turn has forced the Mets to rely too much on their bullpen, which is a vicious cycle that can’t be broken unless the pitchers either start picking up more strikeouts or the Mets improve their defense. This is an argument that has been made several times, but Alderson either simply doesn’t see it or thinks it is irrelevant in his method of roster building.
The good news is that the Mets have two slick fielding prospects in the minor leagues who can also hit in shortstop Amed Rosario and first baseman Dominic Smith. If Alderson had his finger on the pulse both guys would have been up here already to improve the defense, but it looks as if they will continue to waste away in Triple-A until the Mets start dumping some of the veteran players. It looks like the Mets are trying to deal away Lucas Duda and Asdrubal Cabrera to make room for Smith and Rosario at the major league level, but the longer the Mets hold onto their vets the more detrimental it is for the development of the youngsters. When the two top prospects are finally promoted the Mets’ defense should improve dramatically, but until then we can look forward to watching more errors and balls sneak through the infield that could have been taken care of by more athletic players.
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