A Flop And A River

With a 6-3 loss to the Braves, the Mets now stare the trade deadline directly in the face. The cards have all been dealt, the flop is out, and the river is coming.

Speaking of flops, Taijuan Walker’s outing today was a flop as a whole. He was good first time through the order. But after that, his pitches were up and he gave up five runs in his final two innings of work, and that featured rockets by Austin “Righty Freeman” Riley and Abraham Almonte in the 4th, and death by paper cut in the 5th. The Mets, despite Pete Alonso reaching the 400 section in the bottom of the 5th, could not recover. The Mets could only win 2 of 5 against Atlanta, but at least it wasn’t 0 or 1. Somebody had to win three games, and not that much damage was done in the standings.

For Walker, it could be the increased workload after not pitching a lot over the last three years. Getting pitches up is a sure sign of fatigue, and that’s what Walker has been doing. But Walker also talked about “not having the conviction behind his pitches”. All of it combined is giving you what you’ve seen from him over the past month or so. With Carrasco coming back and deGrom hopefully close, maybe they have an opportunity to push Walker back if needed.

They could really use April/May Walker going forward. Because if the Mets don’t feel like they can depend on that (or if it’s even fair to Walker to expect that, which is valid), then it might be time to overpay for a pitcher. Max Scherzer already made it plain that he wants to go west and he doesn’t want to come here. So do the Mets overpay for an innings eater? Do they hope they could get Kyle Hendricks thrown in with a potential Kris Bryant deal? Or do they risk the possibility of designating Jerad Eickhoff for assignment for a 4th time?

Or .. do they do nothing and tell themselves that the gulf is too wide to catch the talent in the N.L. West in multiple seven game series, but they could win this very flawed division as is and go with what they got, hoping that the seven games they played against the Padres where they went 4-3 is an accurate representation of what we’re going to see in the playoffs. I’m not so sure of that, as the Padres were probably at their nadir in that portion of their season. Do they just fix what they need for just money in the off season? Whather you agree with that plan or not, and I’m not sure I do, it’s certainly a possibility if they feel that they’re being fleeced in deals for the next Billy Taylor.

I’ll see you on the other side of the river, friends. Here’s hoping the Mets can ford it correctly.

Today’s Hate List

1. Austin Riley
2. Joey Gallo
3. Alex Rodriguez
4. Brad Hand
5. Ryan Tepera