Arm Care

I gotta give credit to Taijuan Walker. We’ll get to his pitching in a minute, but there was no reason for Walker to bust it down the line on a two out grounder down the line which Lewin Diaz had to dive for. None. A meaningless game where he has to conserve his energy for the mound? With the risk of shredding his hamstring? No reason. But, perhaps buoyed by Mookie Stroman’s stolen base yesterday, he wanted to make a play with his legs too. So he beat out the hit, leading directly Brandon Nimmo doubling the second Mets run home.

As for Walker’s pitching performance, he went into the 8th inning for the first time since before his arm surgery, giving up two hits in 7 and 1/3 against the Marlins. The hysterical part of this was that this happened on the same night as Jerry Seinfeld was in the SNY booth identifying the turning point of the season as being the second game against the Cardinals two weeks ago when the Mets were worried about “arm care” than extending their pitchers to get a victory. Even Jerry Freakin’ Seinfeld is low key killing Luis Rojas and The Analytics Overlords. And he’s the most positive Mets fan in captivity!!!

Unfortunately, Seth Lugo inherited two of Walker’s runners and squandered them like he was Monty Brewster trying to win $300 million. An Alex Jackson RBI double and a two run single by Met killer Miguel Rojas did in Walker, Lugo, and all of Queens as the Mets couldn’t come back in the 8th or the 9th. But the 3-2 loss means that the Mets draft pick position improves so that maybe they can not sign a higher pick next year. Everyone wins.

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Also, Sandy Alderson spoke before the game. He basically said he wanted to make a quick decision on the fate of the manager and the coaching staff, which is funny because I don’t think anybody is going to come out and say “yeah, we’re going to make our under .500 manager twist in the wind for a few weeks before we fire him right before Christmas. (Of course I joke about this, but the Mets made Willie Randolph fly all the way out to Anaheim before firing him after midnight local time, so I shouldn’t discount the sadistic thread that exists in this franchise’s history.) But it sounds like if I was Luis Rojas, I’d familiarize myself with Indeed dot com.

Also, Alderson said that he hopes the Mets can depend more on homegrown talent. Great, but Brodie traded them all away. Look, the only way to regenerate your farm system … and the Mets have some interesting prospects in their system even without Kumar Rocker … is to spend cash on players and not prospects, so that your farm system can grow to the point where they will no longer depend quite as heavily on free agency. It’s why the Dodgers’ payroll ballooned to $275 million while they were holding on to players like Gavin Lux and Walker Buehler instead of trading them for backup center fielders.

“Homegrown” is a great buzz word. Fans eat that shit up. But the only way to build a championship organization when you have money (like the current Mets owner actually has) is to depend on your farm system, supplement that farm system with free agency, and most importantly, developing that homegrown talent to succeed to the point where they will either play for you, or attract marquee talent in trades. Key word there being “marquee”. Not Keon Broxton and Jake Marisnick.

Thanks for attending my Ted Talk. I look forward to Rojas letting Rich Hill throw 200 pitches in his no-hitter tomorrow.

Today’s Hate List

1. Just one final request for this season …
2. With the Braves about to beat Philly again tonight,
3. Please just beat them tomorrow and clinch the division.
4. Front seats to not one but two division clinching games? It’s just cruel and unusual punishment.
5. Also, Trea Turner