In 2015 when the Mets got Yoenis Cespedes, I knew a run could come.
In 2016 when I was counting down games and wins from about July on, I knew the run was coming.
Even in 2019 when Pete Alonso was on an all time rookie heater, and guys like J.D. Davis were going off, there was something there.
The 2023 Mets, if you go by the backs of their collective baseball cards, might be better than all those previous versions I mentioned. But even as they won six in a row right before the All-Star break, and more recently three in a row coming into today, it never felt the same. It never felt like this team had a run in them, even if the calendar said so in May and June. It was just the calendar saying it. Not anything you saw on the field. Only difference between May and now is that now the calendar is telling the Mets this:
But the calendar didn’t need to tell us, because we already knew. Thursday’s loss to the White Sox is just the latest proof. There are just too many players that have sunk like a stone after very good to excellent performances last season. While you can point to about 10-15 players on the roster that fit that description, today it was Pete Alonso and Drew Smith who were the poster children for that trend.
Take Alonso first. I understand that a lot of his struggles are due to the injury, and I’m not going to kill him in general because he’s must better than he’s shown, and this season is definitely an outlier for him. But let’s look at his first inning at bat. Mets are down 1-0 in the bottom of the first, and Francisco Lindor is up with two outs and nobody on. Michael Kopech is walking 5.5 per 9, and when he missed to Lindor, he missed by at least a foot if not a foot and a half.
So Lindor walks to bring up Pete. What does Pete do?
He swings at the first pitch and pops the ball up.
I know that Pete is far from the only player that does this. Baseball players get taught now to simply do what they’re best at, paying no attention to situations or trends. But Pete struggling himself, he’s gotta make Kopech throw a strike before he starts swinging. Maybe even take to two strikes the way Kopech was throwing the ball to Lindor. But when Pete slumped in years past, it was usually a slump of power. He would still take the ball the other way and get his base hits here and there, because he was working off a foundation of what he was taught in years past. In other words, he always had a plan.
Now? He has no plan, and no foundation. When you have no foundation as a hitter, the best thing to do is to go back to the basics. Go back to Baseball 101, which tells you that when a pitcher is wild, you put the pressure on him by making him throw a strike. Pete needs to go back to that before he can start to swinging at everything. He looks like his only plan is to hit a ball 400 miles, and then every pitch will start to look like it’s coming from Dave Jauss. But right now they’re all coming from that Marsh guy, and Pete is as lost as he was during the Home Run Derby. Worse.
Then comes the 6th, and Drew Smith is coming in for Jose Quintana, who gave up two runs on five innings and didn’t look all that bad as the White Sox dinked and dunked him a little but but Quintana looked good for a guy just coming off the IL after 3 and 1/2 months. Alonso makes an error to lead off the inning. It sucks, but errors happen in baseball. Nobody wants to make them. But now it’s up to Smith to work around it. Smith is another guy who regressed from last year, but he’s also regressed from May 16th on, when he had a 1.88 ERA. He’s had a 6.75 ERA since, and right now he’s a project. And now he’s gotta work around an error, which could rattle a pitcher who is going well. That’s not Smith, and Smith did not respond well to the error.
He gave up a single to Eloy Jimenez, and walked Jake Burger. Then he has Yasmani Grandal down 0-2. What does Smith do?
GRANDAL GOES OFF THE WALL 🎇
White Sox lead 4-1 pic.twitter.com/slLujsWhMu
— White Sox Talk (@NBCSWhiteSox) July 20, 2023
He puts a fastball on a tee for him.
Nobody on the White Sox, who have the highest chase rate in the league, should get an 0-2 fastball from anyone … especially Drew Smith whose fastball is erratic and has no pop right now. Smith is in a bad way, but not as bad as whoever called that pitch.
That made it 4-1, and the game ended at 6-2 to prevent the Mets from getting everyone’s hopes up by winning their fourth in a row. Shame that I couldn’t enjoy Quintana’s return, along with the Mets making Francisco Alvarez the DH with Omar Narvaez catching (Narvaez homered today), which we have been waiting for forever. But we couldn’t enjoy it because two guys having down seasons continued to have down seasons. Today it was Alonso and Smith. Tomorrow it will be two other guys. And the next day it will be two other guys. And so on, and so on, and so on.
And that’s why the run isn’t coming.
(Oh, and Tommy Pham’s groin isn’t helping either.)
Today’s Hate List
I think the above summed up my angst nicely. So instead of hate, I want to spotlight someone that I love.
When I got to the game today, I saw someone in an Eric Valent jersey headed to the Coca Cola Corner. I remember thinking that this was going to be the runaway winner of “Jerseys of Obscure Mets” that I would see today.
Boy was I wrong.
The Valent jersey was one of those ones that had a thick white outline around the letters and numbers, even visible against a white jersey. It was one of those replica cheapies that the Wilpons got away with selling for years.
This Ruben Gotay jersey was the absolute real deal. Stitched letters, black drop shadow … it’s so real that you could feel the division slipping away, even at 17 and 1/2 games out. I mean, anyone could get themselves a David Wright jersey. This is the guts of being a Met fan, right here. He not only dropped $300 on a jersey from a utility player that played 98 games in the span of one season, but he proudly wears it to show you that “Hey, I went through 2007 but I’m here to tell the tale. I started at the bottom, and I’m still here.”
Go forth and prosper, fam. And long live Ruben Gotay.
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