Before they defeated the Arizona Diamondbacks last week, the New York Mets’ veterans took matters into their own hands. The Mets entered the day losers of eight of nine, leading some of the team’s veteran position players to hold a “hitters only” meeting prior to the game, David Lennon of Newsday reports.
[protected-iframe id=”f4fe6f938f3a7b0cf95e3f76711accaf-114320562-123575294″ info=”hash” class=”twitter-tweet”]Jose Reyes, Asdrubal Cabrera, and Yoenis Cespedes took it upon themselves to address the hitters in an effort to get them to pick up their play. The Mets have really stunk up the joint this month, going 7-15 entering play today, and the team has gotten very young as a result of General Manager Sandy Alderson’s fire sale. This is a tough situation for any team to deal with, and the veterans made sure to preach accountability and effort to the offense. There has been a lot of sloppy play in this stretch, and even though they are playing out the string the Mets do owe it to themselves and the paying customers to put forth a solid effort.
It’s nice to see some of the remaining veterans on this team step up and try to take control of the locker room, particularly a guy like Cespedes, who has never really taken on a leadership role since joining the Mets. There has been a leadership vacuum with good clubhouse guys like Curtis Granderson and Jay Bruce getting dealt to contenders, and the remaining players need to step up to take on some of the load. The message appeared to translate last night as the Mets played well enough to secure a win over the Diamondbacks, but hopefully the team will be able to keep bringing solid efforts going forward.
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