It's the 2018 worries thread!

[Chad ochoseis]

Count your blessings. Don't look a gift horse in the mouth. You're never as good as you look when you're winning and you're never as bad as you look when you're losing. Insert your favorite cliche here.

The Mets are 9-1. Tied for the best record in MLB, and already 3 1/2 games up in the division. 3rd best OPS and 2nd best ERA in the NL. You'd have to be a huge freaking pessimist to find something to worry about at this point in the season.

Hi, my name is Chad Ochoseis, and I'm a huge freaking pessimist. The Mets haven't played particularly well their last three games, win or lose. But mainly, I'm worried about Syndergaard and DeGrom to a lesser DeGree. They've looked like they have minimal command, and they haven't gone deep into games. So the bullpen has been pulling the weight. So the Mets needed an extra arm. So Brandon Nimmo, who has been playing like an above-average everyday major league baseball player, is now the starting centerfielder for the 51s.

I love this start as much as anyone, but this club is going to need some Thor sooner or later.

[nymr83]

Sorry mr pessimist but we're not ready for your nay-saying today!

The two aces havent looked great but the team wins anyway, thats not a problem! That is what GOOD TEAMS do! Noah and Jacob will pick things up right around the time that the hitting goes into a huge funk when they are needed!

[Lefty Specialist]

Cespedes is slumping at 2 for his last 24.

Oh, except those two hits won two different games.

Hm. This is hard.

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

Ces hasn't looked good for days.

Plawecki is no longer justifying the majority of the PT behind the dish.

[Edgy MD]

The team thinks they can marginalize Nimmo and flourish anyway. They can't, but they're seemingly getting the message that they can. (All this winning is terrible!)

No second lefty out of the pen.

The logjam at the butt end of the rotation may be no big whoop when they're winning, but when they're not winning as consistently, and Lugo, Wheeler, Vargas, and maybe Gselly all think that spot belongs to them, folks may get surly.

Not enough soap in the hand dispensers.

"Piano Man" is still a wet blanket of a seventh-inning stretch song.

[Frayed Knot]

Our 'Pythagorean' RS/RA rate shows that our scoring & preventing runs pace pegs us as merely a 7-3 team rather than the grossly misleading 9-1 (funny what multiple 2-out Grand Slams in a 3-day span can accomplish).
So the inevitable regression to mean means that, in the blink of an eye, we'll plummet down to a 113 win pace for the season.


And furthermore, what the fuck is up with that scruff on Familia's jaw?
It looks like he first got hit in the face by some random glue squirts before a fan blew some recently shedded dog fur in his direction.
I'm thinking Portuguese Water Dog, although Black Lab is a strong possibility as well.

[Centerfield]

Actual worries:

1. Like Edgy mentioned, no second lefty out of the pen.

2. Harvey looks like crap. He's not as bad as last year, but he's a middling 5 inning guy. If this is our #3, that's not going to be good enough to get by Washington.

3. Overworked pen.

4. My predictions of awesomeness for Plawecki, Lagares and Cecchini are taking longer to materialize. My predictions of awesomeness for Nimmo and bullpen Gsellman are working out, but Nimmo's been demoted and Gsellman's arm's about to fall off.

Fake worries:

1. When they actually lose I'm going to throw tantrums like a spoiled kid.

[A Boy Named Seo]

my stuff:

-Agreed that the lone lefty worry is worrisome, we can't always ask Lugo to get Bryce Harper out.
-Frazier has played mostly nice D (blown DP brain fart aside) and drawn 9 walks, but he's still looked crappy at the plate. If Frazier, Bruce, and Gonzo are all struggling at the same time, we're gonna suck a little bit.
-Robles has good numbers, but watching him makes me feel like he hasn't been nearly as good. Just me? Swarzak, come back!
-The two-headed catching monster of Td'A and KP are now OPS'ing .650 and .571 respectively. One of em's gotta go good, right? right!?

I'm just to geeked at these early banked wins, wins in games we should win, and some we probably shouldn't. when the inevitable slide comes, if we can just be .500 from here on out, we're already at 85 wins. I'd think we're a little better than that, though.

[Ceetar]

My only worries are injury ones.

everything else is too small sample size to even hit my radar.

[Benjamin Grimm]

My only real concern at this point is the number of bullpen innings. But that's part of the design for this season, so hopefully Mickey and Dave Eiland have a good plan for how to handle it.

[MFS62]

I was going to update my annual Sound of Music Favorite Things parody.
But, there aren't enough right now to fill out the lyrics.
I'm worried about that.

Later

[Edgy MD]

Yay, five straight series wins to open the season! Yeah, but there's nothing less sustainable than one-run and two-run victories, even though we have been sustaining it. The bullpen will show its humanity.

We still need this offense capable of dominating a few days a week. And I think that means (a) Mickey finding ways to fit Nimmo in the lineup more often than not (which shouldn't be too hard, frankly), and ( Céspedes finding Céspedes.

[Benjamin Grimm]

This is more of a cautionary note. The Mets started similarly strong in 2015 and squandered their great start during the course of May and June. They actually briefly dipped below .500 and needed a late-season surge to get back into contention. (See below.) I've also included the graphs for other strong-start seasons. 1985 also had a mid-season dip that would cost the Mets a playoff berth.

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

Not that this will prevent us from worrying but a team that wins 9 in a row will always be a team capable of winning 9 in a row. That's what held me in during 2015. I have to say, it's really become of of my favorite Met years ever.

[Centerfield]

I don't know. Win streaks are fun and amazing, but like no-hitters, I think they are more fluky than anything else.

In 2006 the Marlins had two separate win streaks of 9 games. They won 78 games. In that same year, the Mets biggest winning streak was 8. But they won 97 games.

I mean, I guess most teams that win 9 straight are pretty good, but sometimes it's just luck.

I'll feel a lot better when the offense gets clicking again and the starters start going deep, and we notch a few 7-1 wins.

Hey, remember in spring training when they were like 0 and fifty?

[Ceetar]

There's a lot of luck in baseball, sure. Maybe the Mets 'true talent' was more of a 7-2 instead of a 9-0 during that streak. But they stole two wins. fine. They also timed the hot streak against the Nats, and hopefully continue it against the Nats.

Sometimes that's enough. Get hot at the right time and annihilate your division rival say 15-4 in 19 games and that's sometimes all you need.

But on the reverse side, maybe instead of a 6 game losing streak they go 2-4 when they're cold. they seem to have enough talent spread around to be a little slump-proof, in the sense that nothing relies on just one or two guys.

[Frayed Knot]

The good thing about winning streaks containing wins you don't necessarily "deserve" and/or consisting of RS/RA differentials that shouldn't have been able to sustain them is that no one gets to take any of the wins back.

[Centerfield]

Understood on both fronts. And I'm not trying to take anything away from what they've done. Just saying that a 9 game winning streak is nice, but it doesn't promise anything going forward.

[Ceetar]

Frayed Knot wrote: The good thing about winning streaks containing wins you don't necessarily "deserve" and/or consisting of RS/RA differentials that shouldn't have been able to sustain them is that no one gets to take any of the wins back.

Exactly. the 'projections' for the Mets and Nats haven't changed that much off of 14 games, but they have near equal projected win totals now thanks to the hot start.

Understood on both fronts. And I'm not trying to take anything away from what they've done. Just saying that a 9 game winning streak is nice, but it doesn't promise anything going forward.

really nothing about any 14 games says much about anything. :-D '62 Mets had a 9-3 stretch once. As long as they win 3/5 and 4/7 when it matters at the end..

[Benjamin Grimm]

That sweep of the Nationals in DC meant a six-game swing in the standings from what would have been if the Nationals had swept the Mets.

If they can sweep this coming series, that would mean a 12-game swing in the standings, which is tremendous.

If the Nationals sweep the Mets this week, however, that six-game swing is completely undone. So it's very important to win at least one. Winning one or two is basically holding serve. Obviously, it's the extremes, a sweep by either team, that will have the most impact.

[TransMonk]

Many of my pre-season worries about this team are starting to reveal themselves after the very successful first two weeks of the season.

Harvey and Matz don't look much more effective than they were last season. The loss of both catchers from the Opening Day roster to injury have created a hole in the lineup. The bullpen (especially Blevins) has been a clear liability in the past few games. The offense is streaky and can look overmatched by mediocre pitchers for innings at a time. The rookie manager is making puzzling in-game moves, which makes him look like a genius when they work, but can be costly when they don't.

I am grateful for the fast start, but now I feel that they are going to need all of every one of those early wins.

[seawolf17]

TransMonk wrote: I am grateful for the fast start, but now I feel that they are going to need all of every one of those early wins.

Which is why I'm glad we *have* those early wins. This team wasn't going to play .900 baseball all season.

No worries from me. If we take two out of three this weekend, I'm good.

[Lefty Specialist]

Problem is that after Thor and deGrom there's not a lot to be excited about. Matz is erratic. Harvey is trying to prove that 6.70 ERA last year was no fluke. And Wheeler- who knows. I was never excited about Vargas, but I'm kind of anxious to see him now.

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

We're old, white and slow.

[Edgy MD]

To be fair, Gonzalez is old, Latino, and slow. And Flores is youngish, Latino, and slow. And Smith is young, gifted, and black. And slow.

They're slow. But man, committing to working Nimmo into the lineup as much as possible solves so very much.

[Ceetar]

John Cougar Lunchbucket wrote: We're old, white and slow.

I thought we were talking about the Mets?

[Ceetar]

Maybe Harvey still figures out a way to be successful, it's only a few starts this year after all, but I thought the fresh start with the fresh regime would be evident, and it's just not.

[Centerfield]

Yeah, the third starter was going to be huge. I was hoping like all hell that we would see a resurgence from Matt Harvey, but I'm more convinced than ever that he's just toast. It would have been great to see Matz get out of the gate as well, but even though he's healthy, he's showing that he is basically what we've seen the past few years. I don't think Vargas and Wheeler will be anything more than back end starters. Maybe they can just stay close and pick up someone strong at the deadline.

I've liked what I've seen from the bullpen so far. A lot of these guys are performing better than we thought they might. The obvious exception is Blevins. It was risky to come in with one lefty to begin with. A lefty with that many miles on him, that's even worse. I feel like this was something Sandy didn't take seriously enough. We've got Bryce Harper and FFF in our division.

A lot of discussion about Jay Bruce yesterday. I don't think he's as bad as Ceetar thinks he is, but he's not a top line slugger, and I feel like we are relying on him to be one. I think Bruce is best used as a secondary source of power, a 5th place hitter like Cleveland used him.

[seawolf17]

Lefty Specialist wrote: Problem is that after Thor and deGrom there's not a lot to be excited about.

Right. And they pitch tonight and tomorrow. If we win these two games, then this is a very different discussion.

[TransMonk]

Until we get to St. Louis.