Centerfield

Someday Nolan McLean will realize he should not be walking guys hitting under .200

Guys. It’s Griffin Canning. He has a 7+ ERA. Let’s treat him as such. meanwhile. McLean starts strong. Let’s hope he keeps it up.

There aren’t many games in this brutal stretch where the Mets will be favored to win. Tonight is one of those games.

Suddenly look like they can play a little.

This reliever sucks. I see why he’s on mop up duty.

Let’s add some runs against this mop up guy.

Let’s give Devin the night off.

How much longer until game time

Jorge Polanco will not join the Mets this weekend, via Mike Puma on twitter. He will remain on his rehab assignment in Syracuse. Not sure if he had a setback or what prompted this.

For what it’s worth, Petco is a tough ballpark to hit in.

All of that is true. My concern is that we just don't have the pitching. 2024 had the good Manaea, Severino, the good David Peterson, and a solid Quintana. They also had passable fill-in guys like Butto and Megill. Peralta is solid. I'm hoping McLean bounces back. And we hope that Scott continues to develop. But beyond that we have nothing.

Tatis Jr was suspended for PED's in August of 2022. Prior to that suspension, he had a .975 OPS (.965 over his first three years). He hit 42 HR's in 2021. Since then, his HR totals have been 25, 21, and 25. His OPS has similarly dipped (.787 in the four years since). He's only 27 years old, so it's unlikely he will continue to have a .674 OPS, but we're seeing a tale of two completely different hitters. When he signed that 14 year deal, we know San Diego was thinking he'd be more like the pre-suspension guy than the player he's been since. It's about to get ugly. This is his last year of $20M. After this, he's paid two more years at $26M per year. Followed by 6 years of $37M per year for his age 30-35 seasons. His name was floated out there last winter. Like "Hey, what would it take to get Tatis Jr. from the Padres." The answer is "a sucker".

6-1! What a nice surprise.

I think the defense has been kinda fun to watch. Ewing and Benge and Baty all made great plays in this series. And the biggest problem on defense can be remedied pretty quickly by never playing Vientos in the field when you have Jared Young in the lineup. Why he was out there is a mystery to me. Except that David Stearns thinks Mendy is doing a great job.

But to Radar's point, yes. The biggest problem the Mets have right now is David Stearns. A last place team in the standings, the worst OPS in MLB, roster construction, players underperforming. It all comes back to him. Princeton Review used to cite to a guy named Joe Bloggs as part of their SAT prep. Joe Bloggs represented the average guy. A guy who would get the easy questions right, get some of the moderate questions, then miss on all the hard ones. Part of their strategy was to recognize a hard question then identify the Joe Bloggs answer. I kinda think of Billy Eppler as the Joe Bloggs of GMs. He'll get all the slam dunks. Hit or miss on the moderates. Rarely makes an exceptional, out of the box move. Joe Bloggs gets a $380MM team into a 12 team playoff pretty easily. He won't build a dynasty, but he'll never have a last place offense. The problem with David Stearns is that he's performing well below Joe Bloggs level. And because he considers himself a 1600 guy, he refuses to make adjustments. He figures his genius will eventually emerge.

The outfield defense is much better. I mean, it had to be. We had Jeff McNeil out there in center. Catcher is the same. Shortstop is only worse because of injury. First base is worse. Second base is better. Third has been fine.

I mentioned this in the other thread. June has the potential to be a brutal month for our Mets. They entered June with a record of 26-33. 7 games below .500. In the month of June into early July, they will face: @Seattle - 3 games @San Diego - 3 games St. Louis - 3 games Atlanta - 3 games @Cincinnati - 3 games @Philadelphia - 3 games Chicago Cubs - 4 games Philadelphia - 3 games @Toronto - 3 games @Atlanta - 4 games 10 series, 32 games against good competition. We've already started 0-2. 18-14 is probably as good as we can possibly hope for. That would put us 3 games under .500, and maybe gives us a puncher's chance the rest of the season. Our chances are still fairly slim, and I won't mention our first four series coming out of the All-Star Break, but I think if we hit this mark, we're still holding on to some sort of hope. I think we have no chance of getting anywhere close to this. 16-16 would mean we remain 7 games under, with a month ticked off the calendar. Our chances to get to a mid-80s win total and grab that third WC is probably not realistic at that point. Anything worse than that, and I think we can agree that our season is basically over. For me, I think this is the month we are all put out of our misery. I think the only reason we have any faint hope is that the schedule has been incredibly kind to us (in terms of competition, not travel). I think when we face these good teams we'll see how outclassed we are. I guess the potential mitigating factor could be guys coming back from injury, but I don't think it will be enough to make a difference. I think we do no better than 13-19. I think there will be series where we feel lucky to steal a game (like this current one). We will clearly be sellers going into the All-Star Break.

Staying on the theme of unforced errors, I’d love to hear the logic behind Young at DH and Vientos at 1B.

Catch the ball guys.

Nothing makes me quite as happy as Ewing and Benge trotting around the bases.

Just a terrible 0-2 pitch to Wisdom. Tong in already down 2-0. Runner on 2nd.

45 degrees past the plate is much farther than I thought was needed. I thought it was break the plane of home plate.

I know this is a small thing, but not pinch running for Melendez really bothers me. I mean, you get the leadoff man on in the 8th inning. It's your DH. Why would you not run for him there? Why wouldn't you give yourself an advantage? Maybe he steals? Maybe the threat of him stealing results in a fat pitch for Baty. Maybe that same ball is hit and a faster runner forces a throw on that double play. In any case, you give yourself a better chance to win with a runner as fast as Brujan. Melendez is your DH. So it's not like you have any downside positionally. It's the 8th inning. So there's a good chance that spot is not going to come up again (it did not). And even if it does, you still have bats like Vientos and Wagaman on your bench. What is the downside? The only thing I can think of is by running Brujan there, you lose the option to use him as the free runner in the 10th. But playing for the 10th inning in the 8th inning seems foolish to me. And there's no guarantee that the free runner is someone you want to sub for anyway. I know that little things like this are probably not going to make a difference in 2026. But one day, the Mets will hopefully be competitive again, and we'll need to win around the edges. Mendoza is not the guy. He's proven this over and over again. I don't see why we don't get started in finding the right guy right away. Infuriating.

Yes. It does. I wonder if we hate it even more given how many extra inning games the Mets play. And as you pointed out, how that free runner seems to bite us in the ass

Second disengagement basically gave them third.