I think I may stop following Mets until all-star break, or at least until June ends. Except for fielding, we stink in every aspect at this point. I see three issues that need to be addressed:
1. We all knew we were playing with fire heading into the season banking so heavily on older players. In particular our #1 and #2 pitchers, alou and valentin. Some of the injuries have been freak bad luck, but some have got to be due to age. But in particular I think it was not a good idea that of our top three pitchers, two are over 40, and one is a complete unknown coming back from major surgery. While it may be acceptable in regular season (if our offense ever decides to show up) it will not be a winning formula in post-season, and I think we're getting a good taste of that in June now that the competition level has been raised.
2. Lineup. Willie, please stop changing the lineup EVERY freakin' night. I can't imagine this does anything to help the offense. We need some stability here. Go to Reyes - Duke - Beltran - Wright - Delgado - Green - ... (Easley / Johnson / Gomez / etc.) I believe this is the lineup that makes most sense on paper and in reality, just lock it in and go with it.
3. Hitting coach. I don't know much about rick downs or his approach, but to be honest I don't see anything positive he's done. This offense has WAY underperformed what it should be doing on paper - the only time we score runs is when other team gifts us errors, or we are already up big so we're just piling on. The offense is nowhere to be found when it counts. Contrast that with our pitching staff - Rick peterson's work has been nothing short of miraculous with Perez, Sosa, and even Maine's relatively rapid progress over just a year. The mets approach at the plate stinks. Except for lack of DH, I don't see why this team should score any less than red sox or yankees, yet we way underscore. The reason is that the mets have TOTALLY different plate approaches than the sox or yankees.
Bottom line - I think if you look at our record against the braves (3-6) and what we've done so far in june (2-8) against much better competition speaks volumes about how good this team really is. Maybe at full health, once Alou and pedro are back that changes, but even in that case we're still back at point #1 - the key contributors are old and injuries just waiting to happen.. I'd like to see us get either Crawford or #1 pitcher.
1 comment:
I think the D Rays already re-upped Crawford long term. Don't think he's going anywhere.
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