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The Mets are the lead story in this week's Grantland's 30.
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The 30: Who Did the Mets Sacrifice to the Schedule-Making Gods?
We’re eight days away from September, and so in keeping with a now-annual tradition, we’re about to get an onslaught of games between division rivals. Not a fan? Thank the dramatically unbalanced schedules meant to foster division rivalries. But for better or worse, the deluge of divisional games means that plenty of teams, both good and bad, are especially well-positioned to have an outsize effect on the shape of the standings over the final month.
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Downright Offensive
Already equipped with one of the best staffs in the game, the Mets’ hitters have started to cook.
15. Tampa Bay Rays (62-62, minus-14, LW: 15)
14. Washington Nationals (62-61, plus-21, LW: 13)
13. Los Angeles Angels (63-61, minus-2, LW: 12)
12. Baltimore Orioles (62-61, plus-54, LW: 11)
11. Texas Rangers (64-59, minus-23, LW: 14)
10. San Francisco Giants (66-58, plus-62, LW: 10)
9. Los Angeles Dodgers (67-56, plus-51, LW: 6)
8. New York Mets (67-56, plus-37, LW: 9)
We knew they would pitch. With Matt Harvey returning from Tommy John surgery, Jacob deGrom following up his rookie of the year season, flame-throwing righty Noah Syndergaard joining the parade, and veteran help from Jon Niese and Bartolo Colon, the Mets figured to field one of the league’s most impressive starting rotations in 2015.
What we didn’t know is if they would hit. For the first three and a half months of the season, they mostly didn’t. David Wright’s injury, underachieving results from several of his teammates, and a core of hitters that just wasn’t all that good left the Mets only one game over .500 on July 24 and three games out of first place.
Oh, how times have changed. In the past 30 days, the Mets lead the National League in doubles, runs scored, and slugging; they’re also second in home runs and third in park-adjusted offense. With the bats matching the strength of the arms, everything’s trending in the right direction: The Mets now sit a season-high 11 games over .500 and lead the East by five games.
That turnaround starts with Yoenis Cespedes. Acquired in a deal with the Tigers right before the trade deadline during one of the wildest weeks in franchise history, Cespedes has hit a ton as a Met, batting .307/.344/.545 in 20 games. Compare those numbers to Carlos Gomez’s .188/.226/.250 line so far as an Astro, and the Mets might have caught a colossal break. By the time Cespedes crushed three homers Friday night at Coors Field, the complaints of fans and media over GM Sandy Alderson’s supposed lack of action were a distant memory.
Beyond Cespedes and summer call-up Michael Conforto (.271/.371/.508 over those past 30 days), the same players that made up that moribund offense from early April to late July have woken up. During the past month, Daniel Murphy’s hitting over .300 and slugging better than .500. Curtis Granderson’s clubbed eight homers. Lucas Duda’s slugging a ludicrous .720. And Wilmer Flores has carried on his newfound folk-hero status, batting .324/.361/.500.
Wright returns today, and although his loss once seemed like it’d be the end of the team’s playoff hopes, he instead rejoins a club that went 62-53 without him. But even with their captain back, the Mets still have some roster uncertainty on their hands.
First, Duda hit the disabled list over the weekend. The Mets’ best full-season hitter this year, Duda’s absence leaves them short a big left-handed bat and forces Murphy to another position he’s ill-suited to play. Over at Mets blog Amazin’ Avenue, Kevin Palermo suggests that the best option for the Mets is to deploy platoons all over the diamond, and he’s probably right.
Second, the rotation is going through some flux. The Mets skipped Harvey’s turn in the rotation Sunday. That was just the first salvo in what will be an interesting innings-saving experiment for the rest of the season, as the team tries to manage the workloads of Harvey and Syndergaard (and possibly deGrom, too) while not dropping out of first. Those efforts will be aided by Steven Matz hopefully rejoining the rotation on September 5, and the Mets subsequently going to a six-man rotation again, but this time with the intention of sticking with it for a few weeks.
Despite those concerns, the Mets still have that cushy five-game lead, and the Nationals have shown few signs of playing the way most of us expected this year. Plus, New York owns the easiest remaining schedule in baseball, as its rest-of-season opponents sport an aggregate winning percentage of just .440.5 And as we saw yesterday, maybe this really just is the Mets’ year: After the first two games of the weekend series ended with identical 14-9 scorelines, rookie Logan Verrett made his first major league start … at Coors Field. He threw eight innings, giving up just one run on four hits and striking out eight. |
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