Far too often this season, dazzling performances from New York Mets starting pitchers have gone to waste due to the team's incompetence with a bat in their hands.
It's been a recurring theme for the Mets all year—a starter goes seven or eight strong but suffers a hard-luck 3-2 loss through no fault of his own.
New York's offense is 29th in the majors with 349 runs scored and tied for last in baseball with a .236 team batting average. Those numbers were even worse a few days ago, but the Mets' 15-run outburst against the Los Angeles Dodgers on Saturday skewed the stats a bit.
As bad as things have been at the plate, here we are on July 27, and the Mets find themselves just two games back of the first-place Washington Nationals in the NL East and 3.5 games behind the San Francisco Giants for the second NL wild card spot.
Aware of the team's deficiencies offensively, general manager Sandy Alderson has initiated his attempt to overhaul the lineup.
On Friday, he called up 2014 first-round pick Michael Conforto from Double-A. In 45 games with the Binghamton Mets, the outfielder hit .312 with an .899 OPS, per MiLB.com.
Because of his success in the minors and the struggles of the major league team, Mets fans had been longing for Conforto's call-up:
They got their wish and then some, as later that day, Alderson acquired Juan Uribe and Kelly Johnson from the Atlanta Braves for two lower-level minor league pitchers, John Gant and Rob Whalen.
This is a low-cost move that immediately makes the Mets better. Uribe and Johnson, at .275 and .272, respectively, have higher batting averages than all healthy everyday Mets position players with the exception of Daniel Murphy, who is hitting .272 himself.
The new guys have quickly made their impact felt.
Conforto went 4-for-4 with four runs scored in his second big league game, Johnson got two hits—including a homer—in his Mets debut and Uribe hit a walk-off single to beat the Dodgers on Sunday.
Nobody is suggesting these three players alone will carry New York's offense—the Mets scored just three runs again on Sunday—but there's no doubt the team is improved from last Thursday.
That day against Clayton Kershaw, the Mets became just the second team since 1920 to start two guys in the four and five spots in the lineup—John Mayberry Jr. and Eric Campbell—hitting below .180 with at least 100 at-bats on the season, according to the Elias Sports Bureau, ESPN's Buster Olney tweeted. To no surprise, Kershaw pitched a complete-game shutout.
Friday's moves allowed the Mets to designate Mayberry Jr. for assignment and relegate Campbell to the bench where he belongs.
Alderson may not be done making trades either.
"We continue to look at all the possibilities and how those different possibilities would fit with where we are right now," Alderson said, per Adam Rubin of ESPNNewYork.com. "The fact that we have several days means there are other things to be examined, explored."
Ken Rosenthal of FoxSports.com reported on Saturday that the Mets have shown interest in Ben Zobrist, Jay Bruce and Tyler Clippard. According to Rosenthal, New York even looked into Troy Tulowitzki, but it didn't seem as though the Colorado Rockies were too eager to trade the shortstop.
The Mets could be getting help soon even if they don't make another trade by the deadline.
Catcher Travis d'Arnaud is playing rehab games and "should" be activated from the disabled list later in the week, while David Wright has been cleared to resume baseball activity, per Rubin.
A month from now, the Mets lineup will look a lot different than it did a week ago, which is bad news for the rest of the NL.
With a rotation that boasts co-aces Matt Harvey and Jacob deGrom, menacing rookie Noah Syndergaard, on top of Bartolo Colon and Jonathon Niese—who have been pretty reliable with the exception of a few really poor outings—the Mets could be dangerous come playoff time if only they get that far.
When rookie southpaw Steven Matz returns from a lat injury, manager Terry Collins will be in the enviable position of having too many good starting pitchers unless he chooses to employ a six-man rotation again.
The National League's best have already gotten a glimpse of the dominance of these young pitchers, and you can bet they won't want to face that collection of arms in a playoff series.
In the first game back from the All-Star break, the St. Louis Cardinals got their first look at Noah Syndergaard and he impressed, hurling seven innings of two-run baseball. The Mets, of course, still lost the game.
On Sunday, deGrom outdueled Zack Greinke, striking out eight and allowing two measly hits in 7.2 shutout innings against the Dodgers:
That gem came a day after Harvey stymied Los Angeles' bats.
If the Mets begin to resemble merely an average offense down the stretch, the entire landscape of the National League changes.
The big number for the Mets offense is four. When they score four runs or more, they're 36-5.
But four might as well be a double-digit number to these guys. In the second half alone, the Mets have lost 3-0 to the Dodgers, 4-3 to the Nationals and 3-2 to the Cardinals.
Provided the offense gets better—which it should considering the key players that will be returning, as well as the transactions Alderson has and maybe will make—these low-scoring affairs will turn into wins over the next few months and allow the Mets to possibly clinch a playoff spot.
Right now, the Mets are a team with really good pitching. In October, they might simply be a really good team—a really good team with enough talent to beat anyone in the league.
from Bleacher Report - Front Page http://ift.tt/1S6b4t1
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