The Binghamton Rumble Ponies are the first team this season to win 70 games in either Double-A or Triple-A, but it’s the big-league Mets that fans are expecting to see win. A winning Double-A affiliate is nice, but it’s not as nice as retaking the division lead.
Going into a three-game series against the team that owns the best record in baseball, the Milwaukee Brewers, fans want blood. They want home runs, large leads and they want hitting coach Eric Chavez fired. The former third baseman has become a strange fixation of the fanbase this season, with many blaming heaping all of the blame for the lineup’s hitting woes on Chavez. They’ve done so much mental gymnastics trying to create narratives about Chavez that they’ve twisted into pretzels.
No love for Moneyball? No blame for Jeremy Barnes?
President of baseball operations David Stearns reiterated his support for the hitting group, which extends beyond just Barnes and Chavez, on Friday afternoon in Milwaukee.
“I have confidence in our hitting coaches, I think we have good hitting coaches, and they have track records of helping to be, and put together quality offenses,” Stearns told reporters ahead of the series opener. “This is, at times, baseball, and it will drive you crazy.”
The reality is that there is plenty of blame to go around for the 27-30 record since June 1. After nearly getting no-hit by the Cleveland Guardians on Wednesday, manager Carlos Mendoza said if he was going to point fingers at anyone, it would be himself. The manager has made questionable bullpen moves in recent months, and his job is continually made tougher by restrictions on his starting pitchers.
However, every manager makes questionable bullpen moves and is faced with starting pitching restrictions at certain points in the season. Mendoza is no different. The Mets still have faith in Mendoza’s management because of what he did last season, especially in the playoffs.
So with that said, let’s dispel a few myths surrounding the offense.
Chavez is not the chief architect of the Mets’ approach at the plate. The Mets don’t have one foundational philosophy when it comes to their approach, as fans have asserted. The Mets’ hitting group tailors game plans to the individual hitters, giving them a game plan to execute when they go up to the plate. From there, it’s on the hitters to execute.
What the Mets need to find out is why they’re failing to execute, and whether it’s because they don’t trust the plans given to them, if they don’t understand the task at hand or something else.
Another narrative that has taken hold on social media is that Mets hitters preferred J.D. Martinez over Barnes and Chavez last season. While Martinez was a strong clubhouse presence and an excellent asset to the 2024 team, he was far from managing the hitting department. Martinez loved talking about hitting and was always generous with his time when teammates asked for advice, but this is no different than when Francisco Lindor had Tyrone Taylor in his hotel room to work on hitting techniques earlier this season.
Do the Mets miss Martinez’s speeches? Maybe. “Let’s suck together” became as much of a rallying cry in the postseason as “Omg” was last summer. But the former DH has never expressed any interest in becoming a hitting coach. While he hasn’t officially retired, Martinez is still unsigned. He seems to be enjoying life in South Florida playing pickleball and fishing for lobsters.
If you can’t tell already, the Mets tend to trust “track records.” They trust the track records of their elite hitters, and while they certainly are not happy with how the offense has performed as of late, history tells them that this lineup will start to produce again.
But they might want to start producing on Friday night. The Mets have slipped from first place in the NL East to third place in the NL Wild Card standings.
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