Maybe the Mets can right themselves. Maybe they have a two-week rally in them that will enable them to avoid the ignominy of one of the greatest New York baseball collapses of all time.
But it has suddenly gotten late early for Carlos Mendoza’s crew — they are 31-48 since June 12 when they were in first place by 5 ½ games — and if they do wind up missing the playoffs, Steve Cohen has a whole lot of soul-searching to do as to what went wrong and who’s to blame for his $340 million investment going so bad. Certainly the president of baseball operations, David Stearns, has to shoulder much of the blame for the demise of the starting pitching in particular, and it’s becoming more and more questionable if Mendoza has the necessary Alex Cora-like chops to light a fire under his sagging troops.
But whether Cohen knows it or not, what ails his team goes much deeper than a couple of bad trades at the deadline by his front office or a still-inexperienced laid-back manager. Here’s what I was told by a Mets insider last week while they were in the process of getting swept by the Phillies:
“For one thing, there are no leaders in the clubhouse. [Francisco] Lindor used to be but that was before they signed [Juan] Soto. Now he’s content to keep his thoughts to himself and he’s not particularly close with Soto, who never has been and never will be a leader. At the end of the year Soto will have all the numbers that will have people saying he was worth the money, but it if they don’t win, where was the impact?
“Mendy is a nice guy who’s close to his players and is afraid to lose that. The players like and respect him but only because they know so much of his decisions come from upstairs. He can never be viewed as an authority figure.”
It’s been well documented — certainly here — that Stearns was grossly shortsighted in putting together a starting rotation on the cheap, hoping perhaps that Kodai Senga and David Peterson would have breakthrough seasons with multiple starts of more than six innings. And when that didn’t happen Stearns was too late in calling up the kids — Nolan McLean, Jonah Tong and Brandon Sproat. The strain on the bullpen became palpable as they lost six games in August started by Senga or Frankie Montas.
But in his effort to address the bullpen shortcomings, Stearns had a terrible trade deadline: Sacrificing a top outfield prospect Drew Gilbert (who had 3 HR and 12 RBI in his first 25 games) and serviceable swing man Jose Butto to the Giants for side-arming middle reliever Tyler Rogers (who’d yielded 21 hits in his first 19 1/3 innings), and then acquiring Cardinals closer Ryan Helsley who’s been a total disaster. A similar bust, Cedric Mullins, whom Stearns acquired from the Orioles to help fill the void in center field, has neither hit (.188) or fielded particularly well.
“The problem with Stearns,” said a rival team operative, “is that he doesn’t talk to his scouts. Rogers is a middle innings guy — and a rental to boot — you can’t give that much up for him. As for Mullins, all the scouts knew he was in decline the last three years and most of them knew Helsley probably didn’t have the mental toughness for New York. But this is what happens when you trade by the numbers.”
By contrast, Stearns’ rival, Phillies GM Dave Dombrowski, had a substantial deadline, moving swiftly to pick off Jhoan Duran, the pre-eminent closer on the market, from the Twins and then going back to them a day later to grab Harrison Bader to plug their year-long hole in center field. Duran has picked up where he left off for the Twins with 13 saves with a 1.23 ERA in 17 games with the Phillies as of Friday while Bader, the ex-Yankee and Met, has had an other-worldly first couple of weeks with the Phillies, slashing .342/.403/.542 while supplying superb defense in center.
“We had two needs at the deadline — a closer and a right-handed hitting outfielder — and we were able to fill both,” Dombrowski said by phone Friday. “In Bader’s case we looked at a bunch of outfielders but ultimately felt he could be a perfect fit for us as a guy who’d give us above average defense in center field and a burst of energy both on the field and in the clubhouse. It helped, too, that he’d played in New York and I knew he’d be able to handle the pennant race pressure in Philadelphia. But I have to say he’s been phenomenal for us.”
IT’S A MADD, MADD WORLD
Baseball lost one of its great characters last week with the death of Davey Johnson at age 82. While most of the obituaries centered on his managing career with five teams, most notably the Mets who he directed to the 1986 world championship, he likewise had an accomplished playing career. With the Orioles from 1965-72, Johnson was a three-time All-Star and won three Gold Gloves at second base, and played in four World Series. After being traded to Atlanta, he hit a career high 43 homers in his first season with the Braves in 1973 — which later earned him another bit of trivia along with being on-deck when both Hank Aaron and Sadaharu Oh hit their 715th homers. He still holds the record for a one-season 40-homer player with the fewest lifetime homers (in Davey’s case 136). … Interesting that only last Thursday — the day they were finally benching him in favor of Jose Caballero — did the Yankees announce Anthony Volpe has been playing with a small labrum tear in his shoulder for four months. Not sure if this was Brian Cashman’s way of excusing Volpe’s horrible play this year, but now he should use it as a reason to shut Volpe down for the rest of the year. Tear or no tear, Volpe has become a liability for the Yankees and needs to spend the next few weeks rehabbing in Tampa and re-working his swing, not striking out three times a game at the bottom of the Yankee lineup in crucial playoff games.
