The average fan doesn't seem to understand how quickly a season can spiral out of control. We are currently in the midst of the Patience Era of pro athletics, and we see how well that worked out for Sam Hinkie in Philadelphia. I agree that pro sports require patience -- particularly baseball because of its 162-game schedule and deep minor league system -- but ignoring the present is never an option in my book.
Gregg Popovich, the greatest coach in professional sports, lives and breathes that very same philosophy. He doesn't believe in rebuilding. The present is always the priority. Care now. Win now. Mortgaging everything on "the future" is the same thing as wishful thinking or dreaming.
But why are these topics of discussion in a column about the Mets, you're wondering?
Because about 1,000 people have already told me to "be patient" about the Mets pathetic 2-4 start to the 2016 campaign. "Be patient," "It's a long season, "It's early" -- I'm hearing these cliches over and over again. And don't get me wrong, I get it, patience is a virtue, but ignoring horribly played baseball is the same thing as wishful thinking. It's easy to say, "It's a long season. The beginning doesn't matter. Don't worry about how they are playing now, they'll come around," but I refuse to fall into that trap.
The reality is that the Mets were the worst team in baseball in the preseason, and that undeniably poor play has carried over into the regular season. So is it simply a slow start, or a sign of things to come? Let's take a look:
Yes, again, I know that we're only 6 games into the season, but .185 is putrid. Please remember that we've played the Royals, Phillies and Marlins thus far, three teams that certainly aren't known for their starting pitching. The Royals won the World Series with their grit, toughness, resiliency, fire, passion, timely hitting and flawless defense, but their starting pitching is average (or worse).
The Phillies were projected by many to be the worst team in the MLB, a dubious distinction that clearly included their starting staff, and the Marlins are only two deep with Jose Fernandez and Wei-Yin Chen. It's not like the Mets have picked up where they left off in the playoffs, facing studs like Clayton Kershaw, Jake Arrieta and Zack Greinke. We're talking about Jeremy Hellickson here, people.
.185 is so bad that it's more than 20 points below the second-worst offense (Braves at .206). One of the overarching issues with the Mets lineup is that they collectively refuse to shorten up with two strikes and/or two outs. Yoenis Cespedes and Lucas Duda swing out of their shoes, regardless of the situation. Travis d'Arnaud takes way too many close pitches with two strikes. It's almost as if he's waiting to have a confrontation with the home plate ump. Dude, the ump is in charge, it doesn't matter if you look at the film later and the pitch was 2.5 inches outside. You struck out, make an adjustment for heaven's sake!
I can't see how an optimistic Mets fan could possibly sidestep around that blatant fact. Before acquiring Cespedes, the Mets were so bad offensively that Keith Hernandez said -- on the air, mind you -- "Give me a whiskey, please!" and "I'm paid to talk, but I'm speechless."
He literally said those things on the air. It was that bad. And Gary Cohen, who is basically Mr. Met, was right there with him, bashing the Mets bats on a nightly basis. Curtis Granderson, Wright, Duda, d'Arnaud and Wilmer Flores were all on that roster. This team couldn't score enough to win without Cespedes. That's the pure reality of it.
Now keep in mind that it was, by far, the greatest offensive streak of Cespedes' entire big league career. That hot streak was an outlier from the rest of his resume. The numbers evened out when he basically went zero for the postseason, with the exception being a fun blast off crappy Alex Wood. Cespedes consistently over-swings and has a few gaping holes: (1) The high fastball at 94 MPH and above, (2) The biting slider down-and-away in the dirt and (3) Well, basically anything in the dirt. He really won't take pitches with two strikes. He will essentially swing at anything he thinks he can touch.
Now, in all honesty, I'm a big Cespedes supporter, but the Yoenis we saw down the stretch of the 2015 regular season is not the real Yoenis. That incredible streak was not indicative of the norm. So the point is...what happens when his production normalizes over the course of the 2016 season? Who picks up the slack?
So far, no one.
Lefty on lefty, TWICE against the most dominant pitcher in the world. The best pitcher of his generation. Daniel Murphy homered TWICE under intense pressure, in close playoff games against Clayton Kershaw. If you really know baseball, you know that's a virtual impossibility for a left-handed hitter. The rest of the Mets got totally abused by Kershaw. The same could be said of Arrieta and Greinke -- Murph was the only one who could get to them.
Interestingly enough, I'm currently in the midst of a similar discussion on Facebook. My combatant says that Murphy's historic postseason run was an aberration; I beg to differ, I think the best hitter on the Mets came through when it mattered the most. Murphy's approach to hitting always translated to the best results on the team with runners in scoring position. Simply put, like the Royals, he keeps the ball in play. He fights to stay alive and has always succeeded in keeping his strikeout totals down (he's never k'd 100+ times). When you extend counts and put the ball in play, great things happen. Murph has a short stroke and professional approach; only Michael Conforto, Asdrubal Cabrera and Neil Walker have the potential to fill his shoes on the current roster. Thus far no one has been able to pick up the lack of production slack.
And if Murph's playoff success was an aberration, why is he hitting .471 with 2 homers and 7 RBI already this season with the Nationals? What if a good hitter has become a GREAT hitter, and the Mets let him go to a hated rival at exactly the worst time?
Isn't that a legitimate possibility?
In the end, we can only hope that this embarrassingly slow start to the season is merely a result of cold weather and some jitters.
But, then again, what if it isn't?
