Ryan Cordell
With the crazy 2020 schedule, the Mets had a four game two city set with the Boston Red Sox. The road teams had the better of it.
1. Luis Rojas hasn’t been any different than Mickey Callaway in his decision making.
2. Andres Gimenez having more PA than Dominic Smith is inexcusable. It’s even worse when Gimenez is getting critical at-bats late in games over Smith.
3. With Smith and Luis Guillorme, it’s hard to conclude anything other than the Mets aren’t prioritizing getting them into games. After all, Brian Dozier wasn’t in full game shape and missed Summer Camp, yet he was activated and started the finale.
4. While people are over-focusing on Edwin Diaz‘s tough inning, they’re missing just how bad Wilson Ramos has been in every aspect of his game.
5. Diaz imploding again, and the Mets essentially admitting Robinson Cano is now a platoon player, that trade somehow got worse.
6. Speaking of awful trades, Blake Taylor has been terrific in the Astros pen while the Mets can’t figure out the pen, and Jake Marisnick is on the IL.
7. Aside from Rick Porcello, the Mets have gotten good starting pitching. Their offense, while disappointing, has been good. And yet, they’re under .500. Why? Because they’re the worst defensive club in baseball.
8. Much of that is attributable to J.D. Davis, who has been dreadful in left. Much like last year, he’s the worst defensive LF in baseball. It was his defense which led to the game winning rally on Wednesday.
9. The Mets need to go back to the drawing board and re-figure things out. Davis doesn’t belong in left. Amed Rosario is not a lead-off hitter. Your top OBP guy in Brandon Nimmo can’t hit ninth. Jeff McNeil is struggling at third.
10. Seth Lugo is far too versatile and important to be just a closer. If the Mets are moving on from Diaz, a committee led by Jeurys Familia is the right approach.
11. Don’t discount Drew Smith who has been terrific.
12. Speaking of terrific young Mets pitchers, David Peterson took his velocity and game to another level in his first career start. It this is who he is now, his ceiling is much higher.
13. Despite what delusional Yankees fans will tell you Jacob deGrom is the best pitcher in baseball. He now has a 2.23 ERA in no decisions.
14. deGrom should’ve had the win, but that’s nothing new. He needs more run support.
15. The Mets had some very ugly ABs in crucial situations. Michael Conforto had a few of those. Don’t make too much of that as Conforto is a terrific hitter.
16. It’s interesting Dozier was activated but not Juan Lagares when both were very similarly situated. It’s all the more interesting when the Mets activated Ryan Cordell over Lagares when the team needed to replace Marisnick’s defense.
17. Overall, this Mets team should be better. It’s just better situational hitting (which comes and goes) and playing a better defensive lineup, which the Mets refuse to do.
18. You wonder how much longer the Mets can stick with Yoenis Cespedes. At times, he looks lost. Other times, he’s battling in AB and seems very close.
19. Speaking of Cespedes, it seems odd today is July 31 and we’re not awaiting Brodie Van Wagenen making a dumb trade.
20. We may never reach that new trade deadline with the Phillies on the cusp of an outbreak themselves, no one knowing when the Marlins can play again, and with Rob Manfred not taking this pandemic seriously.
Game Recaps
No Joking: Wacha And Mets Offense Were Terrific
David Peterson Debut Knocked The Red Sox Off
Oft times, managers catch too much blame for team losses. For example, last year, people were livid with Mickey Callaway for bringing in Seth Lugo, the best reliever in the game. That actually happened.
Then, there are times like tonight where you really have to wonder what the manager was thinking. Tonight was one of those nights for Luis Rojas.
The Mets had entered the bottom of the seventh with the game tied 3-3. Because life isn’t fair, the Mets failed to get Jacob deGrom a win.
deGrom has allowed just two runs over six innings. Both runs came in the fourth. Rafael Devers and Mitch Moreland hit a pair of doubles, and then deGrom unleashed two wild pitches allowing Moreland to score.
At that time, the Red Sox were up 2-1 with the Mets first run coming on a Dominic Smith RBI groundout with the bases loaded. The Mets would tie it in the fifth on a Brandon Nimmo homer.
In the sixth, Andres Gimenez, who got his first Major League start at short, came up huge hitting an RBI triple in the sixth. It was his first career triple and RBI. With Lugo coming in, you had to feel good about the Mets chances.
Unfortunately, Lugo hung a curve to Christian Vazquez, who hit a solo homer to tie the game. Still, it was only tied, and the Mets had a chance in the bottom of the seventh.
Jeff McNeil was hit by a pitch, and Pete Alonso singled putting two on with one out. Michael Conforto failed to deliver the RBI, but he did advance the runners. That should have brought up Smith, the team’s RBI leader up against a tired Josh Osich.
Instead, Rojas went to J.D. Davis as a pinch hitter, and the Red Sox countered with Heath Hembree. Hembree completely overpowered Davis to end the inning.
To compound the mistake of using Davis as a pinch hitter, Rojas put him in left. That proved wrong when Kevin Pillar hit a fly ball literally every other LF in baseball, Smith included, catches. But that’s what happens when you have to play very deep to accommodate insufficient range to play the position, and Davis lacks the instincts and ability to read the ball causing him to let an extraordinarily playable ball drop in front of him.
That play was all the more problematic because Justin Wilson was on fumes. To put it in perspective, this was Wilson’s fourth appearance, and this was the Mets sixth game.
He would load the bases with one out. After Wilson struck out Devers, the bad luck would start. Moreland has a swinging bunt McNeil could not cleanly pick up. Then, for some reason with Dellin Betances earning and ready in the pen, Rojas stuck with the fatigued Wilson to face the right-hand hitting Vazquez.
Vasquez hit a bleeder past a diving Alonso scoring two giving the Red Sox a 6-3 lead. After Wilson walked Alex Verdugo to reload the bases, Rojas finally went to Betances, who got the Mets out of the inning.
From there, well, the Mets did what they do best. They ripped your heart out.
Heading into the bottom of the ninth, it was 6-4 because Cespedes crushed his second homer of the season in the eighth.
That one got out of here in a hurry. ? #LGM pic.twitter.com/RsvO4ckFEZ
— New York Mets (@Mets) July 30, 2020
The Mets didn’t build on that partially because Jose Peraza would not only rob Wilson Ramos of a base hit, but he would also start a gorgeous inning ending 6-4-3 double play.
Brandon Workman had no command whatsoever, and the Mets loaded the bases with no outs. The Mets failed to tie it.
Conforto, who struggled mightily today, struck out looking on a 3-2 pitch on the corner. After an infield single pulling the Mets to within 6-5 because Devers couldn’t make a string enough throw, Cespedes came up.
Cespedes had a poor AB swinging at a 2-0 pitch out of the strike zone and whiffing on a 3-2 flat cutter in the middle of the strike zone. That put the game in Robinson Cano‘s hands. Sadly, he lined weakly to short to end the game.
Frankly, this was an abominable loss. The game was replete with poor at-bats in key spots, and Rojas made a number of mistakes. With Rojas, this is game six for him. We can and should expect better from him.
Game Notes: Jake Marisnick was put on the IL. Ryan Cordell was called up to take his place on the roster. Jordan Humphreys was designated for assignment to make room on the 40 man roster. Alonso had a four hit game.
The 2019 season was the worst season of Edwin Diaz‘s career. He set career worsts in almost every category with the most alarming being in ERA, home run rate, and contact rate. This was a large reason why he set career worsts in categories like ERA+ and FIP. To sum up, Diaz was bad in 2019.
There were a number of reasons why including the change in the ball and Diaz’s admitted struggles dealing with New York. Of all the Mets players, Diaz is the one who probably needs to get off to a good start to avoid the boo birds from coming.
Well, in his first Spring outing, things did not go well. He needed 25 pitches to get through the inning, and he would take the loss after allowing two runs on three hits. Two of those hits went for extra bases with Aledmys Diaz and Dustin Garneau hitting RBI doubles off of him.
Seeing this happen, Mets fans should meet Diaz’s outing with a shrug and a yawn. That’s about as extreme an overreaction you should have.
After all, it happened on February 26. The 2020 season doesn’t begin for another month. That is a month for Diaz to continue to work with Jeremy Hefner to make the adjustments he needs to make in order to again become the dominant closer he was with the Seattle Mariners. It’s a month for Diaz to shake off the rust of the winter and proceed to striking out the side in regular season games which matter.
Look, this is Spring Training. Everything is a small sample size, and bad outings and struggles are going to be magnified. Really, it is incumbent upon you as a fan to determine how you react to these Spring Training outings and stories.
You could chose to be pessimistic about outings like Diaz’s. You could allow Ryan Cordell‘s big game or Daniel Zamora‘s dominating right-handed batters get you excited about the 2020 season. Or, you could just take everything with a grain of salt and await the beginning of the regular season.
You can choose to do what you like, but it is more fun to take some advice from Bing Crosby and “accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative, and latch on to the affirmative.” After all, nothing is on the line in Spring Training, so really choose to have fun by properly compartmentalizing Diaz’s poor outing while allowing yourself to get excited a bit by stories like Cordell or Zamora.