Cabrera, Lagares, d’Arnaud Reward Callaway’s Faith

After how great Opening Day was for the Mets, you’d think the only change that would be made was starting Jacob deGrom. It would’ve been justified with the Cardinals starting another right-handed pitcher in Michael Wacha. That’s not what happened.

In Game 2 of the Mickey Callaway Era, we’re learning this is not a manager who is one for maintaining the status quo. Rather, this is not someone afraid to upset the Mets Home Run Apple card. He’s going to make an informed decision, and he is going to run with it even if it is unpopular.

And because of that, before first pitch today, he was quite unpopular.

Brandon Nimmo was benched in favor of Juan Lagares even with Nimmo reaching in four of his five plate appearances.

Asdrubal Cabrera, the only Mets Opening Day starter to not get a hit was moved from cleanup to leadoff.

Kevin Plawecki, who also reached base four times and hit a double, was benched for Travis d’Arnaud.

Callaway had a sound basis for his decisions. Wacha has reverse splits, and these players hit left-handed pitchers better. deGrom has a high fly ball rate, and Lagares is the best center fielder in baseball. And yet, despite all that, Callaway opened himself up for criticism.

Those critics were silenced immediately as Cabrera led off the bottom of the first with a double. He would eventually score on a Todd Frazier two RBI double.

On the day, Cabrera was 3-5 with a run, the aforementioned double, and an RBI. With that performance, he more than justified his manager’s decision.

Lagares and d’Arnaud would as well.

In the fourth, d’Arnaud would hit the first homer by a Mets player this year. Overall, he was 1-3 with a run, walk, homer, and an RBI.

Yoenis Cespedes would hit the second of the season with a fifth inning blast.

Lagares would also shut everyone up going 2-4 with a run.

Even with deGrom struggling to find it, he still allowed one run on four hits while allowing just one walk and striking out seven over 5.2 innings

The end result was the Mets dominating the Cardinals again. For the second time in as many days; the Mets chased the opposing starter, and they tacked on runs against the opposing bullpen.

For a second straight game, the Mets bullpen looked good.

Robert Gsellman came on with two outs in the sixth and struck out Jose Martinez. After he got into some trouble in the seventh, Anthony Swarzak bailed him out.

Swarzak was the only issue on the day and not just because Matt Carpenter homered off of him to pull the Cardinals within 5-2. The real issue was Swarzak left the game with a strained oblique.

This led to Callaway, a former American League pitching coach, having to make a double switch. Yes, it may be overblown, but Willie Randolph did have an issue with it early in his career.

When Callaway made the switch, it was Jeurys Familia coming in for the four out save. It was a throwback to how he was used in 2015. Fortunately, Familia looks as great as he did then.

With that power sinker back in the high 90s, Familia is unhittable. He was unhittable striking out two and recording the save.

So again, Callaway pushed all the right buttons, and the Mets won another game. In the future, these decisions may not work out as well as it has in the first two games, overall, with Callaway making informed decisions like this, they will work out more times than not.

If that happens, Mets fans will give him the benefit of the doubt because the Mets will be winning games and heading to the postseason.

Game Notes: Callaway joins former Mets manager Joe Frazier to begin his managerial career by winning the first two games of a season. No Mets manager has won three straight games to begin their career.

Frazier’s first inning RBI double was the first of his career.

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