The New York Mets traveled to Baltimore to play the Orioles to complete their nine game road trip. With the split, they finished 5-4:
1. Of course, Kevin Pillar and Mason Williams were the first Mets to go back-to-back. In some ways, that’s the perfect encapsulation of this season.
2. On the subject of homers, Pete Alonso hit three, and he’s heating up just before a temperature check series against the San Diego Padres.
3. Alonso has always been one to speak his mind, and he was right on point when he said the biggest issue is the way MLB changes the ball year-to-year.
4. It’s funny. The Mets really had no choice but to obtain Billy McKinney, but now they suddenly look like geniuses for it.
5. The story of how Kevin Pillar has been a big believer in McKinney, was exited about the acquisition, and picked up McKinney when he joined the team speaks volumes about why this team is performing so well.
6. It’s funny how quickly fans went from why would the Mets sign Pillar to Pillar becoming a fan favorite they fiercely defend has been hilarious. It’s also a sign about all the things Pillar does right on and off the field.
7. While the Mets offensive onslaught felt great, especially the day after the Mets were blown out, some of the joy was taken out of it because it happened against Matt Harvey.
8. At this moment, David Peterson is not an MLB caliber starting pitcher, and it’s unfair to him to keep putting him in a position to fail.
9. No, the Mets don’t have a real answer in Triple-A, and it is going to be tough to navigate this next stretch, but when Peterson has given you 3.0 innings over the last two starts, he’s not going to help you.
10. The Mets desperately need Robert Gsellman to be good. As we saw, when he isn’t, games get way out of hand.
11. The best way for the Mets to navigate things going forward is to get starts like they did from Taijuan Walker.
12. There’s something to be said for Walker and McKinney, two once highly regarded prospects who haven’t lived to expectations, starting to look like the players we thought they would become under Luis Rojas.
13. This is getting way to ahead of ourselves, but McKinney just has this vibe right now where he’s just going to have a really big moment this postseason.
14. McKinney and Ty Kelly are doppelgängers.
15. It was hard to take Ron Darling seriously yesterday when he didn’t have Jacob deGrom atop his pitcher power rankings. In fact, it’s hard to take MLB Network seriously as Darling wasn’t the only one.
16. The baseball card shtick in blowouts works, and Darling and Gary Cohen trading an Andres Gimenez card for a Francisco Lindor was pretty clever.
17. It’s actually amusing the Mets had a game where Alonso and Dominic Smith were both in the lineup and neither played first base.
18. The replay system has become a complete and utter joke. They can’t even manage to get clearly blown calls overturned.
19. Nobody is talking about him, but Cedric Mullens is a phenomenal baseball player who put on a show against the Mets. The All-Star Game is at its best when it gives a player like him a stage to introduce himself to the world, and it’ll be great to see that next month.
20. MLB can keep the Mets down in the power rankings all they want. This is still a first place team.
Game Recaps
The New York Mets got beaten up last night, but tonight, they returned the favor in a 14-1 win. The only downside was the bulk of the damage came against Matt Harvey, who the Mets pushed closer to getting DFA’d.
Pete Alonso opened the scoring with a two run homer in the first. The Mets then put five up against Harvey in the third highlighted by a Kevin Pillar three run homer.
5 ABs. 3 HRs. ?
Safe to say Pete is having a good time in Baltimore. pic.twitter.com/kaxmqEThkL
— New York Mets (@Mets) June 9, 2021
Mask off. pic.twitter.com/SiJBXklaEQ
— New York Mets (@Mets) June 10, 2021
Harvey wouldn’t pitch past the third, and Taijuan Walker was dominant. Walker pitched 7.0 innings allowing one run on five hits and one walk while striking out nine.
As for the Mets, they just keep on hitting. The best way to show how dominant they were is to just show the batting stats from the game:
- Jonathan Villar 2-5, 2 R, 2 2B
- Francisco Lindor 1-3, R, BB
- Pete Alonso 3-5, 3 R, 2B, HR, 3 RBI
- Dominic Smith 0-5
- James McCann 2-4, 2 R, 2B, BB, RBI
- Billy McKinney 3-5, 3 R, 2 HR, 5 RBI
- Kevin Pillar 3-4, 2 R, 2 HR, 4 RBI
- Mason Williams 2-4, R, HR, RBI
- Jose Peraza 0-4
Overall, the Mets hit six homers. That included Pillar and Williams going back-to-back in the eighth. Believe it or not, that was the first time it’s happened this year.
The Mets end their road trip and season series with the Orioles. They are now primed to go home and send another statement to the San Diego Padres.
Game Notes: Mets were 5-4 on the nine game road trip.
Objectively speaking, David Peterson is one of the worst starting pitchers in baseball. Among pitchers with at least 40.0 IP, he has the fifth worst ERA and 14th worst FIP.
The biggest trouble with Peterson right now is he seems to be regressing and showing little signs of coming out of this. Since that gem against the Tampa Bay Rays, he’s made four starts going 0-2 with a 9.88 ERA.
He’s walked eight and struck out 12 over 13.2 innings. That’s 3.1 innings per start. That’s what happens when batters have hit .356/.441/.644 against him. Keep in mind, this is in a year where offense is at historic lows.
Peterson’s Baseball Savant page is a disaster. He’s not generating spin on his pitches, he’s not fooling anyone, his control is poor, and batters are hitting him hard. As many have pointed out, the biggest issue is his release points.
The Visualization portion of Baseball Savant backs that up saying Peterson “tends to have very erratic release points on his pitches.”
It may very well be a matter of fixing that to permit Peterson to be the pitcher the Mets think Peterson could be. From the flashes we’ve seen, this could be a very good starter.
However, he’s not that, and with each start, he gets further from being that. At this point, we should remember Peterson had zero Triple-A starts, only made 24 Double-A starts, and he was really pressed into action last year due to the pandemic with Brodie Van Wagenen’s recklessness with the Mets pitching depth.
While some believed Peterson had a good year last year, it’s important to remember it was just 10 appearances. Also, more advanced numbers like FIP indicated Peterson was due for a significant regression.
Now, you can understand wanting Peterson to work with Jeremy Hefner. After all, by and large, Hefner has seemingly done terrific work with this Mets pitching staff. That said, for whatever reason, it’s just not clicking with Peterson right now.
The other counter-argument is the Mets don’t really have a viable starter in Triple-A to take his place. On the most obvious replacement, Thomas Szapucki, his control issues are correctly demoted.
Of course, the rebuttal is why does Peterson get to continuously falter without giving Szapucki a shot to get the benefit of working with Hefner. More than that, Peterson isn’t giving you starter innings.
On the season, he’s given the Mets 4.1 innings per start. Since May 1, that number is down to 3.2 innings. Over his last two starts, he’s pitched a total of 3.0 innings.
Every Peterson start is effectively a bullpen game. With that being the case, it would be better to call-up Sean Reid-Foley, who has thrived with the Mets in 2.0 – 3.0 inning stretches. Really, at this point, it’s inarguable Reid-Foley for 2.0+ innings is far superior to whatever Peterson is providing.
In the end, this is how you develop Mike Pelfrey 2.0. You rush a pitcher who isn’t ready to the majors. You stubbornly keep him there despite the results indicating he should be sent down. The next part is you call him a bust while completely ignoring all you did to prevent him from realizing his potential.
The Mets need to stop the stubbornness and nonsense. Peterson isn’t and wasn’t ready. He needs time. Give it to him and be ready to maybe call him up later in the season or next year.
Given how the story du jour in baseball is pitchers using substances, like pine tar or spider tack, on the baseball to increase spin, they should all be prepared to answer questions about it. There are many reasons why, including but not limited to whatever Gerrit Cole said:
Gerrit Cole on if he ever used Spider Tack while pitching:
"I don't quite know how to answer that, to be honest…If MLB wants to legislate some more stuff, that's a conversation that we can have" pic.twitter.com/2fR1AUeOQX
— Yankees Videos (@snyyankees) June 8, 2021
Honestly, that’s just about the worst answer to a question you’ll ever see. Really, the only way he could’ve made it worse was by admitting and then suggesting his success is more attributable to undetectable steroids.
To some, he admitted it. Certainly, you can make that case, and there’s spin analysis which will back that up. His discovering this ability to spin the baseball was in Houston where the Astros found new and improved ways to cheat.
While Cole didn’t admit it, he didn’t leave much room for an alternative. It at least appeared it was him or one of his teammates. Whatever is happening he just invited more attention. Really, Cole has no one to blame but himself on this one.
This answer is as bad as it possibly could be. Where it goes from here is anyone’s guess.
In the end, we can only hope he’s asked more of these questions. No, not because we need to get to the truth of the matter. Rather, this is absolutely great theatre, and we all can’t wait to see how he’ll attempt to answer it next.
The New York Mets couldn’t have gotten off to a better start against the Baltimore Orioles. Before David Peterson took the mound, the Mets had a 2-0 lead off a Pete Alonso two run homer:
?️ PEEEEEETE! pic.twitter.com/FxrT3KT9Pp
— New York Mets (@Mets) June 8, 2021
There were a number of problems from there. Up first was umpiring and replay. Again, the state of umpiring is poor, and the replay system needs to be scrapped.
Ryan Mountcastle hit what should’ve been an inning ending double play. Francisco Lindor‘s throw beat him. James McCann‘s foot was on the bag. Somehow, not only was Mountcastle called safe, but it was upheld on replay. Gary Cohen and Ron Darling justifiably blasted the whole thing:
https://twitter.com/snytv/status/1402408375112110084?s=21
Regardless of the horribly blown call, Peterson escaped the inning unscathed. That wouldn’t be the case in the second when the Orioles scored three or when he was knocked out in the third.
It’s the second straight start Peterson didn’t last three innings. He’s now the sixth time in his 11 starts he failed to go five. His ERA is now 6.32.
While Robert Gsellman stepped up the last time this happened to Peterson, he didn’t here. He allowed four over his 2.1 innings.
At that point, it was 8-2 entering the sixth, and it was all but over. Jacob Barnes and Drew Smith each allowed a run, and Alonso hit another homer in the ninth.
All told, this was a 10-3 loss where just about everything went wrong. That includes the replay. It’s probably just best to forget about it and move on to the next game.
Game Notes: Alonso was the DH with McCann back at first. The last Mets pitcher who failed to go three in consecutive starts was Steven Matz.
Stop being an idiot. It doesn’t exist. Many have pointed to the spin on Jacob deGrom‘s pitches have been fairly static throughout his career.
His current catchers, Tomas Nido and James McCann responded to the false accusations by not only definitively saying he didn’t, but by also pondering what would happen if he did.
We saw similar support of deGrom from Marcus Stroman, Trevor May, Taijuan Walker, and others. The best response came from Kevin Pillar who said he’d bet his paycheck deGrom wasn’t. He then upped the ante by bringing it to Steve Cohen’s attention.
I’d bet my paycheck on it that he doesn’t use anything. He might be from a different planet though ? cc: @StevenACohen2
— Kevin Pillar (@KPILLAR4) June 7, 2021
Look, we know what accusations deGrom is cheating really are. It’s trying to deflect from other pitchers. It’s attention seeking behavior, and overall, it’s plain old sour grapes.
Fact is deGrom is the best pitcher on the planet, and he’s doing things only the greatest of the greats have done. In fact, he’s beating their records. Instead of trying to diminish it, we should all be appreciating his greatness.
Back in 2019, Chris Paddack famously threw down the gauntlet. He remarked while Pete Alonso was a deserving Rookie of the Month, Paddack would be Rookie if the Year.
The two went on wildly divergent paths from there. Alonso went on to become Rookie of the Year while Paddack has been a well below average pitcher with a tenuous spot in the Padres rotation.
While the New York Mets struggled to get hits and runs in most of this series, they did not have similar struggles against Paddack.
In the third, Jose Peraza hit a one out ground rule double, and after he was sacrificed to third by Marcus Stroman, Billy McKinney drove him home.
That 1-0 grew to 2-0 in the fourth when Dominic Smith homered to dead center
Right in his wheelhouse. ?@TheRealSmith2_ | #LGM pic.twitter.com/7kNIwhvfRm
— New York Mets (@Mets) June 6, 2021
In the sixth, Alonso would get his revenge. After McKinney hit a lead-off single, he stole second. He then came home on an Alonso RBI single. At that point, it was 3-0.
That was a massive lead considering how Stroman was pitching. Yes, Stroman was wild with an uncharacteristic four walks. Still, he made the pitches he needed and got good defense.
For example, in the fourth, the Padres loaded the bases with one out. Webster Rivas hit a ball down the line. Brandon Drury fielded it on his knee, touched third, and began the inning ending double play.
It's the throw from the knees for me. ? pic.twitter.com/7bu83GADN8
— New York Mets (@Mets) June 6, 2021
It was one of those days for Stroman. He made the pitches he needed, and he got great defense. He also helped his own cause hitting an RBI double in the top of the seventh to increase the Mets lead to 4-1.
The only time the Padres could get to him was by a fluke. In the sixth, Stroman made a nice grab on a Fernando Tats Jr. grounder. Stroman made a poor throw (Alonso should’ve stopped it), and Alonso compounded it by the throwing it away himself allowing Tatis to go third.
Tatis would then score on a Eric Hosmer RBI groundout. That was it against Stroman.
Stroman allowed the one unearned run over 6.2 innings. He yielded four walks and four hits while striking out seven. He’d pick up the win.
That 4-1 Mets lead in the seventh grew to 6-1 when James McCann hit a two run homer:
.@McCannon33 hits a missile. ? pic.twitter.com/vz1GEYAQsV
— New York Mets (@Mets) June 6, 2021
In total, the Mets would win this game 6-2. After a tough start to this series, the Mets battled through, and they claimed a split. This deserves everyone’s respect.
Game Notes: After getting six extra base hits to start his Mets career, McKinney finally hit a single.
One of the New York Mets most controversial moves this offseason was jumping the gun to sign James McCann. That bold move did not work out early.
In just about every single aspect of his game, McCann was struggling. Things got so bad for him he eventually lost his starting job to Tomas Nido. Eventually, due to injuries, McCann actually became the team’s first baseman.
Whether it was the temporary position switch or the change in hitting coaches, McCann has figured it back out, and he’s now looking every bit the player the Mets thought they were signing. He’s now a force both before and at the plate.
Over the past 11 games, McCann is hitting .300/.333/.675 with three doubles, four homers, and 11 RBI. That included a big game against Madison Bumgarner and the Arizona Diamondbacks.
James McCann over his last 8 games:
3 HR
5 RBI
4 2B
1.260 OPS(via @Mets)pic.twitter.com/ea5bzikmEK
— SNY (@SNYtv) June 2, 2021
After the 2016 Wild Card Game, seeing the Mets beat up on Bumgarner feels good. What feels better is seeing the Mets pick up a hard fought win.
In what was a back-and-forth game, McCann was 3-for-5 with a run, homer, and four RBI. His bat was the driving force of the Mets 7-6 win.
This game was both emblematic of where McCann and the Mets have come. After early season struggles, they’re settling in and starting to thrive. It’s why they’re in first place with the largest lead in all of baseball. It’s also why it was the Neon Moment of the Week!
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Each and every time Jacob deGrom takes the mound, he does something special. Then, there are nights like tonight where he was just on another level.
We saw it with everything including his defense. He took what would normally be a weak infield single, and he turned it into an unassisted out.
That was nothing compared to what he did in the fourth.
Jake Cronenworth hit a one out single. It was a very nice play by Billy McKinney sprinting in the gap to keep Cronenworth at first. Cronenworth did get to second when Francisco Lindor bobbled a Fernando Tatis, Jr. grounder.
Then, we got the biggest play of the game. Eric Hosmer blooped a ball which landed in front of Dominic Smith. Cronenworth got crossed up thereby preventing him of any chance of scoring. As a result, the bases were loaded with one out.
That meant deGrom had them right where he wanted them. He made very quick work of Wil Myers striking him out on four pitches. Tucupita Marcano battled, but he’d strike out on a 3-2 slider to end the inning.
Right there was the Padres chance, and as we know when you fail against deGrom, you’re not going to get another opportunity. The Padres wouldn’t. The question really was whether deGrom would get run support.
After back-to-back nights where the Padres flirted with no-hitters, they threw Joe Musgrove, the only pitcher in Padres history to throw a no-hitter.
Ironically, Musgrove didn’t flirt with the no-hitter. That ended when McKinney led off the game with a double. To the shock of no one, the Mets failed to score.
Entering this game, the Mets hadn’t had a hit with RISP in this series. As such, you had to believe the Mets needed to homer to score.
That happened twice in the fifth as Jose Peraza and Lindor each hit a solo homer giving the Mets a 2-0 lead.
José Peraza puts us on the board. #LGM pic.twitter.com/w06Hu1f5F0
— New York Mets (@Mets) June 6, 2021
It's outta here! @Lindor12BC pic.twitter.com/ZBnzYg1wwe
— New York Mets (@Mets) June 6, 2021
As impressive as these homers were, there was the miracle in the sixth. Kevin Pillar and Tomas Nido began that inning with consecutive singles. That’s when Jonathan Villar, who has been on the bench with a hamstring issue pinch hit for Trevor Blankenhorn.
Villar came up big with the Mets first hit with RISP in the series. Villar drove home Pillar to increase the Mets lead to 3-0.
That was more than enough for deGrom, who was absolutely brilliant. He pitched seven scoreless allowing three hits and one walk while striking out 11. His season ERA is now 0.62. That’s the lowest ERA a pitcher has ever had through his first nine starts.
If someone says there is a pitcher better than Jacob deGrom, you can slap them. ? pic.twitter.com/9uRRVWXibj
— New York Mets (@Mets) June 6, 2021
Now, with deGrom recently off the IL, this was supposed to be no restrictions. Maybe that was the case, and maybe it wasn’t, but we saw deGrom lifted despite throwing just 77 pitches.
While the decision seemed curious, the Mets had Seth Lugo for the eighth and Edwin Diaz for the ninth all lined up. After a scoreless eighth for Lugo, the Mets tacked on an insurance run.
Former Mets prospect Nabil Crismatt was pitching his second inning of relief. Lindor led off the 9th with a lead-off double. After Smith drew a one out walk, Pillar drove home Lindor to increase the lead to 4-0.
The Mets threatened for more, but didn’t deliver. Not even with the bases loaded. This meant it was not a save situation for Diaz.
In years past that was an issue for Diaz. Not tonight. He pitched a scoreless inning preserving the Mets 4-0 win and snap the Padres 12 game home winning streak.
This win was made possible by deGrom who was brilliant. He keeps setting new records and further establishes himself as the best pitcher in the game.
Game Notes: In the game, deGrom passed Sid Fernandez for fourth all-time on the Mets strikeout list. deGrom has given up just 10 hits with the bases loaded in his career over 58 plate appearances.