Asdrubal Cabrera
Yoenis Cespedes and Asdrubal Cabrera are supposed to come off the disabled list, but that doesn’t mean that the Mets are getting healthy for the stretch run. Not in the least. Seth Lugo will make his first career start as Steven Matz is going to miss tonight’s start due to his bone spurs. Sorry, he is going to miss the start due to shoulder discomfort.
Matz started feeling shoulder discomfort the day after his last start. Matz felt this shoulder discomfort after having gone 7.1 innings in his prior start and throwing 120 pitches over six innings the start before that. In his last start, Matz had all but scrapped his slider, and he started relying more on his curveball as a weapon to get batters out.
It is important to note the Mets pitched Matz because they believed there was no structural damage. As Sandy Alderson said, “Continuing to pitch will not cause any structural damage. We will continue to monitor his situation, but at this point it’s a function of if he can tolerate the discomfort while continuing to pitch.” (New York Post). It should also be noted that, according to Jon Heyman, the Mets talked Matz out of getting surgery to remove the bone spur. Instead, the Mets decided it was best to have their young lefty try to pitch through the pain and help the Mets win another World Series.
One thing that stood out in Matz’s last start was how everyone seemed to believe he turned a corner. Not just this season, but possibly his career. Ron Darling and Keith Hernandez talked a few times about how important it was for young players to learn the ability to pitch while being hurt, while having pain. As Darling would say, pitchers always have pain, and therefore, they need to learn how to deal with it if they are going to take that next step.
That begs the question – was Matz pitching through pain or was he pitching through injury? Matz is going to miss this start, and according to Terry Collins, he may very well miss his next start as well. What if Matz pitching with the bone spurs led to his shoulder injury? There will be many theories bandied about, but at the end of the day, no one knows quite for sure. However, what we do know is that the Mets best chances to win both this year and the years going forward is keeping their starting pitchers healthy. They haven’t been healthy this year.
For what it’s worth, after his last start, Matz didn’t feel there was an issue saying, “My arm’s been feeling great. I have no complaints there.” (Newsday). Except, now he does, and we don’t know why. The only thing we do know is that the Mets pressured him into pitching with an injury in his elbow, and now, they are sitting him with a shoulder injury.
For the first time in quite a while, I was legitimately excited to watch a Mets game as we were guaranteed a great pitching matchup with Jacob deGrom and Madison Bumgarner. Admittedly, when I saw a lineup with Ty Kelly and Justin Ruggiano, I was less excited. Still, whenever deGrom takes the mound, the Mets have a legitimate chance to win.
I didn’t even make it to the fourth inning. I missed Ruggiano giving the Mets false hope with the grand slam. I missed deGrom and Bumgarner failing to hold up their ends of the bargain in the pitching duel. I missed the Mets show some fight in the sixth by them trying to crawl their way back into the game with a Kelly triple scoring Ruggiano and Travis d’Arnaud to make it 8-7.
I did manage to wake up in the eighth inning. I tried to keep my eyes open for as long as I could. As I watched Addison Reed give up a two run RBI double to Buster Posey, I asked myself why I was bothering. If the Giants are lighting up Reed, there really is no chance for a comeback. With that, I went back to sleep. While I missed the ninth, I was pretty certain the Mets were going to lose by a score of at least 10-7. As it turns out, that was the final score.
The Mets are back to a game under .500, and they fell to 4.5 games behind the idle Cardinals. The hope is that Yoenis Cespedes and Asdrubal Cabrera coming back will help spark this team, but I’m not holding my breath, especially now with the Mets having to skip Steven Matz in the rotation with bone spurs – no wait, they have to skip him now due to bone spurs and a shoulder injury.
Sooner or later this bad dream has to end, right?
Recently, Neil Walker has been the hottest hitter in all of baseball. Over his last 19 games, Walker is hitting .455/.488/.740 with two doubles, one triple, six homers, and 14 RBI. He is making last year’s version of Yoenis Cespedes look like Mario Mendoza. For a Mets team that is struggling to get above .500, let alone be relevant in the Wild Card race, the team can ill afford to lose his bat especially with injuries to players like Asdrubal Cabrera and the aforementioned Cespedes.
And yet, that is exactly what is going to happen. Neil Walker’s wife is expecting to deliver the couple’s first child – a daughter. Walker keeps his cell phone close waiting for the notice saying, “I’ll pretty much have my phone on me everywhere but second base. You try to bottle up those three hours any way you can. In between at-bats, I’ll shoot in [the clubhouse] just to check my phone and make sure nothing is going on.” (MLB.com).
Once that happens, Walker is on the next flight out to New York as he intends to take paternity leave. He is going on paternity leave with full knowledge that his team needs his bat in the lineup, and that his taking time off may have an impact on his production. Walker joked, “Obviously, when you are swinging the bat well, you want to continue to get as many at-bats as possible, but I certainly am not going to go blaming my newborn if I don’t stay on fire. I’ll be mentally taking at-bats.” No matter what happens with Walker’s bat, he is doing the right thing by going to be by his wife’s side.
What is bizarre is that someone actually had to say that.
Back in 2014, when the Mets weren’t expected to go anywhere, Walker’s predecessor, Daniel Murphy, took paternity leave, and he was outright chastised. Boomer Esiason, a former New York athlete himself, said, “Bottom line, that’s not me. I wouldn’t do that. Quite frankly, I would have said ‘C-section before the season starts. I need to be at Opening Day. I’m sorry, this is what makes our money, this is how we’re going to live our life, this is going to give my child every opportunity to be a success in life.” (Boston.com). Obviously Boomer wasn’t the only one to chastise Murphy, but he was one of the few that had the audacity to challenge both Murphy’s commitment to the team while instructing Murphy’s wife how she should deliver their baby.
Lost in the shuffle was the fact that Murphy’s wife needed to have surgery. As Murphy would say, “It’s going to be tough for her to get up to New York for a month. I can only speak from my experience — a father seeing his wife — she was completely finished. I mean, she was done. She had surgery and she was wiped. Having me there helped a lot, and vice versa, to take some of the load off. … It felt, for us, like the right decision to make.” (ESPN.com).
A husband needs to be there for his wife because you never know what will go wrong. We were reminded of that this year with Jacob deGrom.
Back in April, deGrom found himself on the Bereavement/Family Medical Emergency List as his newborn son had difficulty breathing with apnea. The deGrom family went through the harrowing process of not knowing if their child was healthy. At the time, deGrom was home to not only be there for his wife emotionally, but also to spend time with his son Jaxon. Fortunately, deGrom’s son would be alright allowing him to put in the work he needed to for the baseball season.
Fortunately, Murphy’s wife and deGrom’s son were ultimately okay. During that time, Murphy and deGrom got to spend time with their families that desperately needed them home. But that’s not the only reason for the paternity leave.
The birth of your child is the greatest experience of your life. It certainly was for me. In fact, each day with my son is better than the next. No father should be robbed of that experience. Not me, not you, and not Neil Walker.
Furthermore, your wife needs you. There are no words to describe what your wife goes through not just during pregnancy, but also during labor. Her reward after that grueling experience? She has to feed a baby every two hours followed by burping and changing the baby. By the way, she also has to find some time to sleep. She needs all the help she can get, even if it is just a day or two with her husband.
Walker making the decision to remove himself from the lineup at a time the Mets need him most does not make him a bad teammate, it makes him a good husband and father. Walker’s place is with his family. It is his teammates job to pick him up during his absence the way Walker picked them up in April and over the course of August.
The Mets have a serious problem with Curtis Granderson. He is looking every bit of his 35 years of age hitting .226/.317/.420, and it is getting worse as the season progresses. Since the All Star Break, a time when players can rest up and get rejuvenated, Granderson has been hitting .186/.250/.304 while striking out in 21% of his plate appearances. When he does hit the ball, he is hitting an excessive number of grounders into the shift. It’s a major problem as Granderson has the lowest batting average on groundballs among active players. Keep in mind that list includes players like David Ortiz and James Loney, both of whom could lose a race to Sid Bream.
Even worse for Granderson is while he was a finalist for the Gold Glove in right field last year, he has taken a real step backwards defensively. Granderson’s defensive metrics in right field have dropped considerably with him having a -4.9 UZR and a 0 DRS this season. Fortunately, Granderson isn’t the Mets right fielder anymore . . . he’s their center fielder.
More than anything else, that is the issue with Granderson. He is the team’s best option in center field meaning he has to play everyday despite the fact he has stopped hitting and despite the fact he is no longer a good fielder.
The Mets got to this point for a number of reasons. The first is injuries. Yoenis Cespedes was supposed to be the everyday center fielder. However, with his quad injury, he will be unable to play center for the rest of the season. The Mets platoon option against lefties, Juan Lagares, is on the disabled list after needing surgery to repair a torn tendon in his left thumb. The recently imported Justin Ruggiano played only three games with the Mets before needing to go on the disabled list himself. With the injuries, that leaves the following options on the roster to play center field:
With respect to De Aza, he has come crashing back to Earth after a torrid July. So far in the month of August, De Aza is hitting .088/.244/.176. As bad as things have been with Granderson, he hasn’t been that bad.
With respect to Bruce, he’s miscast as a right fielder. After two bad years in Cincinnati where he averaged a -5.2 UZR and a 0 DRS, he is at a -13.2 UZR and a -13 DRS this year. Honestly, the Mets should be looking for a way to take him out of the outfield and put him at first base rather than put him at a position he is ill equipped to play and last played eight years ago.
That leaves Kelly and Rivera neither of whom are center fielders. However, they are the Mets next best option as the team decided both should be in the majors over Michael Conforto and Brandon Nimmo. While you can certainly make the argument that one of them should be on the roster with the need for another third base option with Asdrubal Cabrera on the disabled list moving Jose Reyes to shortstop, it is unfathomable why both of them are on the 25 man roster. It’s unfathomable to have them both on the roster when you consider Conforto and Nimmo are better hitters than either one of them despite their struggles in the majors this year.
The rationale is the outfield is too left-handed with Granderson, De Aza, and Bruce is quite poor reasoning. Granderson is a career .224/.296/.398 hitter against lefties, and that hasn’t stopped Collins from playing Granderson against lefties. Yet somehow, Collins decides that Conforto and Nimmo, two players who have hit lefties in the minors, cannot possibly hit lefties. The end result may very well have been that Collins is right as his refusal to play either against lefties may have created a mental issue with them.
Regardless, the Mets only options right now in center field are Granderson and De Aza. While Granderson has struggled mightily this year, he is currently the Mets best option in center field. With that in mind, Granderson simply has to play every day. He has to play every day despite his slump. He has to play against lefties despite him hitting .225/.290/.392 off of them this year. He has to play in center because the Mets have no other options.
Ultimately, that is the real Granderson problem. It’s not that he’s struggling. It’s that the Mets don’t have a better option than him right now – especially since the team decided Kelly and Rivera were better than Conforto and Nimmo.
Approximately 117 games into the season 2.5 games is all that separates four teams for the final Wild Card spot. As we have seen repeatedly this season and again this past weekend, injuries have played and will continue to play a major role in this Wild Card race.
Over this past weekend, it was announced that Giancarlo Stanton is going to miss the rest of the season with a groin injury. It’s a devastating injury for Stanton and the Marlins as Stanton had turned his season around hitting .287/.349/.588 with 10 homers and 30 RBI since July 1st. With him gone, the Marlins have lost both the most feared hitter in their lineup, but also the only hitter in all of baseball that can truly say owns Jacob deGrom.
Stanton’s injury comes on the heels of the Marlins having to send back Colin Rea and his torn UCL to the Padres as it turns out he was damaged goods. The Marlins also do not anticipate their big free agent addition, Wei-Yin Chen, to contribute for the rest of the season as he is dealing with elbow issues of his own. Joining Stanton and Chen on the disabled list is Adam Conley, who is arguably the Marlins second best starting pitcher. In addition to losing two of their starters to injuries, the Marlins are without their closer A.J. Ramos as he was put on the disabled list with a fractured middle finger on his pitching hand. Add all of that to the Marlins needing to skip a couple of Jose Fernandez starts to manage his workload, and the Marlins are in real trouble on the pitching front.
The Marlins have been relatively healthy all season, and now it seems as if they are starting to get bit by the injury bug at the wrong time of the season.
A team that has been decimated by injuries all year has been the St. Louis Cardinals. The Cardinals season got out on the wrong foot when they began the year without starting shortstop Jhonny Peralta as he was recovering from a surgically repaired thumb.
Joining Peralta on the disabled list this year has been his replacement Aledmys Diaz with a broken thumb of his own. The Cardinals are also without Matt Adams, who had been the starting first baseman during the stretch that the Opening Day first baseman, Brandon Moss, was on the disabled list. Centerfielder Tommy Pham has spent much time on the disabled list this year leading to the Cardinals experimenting with Kolten Wong in center. This is the same Wong who had to be sent to the minors due to his struggles at the plate and at second base. The most recent and possibly most devastating injury is Matt Holliday going down with a broken thumb.
As bad as things have been for the Cardinals position players, their pitching staff is just as decimated by injuries. Lance Lynn has not made one start for the team this season as he is still recovering from Tommy John surgery. He has been joined on the disabled list by one time NLCS hero Michael Wacha who may not only be done for the season, but also may need to have his role as a starting pitcher be re-evaluated all together with his scapular issues. This duo joins a number of Cardinals bullpen arms on the disabled list.
Neither Jordan Walden or Mitch Harris have thrown one pitch this season as they have dealt with injuries. Kevin Siegrist was recently put on the disabled list with arm fatigue, and Tyler Lyons is done for the year as he is dealing with a stress reaction in his right knee. The reliever problems are only exacerbated by the fact that their closer Trevor Rosenthal was first ineffective to start the year and then landed on the disabled list with a flexor tendon injury. Like most of this Cardinals team, it is questionable whether he can return this season.
Unlike the Marlins and the Cardinals, the Mets are starting to get healthy. This weekend the Mets not only had Jose Reyes return from the disabled list, but the team also saw him score a Reyes Run on Sunday.
Reyes should soon be joined by some of his teammates. Today, Yoenis Cespedes is expected to start his rehab assignment. Tomorrow, Asdrubal Cabrera will begin his own rehab assignment. Their return will dramatically improve a Mets lineup that has been starting Ty Kelly and his .200 batting average in left field all too frequently. Matt Reynolds and his .211 batting average had already been sent to the minors when Reyes was activated from the disabled list.
Long story short, the Mets will soon be as close to full strength as they have been all season. They are getting healthy as two of their main competitors for the Wild Card are dealing with some disastrous injuries. With all these injuries, the Mets are a better team than the Marlins and the Cardinals meaning the Mets are out of excuses. It is time for the Mets to go on a run and take control of the Wild Card race.
The Mets have not won back-t0-back games since over a month ago. At that time, they have gone from three back in the division and leading the race for the second Wild Card. They have seen Asdrubal Cabrera, Yoenis Cespedes, and Jose Reyes go on the disabled list. Matt Harvey had season ending surgery. The Mets have seen themselves fall to nine back in the division.
Yet, the Mets are still in the thick of the Wild Card race.
After a much needed day off, the Mets begin a six game homestand against two of the worst teams in baseball in the Diamondbacks and the Padres. After that the Mets begin a West Coast trip starting with the Diamondbacks. These are nine extremely winnable games. If the Mets are a playoff team, they will steamroll through the Diamondbacks and the Padres and take possession of the second Wild Card spot.
Even better, they should have some help coming soon. Jim Henderson, Zack Wheeler, and Reyes are on rehab assignments in St. Lucie. Adding these health players along with a Michael Conforto, who hit an opposite field home run yesterday, gives you some optimism in what has mostly been a frustrating season for both him and the team.
All that anger and frustration can go away over the next nine games against two bad baseball teams.
Editor’s Note: this was also published on Mets Merized Online
With Asdrubal Cabrera and Jose Reyes joining David Wright and Lucas Duda on the disabled list, the Mets needed to go to AAA to find a utility infielder. For some reason or another they chose Ty Kelly.
Kelly has been a nice story this year. He dominated AAA forcing the Mets to finally give him the major league shot the Orioles, Mariners, Blue Jays, and Cardinals declined to give him. He had gone from a career minor leaguer to a player who has finally gotten his shot to be a major leaguer at 27 years old. On June 8th, he even hit his first career home run off future Pirates ace James Taillon. Kelly’s story has been one of perseverance and one of triump. However, that terrific story does not make Kelly a major leaguer.
In 14 games, Kelly was over-matched hitting .148/.207/.259 with that one home run being his only extra base hit. He has showed why four other organizations passed over him time and again. He has shown why the Mets buried him on the depth chart after his 14 game stint. Given his performance, it makes you question why he is back with the Mets,e especially with the team having presumably better options down in the minors.
If you are going to stick with the 40 man roster, Eric Campbell would have been a better choice. He is a career .221/.310/.312 hitter, and he hit .159/.270/.222 this year. He had some flashes this year with a five game stretch that saw him hit .273/.467/.273 while playing well defensively at first and third base. On different occasions over the course of his career, he has come up with key pinch hits. Since his demotion, he has hit .363/.493/.593 in AAA, which shows that he has the ability to get on base, and anyone can hit in the Pacific Coast League. Regardless of your position on Campbell, he is a better player than Kelly.
However, Campbell has been given numerous chances to stick with the Mets, and he still hasn’t. It has gotten to the point that the Mets now favor Kelly over him. The Mets have moved on from him. With that in mind, it might be time to consider someone other than Campbell and Kelly.
Again, the Mets should give T.J. Rivera consideration. He was a Pacific Coast League All STytar, and he is hitting .340/.380/.490 in 90 games. He has more defensive versatility than Kelly and Campbell as he plays all four infield positions, and he can also play left field. He may not be a plus defender at any of those positions, but neither are Kelly or Campbell. He may be a 27 year old rookie, but so was the older Kelly when he was called-up with year. Overall, the only difference between Rivera and Kelly is that Kelly got his shot; a shot in which Kelly has mostly failed.
Admittedly, a pennant race is not the best time to give someone like Rivera a shot to prove he is capable of playing in the majors. Then again, a pennant race is an even worse time to keep sending out a player like Kelly who has shown he struggles at the major league level. If you are going to pass on Campbell, who has shown some ability to play at the major league level, the Mets should have called-up Rivera who provides the team more versatility despite not being a switch hitter like Kelly.
Sooner or later, you’d have to imagine Rivera will get his fairy tale shot like Kelly did. He might even do more with the chance than Kelly has. It would be in the Mets best interests to find out.
Editor’s Note: this was first published on Mets Minors
In the movie, A Time to Kill, an all white jury in the deep South was set to convict Carl Lee Hailey, a black man, until his young white lawyer, Jake Brigance, stood before the jury of his peers and gave the closing argument of a lifetime:
What he did was absolutely brilliant. He took the same exact story and presented it to the jury exactly how it happened to a group of people that know what happened. The only thing he changed was the person. Instead of it being Carl Lee Hailey’s daughter, it was a little girl that could very well be close to them. Ultimately, that is what made the story hit home; that was what made them change their opinion.
Overall, the “A Time to Kill Test” is a good test to use whenever passing judgment on anything including how you feel about a player in a particular situation.
If you do not think it was a big deal that Yoenis Cespedes was playing golf with an injured quad, ask yourself would your opinion have changed if that was Matt Harvey? If you had a problem with Cespedes playing golf, would you have had the same opinion if you discovered David Wright was the one playing golf or taking part in any other activity that would have hampered his injury? Would it even matter if Jose Reyes or Asdrubal Cabrera were taking part in recreational activities that could have possibly had an effect on their ability to get back on the field from their perspective injuries? Essentially, no matter what the situation, choose another player, preferably one on the other end of the spectrum, and see if your opinion would change.
Overall, from looking at things from that perspective, it would be fair to say Cespedes shouldn’t have been playing golf while he was injured as it could have prevented him from getting back on the field. It would be fair to say his playing golf was ill advised because the possibility remained that he could have exacerbated the injury.
Sure, it is possible that your perspective may change if it was Harvey or Wright in the same situation, but that’s the issue. If it was the same situation, your opinion on the matter shouldn’t change.