After being perched atop the Ionosphere for much of April and some of May, the Mets have crash landed back to Earth. To be fair, the Mets had to level out at some point. Even though they’ve been under preforming by not hitting or from sub-par performances on the field, they still sit in first place. It also doesn’t help the Mets disabled list is quite extensive.
I can sit here and blame Wilmer “The Error Factory” Flores (Yes. That’s my nickname for him) or Murphy’s performance on the field and write an essay just on that alone. But, the problem is deeper then that. The Mets have thirteen players on the DL right now. Of those thirteen, nine of them are pitching. In my last post I had said this regarding our tattered bullpen:“With some of our bullpen pieces coming back in the near future, I feel we might feel the strain for the short term.” Boy oh boy. It would be nice if that short term was over with already. the Mets could really use those pieces right about now.
Sandy Alderson doesn’t seem to concerned. In an interview Friday, he said this: “I think everybody needs to take a deep breath. Before we started that series, we were nine games over .500. We lost four games, three by one run. It’s easy to identify one play or one at-bat or one pitch as a defining moment in each of those games but the fact is that we need to swing the bats a little better and keep in perspective what happened. We need to calm down a little, and get back to work.”
How many deep breaths does Sandy mean? From the way things are looking we may need to take a few deep breaths before everything blows over. He is right about swinging a better bat though. The Mets are sitting towards the bottom of the League in team Batting average with .233. Not exactly a competitive offensive output coupled with errors coming from Wilmer and Murphy. Sandy’s lax comments should be concerning to fans.
When you have thirteen players on the DL and you’re missing players like Wright, Parnell, Wheeler and d’Arnaud and sinking faster then the Titanic you have to worry.
Alderson isn’t exactly ignoring the amount of injuries either: “We don’t have our full squad, everybody is aware of that,” Alderson said. “But at the same time, we have to play the games. And here’s what we have. We have plenty of potential in our lineup to score runs, but we haven’t been doing it recently, but like everything else in baseball, it will turn. The current question is when, and I don’t have that answer.”
It’s not like Alderson is tone deaf to the teams woes but, he doesn’t seem to be offering any solutions other then sticking it out with what we have. It’s only Mid-May and it’s not enough to jump ship yet but, it would be better to see a higher degree of urgency from the Mets top brass. Sandy is right, the Mets have the potential to do more then what there doing and hopefully things will turn sooner rather then later.
