In Queens, It's Getting Late, Early
An 0-4 start has me wondering if this team is worse than I thought.
Despite my reservations about the 2024 New York Mets, I found myself seated in the right field bleachers last Saturday afternoon at CitiField in Flushing for the second of a three-game set vs. the visiting Milwaukee Brewers. My wife has a birthday in April, and we’ve developed a habit of purchasing tickets for early season games that allow us to bundle a visit to CitiField with a trip to see my side of the family and celebrate.
On this day, we lucked out with the weather. Normally these early season games force us to bundle up like we’re going to a football game in early November. But on Saturday the mercury crested just over 60 degrees at first pitch. We were seated on the sunny side of the field, allowing us to take off our coats and enjoy the warm weather.
Despite the fact that the Mets had lost on Opening Day to Milwaukee on Friday by the score of 3-1, spirits seemed high among the Flushing faithful, though it didn’t take long for them to embrace their fears as the Brewers plated three runs in the top of the first. I have my doubts about New York’s starting rotation, and despite looking serviceable during Spring Training, ex-Yankee righthander Luis Severino is a cause for concern. Still just 30, Severino is coming off a season where his ERA climbed to 6.65 and ended early due to injury. With new President of Baseball Operations David Stearns unable to lure any high-priced pitching talent to Queens with Mets owner Steve Cohen’s billions, Stearns was forced to build around what remained of his rotation and make the best of it with second tier talent. He signed Severino, Giants lefthander Sean Manaea and Brewers righthander Adrian Houser.
In just five innings, Severino yielded six runs, all of them earned, as the Mets lineup was forced to contend with deficits of 3-0, 5-1 and 6-1 before staging a late inning rally to close the gap to 7-6 before the home side was retired in the bottom of the ninth. And while there were bright spots — all of New York’s runs were scored on home runs by catcher Francisco Alvarez, third baseman Brett Baty and first baseman Pete Alonso — you got the feeling that this Mets lineup would have to score four, five or six runs every night for the team to be competitive.
With nominal staff ace Kodai Senga lost to injury to start the season, righthander Tylor Megill was called into the rotation. Megill is a battler, and over the last three seasons that’s exactly what he’s done while trying to prove he belongs in the majors as a starting pitcher, with mixed results. He only lasted four innings on Sunday before experiencing shoulder pain and was promptly placed on the injured list on Monday. The Mets won’t need a fifth starter for a while, and they have Jose Butto stashed at Triple A Syracuse, but it’s an unsettling omen nonetheless.
Manaea got the start on Monday night and proved to be something of a revelation, shutting out undefeated Detroit for six innings, yielding just a single hit and striking out eight. The bullpen was flawless through three innings, but the Mets batters displayed no punch. The top of the lineup, Brandon Nimmo, Franciso Lindor and Alonso went a combined 0-11 at the plate with a pair of walks, and Detroit scored five times in the top of the tenth to cap off a 5-0 victory for the undefeated Tigers.
In baseball, as we learned from 1988’s Bull Durham, sometimes you win, sometimes you lose and sometimes it rains. Mercifully on Tuesday night it did rain, and the Mets and their fans got a brief respite from the misery. No, 0-4 is not 0-21, the modern mark of baseball futility to start a season that was set by the 1988 Baltimore Orioles. But we’ve seen enough of a body of work over the last season to detect some problems. The Mets lineup that was so productive in 2022 has fallen off a cliff. Free agent designated hitter J.D. Martinez is still in Florida for an extended Spring Training thanks to his late arrival in camp. One would think that his debut in Queens would be moved up, lest outfield spare parts Tyrone Taylor or D.J. Stewart be asked to hit cleanup again in his absence. At least the team had the good sense on Monday to move Alvarez into that spot in the interim. As for what’s wrong at the plate, the team ought to be able to figure it out, as it has two hitting coaches in Jeremy Barnes and Eric Chavez. One wonders how that arrangement is working out.
In the end, one has to fall back on the wisdom of Baseball Hall of Fame member and one-time Mets manager Yogi Berra who famously said, “It gets late early out here.” Once the Mets wrap up their series with Detroit on Thursday afternoon, they head out on their first road trip to Cincinnati and Atlanta. The Reds are a young team on the rise, while the Braves are still the same nemesis that has dogged the Mets since the Braves were re-aligned into the National League East in 1994. This Mets team would have had a hard time gaining a split of a four-game series in Atlanta with Senga in the rotation, one wonders how they’ll manage without him. Probably not well.
A weekend of baseball in New York wouldn’t be complete without a dose of #LOLMets, and the locals didn’t disappoint in the 2024 season’s opening series.
In the eighth inning on Opening Day, Brewers shortstop Willy Adames hit what looked like a routine double play ball to Mets third baseman Baty. He tossed the ball to second baseman McNeil who was at the bag. But while he caught the ball for the force of Rhys Hoskins at second, a late slide by the Brewers first baseman broke up the double play. McNeil took exception and it wasn’t long before the benches cleared.
No punches were thrown, but a war of words between McNeil and Hoskins followed, both on the field and in the respective clubhouses after the game. But what was most interesting was an investigation conducted by Jomboy Media using Baseball Savant that looked more like the work of a professional baseball scout. He asked a simple question: was Hoskins a dirty player and what does the video record show?
In the end, the Mets might end up regretting that McNeil ever complained about Hoskins, as the deep dive revealed that: 1) Hoskins always slides late and hard into second on double play balls, a legal tactic that infrequently results in a runner reaching first safely, and; 2) The Mets as a team, with few exceptions, never slide hard into second, a tactic that I can’t understand.
But of course, it didn’t end there. In old time baseball, the code would demand that the Mets starter during the next game on Saturday, which was Severino, would hold Hoskins to account by throwing inside. First base was open, but the Mets chose to pitch to Hoskins, and he promptly doubled home a pair of runs. Later, he added a two-run home run off Severino, and after that, scored from third base on a balk.
Apparently having seen enough of Hoskins, the Mets decided to do something about it in the top of the seventh when he came up for his fourth at-bat of the game. Reliever Yohan Ramirez threw behind Hoskins, and the umpires ejected Ramirez. Later, he and Mets manager Carlos Mendoza would be suspended for three games and one game respectively, though the Ramirez suspension would be later reduced to two games on appeal. After the game, Mendoza and Ramirez both claimed the pitch wan’t on purpose, so it figures they both would be suspended anyway. From the Mets booth, Ron Darling took the team to task, saying that if there was a time to throw at Hoskins, it was early in the game before he did all of his damage at the plate.
#LOLMets is always lurking nearby whether you like it or not.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okXhAC78d4Q