UTK Special: The Mets Should Be In The Playoffs
A Elimination UTK Special
The season for the Mets was defined by the change in ownership and heading into the 2021 offseason, optimism sprang up ahead of the flowers. There was enough pitching, even with Noah Syndergaard sidelined, and an exciting core, plus the new billionaire on the block was engaged and hardly hamstrung by cash the way that fans of the franchise had gotten used to post-Madoff.
Instead, injuries and a front office in turmoil from the jump have put the Mets and Mets fans back in a familiar position. A season that started with such promise was derailed by infighting, players being vastly off-message, and mostly, the same thing they’ve dealt with for years - pitching injuries.
The team ends up further back of a wild card than the division, which is telling in itself. The Braves lost their best starter and one of the best players in the game, yet here they are, putting themselves back atop the division and with a chance to go deep into the playoffs despite it. The Mets? They just faded, despite big deals at the deadline, largely because they couldn’t figure out how to get their injured players back on the field.
The Mets have more days lost than anyone in the major leagues, at 2,195 days per the wizards at Man Games Lost, as of September 22. That equates to a WAR loss of 36 and while it is not a 1 to 1 relationship, reducing injuries by even half would have put the Mets in a playoff position rather than heading home with an under-500 finish.
The facts are bad enough, but the perception is worse.
The Mets could fix their front office issues with a couple good hires at the top and then filling in, but there’s no indication that they have a real plan here. There’s a wishlist of top names - Theo Epstein, Billy Beane, and David Stearns - but in each case, this wouldn’t even be a lateral move. With Sandy Alderson still in place and Bryn Alderson handling the GM role, none of those would have the same direct path to ownership they had in their previous/current role. Yes, they’d likely have that in reality, but even if Sandy Alderson shifts entirely to a business or emeritus role, it’s not the same since Beane has largely done exactly that since Alderson left Oakland.
The President role - where the Mets hope to fill in - isn’t likely to have GM choice, but could have managerial choice. Luis Rojas is going to have to hope that the new President doesn’t want to make a change, but there’s rumblings Rojas might jump ship ahead and get a soft landing somewhere. With all three of the top guys and adding in Bryn Alderson to the discussion, there’s little clue about where they’d go. None have hired many managers in their recent careers to guide us, with Stearns having no hires at all. Granted, Craig Counsell being in place has made that decision moot, but largely, Stearns hasn’t been involved with many decisions like this at all to guide us where he might go.
All that is moot. None of them are coming and if they do, I’ll be shocked and surprised, left wondering just how many zeroes Cohen put on that check.
The key injury for the season should be “pitching staff” but we can be more specific with Jacob deGrom, who symbolizes the Mets in 2021 and the self-image of Mets fans, who trend to the negative and have almost trained themselves to believe they can’t have nice things. DeGrom had an historic first half, but the second half was never to be, derailed by a small UCL tear, a flexor issue, and an inability to return him from it. The Mets have enough technology that they should have been able to know what deGrom’s mechanical issues were, but inside the elbow, as examined by both Mets and outside doctors, the elbow simply wasn’t holding up.
Some of this is the 100 mph conundrum. Aroldis Chapman as the notable exception, no one has thrown 100 mph on a regular basis and survived long without significant injury, usually to the elbow. DeGrom’s velocity has crept up as he’s continued to refine himself as he aged, throwing harder and harder, reinforced by better and better results. Durability was the concern and now, deGrom missed half the season, stopping and starting and potentially doing more damage to the elbow. There’s no certainty this isn’t where he’ll be, and no, Tommy John surgery shouldn’t be done now. His UCL was declared healed by imaging, confirmed by multiple top of the line doctors, and would go against every medical standard. DeGrom doesn’t need surgery; he needs proper workload management.
On the hitting side, Brandon Nimmo should be the development system’s golden star. Drafted as a near unknown on scouting info, Nimmo’s paid off as a star level and improving player. The downside is he lost 66 games to injury to a recurrent hamstring strain and a recurrent shoulder issue. He’s only played 75 percent of his team’s games once in his pro baseball career, but he’s shown the level he could play at if it were possible. The Mets may simply not be able to manage him and if so, maximizing a part time player should become the focus. Nimmo’s value is mixed only because of his health and the Mets inability to manage it, though there’s certainly signs that his talent hasn’t been affected.
The Mets not only had their own injuries, they bought some too. Dellin Betances had injury problems while he was with the Yankees and since coming to the Mets, things have only gotten worse. He came into 2020 way down on velocity and never had any consistency. 2021 was worse, appearing only once before hitting the IL and ending his season with shoulder surgery in late June. Betances was expected to be a key reliever and provided very little return on the Mets’ $16m investment.
It’s one thing to have a fragile player with upside that you were wrong about, but Tommy Hunter has been one of the more durable pitchers of the last decade. As a Met, he never played, unable to get on the field and dumped on the Rays in the Rich Hill deal. While Hunter wasn’t expected to be a high leverage reliever, it is another body that had to be dealt with, another piece of the plan that didn’t work, and someone had to scout, sign, and manage Hunter, down to passing the entrance physical. While Hunter isn’t expensive in baseball terms, every penny they paid to him was avoidable.
It’s fitting that this piece comes out on the very day that Noah Syndergaard returns and potentially makes his last outing in a Mets uniform. I can’t knock the Mets much for an extended Tommy John rehab. Virtually every Tommy John from the early 2020 window has had a complex or even unsuccessful process, for no known reason. Syndergaard was no worse than most, but also no better.
What happens to Syndergaard in the offseason will be telling. Tommy John surgery is normally very predictable, so the assumption should be that Syndergaard will be back to normal after what should be a normal off-season and spring training. There’s more uncertainty with this class than ever, but the Mets should know more than anyone else about what he’s done. Given what Syndergaard and the Mets have said throughout, the Mets not re-signing Syndergaard would be pretty damning.
One AL athletic trainer who’s been watching the Syndergaard situation in anticipation of his team taking a look at him in free agency told me “If the Mets don’t make a credible offer, no one else should. That team has been saying since spring that he was fine. If they don’t want him back, I have to think they know something else is wrong.”
While many have focused on what Steve Cohen could do or would do in contrast to Sterling ownership (the Wilpon/Katz entity), the answer is “not much.” Some of that is the result of smart caution. Cohen couldn’t fire Sandy Alderson and come in checkbook ablaze without incurring the wrath of fellow owners, as opposed to the devil may care hedge fund king image that Cohen cultivated in his day job.
Some of the changes were thwarted by the GM hires - Jared Porter’s quick exit left the team headless in the spring where much could have been done, while Zack Scott’s later season but still quick in the scheme of things exit muted some of the late season moves most teams were doing, such as re-shuffling the front office as several teams have already started, notably the Padres and Reds.
Still, the bulk of the coaching staff, the strength and conditioning staff, the development staff, and the medical staff is the same as before Cohen came in. All are qualified and hard working, but as I always say, at some point, results have to count. (Or does Steve Cohen’s investment career tell us anything about how he views results?) The sheer number of soft tissue and workload injuries this team has had over the last decade point to conditioning. Mike Barwis was famously brought in by Jeff Wilson to fix this problem, but that was 2014 and again, not much has changed. Heck, The 7 Line has been noting this for over a decade and massage chairs and rock mats aren’t going to fix it. A real plan is.
The Mets were on track to make the playoffs, spending over 100 days in first place despite having talent on the sidelines and worse. The team finally broke down under the weight of those injuries, their depth broken despite pre-season and in-season deals to strengthen the team. The payroll isn’t the problem, and neither is the talent. The problem is that the Mets system, as currently organized, can’t keep that talent healthy and on the field. It doesn’t take billions to fix this, just a will to act.