After The Trade Deadline, The Mets Need More From Their Holdovers

Forbes

2 days ago

In 2000 and 2015, the Mets built off a busy trade deadline with series sweeps that turned out to be defining moments in their World Series push.
The Mets can only hope their inability to author a sweep this weekend won't end up the defining moment of this season.
While the Mets didn't have the worst weekend in New York baseball — mission accomplished in that regard, Brian Cashman — their series loss to the Giants, capped by a 12-4 rout Sunday, did shine a brighter light on the underlying issues that David Stearns couldn't or wouldn't address at the deadline.
First the couldn't: This isn't fantasy baseball, so there was nothing Stearns could really do to jolt the top half of the lineup. But if the Mets' core veterans — Brandon Nimmo, Francisco Lindor, Juan Soto and Pete Alonso — don't start hitting, a bullpen comprised entirely of Mariano Rivera clones is going to have a hard time getting the Mets to the playoffs, never mind winning it all.
Nimmo, Lindor, Soto and Alonso offered up the template the Mets need for a deep playoff run by combining to go 9-of-17 with 10 RBIs in Saturday's 12-6 win. They finished the weekend with five extra-base hits.
But such production is an outlier for a quartet that is batting .234 with 32 homers and 103 RBIs since June 13 — a 43-game span in which the Mets are 18-25 while scoring 173 runs, tied for the fourth-fewest in the majors with the Twins, with whom no playoff contender wants to be compared. And the five extra-base hits give the foursome just 17 extra-base hits in 15 games since the All-Star Break.
The struggles on offense are long-lasting and concerning, but not nearly as long-lasting or concerning as the issues within the rotation. David Peterson is the only Mets starter to pitch beyond the sixth since June 1, a 53-game stretch that represents almost exactly a third of the season.
Even more alarming, the only pitchers other than Peterson to even record an out in the sixth in 27 games since July 1 are Clay Holmes and Frankie Montas, who have done so twice apiece. Neither Holmes, who is trying to complete the transition from the bullpen to the rotation, nor Montas look like pitchers the Mets can rely upon even for a handful of innings as potential postseason starters.
The Mets, of course, are just one of 30 teams that can't find enough starting pitching thanks to the way the game has 'progressed.' Twenty-five years ago last week, Bobby Jones completed a post-deadline sweep of the Cardinals by tossing a 118-pitch complete game in a 4-2 win. Really. A 118-pitch complete game. In this century.
Stearns not adding a frontline starter last week suggests the price was exorbitant and indicated some faith not only in the Mets' current options providing more length over the rest of the summer — Montas, Sean Manaea and Kodai Senga are all coming back from injuries — but also prospects such as Nolan McLean and Brandon Sproat, each of whom are thriving at Triple-A Syracuse.
But the urgency to find an internal upgrade increased over the weekend, when Senga and Montas lasted just four innings apiece in the final two games against the Giants. While the best arms in the bullpen patched together 15 outs Saturday, there was no going to the well a second time Sunday, especially after Montas put the Mets in a 7-1 hole.
'It's a tough spot because we did it (Saturday), but I don't know that we had enough to get through nine innings throwing all the high-leverage guys,' Carlos Mendoza said.
At least those new high-leverage guys fared well in their New York debuts. Ryan Helsley, Tyler Rogers and Gregory Soto have combined to allow an unearned run with seven strikeouts over their first 4 1/3 innings with the Mets.
Helsley, who spent the first 10-plus years of his career in the Cardinals organization, evoked memories of the Mets' 2000 post-trade deadline surge by saying Friday felt like the first day of school. After Robin Ventura distributed name tags following the deadline 25 years ago, Mike Bordick and Bubba Trammell each homered in their first at-bat with their new team and Rick White earned the win in his debut.
But there were nowhere near as many positive signs over the weekend from the holdover Mets who are going to determine how far this team goes.
'He's got to be better,' Mendoza said of Montas.
Unfortunately for the Mets, he's not the only one.