3
2009
Speed, Pitching and Defense, But What About Fundamentals?
An article by 
The New York Mets have released a statement that they will not be altering the dimensions of Citi Field for the 2010 season based on the recommendations of Omar Minaya and Jerry Manuel.
Ed Eagle of Mets.com writes,
The Mets’ franchise legacy has been built upon strong pitching, and they’ll need to continue to focus on that aspect of their team-building to be successful in their new home in the future.
Citing a team source, the New York Daily News reported Thursday that the Mets plan to keep Citi Field at its current pitcher-friendly dimensions for the 2010 season upon the recommendations of general manager Omar Minaya and manager Jerry Manuel.
I’m actually a little surprised by the news and I thought for sure the Mets would shorten the height of portions of the wall. Either way, I don’t think it’s that big of a deal, and personally I like the dimensions and the uniqueness of Citi Field.
One of the things that caught my attention was the following quote by Jerry Manuel which was included in the article.
“We’re going to try to build a team with speed and defense and pitching,” Manuel told the newspaper. “I think that fits that style.”
I have a few issues with that quote…
First, he says that we are going to try and build a team. So does that mean we are officially in rebuild mode?
If that’s the case, than what direction are the Mets going in heading into this off season?
Manuel says, and I agree with him, that the Mets will focus on speed, defense and pitching.
I think we can all agree that with a healthy Jose Reyes, Carlos Beltran, Luis Castillo and David Wright, the Mets will continue to be one of fastest teams in the league. The emergence of Angel Pagan will play into it as well.
Defensively, the Mets have some work to do.They are fifth in the league with 82 errors and their star third baseman leads the team with 13. Before Jose Reyes went on the DL, he was on the verge of a woeful defensive season, and in 35 games played, he already had five errors to go with a career worst .966 fielding percentage. Obviously, Dan Murphy has improved some since taking over at first base, but he still ranks in the bottom when compared to all first basemen and he doesn’t make up for it with his bat. Leftfield has been a carousel of bad defenders which started with the inept Dan Murphy. Angel Pagan might be a glimmer of hope, but I want to see more of him before drawing any definitive conclusions.
Now we come to pitching. I would love to know exactly how the Mets will play this hand. Here you have a pitching staff that is fortunate enough to pitch in one of baseball’s largest parks, and yet they lead the league in walks. Somebody please explain that to me because it doesn’t compute if you were to apply the laws of logic. In a post by Ed Leyro on this site, there is a good debate on the virtues of Dan Warthen. If job performance is still judged by results, and last time I checked most teams west of the East River still operate that way, than the question is why is Dan Warthen still here? Not one pitcher has stepped up on his watch and in fact you could safely assert that every Mets pitcher has declined under his tutelage. As one reader writes, that includes K-Rod, Santana, Pelfrey, Perez and Putz.
Will the Mets go out and revamp the rotation as they did the bullpen last off season? In 2008, Minaya failed to address the concerns in the bullpen and said “they simply had a bad year”. He was wrong and was forced to revamp the entire bullpen after the season.
Will he do the same in 2010? Will he simply say that Pelfrey and company simply had a bad year and do nothing? Is next season riding on the questionable returns of Oliver Perez, John Maine, Johan Santana and Jon Niese who are all coming back from surgery?
The Mets have a ton of work to do if they want the ideal pitching staff to compliment the dimensions of Citi Field. However, I am convinced this off season will feature a bunch of hot air from Mets management that the Mets already have that ideal pitching staff, and that they will comeback healthier and better in 2010. If they do revamp the rotation, we might have to wait yet another year as we did in 2008 with the bullpen. The Mets are notorious for not learning from past mistakes.
Finally, why is it that the Mets higher-ups never mention the word “fundamentals”?
If you’re going to build a team that you hope will come out on the winning end of a 2-1 ballgame, shouldn’t fundamentals be the number one priority?
Think about how many fewer errors, and fewer baserunning mistakes, and fewer walks the Mets would have had this season if they simply used their heads out there on the field. I bet you could easily add 8-10 mores victories to the win column if only they had a coaching staff that focused on elevating this team’s baseball IQ.
Unless you have a fundamentally sound team, it doesn’t really matter how good your speed and pitching is. Your mental mistakes will always find you in this game. If the Mets are banking on going toe to toe in mostly one-run and two-run games, they can start by overhauling their approach to the game, because in the end Yogi Berra was right,
“Baseball is ninety percent mental. The other half is physical.”
By the way, it was great to see Yogi take part in the festivities last month when we honored the 1969 Mets.
About the Author: Joe DeCaro
Went to my first Mets game, a Mayors Trophy game at Shea, in '73. We beat the Yankees 8-4 and I was hooked. I marched in two Banner Day parades, and before the Grand Slam single, there was the "Hendu Can Do" grand slam - I was there. I've collected Mets memorabilia all my life and started Mets Merized Online to feed my addiction.
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NL East Standings
| Team | W | L | Pct. | GB |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nationals | 26 | 18 | .591 | - |
| Braves | 26 | 20 | .565 | 1.0 |
| Mets | 24 | 21 | .533 | 2.5 |
| Marlins | 24 | 21 | .533 | 2.5 |
| Phillies | 23 | 23 | .500 | 4.0 |
Last updated: 05/25/2012
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OUTSTANDING post Joe,
This is exactly what it’s all about. I think it’s very ominous for next year with Jerry Manuel coming back as manager. I do not like the way he runs a ball club. His mentoring style makes him a good guy to keep as a coach though but he’s not a guy to make on the field decisions.
As you already said, the fundamentals are horrendous and it appears he doesn’t know how go about correcting them.
As for his style, he’s not a guy for squeeze plays & hit and run plays…The Mets should be a team that does this, you have to keep the other team on their toes and always on guard.
Our base running is very station to station. He doesn’t teach his base runners to force the issue. You have to get your runners out of the habit of slowing down approaching 2B on doubles and instead of settling for what you have, run full speed and try to round the bag to force a throw…you FORCE the other team to make a mistake.
We have problems hitting the correct cut-off man.
Our pitchers don’t back batters off the plate. If a team is showing you up you have to hit a guy every now and then. The Mets have to show backbone and if necessary even instigate a problem sometimes.
It is 100% INEXCUSABLE that we are in September and runners are still rounding 3B and looking back at the ball. Incredible. You have to have your on-deck hitter positioned to help him with that. If i know that then why doesn’t Manual know it?
If Manuel does in fact try to correct these mistakes and the guys aren’t listening to him then all the more reason he must be replaced.
Whether he is right or wrong, everybody sees how the runners have disrespected Razor Shines several times by completely ignoring his instructions. I don’t think the coaching staff has the complete respect of the players.
There’s hardly any aggressiveness. Jerry’s laid back style creates a laid back style of play and this team cannot afford to play like that.
I’m sure i forgot some other things but you get the idea.
Great posts by both of you. You both hit the nail on the head with regard to fundamentals and baseball IQ. All the talent in the world means nothing if it is not applied correctly and that job falls upon the coaches and the rest of the development team.
What scares me the most is how ill-equipped the Mets players are when they get called up from the minors. Batters don’t run out of the box, pitchers are afraid to pitch inside or throw strikes. They are always working behind in the count and it drives me nuts.
The baserunning this season has been a complete joke. The person who commented above me mentioned that the players do not respect the coaches and he’s right. We have seen the evidence time and time again.
Warthen keeps saying the right things and yet the pitchers are still as erratic as ever.
The batters have no clue at the plate. They are the poorest team I’ve ever seen as far as situational hitting goes. I don’t expect HoJo to hit the ball for them, but I do expect something simple like driving the ball to the outfield with a runner on third, or hitting the ball to the right side of the infield to advance a runner from second to third. They are absolutely clueless.
It’s painful to see Jose Reyes’ approach at the plate (when he’s healthy). It’s pot luck with him. He’s blessed with speed and yet he could easily be so much better than what we’ve seen so far. If he hasn’t adapted his situational hitting after six years, he never will.
Why do our baserunners run the bases while looking wildly all over the place when they should be focused on picking up their coach and running full throttle? I can go on and on, but I’ll stop here.
I don’t see how this team can advance with Minaya, Manuel and the rest of the coaches. They don’t even understand the problems, so how can they fix them.
After all the follies the Mets play this season. Bad plays doesn’t translate to wins.
I know that I sound like a broken record but Jerry Manuel should be offered the Mets triple A managing job for next year. He is a good mentor and would be in position to get players ready for the bigs.
We need a manager with fire in his belly – and that would be Valentine. This is a manager who will do anything to win.
I’ve been floating Davey Johnson as the new GM – but he may be too smart to want to take the job with little Jeffie picking favorites and undermining.
At the core of the problem are the Wilpons. Until they get it in their heads that they have people running their organization that should be gone, nothing good will happen to the Mets. The good news is that money does get the Wilpon’s attention – and a successful club will give them more money then they can shake a stick at.
Great article and posts as well. They hit the nail on the head. I find it amusing that we have a pitcher’s park based on the Mets tradition of strong pitching. But tradition may have won games in the past, but tradition doesn’t win games today. It’s performance that wins games today. The sad fact is that our current pitching staff is simply not good enough to take advantage of this pitcher’s park. Even our ace, Santana, is prone to giving up HR’s. And don’t even consider Pelfrey and Perez in the company of Met tradition, they’re not exactly Seaver and Koosman you know. Maine is non-existent, so he doesn’t count at all. In fact, Figueroa and Misch have been looking more like gamers lately than all these other guys.
The reality is that our opposition uses its pitching staff to take advantage of our pitcher’s park to shut down our offense, while their offense takes our guys over the wall. So much for the G.D. pitcher’s park. We have a section in the RF stands known as Utley’s section. The Phils are the perfect example. Their staff from top to bottom shuts us down in Citi, while Utley, Howard, Ibanez, Rollins, and Victorino blast away. Our strategy is a farce. Use small ball while the Phils kill our mediocre pitchers with big balls. Pitcher’s Park my Butt. Omar and Jerry are clowns who can’t think their way out of a paper bag.
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