6
2012
What Went Wrong For The 2012 Mets?
An article by 
Other than a lack of overall talent, there’s never just one reason why a team fails to win. The Mets began the season projected for the basement, with some corners speculating 100 losses.
So, at 74-88, 14 games below .500, and in fourth place, the Mets did better than expected, but in the end were still disappointing and kicked a promising season away with a dismal second half.
The Mets were 46-40 at the break, but ended the first half on a sour note by losing two of three at Citi Field to the Cubs. This coming after losing two of three to the Cubs at Wrigley Field a short time earlier.
You can’t consider yourself a serious contender when you lose consecutive series to a team that lost 100 games. You just can’t do it.
So, what went wrong?
STREAKY BAD: The Mets’ longest winning streak in the second half was four, accomplished twice. Conversely, they had five such losing streaks, including dropping six straight three times. When a team is streaky bad like that players begin to press, which is what happened in July and August.
STAYING WITH A PAT HAND: GM Sandy Alderson said several times the team had the resources to add talent if they were in contention at the trade deadline. But, that doesn’t meaning waiting until July 31. The bullpen had shown signs of breaking down in late June and early July, and there was a woeful lack of power with Ike Davis, Jason Bay and Lucas Duda doing nothing, but Alderson was content to believe things would get better and was satisfied at the break with a 46-40 record. The Mets opened the second half with two losing streaks of at least five games and by that time it was too late.
INJURIES: All teams have them and the Mets were no exception. It’s hard to win when three-fifths of your rotation goes down. First, Mike Pelfrey, then Dillon Gee and Johan Santana. The Mets simply didn’t have the replacement parts they needed, although the got more from R.A. Dickey than they could have wished for and Matt Harvey made a good first impression.
THE BULLPEN COLLAPSED AGAIN: The bullpen wasn’t bad in April, but was non-existent in the second half. The pen’s failures can be summarized by just 36 saves, and a 20-22 record in one-run games and 3-7 in extra innings. Clearly, they couldn’t slam the door late. The problem wasn’t really the closer as much as it was the bridge leading to the closer.
NO OFFENSE: The Mets had three players with 20-plus homers, but that’s not enough. The Mets went 15 straight home games in the second half where they scored three or fewer runs which lead to a minus-56 runs differential. If Davis had any kind of a first half he might have finished with 40. David Wright couldn’t carry the team from July on and one wonders if he’ll be a 30-homer player again. The Mets received very little from Bay, Duda, Josh Thole and Andres Torres. Who would have thought Scott Hairston would lead the outfield with 20 homers?
About the Author: John Delcos
I am an active member of the BBWAA and have covered Major League Baseball in several capacities for over 20 years, including ten in New York working the Mets' and Yankees' beat. I covered the Baltimore Orioles for eight years and the Cleveland Indians before that. I currently serve as an editor and senior staff writer for Mets Merized Online. Follow me on Twitter @jdelcos.
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Just think, the Mets consider Lucas Duda a building block for the future! Maybe even the 1B of the future! Why? Because he draws walks! With geniuses like this running the show the Mets future looks bright indeed! Oh, and if you believe that, then Josh Thole is going to hit .336 with 25 HR and 100 RBI next season like Buster Posey did this year. NOT!
What went wrong. Listen pal I’ve been married for 40 years now and I still can’t figure it out and you want an answer to this question? Think about it!
It is getting ridiculous that so many contributors to this site continue to twist statistics back and forth to suit their needs of bitching about the direction of this team. They were not complaining during the first half of the season when our hitters other than Ike were being patient and were making the opposing pitchers work very hard. This approach of being selective got our hitters better pitches to hit especially with 2 outs as they led the league in 2 out RBI’s which translates to clutch hitting. When the bats cooled and the opposing pitchers began to take advantage of the weaknesses of some of our younger guys, our guys didn’t adjust. Look at what happened with Kirk and with Valdespin alone. They started pressing and swinging at bad pitches. Kirk was sent down and will mature. Valdespin has shown physical skills but I think he is a dumb player. I hope he is dealt as part of a package to help fill some our holes.
If you want to be pissed off you should be directing it towards the Wilpons who have
managed to escape nearly a catastrophic situation. Their financial problems and their unwillingness in the past to change with the times have cost this team plenty. They spent zillions with the SNY network and built an expensive ballpark that unfortunately pays homage to the Brooklyn Dodgers instead of the history of the NY Mets. No disrespect to Jackie Robinson intended!
Being in a precarious position of losing the team, they ended up bringing in Sandy Alderson to keep the ship afloat. Was he forced upon the Mets? It doesn’t matter. The bottom line is that Sandy has determined that long term contracts are risky especially with players who have a history of bad injuries.I think that he made a mistake by listening to the fans uproar over the prospect of trading Jose Reyes before he hit the market as a Free Agent and was hoping that Jose’s demands would be tempered in order to stay with the Mets. This won’t happen with David Wright. I believe that Sandy will come up with what is needed to resign David to an extension. As far as R.A. Dickey goes, I think he will be made a good
offer for the future but that it won’t be part of the negotiations of David Wright’s contract. I think that Dickey’s concern is that if the Mets don’t make good offers to David that it would be a sign that the team does not care enough about winning. If Sandy feels that Dickey is being ridiculous with his demands…he will go to the winter meetings and trade him while his value is sky high. Trading him might be the best idea if you send him to a team that needs a starter badly but only if they can get a young thumper to play a corner outfield position or be our next catcher. We have already seen Matt Harvey and the next piece of the puzzle can be filled if Zack Wheeler is ready to jump to the majors and contribute immediately in 2013. Sandy Alderson is hopeful of this. Our starting rotation with Dickey, Niese, Harvey and Wheeler as the first 4 guys could conceivably be awesome and give us the innings we need from our starters every night so that our middle relief work is greatly reduced. This is where our bullpen is the weakest.
This off season is going to determine the next 6-10 years for this team. If the Mets financial problems prevent them from keeping David Wright in the fold and they make no attempts to fill any of the holes they have, it could be disastrous.
It would be very wise to get the David Wright situation solved sooner than later.
Duda does not provide the defense at 1b that Ike does, even though he seemed to regress a bit this year, but if you want pitching to lead us out you need good defense behind them to keep them in games and Duda is not the caliber of 1b that Ike is.
What really killed the season?
“The APPROACH”
We had 620 PA with a 0-1 count! (189 Hits)
502 of which went to 0-2! (63 Hits)
(We were wearing out the Pitcher you know!)
441 PA with a 1-0 count (295 Hits)
with 126 of them going to 2-0 (43 Hits in a hitters count)
124 going to 3-0 (2 measly hits in a hitters count)
NY Mets were 29th in BA on the first pitch hitting .298, 11 In PA with 2 Strikes hitting .180 (16th)
In the first half Pitchers (pre All Star) threw 12752 Pitches in all PA 10870 after the All Star break. Some suggest they didn’t take as many pitches in the second half but the truth is more like Pitcher pounded the zone so taking didn’t work anymore they just wound up in tat awful 2 strike count where they hit .180..
baseball is a game of point counterpoint. What works today does not work tomorrow especially if the team gets onto what you are doing and does the thing that stops “The APPROACH” dead in it’s tracks!
And thats pretty much what happened in the second half and who benefitted?
Ike Davis who had always been aggressive and slumped until they came at us byt throwing first pitch strikes to get ahead instead of playing with us the way they used to when Ike was hitting below .200!
And 20 something HRs from Ike was the result!
They like Duda and claim he stuck with thier approach…Well why the hell did he suck all year if thats the case?
Metsie — What is ““The APPROACH”???
Sandy recently said it was to not swing during an early count UNLESS the batter thinks he can handle the pitch. I infer from what Sandy said, it isn’t to NEVER swing at an early count pitch!
What are your thoughts on the matter? Did Sandy change horses in midstream? If so do you have evidence that he did?
Thanks.
You think that a Picher doesn’t know what strikes you like to hit and can’t throw strikes he knows you have problems handling?
Busting a guy inside with a fastball when he likes it low and outside?
Throwing a fastball hitter a curve for a strike knowing he has been told to wait for that fastball he loves to handle?
Both Sandy and Terry emphasized base on balls!
People seem to gloss over that fact.
“The Approach” is all about extending PAs and pitch counts. But you can only do that if the Pitcher has a problem throwing strikes.
Look at what ALL the good pitching in the NL east does to us.
Those are all guys who can throw strikes you don’t like and instead of waiting for a pitch you can handle (which is fine right up until the point you have 2Ks on you) you need to focus on protecting the plate and deny easy strikes to a pitcher and take advantage of his desire to get ahead of you early in the count.
Most teams hit well above .300 on the first pitch. Why don’t we? Because we are too busy taking them, winding up in the hole from the get go and forced to bat defensivly so that it doesn’t matter what you like you have to swing or punched out.
My 5 point Solution:
1 -Fire Jeff Wilpon as COO
2 -Promote Sandy Alderson to President/COO
3 -Rehire Omar Minaya again as GM
4- After this year, replace Terry Collins with Wally
5- Stop leaking out negative or BS stories to the press
Part of the “approach” problem was that they built the park for speed and the team for power when they first built the park. They have been trying to figure out what they want since then. Now it seems they want power over speed. Problem this year is we had enough of neither one. We did not get enough power production and we had NO speed at all.
The loss of power is a direct result of “The Approach”
Who led the team in HRs this year?
Ike Davis the guy accused of not accepting the coaching and not buying into “The Approach!”
You don’t take 3-0 or 3-1 and go for the walk when you know the fastball is on it’s way and coming down broadway. Unless you recognize it is clearly a ball you take your cut at it.
Thats why the Power dropped this year (including Wright), because they were too busy doing something to the pitcher when they should have been doing somthing to the baseball that was going to be called a strike!
actually…the problem has always been a lack of a COHESIVE vision.
They started the ideas on the stadium and their dimensions in 2001-2002….the dimesions were a throwback and mainly built on aesthetics and a nostalgic old-school, a team built on pitching and defense would benefit…it was said that this was FRED’s idea…and JEFF was actually against it…
8 years later, Sandy Alderson announces the dimension changes and points to the entertainment factor and how fans want more offense and how hard it is to find guys athletic enough to play the OF…
again….building a team is last on the list…its about entertainment first….
when the dimensions were big…it was about giving the fans an old-school feel…
when the dimensions got small…it was about giving the fans more entertainment from high-scoring games…
a team that bases their moves on science and facts would never put Lucas Duda in RF, and would not have Jordany Valdespin play LF, CF, RF, SS, and 2B during his first week and then wonder why he cant concentrate on his plate discipline…
a team that wants to spread the PR love around, wont make 1 player the central focus of all their attention and wont throw players under the bus…
the mets are a mess…with sandy, w/o sandy, w/ omar, w/o omar, w/ duquette, w/o duquette, w/ phillips, w/o phillips…
the 1 constant factor is the Wilpons…
I have never been a David worshipper. If these people were aying attention they would take a good look at his second half and see that it reminds them of the David who has shown regresssion over the past few years. I don;t hate him. I like him. I do not love him. And to be honest, I am at the point where I wnt all the old faces tobe gone. This run of failure is too depressing.
Exactly,
Time to move on already. Ike and Niese are cornerstones of the future you build around, not trade. Ike will be a prolific 40/HR guy a year and you’re gonna trade him because he wants to hit his own way? If that happens and this kid becomes a star while the team is choked by David Wright’s contract and the team remains stagnant it will go down in Mets annals like the Nolan Ryan, Amos Otis trades.
Move Wright. He’s your biggest chip. Make phone calls and see who wouldn’t mind taking a one year rental maybe you find a team (or they find you) that wants him with the intention of keeping him. Add to that the possibility of a 3-way deal and 3-way deals could be a nice way of improving for this type of Mets team.
Gotta make calls. Find out who needs what because if you can’t make a deal directly then you can try to find a team that has what you need but they don’t need Wright but if you find a team that can use Wright and has something you don’t need but the other party does than you trade for that chip, move him to the party that needs him and you fill a need that the first team you traded Wright to didn’t have. And you can do that not only with Wright but with other players/packages as well.
Get off your ASS sandy, stop looking at PPPA, stop worrying about OBP, and start thinking about baseball, competition, and WINNING.
I would trade Wright and Dickey. David had a great first half and a mediocre second. Not worth the kind of money he will be looking for next year. But his trade value will be good. Some team will say with a good team around him he will not fade like he did. We will not have a good team around him for at least another year or two. Dickey is older, but being a knuckleballer he is very durable arm-wise. So he has high trade value. Neither of these guys is really worth big money, and I am sick of writers moaning about David being a met for life and so on and so forth. David is in decline. Do not pay for decline. You have to ether re-sign him or trade him THIS off-season. Get younger, a lot cheaper and potentially better in the long run. Right now the Bay and Santana salaries are strangling this team. In fact, I would actually keep Niese and trade Dickey. A rotation of Harvey, Wheeler, Niese and Gee and whoever would do me for next year. This team is not going anywhere next year. As for Ike, I dont know. You love that power, but he is just not a good hitter. He is the kind of guy who can accidentally hit 35 HRs, but is still an easy out most of the time. If you can package him for something good, fine. If not, go another year with him and see if his overall hitting picks up. Murphy did not impress me this year. I would not tender Thole, who I think is awful. I can get an awful catcher anywhere.
” Neither of these guys is really worth big money, and I am sick of writers moaning about David being a met for life and so on and so forth. David is in decline.”
David has a great relationship with the writers
the writers influence the fans
the fans then sheepishly want David Wright to be a Met for life
If David regresses and the mets suck, the writers will eventually write negative stories, the fans will then forget they wanted David for life and will turn on him quicker than a hunts points ho
the same fans who were happy when Johan got here are now bashing Omar Minaya for making perhaps the biggest trade in our franchise history
thats NY
win or go home
I must confess–I just woke up. I posted a reply to your comment but I put it two posts up. Sorry.