Mandatory Credit: Brett Davis-USA TODAY Sports

While injuries keep piling up for the Mets (I’ve started a sentence with that for probably the last four series), the team took two of three from the Atlanta Braves in their first matchup of the year against the NL East rival.

The Bench Mob–the backups who really have been The Starting Mob for the last two weeks–continued to produce enough offense to win games while the pitching staff held Ronald Acuña, Freddie Freeman and the Braves offense (largely) in check.

The Mets are still one game up on the Phillies in the division and sit at 20-17 as the team heads back to Florida this weekend for their first square up of the year against the Marlins.

3 Up

Tomás Nido’s Playing Time

Tomás Nido was the core of the Mets’ offense this series.

He had three hits Monday, the go-ahead home run in the ninth inning Tuesday and a pinch-hit bloop single that put the Mets up 4-3 late in Wednesday’s game.

Nido had his best offensive year, albeit in an extremely small sample size, in 2020, and it seems the improvements he made then (doubling his barrel percentage, increased hard-hit percentage) have carried over into 2021 so far.

The 27-year-old has earned more playing time over the coming weeks as the Mets look for offense in any nook and cranny they can find.

Bullpen Righting the Ship

The bullpen had their worst series of the year against the Rays, giving up 14 earned runs in 12.2 innings.

They returned to form this series while taking on the larger haul of the innings due to, what else, injuries. Like last series, all 11 bullpen arms got run against the Braves, but this time around they limited the damage to six runs in 18.1 innings in relief (and fine, one inning starting).

The Braves finally got to the bullpen at the end of the third game of the series, but that’s not far-fetched when the Mets had Aaron Loup and Jacob Barnes taking on the crunch time innings at the end of the three games. By Wednesday, most of the top arms couldn’t pitch on a third- or fourth-straight day.

The bullpen has been able to avoid injury for the most part over the first seven weeks of the season–the one group that’s done so thus far. It’s been managed pretty well up to this point, too, with everyone taking on their fair share when they need to shut games down or eat some innings. The Mets now have just two healthy major-league starters on the roster, workload from the ‘pen won’t ease any time soon.

Shifting Defense

The Mets went from -21 in defensive runs saved in 2020 to second in the league so far in 2021 with 22 DRS. They’re also middle-of-the-pack in Statcast’s Outs Above Average stat, up from the bottom third of the league in 2020. It’s a seismic shift in defensive strategy.

Specifically, the Mets are shifting more than they ever have. They’re shifting 56.5 percent of the time–tied with the Dodgers for most in the majors. This is up from shifting 21.4 percent of the time in 2020–a bottom-four mark in the league. Half of the team’s 22 defensive runs saved have come when in the shift, according to Fielding Bible. And both righties and lefties are producing wOBAs below league averages when the Mets are shifting.

The through line with all of this? Ben Zauzmer, the former Dodgers analytics guru who took over the Mets’ research and development department this offseason. He’s clearly made an impact on the team’s defensive strategy in just one offseason.

Pete Alonso, Michael Conforto and even Dominic Smith are playing average to above-average defense at their positions. The same goes for Brandon Nimmo, who noted that he changed his positioning in center field to play deeper based on a tip from Zauzmer. There is certainly an aspect of the Mets improved defense chalked up to hard work (and acquiring one of the best infield defenders in baseball in Francisco Lindor), but there’s the other part of it that can be explained by the work by the analytics department.

3 Down

The Triple-A Outfield

The Mets’ starting outfield Wednesday night was Jake Hager in left field, Johneshwy Fargas in center and Khalil Lee in right. That’s the New York Mets, not the Syracuse Mets.

The Mets need bodies right now–the reason they traded one dollar of U.S. currency to the Cubs to pay Cameron Maybin‘s salary for a couple weeks–so they’ve had to fill the lineup with guys from the minors.

At the plate, they’ve (reasonably) looked the part of some guys who are still working things out in the minors. Between Lee, Hager, Fargas and Maybin, the quartet went 2-for-22 this series. Fargas had the two hits.

With outfield depth as depleted at the major- and minor-league level as it is right now, the Mets may have to look into using Jeff McNeil in the outfield when he returns from injury, should his hamstring feel 100 percent. J.D. Davis seems like the player on the injured list who will come back sooner than the rest, but he’s an infield option, and the Mets badly need outfield guys. Jose Peraza, who has a couple hundred defensive innings in the outfield under his belt, may get some run, too.

I will say, though: Khalil Lee made some amazing plays in right field this series.

James McCann‘s Playing Time

I wrote above about how Tomás Nido deserves more playing time. I’m not the only one who’s done so this week on MMO. But you obviously can’t start two catchers, and right now Nido deserves the share of playing time over James McCann. At least a split of it.

McCann dunked a double–his second extra-base hit of the year–into left field on Monday to put the Mets ahead. (Tomás Nido actually scored on the play after he hit a double in the previous at-bat.) That was his only hit of the series after not starting the first two games and going hitless in the last game.

Before this series, McCann was on pace to play in 138 games–20 more than he’s ever appeared in in one season. The Mets are paying him to start the lion’s share of games, but perhaps some rest over the next week or so, especially when Nido’s bat is hot, will do McCann better at the plate in the long run.

More and More and More Injuries

We added Jeff McNeil and Michael Conforto to the list last series. We’re adding Taijuan Walker, Kevin Pillar and maybe even Pete Alonso to the list this time. The Mets could legit fill an entire starting roster–a really good one at that–with players currently injured, as one Twitter user pointed out.

You might be able to replace Martinez with Big Pete at this point.

The Mets are played it safe with Walker (similar to deGrom and McNeil) and put him on the injured list after leaving Monday’s start early with left side tightness. Alonso’s wrist is bothering him. (He had X-rays Wednesday and were negative. He wasn’t available to hit Wednesday, either, and it seems they’re hoping a couple days off will help the wrist out in the long run.) I don’t want to talk about what happened with Kevin Pillar, but I will present this gnarly photo.

Please get healthy soon, fellas.