3 Up, 3 Down: Mets On Rocky Mountain High

3 UP

Mets Still Have Starting Pitching

With Jacob deGrom, Tylor Megill, and Max Scherzer down, in some corners of Mets fandom, there was a sky is falling mentality. To be fair, we’ve seen this plenty of times before over the past two decades.

However, this Mets team actually built a deep rotation. We saw this in the series against the Colorado Rockies. It was all the more impressive because it happened at Coors Field.

Carlos Carrasco shut down the Rockies allowing one earned over 5 1/3. In the series finale, Taijan Walker pitched seven shutout innings as the Mets shut out the Rockies. That’s a great 12 1/3 innings from the Mets fourth and fifth starters entering the season.

Yes, losing the aforementioned pitchers hurts, but as we saw, the Mets still have the starters to not only keep this team in first place, but to also increase their lead.

Golden Guillorme

The Mets best position player in this series was Luis Guillorme, and he’s been one of the best all season. He made a number of sterling defensive plays at all three defensive positions in this series.

We also saw Guillorme be the team’s best hitter in the series going 5-for-7 with a run. Really, he has been doing it all, and it is getting increasingly difficult to find reasons to keep him out of the lineup, and more importantly, out of the field.

Can’t Keep a Good Team Down

The Mets have played 13 series thus far, and they are 11-1-1 in those series. Part of the reason for that is they are an astonishing 3-0-1 in four games sets. More importantly, it is how the team responds to adversity.

The Mets have won the game immediately following a loss 14 consecutive times. In fact, the Mets have consecutive games just once all season.

This is who the Mets are in 2022. They just respond to all kinds of adversity. Starters down? Top players struggling? Bullpen tired? Player makes an error?

It doesn’t matter. The Mets respond by having someone else stepping up and winning the game and the one after that. Overall, this team is just different.

3 DOWN

Shreve Getting Shredded

Over his last three outings, Chasen Shreve has allowed at least one run. He’s allowed five runs over 2 1/3 innings. That includes two homers.

This three game stretch has seen his ERA balloon from 1.54 to 4.50. With each outing like this, there has been be decreasing trust in him from his manager Buck Showalter. In fact, it does at least seem like Showalter would rather go with Joely Rodriguez in big spots, which is more than justified.

We could point out much of the damage comes against right-handed batters, but that is also part of the problem with the modern reliever rules. Fact is, Shreve’s inability to pitch to right-handed batters this year makes it increasingly difficult to use him in games.

April Showers Bring May Cold Spells

The Month of May has been very unkind to Mets batters. That was evident in Colorado. In a place where runs come by the dozen, the Mets scored just 10 runs in the series.

Mark Canha was 1-for-7 in the series, and he is batting .222/.307/.389 for the month.

Eduardo Escobar was 1-for-6, and he is batting .147/.224/.235 for the month. He’s compounded that by playing very poorly (-5 OAA) at third base. Fortunately with him, he’s typically poor in May and has a huge breakout in June.

The cold spells are not limited to them as we have also seen Francisco Lindor hit .192/.301/.282 so far this month.

All told, the Mets offense as a team has gone from a 116 wRC+ in April to a 105 so far in May. Something is no quite clicking there. Hopefully, they figure it out again soon.

Josh Donaldson Drama

No, this does not directly impact the Mets, but this is a bad situation for all of baseball. Tim Anderson and the Chicago White Sox believe Josh Donaldson used Jackie Robinson‘s name to mock Anderson. Tony LaRussa and that clubhouse believe it was a racist comment. For his part, Donaldson is dumbfounded and thought it was an inside joke.

Whatever the truth is here, black players in baseball feel like opponents and teammates are being bigoted towards them. To a certain degree, that could explain why black participation in the sport keeps declining, which is not good for the sport.