It’s the 2015 season, baseball is back in Queens and the Mets are looking to revive a city enriched in National League baseball history. Let’s dive into this seasons first edition 3 and 3. As always, you’re feedback is a necessity, there was well over 10 hours of Amazin’ baseball to watch this week, I’m sure everyone caught something interesting out of the corner of their eye.
3 Up
What A Catch
How about this SoCal product Travis d’Arnaud? The former #1 catching prospect in all of baseball continues to rise to his potential and this week, vaulted the Mets offense over the top to lock in two out of the three wins. TDA batted .455/.455/.636 this series, going 5 for 11 with an RBI triple and a run scored.
While all of this is a small sample size, this series was a microcosm of the performance he put up following his demotion last year. TDA did not draw one walk this series, but only struck out once (after returning on June 24th last year, he only produced a 5.8% walk rate, but offset that with a respectable 14.1% K rate). In other words, d’Arnaud may never produce a high OBP, but he has the skills to make a lot of hard contact and this series should have given fans a lot of encouragement towards his future.
D’Arnaud’s potential stretches far beyond his offensive talents though. The Nationals tested his arm with a stolen base attempt, and they failed. TDA looked much stronger behind the plate staying in front of erratic pitches and most importantly, he dictated the strike zone with his excellent framing skills. Go back through highlights from the three starting pitchers this series and you’ll see the number of instances where this skill goes completely unnoticed.
Point in case, the curveball that froze Nationals’ catcher Jose Lobaton yesterday. In the bottom of the 2nd inning with runners on 1st and 3rd, Harvey through a great looking curveball, but it missed the bottom of the strike zone where TDA had his glove set. TDA took the liberty of making it a strike with his lightning fast hand speed. Had that not been yanked back up from the bottom of the zone, it’s bases loaded instead of inning over. Look for a huge year out of d’Arnaud, but be sure to enjoy all aspects of his game.
Starting Pitching
The Mets starting rotation was fantastic to start the year. Bartolo Colon did exactly what you’d expect, missed on one pitch and paid for it, but other than that, he put the team on his back and carried them through 6 innings of 1 run ball.
Jacob deGrom was the tough luck candidate again just like last year, but any fan in their right mind should be happy with 6 innings of 2 run ball out of deGrominate. He can do better and had he got the bunt down to move runners over, deGrom may have helped his own cause a bit more, but his job is to pitch- he did just that. It’s up to his offense making around $50 million through the 2,3,4 and 5 holes to provide the runs.
Matt Harvey. Seriously, what can I add? He’s a freak.
Capitalizing On Mistakes
The Mets are notorious for making inexcusable mistakes and paying dearly for them in close games. This time, it was the other way around as Nationals shortstop Ian Desmond gifted the Mets a handful of second chances that ultimately proved to be the difference on Opening Day and Harvey Day. This isn’t a sign of sustained production, but good teams capitalize on their opponents mistakes and this has alluded the boys in Flushing over the last few seasons. It’s less a sign of sustainability and more a sign of a team that can smell blood and attack while their opponent is down. That’s what playoff bound teams do.
3 Down
Florida Called, They Have Your Offense
This point is meant to play devil’s advocate to the point above, but of the 10 runs the Mets scored in this series, only 4 were earned. 60% of their offense came off the mistakes of Ian Desmond and company and as I said before, great teams cash in on their opponents mistakes, but champions find a way to produce consistently. It’s early, but this team needs to retrieve the stroke they found down in Grapefruit League play and bring it back up North with them. Warmer weather will help, but the team has to start scoring before beach season gets here.
Bullpen A Bit Shaky
When you take two out of three from the divisional front runners, it’s hard to takeaway anything bad, but the bullpen had it’s hiccups- particularly yesterday. This team has got to preserve the efforts of guys like Matt Harvey, your ace goes out and puts up 6 dominant innings of nothing but zeros, the pen has to hold it down.
For the most part, everyone was fantastic, including Rafael Montero in Wednesday’s loss. Alex Torres and Jeurys Familia struggled yesterday though and at times, made it look as though a 6 run lead was not enough to lock down a W. Again, it’s early and this is a minor gripe considering the overall result, but the bullpen will be relied upon heavily to keep young aces like Harvey and deGrom chugging throughout the whole season- they need to be stingy.
Infield Defense
They held it together, but came close to falling apart for their starting pitchers. Wilmer Flores still needs to improve on setting his feet and executing routine putouts to 1st base. Lucas Duda missed a David Wright throw in the dirt, something he normally makes look easy and Daniel Murphy gave me the usual roller coaster ride that ranges from “Wow, that looked great” to “Good Lord, please get us through this inning”. Again, the boys got the job done and this is a stretching attempt to fit the 3 and 3 narrative here, but the defense was suspect at moments. Pitching will be this club’s calling card to the post-season, defense will be the pillar that supports that strength.
Thankfully, the Mets were very un-Mets like, got through each inning with minimal or zero damage and went on to take the series.
Thanks for reading along, let’s hope for similar or better results in Atlanta against the now 1st place Braves.
Lets! Go! Mets!
