3 Up, 3 Down: Mets Sweep Phillies In Rain-Shortened Series

 

The Mets offense finally showed some level of consistency, scoring four, four, and five runs in three wins against the Phillies this week, but a fourth game got rained out, adding to an already-extensive list of doubleheaders over the rest of the season with more bad weather on the horizon.

For now, let’s talk about the three-game sweep, albeit in a shortened series, of the Phillies.

3 Up

The Offense with Runners In Scoring Position

One of the “downs” last time around was the offense, and particularly the offense when runners were in scoring position.

The team entered the Phillies series with a terrible .146 average with RISP, but they started to perform better across the last three games. The team went 6-for-21 with RISP over the doubleheader and 1-for-6 on Wednesday during the 5-1 win, good for .259 over the series.

Nine of the 13 runs this series came when the team had runners in scoring position, while just half of the team’s runs came with runners in scoring position over the first five games.

As a whole, the team is still averaging just over 3.62 runs per game—good for 26th in the majors and just a notch above Philadelphia and Washington, and their average with RISP for the season is now .191. It’s still not great, but it’s an improvement. The team’s bats are starting to come around, though, and with the pitching staff locked in to start the year, the Mets could begin to rack up early wins and get out to a nice lead in the NL East.

The Starters

Speaking of the starters, the Mets have only had to use four guys to start games through the first two-plus weeks of the season. (We’ll have more on this in a bit, too.) They’ve done extremely well.

Jacob deGrom, Marcus Stroman, Taijuan Walker, and David Peterson have a combined 2.33 ERA–second in the majors–through eight starts so far. They’re averaging 5.8 innings pitched per start, which is tied for third in the majors. The staff as a whole, bullpen included, have a league-best 2.97 FIP.

Things could have easily gone awry with starters being thrown off their preparation routines through the turbulence of the schedule, but they’ve been a great constant keeping the offensive in games through the first eight contests.

Lengthy, effective starters will ultimately help not tax the bullpen in the first month of the year (should Rojas not go to the same three or four guys in all of their tight games, which most of them have been so far) while it waits for a lynchpin–Seth Lugo–to return in May.

David Peterson‘s Stock (And Fastball)

I was going to reserve this last spot for Brandon Nimmo, who continued his scorching start to the year reaching base at least twice in the first eight games, but I wrote about Nimmo last series. David Peterson’s stellar start gets the nod here.

Peterson delivered the best start of his young career Wednesday, notching a career-high 10 strikeouts in six innings. He did so against the team that rocked him a week earlier.

Last week, I wrote about how expectations for Peterson should probably be tempered as he learns how to pitch off his slider. When facing the same lineup for the second time in seven days, he learned pretty quick.

The biggest difference between his first and second starts was his fastball/sinker usage.

In his first start, he threw his fastball/sinker 45 percent of the time. Phillies hitters pounced on his slider later in the game as Peterson settled into using it in critical situations. For his second start, though, the fastball/sinker usage number jumped to 61 percent, and Peterson had a 29 percent whiff rate on the pitch(es)–just about double what it was in his first start and more in line with what we saw from Peterson in 2020.

Peterson has proven through his first 15 starts his slider will be pretty reliable. So when the young lefty’s fastball/sinker and slider are working in tandem like they were Wednesday night, you can understand why expectations jumped high in the first place.

3 Down

This Damned Weather

The Mets have had six games postponed and they’ve only played eight. They’re likely to have another postponed on Friday in Denver due to snowfall. There’s snow currently in the forecast for Chicago on Tuesday, as well. At this rate, a hurricane will wipe out a four game set with Miami in August.

I understand pandemic concerns cancelled their first three games, but that’s still three of 14 games postponed to date because of weather. That’s April baseball, they say. That’s what happens, they say. It’s kind of bullshit, a Mets fan starving for baseball says.

We find silver linings here, though, and these weather rainouts have allowed the Mets to not have to test their starting pitching depth so far. We’re two weeks into the season and the Mets have gotten two starts each from deGrom, Stroman, Walker and Peterson. Because of the Thursday rainout (there was a gap where they’d have to spot start a depth guy Saturday), they might only need a fifth starter twice time through the first five weeks of the season. (This Saturday against the Rockies and the 24th vs. the Nationals, by my count.)

This bodes well for a team who was missing one of its top starters—Carlos Carrasco—to begin the season. If Carrasco needs to take until May 7–the third time they’d need a fifth starter–to comeback, though his rehab seems to point at a return sooner than that, it seems like he can do so comfortably.

McCann‘s Defense

Remember the SMALL SAMPLE SIZE stamp from last week? We’ll probably bust it out here, but James McCann‘s defense behind the plate to start the year has been shaky for a guy with a history of being decent behind the plate.

He’s had two plays off the top of the head to start the year that have cost Mets runs: 1) when he dropped a Luis Guillorme throw at home plate in the first game of the year that allowed what came to be the deciding run score, and 2) his passed ball from the first game of Tuesday’s doubleheader that allowed runners to advance to second and third in “extra” innings, and the runner from third ultimately scored on an infield single. (Thankfully for McCann and the Mets, they won the game in the bottom half of the inning.)

McCann’s framing numbers have been below league-average so far, as well, ranking 22nd in the league in Statcast’s Strike Rate, which measures the percentage of pitches not swung at just outside the strike zone that are called strikes.

By all accounts, McCann has been great in the locker room, but his defensive lapses and struggles on offense (perhaps the late-game home run Wednesday will help) have been noticeable so far.

Pillar‘s Playing Time

Kevin Pillar started Opening Day in center field and at the top of the Mets’ lineup. He got five at-bats that day. He’s had seven plate appearances in the seven games since then, and that’s okay! (The off days haven’t helped Pillar, either, as he’s had had one or two starts taken from due to rainouts.)

Pillar is fine as a fourth outfielder when you have guys like Brandon Nimmo and Dom Smith, who’ve been the two best offensive players for the Mets so far, manning left and center field. He’s fine as a fourth outfielder even when you’re getting the lows of a Michael Conforto slump.

It’s nice to see Rojas and the team have seemingly learned, quickly at that, from their Opening Day oddity, and Pillar has found his more fitting role as a once-a-week starter and late-game pinch hitter and defensive replacement.