While Matt Cerrone of MetsBlog wonders where the offense is, Kevin Kernan of the New York Post takes it one step further and asks if the Mets have lost their swagger.
“This isn’t Panic City, yet, but it’s not a good vibe around the Mets as they dropped two straight to the Braves and head out to play two more terrible teams — the Reds and Phillies — before finishing the season at home with a three-spot against the Nationals. If the Mets don’t clean it up, they could be scrambling instead of setting up their postseason plans to perfection.”
Terry Collins told reporters his hitters are picking up some bad habits and are being too aggressive and because of that they are chasing pitches out of the strike zone.
“One of the things we’re getting away from is our chase rate is up a little bit, which is something we have not been doing, We’ve been making pitchers bring the ball in the strike zone. Look at what we did on the road. You’ve still got to be patient enough to make sure you’re getting balls you can handle.”
“For six years, I’ve said this is not an easy place to hit,” Collins said about Citi Field. “It’s a big park still, even though we’ve made adjustments to it. There’s wind factors a lot of times. We live and die with power, and this is a tough place to have power.”
Kernan says the Mets,who have lost five of their last six series at home and are 6-12 in their last 18 games at Citi Field, are a team that has lost its edge.
“They don’t look or act like a playoff team. There is no swagger to the Mets, other than Yoenis Cespedes. Until the Mets get rid of the Ghosts of 2007-08, this will be a team with self-doubts.”
Geez, where do I begin… First of all, regarding swagger, too many fans mistakenly think that when a team is in a winning streak it must mean they possess a ton of swagger and when they are losing they lack this somewhat mystical and magical trait.
What is swagger? Webster’s dictionary says it’s an arrogant confidence. That sounds about right.
When the Mets had their 11 and 8 game winning streaks, I don’t recall any players exhibiting a mean streak, do you?
Were they succeeding because they had swagger or were they just a team that was playing their butts off, getting great pitching, timely hitting, incredible resiliency, and shut down relief. Is that swagger? Not really, that was just great winning baseball.
As for, “where’s the offense” my guess is here it comes. Since July 25 the Mets have had the best road numbers in the league, averaging 6.1 runs per game.
In fact, the Mets are 26-11 (.703) on the road since July 1, the best record in the majors over that span.
The Mets head into Cincinnati riding a seven game road winning streak. I’m confident that with Steven Matz on the mound and the power of road splits pointing to some big-time offense for a dozen of our hitters, the Mets will take care of business against the Reds.
The Mets have scored three or more runs in each of their last 27 road games dating to July 21, a franchise-record for the longest such streak. Expect them to continue building on that.
So where’s the offense? Here it comes. Where’s the swagger? I couldn’t tell you because I really haven’t seen any of that all year. Let’s just play some good old-fashioned baseball and win some games.
I don't care if we back in or if we bash down the front door, the Nationals lost and our Magic Number shrinks to 5! pic.twitter.com/B68N2mjCSi
— Metsmerized – Joe D (@MetsmerizedJoeD) September 24, 2015
I’m also glad to see my Tweet last night and my article this morning resonated with a lot of people and even one blogger in particular. Let’s get this done!
