Sam Hodgson/ The New York Times
In yesterday’s extra-innings loss to the Los Angeles Dodgers, the Mets’ pitching staff, which combined to allow seven home runs, rightfully took the lion’s share of the blame.
As the story has been across the past two seasons, the lack of organizational depth, best characterized by Jerry Blevins getting the start because literally nobody was available to spell an injured Jason Vargas was a major factor.
However, the 2018 season itself has been marred by particularly dreadful fundamentals, and manager Mickey Callaway’s decision to let slow-footed first baseman Dominic Smith swing with a man on and no outs in the 10th inning, against a jarringly over-shifted Dodger infield no less, was no exception. Smith struck out on three pitches — admittedly better than a ground-ball double play that felt inevitable — but nonetheless embarrassing.
While first-year manager Callaway has made some puzzling in-game decisions, it has been hard to hold him fully accountable when this sort of ineptitude played out exactly the same under Terry Collins, even with the more competitive teams. Unlike Collins, however, Callaway is a little more transparent in the post-game interviews when it comes to assigning blame. The explanation that followed the debacle, if anything, only illuminated the organization’s (purported) endeavor to hunt down and correct the issues that have all but helped close its championship window.
“We thought about bunting, but Dom’s never bunted in his professional career, so we didn’t think that would be a good idea,” Callaway said.
With this in mind, it’s hard to expect that any manager try their hand at a sacrifice bunt. It’s almost unfathomable, however, to foresee any young player, much less a top prospect, having virtually zero experience laying down bunts, regardless of their stature or position. It’s a basic fundamental tool to possess.
After dropping this incident atop the pile and making our way back down the ladder, we pass by some grossly familiar scenarios: Amed Rosario‘s defensive ineptitude (-6 defensive runs saved at short already) combined with the speedster’s own inexplicably poor ability to drop down bunts, which has been discussed at length throughout his first full season.
The organization’s chronic phobia of exposing its left-handed rookies to left-handed pitching (Smith last year, Brandon Nimmo in 2017, and Michael Conforto in 2016/2015) is by no means a coincidence in how humiliating an issue it has become. Even further back in time — before our “glory days” — we can all remember our frustrations when it first became clear as day that neither Travis d’Arnaud nor Kevin Plawecki posed much of a threat, if any, to opposing base runners. With that being said, we can also see that pitchers over the last several years have been unable to hold runners on, a dual issue.
Callaway’s comments best serve as an admission of the true dysfunction within the New York Mets organization. In the same way that some injuries have been bad luck and others horribly mismanaged, there is a fine line between Jay Bruce lumbering after a fly ball like an oaf and Wilmer Flores, who has been in the Mets’ system since 2008, still not having a definite position. The issue is very easy to trace, but has unfortunately marinated for years on end, and has now reached a point that verges on irrecoverable. There needs to be accountability from ownership down.
Sandy Alderson’s often-panned inability to successfully pick out and cultivate young stars may not actually be a result of his unfortunate inability to scout and draft talent, but rather a damning consequence of his laissez-faire tactics in developing these players by failing to maximize versatility and declining to thoroughly refine the physical and fundamental flaws that have, among many other personnel mistakes of his own, incinerated, drowned and buried this team under his watch.
Moreover, we should take a step away from the talk about trading Jacob deGrom and Noah Syndergaard and realize that no matter the returning package, entering a rebuild under somebody who has spent next to no time correcting the basics and molding the intangibles will only bear depressing and rotten fruits.
