With the Miami Marlins rolling into Citi Field tonight and the memory of their sweep over the Mets still fresh in our minds, here is some added incentive for the Mets to come out swinging this evening.
Entering tonight’s contest, the Mets are hitting .228 as a team, baseball’s second-worst average. The only team worse is… wait for it… the Miami Marlins, who are just one-thousandth of a percentage behind with .227 average.
Andrew Keh of the New York Times, spoke to Mets pitching coach Dave Hudgens who says that Mets hitters shouldn’t panic.
“I think we’re much better than the number,” said Hudgens. “But it’s difficult to get it back up quickly. You can’t panic. You need to grind it out little by little to get to where you need to be.”
“When guys are struggling, they chase hits, trying to get their averages up, because they don’t like to see .215 on the board. But when you do that, you lose your approach, and when you lose your approach you swing at bad pitches, and when you do that, you become an out. And that’s what we’ve been doing.”
You all know my feelings on Hudgens and his approach that has yet to bear any fruit. The Mets have only one qualified batter that is hitting over .280 – Daniel Murphy, who’s batting .290 for the season. That’s it.
