Good morning, Mets fans!
Nice win yesterday! We’re over 500. Can we get to 90? Time will tell.
Anyway, we’ve reached the point in the season where we can start to throw around terms like “good start” and “bad start” for certain players. But stats at this point in the season can still be incredibly deceiving.
Yesterday, I wrote about how amazing Gonzalez Germen has been. His stats are eye-popping, although, as I said, they are not sustainable. Juan Lagares has also been fantastic, but he just landed on the disabled list and only time will tell if he can hit the ground running once he returns. Lucas Duda has been mashing the ball, Kyle Farnsworth is pitching well… there have been some good signs so far.
There have also been some struggling players. David Wright, Curtis Granderson, Ruben Tejada, and Travis d’Arnaud have had their struggles in these first couple weeks.
It is important that we remember not to get too high or too low on any given player so early in the season, because while there have been enough games played for noticeable trends to develop, there are more than enough games remaining for those trends to strengthen, stop, reverse, and reverse again several times over.
Even within the small sample size we have been given, we can see how fickle these trends can be. Jose Valverde was awesome in his first couple outings, but had a disastrous meltdown in Anaheim and then gave up home runs to the first two batters he faced yesterday. Eric Young was dreadful for the first few games, but has been red hot lately and has been a major catalyst at the top of our lineup.
Curtis Granderson won’t hit 170. Gonzalez Germen won’t have an ERA of 0.89. April stats are tempting, but can be very misleading, and that’s why I have dedicated this edition of the MMO Morning Grind to John Buck, who was Mike Piazza at the plate for one month and then Brian Schneider for the rest of the season.
The season isn’t a sprint, it’s a marathon, and that goes for every player on every team in the league. Keep that in mind, and enjoy your day, Mets fans!
