The Mets are hanging tough with the Nationals at the top of the division after two months of play. But unlike the last Mets team to win the NL East (2006), this year’s team doesn’t feature elite position players anywhere on the diamond. It’s not a coincidence that, while the ’06 Mets accounted for half of the National League’s starting lineup in that year’s All-Star game, the second round of balloting returns on Tuesday revealed that the Mets will certainly be absent from the starting nine this time around.
The 2006 Mets sent David Wright, José Reyes, Carlos Beltran, and Paul Lo Duca to the game in Pittsburgh, along with pitchers Tom Glavine and Pedro Martinez. With one month to go before the ballots close for this year’s game, Wright is the only Met in the top 5 in voting at his position— he would almost certainly miss the game even if he did somehow get voted in. Lucas Duda, who has had a very solid year, isn’t in the conversation. Neither is Wilmer Flores or the red-hot Daniel Murphy, who got off to a slow start this year after being the Mets’ lone representative at the game in 2014.
Every team is guaranteed one All-Star, and the Mets will undoubtedly be sending a pitcher, with at least one of Matt Harvey, Jacob deGrom, and Jeurys Familia getting the nod. But the fact that a New York team can’t get any of their guys into the ASG discussion is indicative of something that has been the case for a long time: this team doesn’t have stars. Beltran is gone, Reyes is gone, Carlos Delgado is gone, Wright is injured, and attempts to add stars in Free Agency (Curtis Granderson, Jason Bay) have fallen flat.
You don’t need a ton of big names on paper to be a good team— the Royals proved that last October and the Mets have had a nice season thus far with their current roster. But with the possible exception of Duda, the Mets don’t have impact players on offense— guys who can turn the game on its head, guys who strike fear into the hearts of opposing pitchers, guys who can truly be called “stars.”
The Mets have some trade chips, they have a shot to play postseason baseball, they claim to have some money to spend, they have clear needs, and they have the busiest trade period of the baseball season coming up in about a month. Let’s see if Sandy Alderson makes a move and gets a hitter that Mets fans can flock to the ballpark to see.
