The New York Mets offense has been largely dormant of late as the injuries pile up for a team that has now lost four of their last five games. Manager Terry Collins is currently without David Wright, Lucas Duda, and Travis d’Arnaud. Making matters worse, on Wednesday, Yoenis Cespedes asked for the game off against the White Sox, telling Collins he was fatigued after playing every game for the month of May.
Collins admitted after Wednesday’s frustrating 2-1 extra-innings loss, that the injuries have no doubt played a role in the team’s offensive shortcomings and he was visibly frustrated about it.
“I don’t think there’s any question that’s a major part of it,” Collins said. “In baseball you’ve got to pick each other up. You’ve got to have somebody step up when somebody else hasn’t. We’ve been doing that a lot, but we didn’t get it done this homestand. And we had a lot of opportunities to win a number of games on this homestand. We couldn’t put a big hit on the board.” (ESPN)
All of their missing offensive threats aside, this team still drew 13 walks yesterday and were unable to cash in on numerous opportunities to score a run. The last time a team drew that many walks and lost the game was back in 2006, when the New York Yankees held the same dishonor.
Even more disheartening, the Mets became the second team since 1893 to draw 13 walks and not exceed one run of offense, according to the Elias Sports Bureau. The only other team to achieve this dubious feat was the franchise the Mets replaced in New York – the Brooklyn Dodgers – who achieved this same feat in 1953.
The Mets had 20 baserunners in total and were only able to manufacture one run as they left 14 stranded. Almost anytime they were able to get a baserunner on by way of hit or walk, a double-play seemed to be right around the corner as they hit into five on the day. The Mets were just 1-for-8 with runners in scoring position on the day, continuing to show their struggles at getting a key hit when it counts the most. They continue to rely on the home run to score their almost two-thirds of their runs.
“We’re not a small-ball team,” Collins said. “We don’t steal bases. We’re not a big hit-and-run team. We’re more of a get-a-good-ball-to-hit-and-drive-it kind of a team. To ask guys to do things they’re not very good at, you’re asking them to fail.”
“You want to put them in situations where their strengths take over and there’s a better chance for success. We said earlier: There’s going to be a span here where we don’t hit homers. And we’re going to have a tough time.”
The few Mets who are healthy, are also struggling. Michael Conforto who started off the season on a torrid pace is hitting just .176/.250/.412 in his last 15 games. Conforto also went 0-for-6 in Wednesday’s loss with four strikeouts.
Cespedes finds himself mired in his own recent struggles as well. Over the past seven games, he is hitting .043/.080/.043. Recent call-up Ty Kelly, who was having a huge season in the minors, has not shown the ability to carry that over to the majors just yet. In a small sample size of seven games, Kelly is 2-for-17 with two walks and he has looked very overmatched in many of his plate appearances.
Collins believes that this is just another rut for his team in what is a very long season and is confident the team will fight its way through it.
“We’re still going to be OK,” Collins said. “We’ve just got to grind out something on the offensive side. We’re going to be fine. Our pitching is going to come. And, as we know, as we saw last year, when that pitching gets going, we get rolling.”
The team seems to be in need of some type of spark to get this offense going yet again, The pitching has been doing their job, keeping the team in almost every game. The Mets’ offense however, ranks 28th with a .231 batting average, 25th in runs scored, and 29th in batting (.212) with runners in scoring position. They ended the month of May with an MLB worst .211 average as a team.
