Good luck finding plenty of people outside the Citi Field clubhouse expecting the Mets to get back into playoff contention.
The fans – who booed in the general direction of Justin Verlander, Francisco Lindor, Pete Alonso, Francisco Alvarez, Drew Smith in a flat 6-0 loss to the Los Angeles Dodgers on Friday – seem to know what they’re looking at.
Those in power, those who will soon determine whether to begin a sale that would have been hard to imagine in April, are under no illusions either. It’s getting terribly late and the trade talks are accelerating. Would a department responsible for baseball operations add to what it has seen for most of the year?
No, the Mets brass have yet to make a final decision on whether to buy, sell or stick to the August 1 trade deadline. But it’s almost time to shape the 2023 season into the future. A solid series of at-bats for Marc Vientos in August and September. Ronny Mauricio at second base and Jeff McNeilif he’s still there, in left field.
Tommy Pham, Mark Canha, David Robertson and other veterans helping competing teams – and perhaps Max Scherzer And Verlandese Also.
This expensive and talented team is almost cooked, and it’s so confusing: Really, why are they playing so badly?
Friday was much the same. Verlander walked six batters in five innings, including the seventh, eighth and ninth batters in the fifth, all of which came to score.
Thinking he might be tired, like almost any 40-year-old pitcher, I asked him if he knew why he lost command there.
“That’s a great question,” Verlander said, in a tone that might or might not have meant he thought it was a great question. “If I knew the answer right away, I think I would have corrected it.”
Boy, do those two sentences sum up the 2023 Mets. What’s wrong with this team? Excellent question. If someone knew exactly how to answer, maybe the season wouldn’t fall into that deep hole.
Ditto for the offence. How exactly does such an accomplished lineup result in an entire night of bats? Brandon Nimmo doubled to start the bottom of the first inning, and the team didn’t have another hit all night.
Buck Showalter rightly noted that the Dodgers starter Julio Urias, a star of the sport, worked four effective shots. I asked him what he thought of his own team’s approach and the quality of the at-bats.
“It’s something that, in private…”, began the manager, before stopping. “Certainly we’ve seen these guys perform well against good pitchers. “And we will always, publicly, obviously, give him credit. And that’s a lot to defend on both sides of the board. I saw our guys make some adjustments. It didn’t come in a lot of patterns.
The key words in this quote were “in private” and “in public”.
As a matter of principle, Showalter will never criticize its players during a post-match press conference. He sees and hears the external toxicity all around the Mets and refuses to contribute to it. He thinks his job is to set a steady, encouraging tone, never too high, never too low.
But there are few people on this planet who can decode more layers of detail in a baseball game than Showalter, few who see the game as clearly. It’s hard to imagine that from his perch at the dugout railing he sees a ball club poised to play crisp, clean games or live up to its payroll and expectations. He must know what he’s looking at — even better than we do.
Not everything was bad. Showalter was also watching Lindor on the court in the eighth inning. With the Mets leading 5-0, the shortstop moved deep to his right to pick up a fly ball that should have rolled into left field. He pulled it second for a forced out.
Because there had been a runner on third, the score at the end of the game was 6-0 Dodgers. Lindor turned to the outfielders and put his hand in his glove, urging his teammates to maintain their energy and focus.
Lindor’s leadership was admirable, but he wasn’t powerful enough to wake the team up.
It seemed, in fact, that he was just cheering in the void, begging for the resurrection of a nearly lost cause.