00:00A lot of y'all owe Juan Soto an apology, and what is Carlos Mendoza going to do with the pitching rotation?
00:07Let's talk some Mets baseball with James Sciano of the Messed Up Podcast.
00:10James, thanks for hopping on with today's such short notice.
00:14Let's get straight into this, man, because everybody was hating on Juan Soto because of the slow start that he had.
00:23He has been him and dominated the month of August.
00:28I even saw a tweet where they said that he's the first player ever with at least 10 home runs, 10 stolen bases, and 25 walks in that month alone.
00:36There's a stat for everything, but folks said that he was unhappy in Queens and he was a bust.
00:41You heard all of it, but he's since turned on the generational juices at the right time.
00:47So why do you think that he's caught fire as of late?
00:51Let's go, Brandon. Good to be here.
00:52I mean, we all knew he would.
00:54I think anyone who was having those takes, they were kind of unsubstantiated.
00:57Juan Soto always everything under the hood, hitting the ball hard, lifting the ball well, taking the right pitches, swinging at the right pitches.
01:04Probably a bit too passive at times for the liking of a lot of Mets fans out there who are talking about the price tag.
01:09But this is one of the greatest hitters of the modern era.
01:11One of the greatest hitters most of us are ever going to see in our lives.
01:13There was literally never even a shadow of a doubt that he would find a way to come into his own.
01:18Similar to how Carlos Beltran struggled.
01:20Similar to how Francisco Lindor struggled in the first couple rounds I met.
01:23Juan Soto just didn't struggle as much because he's that much of a better hitter than both of those guys.
01:26It's not even close to a shock.
01:28We're probably at a spot right now where Juan Soto might be the second most valuable player in the National League.
01:33Like, you're almost guaranteed to get down-ballot Juan Soto MVP votes this season behind Shohei Otani and whoever else in between those two.
01:39Possibly nobody, depending on how September turns out.
01:42Like, it is.
01:43He's that good.
01:44He was always that good.
01:45And shame on all the people that doubted this even for a second, especially those Yankee fans who were petty about it the whole time, making up their false narratives and rumors for no good reason.
01:53I'm glad you called out the Yankees fans being petty.
01:55I just want to instigate a little bit here.
01:57Who's having a better season, Soto or Aaron Judge?
02:00I can't front on that one.
02:01It's definitely Aaron Judge.
02:02Aaron Judge with the 1,100 OPS.
02:04He's going to win the MVP again.
02:05He is, in the regular season, there's absolutely no better player than Aaron Judge.
02:09There's no doubt about that.
02:10Thanks for not being a politician with that answer and just giving it to Timmy Strait with no chaser.
02:15Soto and the bats have been hot.
02:17But on the flip side, the starting pitching has been a little iffy.
02:21Some of the guys, Sean Minaya had another disappointing outing allowing five runs on eight hits and just three and two-thirds innings.
02:30The day before, Kodai Senga allowed five runs on seven hits and four and two-thirds innings against, as you know, a bad Marlins team.
02:38Mendoza said on Monday that they're part of the rotation.
02:42But with how good rookies Nolan McLean and Jonah Tong kind of looked at in their debut outings, do you think Mendoza needs to kind of rethink that and make a change to that starting rotation?
02:56Kind of.
02:57This will be a little bit more of a politician's answer.
02:59But I think that we've got to get to a spot where we see some creativity, maybe, with how Mendoza deploys these guys.
03:05I remember back to when Sean Minaya made the season debut, that game right before the All-Star break in Kansas City, where he came in and followed up five innings or four and two-thirds innings, whatever it was, from Klay Holmes, and kind of just ran right through this Royals lineup over a 60-70 pitch outing.
03:20Because we keep watching Sean Minaya make these starts, grit his teeth, get to that third, fourth, fifth inning, get to about that 65-70-80 pitch line, and then completely nosedive.
03:30And I do wonder if there could be some creativity, like we see a lot of times in college baseball, like we saw the Detroit Tigers do down the stretch last year, where you just kind of suction cup Sean Minaya and Klay Holmes together.
03:41You say, Klay Holmes, you got the first three and a half.
03:44Sean Minaya, you get the next three and a half.
03:45One of you guys can make it through four.
03:46That's great.
03:47Then right there, we get even closer to Edwin Diaz.
03:49Such different arm slots, such different approaches, throw from different arms either way.
03:53I think that there's a lot of room for Carlos Mendoza with all these guys in rotation now, with Tyler McGill coming back, with Brandon Sprout very likely up with the Major League team this week, to be like, hey, you're a three-inning guy, you're a four-inning guy.
04:06We're all going to work together and get through all these games.
04:08Because you kind of have to start treating this like the playoffs for a few weeks until hopefully you can clinch something.
04:13But I think that there's room for creativity, and it would help this team tremendously.
04:17All right, now let's break down the nitty and gritty on this team, because we're getting to the final hours of the regular season.
04:24In the past couple of weeks, we've seen this Mets team lose a series to the Nationals, beat the Braves, sweep the Phillies, then lose a series to the Marlins, then take game one of this Tigers series.
04:35You don't have gray hair, but I do from watching this team.
04:38I understand that you're not going to win them all in baseball, but I'm asking you, what's stopping this team from being more consistent?
04:48And do you think they have enough star power or creativity, as you mentioned, on the roster to make a deep run in the postseason again?
04:56I wish I knew it would stop this team from being creative, but it does seem like that is the pitching at the end of the day.
05:01Like, there's always that meme that goes around Twitter where it's like kind of the three buttons, hitting, starting pitching, relief pitching, and the Mets can never align those three.
05:07It's been that way basically since the end of May, and it's crazy to say, but there is definitely enough star power on this team to make a run.
05:15Like, we've seen how kind of frenetic every team in the National League is.
05:18Every team in baseball is.
05:19This is one of the most wide-open times going into the playoffs I can ever remember as a baseball fan or as a content creator.
05:25And I think that now seeing Mark Viento's hitting, Pilonzo, of course, Juan Soto, Francisco Lindor, Marte is hot, Beatty's playing well, Jeff McNeil keeps hitting,
05:33Brandon Nimmo keeps hitting, Francisco Alvarez is trying to make a Herculean comeback with one broken pinky and one partially torn ligament in his thumb on two different hands.
05:42You can hit your way through almost any team in the National League right now.
05:45There's no doubt about that.
05:46It's whether or not they can actually find any level of consistency with this rotation.
05:50I'm a little scared of putting too much on these rookies going through a playoff run, but until they show they can't handle it, we have to assume they can handle it.
05:58I think there's going to be a lot put on their plates through the end of the season, both McLean, what he's done so far, Tong after that debut, and again, probably going to see Brandon Sprott, I'm assuming maybe, late this week or early next.
06:09It's just about, again, whether or not they can push those right buttons and whether or not they're willing to kind of push the thresholds of creativity to get the most out of all those guys.
06:18Real quick, since you mentioned Francisco Alvarez at the beginning of the season, he said that they had the best lineup in baseball.
06:25We're, what, 130-plus games into the season.
06:29Yes, no, why?
06:32Maybe not the best right now.
06:33The Yankees might have that at the moment, but I think right now, the National League, the way the Dodgers have been hitting, what they've not gotten out of Mookie Betts, we definitely might.
06:40And we know if these nine guys are up to their standards, and Alvarez is back in that lineup, there's not one easy spot.
06:46Like, we're getting up and down production from this whole team.
06:49Even everything that we've been saying about running the scoring position for the entire season, just based on how good we've been over the last month,
06:55we're up to the third-highest OPS in all of Major League Baseball runs in scoring position.
06:58Like, we're doing things right now from a lineup perspective that no one else is doing.
07:03And just being able to do that, sustain that to some degree, and having average pitching,
07:08which is exactly what we kind of expected from this team heading into the season,
07:10that was what the vision was.
07:13Pitch well enough to hit your way to these wins.
07:15A lineup can take over a postseason just like a pitching staff can,
07:19and this lineup is good enough to do that if these guys click the way we've seen them click over the last month.
07:23All right, man. Thanks for hopping on with us.
Be the first to comment