Mets' youth may turn their underwhelming season around!

New York Post

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00:00All right, guys, Tyler Ward is joining me in studio for a little State of the Mets talk,

00:04action, whatever you want to call it, because right now the action hasn't been

00:08or lived up to par what we thought the season was going to be.

00:12What's going on, my man? Glad I can get you up here.

00:13Thanks so much for having me, Brandon. Always a pleasure.

00:15Really excited to get into this, even though what's been the trend lately,

00:18it's always been more of a negative than it's been a positive to talk about in Mets.

00:21Let's try and stay positive.

00:22Right.

00:22I feel like New York needs a little more positivity when it comes to the sports,

00:26especially with the Mets, because we can look at this as like a glass half full,

00:32half empty type situation.

00:33Still one and a half games up on the Reds, still in good position in terms of making the playoffs,

00:40but they can't afford anything else, I feel like, to go wrong with, what,

00:44almost less than a month left in the regular season.

00:48How confident are you and the fan base, because I know you're the voice of the fan base,

00:52how confident are you guys that the Mets can hold on to that top spot in the wildcard race?

00:58I think the confidence in them at least being in the wildcard is solid,

01:02because when you look at the Cincinnati Reds, at least if you've been paying attention,

01:05they don't have an easy schedule at all.

01:07So I think that's something that the Mets can lean in on us fans and say,

01:09hey, listen, the Mets haven't had a great baseball,

01:11but at least they're facing off versus a team in the Reds that have a gauntlet of a schedule

01:16for the remainder of the year.

01:17Where there's a lack of confidence has a lot more to do with the division,

01:21especially seven games out currently of the Philadelphia Phillies,

01:24and knowing that this has been now north of two months straight of the Mets

01:27just not playing good baseball.

01:28Like, they've had one of the worst records, like bottom five in the game,

01:31going back to north of two months now.

01:33And then you look at also up until really this past week, they lost 14 of 16 games.

01:38Like, you just can't have that streaky of a season

01:40and then have instilled confidence as an organization,

01:43let alone the fans especially, to say, hey,

01:45all the boys are going to go out there and be just fine.

01:47Like, no, they actually need to start to prove it now instead of us just believing it,

01:51if that makes sense.

01:52When we talk about proving it, you talk about the division,

01:55but I feel like there is a division when it comes to this team being able to put together

02:00consistent good baseball.

02:02One night you can have the offenses there,

02:04but the rotation and the bullpen is struggling or vice versa.

02:08Carlos Mendoza has said that the Mets are going to go back to a six-man rotation soon.

02:13So where do you think they stand with prospects Jonah Tong and Brendan Sproat?

02:17So this is the big hop-on topic right now, right?

02:20Everyone's talking about this.

02:21And this has changed so much, especially over the past, I would say, north of a month,

02:25because a lot of fans, headlined by myself and others in the community,

02:29have been saying, call up Noah McClain.

02:31The guy's been dominant all year long.

02:33They finally do call him up, and through two starts,

02:36he looks like the Mets' best starting option outside of David Pearson, which is crazy.

02:39So then you say to yourself, if you're David Stearns and Smet's president,

02:43okay, we finally start to give a leash to our young top prospects, and it's working.

02:47Will it work more if we consider Jonah Tong, who, according to Mike Puma,

02:51here at the New York Post over the past 72 hours reported,

02:53that the conversation has finally started to change with Jonah Tong.

02:57He's now in that discussion for that six-man spot.

03:00And that's huge because Tong not only has a sub-two ERA all year in the minor leagues,

03:05he has more strikeouts than anyone else in the minor leagues,

03:07but he's touching 98 on the gun, doesn't have even a single piece of facial hair on him.

03:12He's only a young 22.

03:14He's going to light your absolute doors off, and there's nothing you can do about it.

03:17He has some of the best breaking balls in the game we've seen already.

03:19Just throughout what he's done in two starts in Syracuse,

03:22since he's been moved up because he was the McClain replacement,

03:25he has been jaw-droppingly good, hasn't allowed a run his first two starts.

03:28So Jonah Tong looks like he's getting heavy consideration finally for that six-man spot

03:33because if he blossoms at all like McClain is, before you know it, in the snap of a finger,

03:38the Mets, two of their best starting options potentially heading in that wild card round

03:42could be the kids versus the veterans who have been here for the majority of the season.

03:46That's how good they are.

03:47But is that asking too much on two of the kids, though?

03:50You know, like you're asking these two young cats, no facial hair,

03:53probably just was able to leave enough legal to be able to drink.

03:59You're asking these two to come up, one, save a season almost,

04:04and then two, play like a seasoned vet in the postseason.

04:09Is that asking these two too much?

04:11It's asking too much if you're going up to them and demanding it.

04:14That's what the Mets are not doing right now

04:16because David Stern's Mets president was very adamant in the first half this year

04:19by saying that we do not want to rush up a prospect for the sake of team need or team desperation.

04:25But what we have seen is that, yeah, they did kind of call out McClain

04:28because of team need and desperation because they're getting no length from their starters.

04:31Jonah Ton falls in a similar category with that.

04:33And then the final man that I haven't touched on yet, Brandon Sprout, as you mentioned,

04:37he's another arm to consider because he not only throws north of 100 on the gun,

04:41he's been looking far more polished over the past month and a half,

04:44but he's now looking like he's going to be utilized as a reliever for this Mets team

04:47because the Mets just threw him in the bullpen in AAA Syracuse yesterday.

04:52He gave up five earned runs across 3.2 innings.

04:54Not great, but this was his first professional outing ever as a reliever.

04:58So if the Mets are warming themselves up to that idea as a reliever,

05:01we could likely see Ton come in as that six-man option for the rotation

05:05and Sprout come in as kind of that middle-to-long relief

05:08a guy like Frankie Montas was supposed to be

05:11before now he was kicked out of the rotation in the bullpen

05:13and now is out for the year

05:14and is probably going to be getting Tommy John surgery at this rate.

05:17So it's less about the pressure on the kids as it is.

05:20This is now an opportunity to consider them,

05:22something the Mets probably should have done a month and a half, two months ago.

05:25But again, it's always better late than never,

05:28and that's what Stearns and the Mets are trying to figure out now.

05:30So leave it up to the young guys to come in and bring this team some aura,

05:33some sort of juice.

05:34Right.

05:35I feel like we were talking about this a little bit earlier off camera.

05:38For the last, what, two seasons,

05:40we've seen some sort of spark in late summer,

05:43whether it was Grimace or Jose Iglesias with the OMG,

05:47which I used to bump on the treadmill and I used to do cardio, man.

05:50It was hot.

05:51There's absolutely no gimmicks or Grimace this season.

05:55So who is it right now?

05:56Which players are you calling upon right now to be that spark,

06:01to be that energy,

06:03so this team can go on a sustainable run,

06:06not just win a couple games and fall back into some sort of slump,

06:09but to actually hit some sort of double-digit win, like run,

06:14I mean, some double-digit wins in a row, consecutive wins,

06:18and really sustain that leading into the playoffs and maybe even more.

06:22Yeah, I think it's twofold, and I think it starts with the kids.

06:25What I mean by that is Mark Vientos,

06:27who had 27 home runs in his rookie year last year,

06:29was a phenom in playoffs.

06:31Defensively, he was a liability,

06:32but he didn't care because Buddy was hanging tanks every time out there.

06:34You get Brett Beatty,

06:35who's really looked great with the bat the past month and a half especially.

06:39Vientos has four home runs in his past five or six games.

06:42He's finally heating up,

06:43and this comes at a pivotal time for the Mets

06:45because right as they were getting their young,

06:48very vibrant catcher in Francisco Alvarez

06:50with a 1,000 OPS, batting 300 for north of a month,

06:53he may still stay with this team,

06:54but if he does, he's going to be injury-riddled,

06:56which means you're probably not going to get close to 100%.

06:59It might be 70% or 80%,

07:00but that gap alone could take him away from performing great

07:03versus just being a round league average.

07:05It comes down to the kids needing to step up

07:07in the bottom half of this Mets order.

07:09Because they've been so sporadic all season long.

07:12Now that they're finally getting it from guys like Vientos and Beatty,

07:15that's been huge, but it doesn't stop there.

07:17What they need, what they need as a moment,

07:19if it's not going to be something silly like,

07:21it's Sesame Street day this Wednesday.

07:22Maybe they need Big Bird to be the guys he's thrown out on the mound.

07:25Who knows?

07:26Maybe he will be Grimm as 2.0,

07:27but what they need on a serious note

07:28is to have a rally late in a ballgame.

07:31The Mets are 0-53 this season when heading to the ninth inning losing.

07:35I can't recall any team in MLB history that's done anything of significance

07:39when not having one single rally late in a ballgame.

07:43This is what the Mets did last year.

07:45That is why they had that never say die mentality.

07:47They were resilient.

07:48They were bolting down first base just to get on there with two outs

07:51and grinding out to the next man up.

07:53They don't have that this season.

07:54And I think it's a Juan Soto home run in the eighth or ninth inning away

07:58from actually happening

07:59because he himself hasn't had that big moment

08:02the way that he has had in that one year with the Yankees,

08:04to a degree with the Padres,

08:06and most certainly there as a World Series champion with the Nationals.

08:08All right, lastly, I'll put you on the spot.

08:10You're about to head out to Citi Field.

08:12They start this new series against the Phillies.

08:14Huge series.

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