00:00The Mets are trying to keep it classy out in San Diego, and they'll try and avoid the sweep to the Padres.
00:05So let's talk some baseball with James Sciano, host of the Mets Stuff Podcast.
00:10James, appreciate you hopping on, man.
00:12First time in the Zoom Zoom room with me.
00:14Let's get straight into this thing.
00:15I got a stat for you, because the Fab Four, as you know, they're in the funk right now.
00:20Brendan Nimmo, two for his last 18.
00:22Francisco Lindor, eight for his last 55.
00:25Juan Soto, five for his last 43.
00:28And Pete Alonzo, five for his last 57.
00:31Who needs to get out of this funk the fastest?
00:35I mean, between them all, it's definitely a combination of Lindor and Alonzo.
00:39There's just been such a funk from those guys now going on for months, where we've kind of just seen, like,
00:43solo since the All-Star break, Nimmo for a week or two now.
00:46The bottom line from the bullpen really carried that sweep in San Francisco, which was nice to see.
00:50But it comes down to Lindor and Alonzo.
00:52Alonzo were going on a month and a half, two months of him doing absolutely nothing.
00:55And Francisco Lindor even probably a spidge longer than that, basically since the broken
01:00toe that happened all the way back late May, early June, to where he hasn't been anything
01:04like the same player since then.
01:06We've seen some big games for him in the midst, but there's just been no level of consistency.
01:10There's been shrinking of his contact rate.
01:12Pete Alonzo has stopped pulling the ball.
01:13He stopped lifting in the air.
01:15All the things that he was doing so well through those first six, eight weeks of the season
01:19to look like an MVP candidate, to look like one of the best power hitters in baseball.
01:24This team can't really go very far if those guys aren't hitting well.
01:27There has to be something that changes fast with the two of them if we want to get where
01:30we want to get to.
01:31Yeah, I'm glad you jumped in and said that because you took the words right out of my mouth.
01:34You mentioned how the bullpen carried them during the Giants series.
01:38But let's talk about the starting pitching rotation.
01:41No Mets starter outside of David Peterson has been able to complete six innings since
01:46Clay Holmes back on June 7th.
01:48The Padres have scored 14 runs in two games this series.
01:53Is that stat and I guess the pitching something that people have to pay attention a little bit
01:59more to going forward?
02:01Oh, for sure.
02:02Two nights in a row we saw, for lack of a better term, implosions.
02:06First, it began with Frankie Montas, then Oscar Brazoban, and then last night Jose Buteau
02:11and then Chris Davinsky.
02:12And it is kind of starting to come back together.
02:14I know I see you fleshing that McGill picture here.
02:17I think McGill is oddly a guy that we've missed recently.
02:19I know we missed him more during that Justin Hageman, Brandon Waddell phase.
02:23But just having a sixth guy in this rotation to give these pitchers an extra day.
02:27Because Clay Holmes, I know we got to 100 pitches last time out.
02:30He's going to pitch for the Mets later today.
02:32That was the second time going over 100 pitches in the last seven starts.
02:34David Peterson's been the horse.
02:36But now we're on a few weeks with this Kodai Senga, Sean Minaya thing.
02:40Where both of those guys are pitching well enough.
02:42They're both pitching well enough to keep us in and give us chances to win these games.
02:45But Minaya especially, he began his rehab assignment about six weeks ago now.
02:49And we still get the spots every time he pitches.
02:52So when he's around 70 pitches or so, his velocity drops like a rock.
02:57He threw a handful of fastballs yesterday, blowing 90 miles an hour.
03:00The same thing happened to start before that.
03:01And the same thing happened to start before that.
03:03That's not really tenable for Sean Minaya.
03:05He can't be throwing 89 mile an hour fastballs and expect to be the Sean Minaya that we signed him to be.
03:10The Sean Minaya that we saw last year.
03:11The Sean Minaya we hoped we'd get this season.
03:13So there is some fear about how much longer this is going to take for Sean Minaya to be at full strength.
03:19Because we're at nearing months that he has been pitching competitively.
03:23And we're still not ready to let him go deeper in the games because the velocity won't hold up.
03:27For Kodai Sanga, similarly, there's been a lot of inconsistencies this year.
03:31The injury in the middle of it was a real just thorn in the Mets side.
03:34But it's just more about his execution.
03:35I'm more confident in him moving forward.
03:38This command situation seems like a sequencing issue.
03:40But I need to see Sean Minaya sustain that velocity past that 75-80 pitch mark before I'm really ready to put my foot down and be like,
03:47this is the same guy that we saw last year again.
03:49You mentioned Brazoban earlier.
03:52The news broke that he just got sent down to the minors.
03:55He's pitched in more games than any other reliever on the team except for Reid Garrett.
04:00What's your thoughts on Brazoban going down to the minors?
04:04It seems like Brazoban has moved down a rung in this bullpen hierarchy.
04:08Beginning of the year, we were locked in on Brazoban.
04:11Kind of maybe not taking a step forward, but being one of the more trustworthy guys getting these high leverage spots.
04:16Now with the news of his demotion, Carlos Mendoza did mention that he'd be stretched out to four-year pitches or so at Syracuse.
04:22That's telling me that now Brazoban's kind of worked his way back into being hopefully some kind of multi-inning guy,
04:28but possibly even something like a mop-up guy because Brazoban just hasn't been, again,
04:33a very reliable late-game high-leverage reliever going on two or so months now.
04:38That's not really that surprising.
04:40We acquired Wasko Brazoban on the trade deadline last season.
04:43He was someone who was 34, 35 years old with many minor league options that the Marlins were willing to give up
04:48for a low-level minor leaguer going back to them.
04:51He was never really brought here to be a high-leverage guy.
04:54He was brought here to be a guy that could pitch innings and be one of these chess pieces that David Stearns likes to use so well
04:59with going up, going down, being someone that we can move around.
05:02So it kind of makes sense that we could stretch him out to 30 or 40 pitches through the rest of the season.
05:07He's someone that can come into a game, soak up two and two-thirds innings,
05:11get himself to those 40 pitches, go back down to the minor leagues the next day.
05:14Ten days after that, come back up, do the same thing.
05:16So I think this is just a bit of a recalibration of a role for Wasko Brazoban.
05:19And we still appreciate what he gave us in April and May,
05:21but understanding that the quality of pitchers is probably more like this role than what we saw early.
05:27All right, we got the trade deadline going down on Thursday.
05:29There's reports out that the Mets could be one of the most aggressive teams in baseball at the deadline.
05:36So if you're David Stearns, what you buying?
05:38I think that this conversation begins and ends with Luis Robert Jr.
05:43I know that a lot of Mets fans might not want to hear that name right now.
05:46You see the 206 batting average.
05:47You see two years of poor production.
05:49You see a nearly 30% strikeout rate.
05:51And you're like, why would the Mets want this guy?
05:53Especially when these Mark Fientist rumors are flying around, which I don't necessarily buy.
05:57But I think it's interesting that we are so linked to Robert.
06:01We need another right-handed bat in this lineup.
06:02We've seen this team struggle against left-handed pitching.
06:04As bad as Robert has been against pitchers in general this season with the 206 average and the 295 on base, he's still a lefty masher.
06:12And if you look back over the last month, we got 320 batting average, a 420 on base percentage, a 530 slugging with three homers and four stolen bases.
06:20We don't like to cherry pick, pick and choose these months we're talking about with a guy like Robert, especially when you have a year plus of bad play.
06:26But we've seen a couple of players leave this White Sox disaster team over the last year or so and find success elsewhere.
06:33Right now, Andrew Vaughn, the Milwaukee Brewers, they made a pretty innocuous trade for him from the White Sox a month or so ago.
06:39He went down to the minor leagues for two weeks.
06:41He's become a stalwart in the middle of their lineup.
06:43He's running the highest walkthrough of his career, the lowest chase rate.
06:46Very small tweaks and changes to these guys that are playing in these organizations that we will not perceive as smarter advanced to be nice can make a difference very quickly.
06:56And even if you don't get the Luis Robert from a few years ago who got down ballot MVP votes, you still have a much better defensive center fielder than Jeff McNeil and a much better offensive center fielder than Tyrone Taylor.
07:08That's someone that if he's hitting fifth or sixth in the lineup on most days, it's a huge upgrade, a huge addition to this team.
07:14And one, I think that David Cerns and the Mets are serious about going after.
07:18Real quick, James, about 15 to 20 seconds.
07:20Final thoughts on this game three of this Padres series before the Mets head back to Citi Field on Friday to take on the Giants.
07:28It's one I'd really like to win.
07:30You want to avoid being swept by these teams in the National League you're competing against.
07:33I know our sights are still set on the Phillies for the division, but it's a good chance you might wind up competing with this Padres team for a wildcard spot.
07:42There's a good chance if you're competing with them for a wildcard spot.
07:44It might be a home series here or a home series there like we saw a few years ago.
07:48So you got to win this game.
07:50I don't know what we're going to get out of Clay Holmes workload-wise after the 100 pitches he threw last time out.
07:54But, I mean, you got to hope he can get near that again, get this to the fifth, sixth inning, and give this bullpen a chance to hopefully protect the lead,
08:01especially given what's going on with this lineup recently.
08:04All right, James.
08:04Appreciate you hopping on with me, man.
08:06Thank you, Brandon.
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