00:00Joel Sherman back with three things. It's hard to ignore how the Mets have begun this season.
00:06They're 7-12. They're playing terribly. They met up at the worst possible time when they were
00:13struggling with by far the best team in the major leagues, the Dodgers, and they did not look like
00:18they belonged on the same field for three days with them pretty much. At this point, aside from
00:24when Clay Holmes and Nolan McClain started, and they both started and pitched really well
00:29against the Dodgers, there's not a lot to like about the Mets. So why don't we go through three
00:36things? Let's not sugarcoat it. I know that we'll always do it early, and I'm one of those people.
00:43There's 90% of a season done. The 2024 Mets showed us how poorly they played into June,
00:5011 games under .500, and they ultimately got to the NLCS. Last year's team played great to the
00:56middle of June, best record in the National League, and didn't even make a warded-down playoffs.
01:02But if I were just going to point this out, I went and looked this morning. Over the last 10
01:07-162-game
01:08seasons, so not counting the 2020 COVID-60-game season, there's been 59 instances where a team
01:15started 7-12 or worse. Only four of them ended up winning 85 or more games. If we make 85
01:21games,
01:22it's kind of like a baseline to get into the playoffs. And three of them made the playoffs.
01:28The 2024 Astros were 6-13. They won their division with 88 wins. The 2022 Guardians were 7-12,
01:36and they won the division, finished 92-70. The Rangers of 2015 started 7-2, went 88-74 with the
01:46division champs. And if you're looking for one more silver lining, 2018 Rays, they didn't make
01:52the playoffs, but they started 6-13 and won 90 games. And I would gather if the NS6 teams in
01:58each
01:58league make the playoffs, if the Mets somehow get to 90 wins this year, they'll make the playoffs.
02:04But as you see, history is against you. 7-12 is usually an indicator early in a season,
02:12as it might be, that you might not be a very good team. And it is possible that we're looking
02:18at a not very good Mets team. Number two, I would say, is what's been lost early here,
02:27and is hard to recapture, is faith. I've got to say that at this time last year, when the Mets
02:35were rolling, I really thought that the Steve Cohn, David Stearns, Carlos Mendoza triad of owner,
02:45head of baseball operations and manager, coming off of their strong run to the NLCS in 2024,
02:51their powerful beginning to last season, that the Mets finally had it figured out,
02:55that they had a group in charge that was going to bring sustained winning to the team.
02:59And instead, you know, you're going to lose some faith here. The way last year's team collapsed,
03:07and this year's team has begun, the new players that David Stearns has brought in,
03:13this just isn't working right now. Again, over the long period, I would suspect
03:18that Bo Bichette and Polanco, as long as Polanco's healthy, will hit. But there is some strange
03:24history with the Mets that big stars come in and don't perform well in those first years.
03:31Carlos Beltran's going to the Hall of Fame. He didn't play well the first year as a Mets.
03:34Francisco Lindor didn't play well. Robbie Alomar looked like his career was over in the year he
03:39played with the Mets. Mo Vaughn, Jason Bay, George Foster. These are the guys who have come in as big
03:47stars on the positional side, and it just hasn't worked. And you just wonder, is there, you know,
03:53I don't want to be the kind of, is there a hex here? What's going on? But it just hasn't
03:58been good.
03:59And as you kind of, like, look at this, like, the faith in baseball operations, like, you know,
04:07is David Stearns had a real great touch with the Brewers. He seemed to have a great touch with the
04:132024 Mets. It's a year plus now of a lot of his stuff not working that included, you know,
04:20Devin Williams fell apart at, you know, against the Dodgers on Wednesday night. Luke Weaver has not
04:27pitched well so far. Freddy Peralta's been okay, but not great. The Bichette-Polanco thing not really
04:35working. Luis Robert's been pretty good. But on the whole, the new group is not doing great. And
04:42of course, the fire Carlos Mendoza screams have begun that ended last year. I'm always, look,
04:50you know, we're at a moment right now. I went and looked at this. I mean, why don't we go
04:55to number
04:55two here to deal with Mendoza? And now, I mean, number three, which is, like, what do the Mets do
05:01well? And would a different manager really change that if you don't do things well? And ultimately,
05:09if you don't do things well, how do you run off the, you know, 16 out of 20 that it's
05:15going to take
05:15to kind of begin to stabilize this again, where they do some sustained winning? At this moment,
05:21they're averaging 3.42 runs per game. That's 27th. They're giving up 4.16 runs per game. That's
05:2920th. Their defensive efficiency, and I'm a big defensive efficiency guy, defensive efficiency is
05:34essentially the ball's hit. Is it recorded into an out? What's the percentage that's recorded into
05:39an out? It reflects your positioning. It reflects range. It reflects the defensive skill of the player.
05:46The Mets are 19th, and remember that, you know, run prevention, including getting better on defense,
05:52was a key for the Mets, and I do think they're better on defense this year, but not enough to
05:58counter what else is going on, which is the pitching hasn't been great, except for when Holmes and McLean
06:04pitch, and the hitting has just been terrible, especially since Soto left the lineup. Can you have some
06:11hope that in the next, maybe like in a week, if Soto gets back, things will get better? It almost
06:16has to. Soto's such a great hitter in his prime. You would think it's going to get better. I still
06:21don't know what's going on with Francisco Lindor, whose baseball IQ would have been one of his
06:27key strengths, I would have pointed out, and he's been, again, there was a play last night in the
06:33game where he didn't charge a ball, and it turns into an infield single and a bad inning for
06:37Devin Williams. It just doesn't feel like Lindor, who gets off to bad offensive starts, but never
06:43kind of bad mental starts. Whatever's going on with him where he's drifting, that's not good. He's the
06:49second most important position player on the team after Soto. Maybe more important than ever with,
06:54you know, Alonzo and McNeil and Nimmo gone and new guys here that he needed to kind of get off
07:01strong
07:01to make it a little easier for the Bichettes and the Polancos. That's not good. I do think that if
07:07and when A.J. Minter gets back, the bullpen will be a little deeper as long as Minter is the
07:13guy he
07:13was before he hurt his lat, but it has been a calendar year since we've seen him on a field,
07:19so I would wonder about what he needs to break back into it. That end game, look, I know what
07:26the
07:26underlying numbers were on Devin Williams and to some degree Luke Weaver last year, and the Mets
07:30believed in that. You know, they just didn't pitch well for the Yankees last year. Weaver started well
07:37and ended terribly and was unpitchable in the playoffs, and Devin Williams started poorly and
07:43finished much better, but it was at its best pretty good, but it wasn't the Devin Williams of
07:49Milwaukee. It never felt like that, and the Mets invested a lot to turn those guys into the last six
07:54outs. Look, the problem isn't just that they've started poorly, and they've started very poorly.
08:01It's not just that the history of this kind of start, a 7-12 start in 19 games, often leads
08:07to a
08:07bad outcome. It's just hard to watch them and see where some facet of the team, or multiple facets,
08:16better yet, of the team play well enough that they're able to roll off the kind of winning streak,
08:23winning period, to kind of get back into this 500th and 5-over, etc. There's a long time. The 2024
08:31Mets
08:31showed us there's a long time in a season. There's a long time for these Mets, but man, is the
08:37vibe bad
08:37and the play worse right now.
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