This was a poor week away from home for the New York Mets..
They went 2-4 on their six-game road trip, three of those losses were defined by poor play, mental mistakes, missed opportunities, and a smidgen of bad luck.
Despite the setbacks, the Mets are still 15-7 on the year, and the Mets remain unconcerned about the road ahead after the rough road trip.
“It’s the big leagues,” Terry Collins said after the game. “You’ve got to just keep going. You can’t get down because you’re 2-4 on a road trip. You pick yourself up and go home.”
And homeward bound they are, where they have enjoyed tremendous success so far in 2015 – they are 10-0 at Citi Field this season.
“We just got beat. You play 162 games and that’s going to happen. So, no, there’s no concern. We’re excited to get back home,” Michael Cuddyer said before departing Miami on Wednesday.
It’s easy to forget the Mets are down two key players in their lineup, and their bullpen is in a constant state of flux while missing key figures due to injury as well. Yet, they’re still 4 1/2 games up in the division heading into play tonight.
The main concern with this team remains the defense, specifically on the middle infield. With all due respect, when Wilmer Flores is the best defensive player (statistically speaking) among the group of middle infielders, that says something about the problems they have up the middle.
It’s always easier to destroy something than it is to create something. When the middle infield is butchering routine plays, is unable to turn routine double plays, and making mental mistakes on top of that, it’s difficult to outhit the runs that poor play is giving up, no matter how much they produce with their bat. And, when they’re slumping, as Daniel Murphy has up until this week, it makes the poor defense even more difficult to handle.
It’s maddening, but unfortunately not unexpected. The thing is, it seems every single time there is a misplay up the middle, it costs the team runs.
It can be argued that poor defense cost this team three games on this road trip. Sure, maybe Terry Collins shouldn’t have pitched to Giancarlo Stanton a couple of times, maybe he should’ve pulled the plug on this reliever or that one over the course of the week. But those are obvious secondary problems he might not otherwise have been faced with if the defense had played better and they had given up fewer runs.
At some point, the team is going to be at a crossroads with this situation, as it just won’t fly in a pennant race, and it will kill them should they be a part of October.
Just Mets 
2 responses to “Mets unconcerned about their play, but defense is a major problem”
This is Sandy’s great experiment, the new market inefficiency — putting together a team that can’t field. He views it that fielding is overrated. We saw this with their disdain for Lagares. Only a year ago TC was talking up Eric Young, Sandy brought in Chris Young, and the talk was that the edge would go to the most productive offensive player. I’m saying: They lucked into Juan Lagares, who was too good to ignore. But otherwise, as an organization under Alderson, the Mets have been indifferent to speed, defense, raw talent and overall athleticism. It’s an interesting strategy, almost the exact opposite of the Marlins. I think with any individual player, it’s perfectly reasonable to pick offense over defense. But there’s a cumulative factor that enters into it, where it drags on the overall team. In game last night, Marlins had huge defensive edge at C, 3B, SS, 2B, LF, and RF. And I mean, not even close at any of those positions. It’s going to take a lot of hitting to make up for that.
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Spot on Michael – I find it funny that no one was screaming about TC when the Mets were winning 10 in a row – it’s easy to criticize TC when he’s forced to make decisions he shouldn’t have to make in the first place. The Mets *must* get better defensively up the middle. The Flores-Murphy combination just will not get any better, and Murphy will eventually be the odd man out – it just won’t be after the season is over – they can’t wait that long. Even the trade deadline may be too long of a wait. If Herrera is the guy, then bring him up sometime before June and bat him leadoff, drop Grandy down to 5-6-7 where his bat is better served.
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