Just Mets

For the five weeks of the season, Jon Niese had been surviving a ton of good luck in his starts. He had a 1.95 ERA through his first six starts, although he had allowed 54 baserunners in only 37 innings during that span.

Even during that time, he acknowledged he was somehow managing to survive some rocky situations, knowing his was getting the job done despite his outings not being, “pretty,” as he would put it.

But recently, he has not been able to rely on the same good fortunes he had over his first six starts.

Niese has been mostly ineffective in his last four starts. He is 0-3 with a 9.00 ERA in only 20 innings during that span, allowing 31 hits and six walks and five home runs with only 12 strikeouts during this stretch.

“I’m concerned because I have yet to see him in my time here ever pitch where he makes the number of mistakes he’s made,” Terry Collins explained of Niese’s struggles.

“All my mistakes are getting hit,” Niese said of the difference between now and his first six starts of the year. “They just seem to be barreling anything I throw up there. It’s been frustrating the last four starts.

Both Collins and Niese continue to insist health is not a factor in these struggles.

“He went on a very rigorous program this winter to make sure his shoulder was strong,” Collins said. “He has yet to complain about it at any time. So, that’s not it.”

This isn’t an issue of falling behind or walking hitters. It’s an issue of a lack of quality strikes.

As both have acknowledged during this stretch, Niese has lacked general command of any of his pitches, specifically with his curveball, cutter and two-seamer. When he’s been successful, his two-seamer usually runs away and down with good movement, his cutter saws off right-handers, and his curveball has that classic 12-6 movement moving down and in towards the right-handed hitter. They typically result in a ton of ground balls when contact is made.

Recall, Collins was originally playing Ruben Tejada at shortstop during Niese’s starts to theoretically provide better defense behind Niese.

But, in these struggles, Niese is getting too many balls in the air because all of his pitches are consistently up in the zone and not moving hardly at all.

“It’s frustrating, because my arm feels great and my body feels great,” Niese explained. “It seems like I’ve been trying to execute my pitches instead of actually executing them. It’s going to change. I’m going to keep working.”

He’s no ace, but he’s better than this. The problem is, with the way things are going, it’s hard for the Mets to continue to run him out there. Perhaps the extra day with the six-man rotation can be good for him in that it’s an extra day to work out these command issues, but there’s only so much longer this can go on before the Mets might have to take Niese out of the rotation for a while to right this ship.