Terry Collins has seen his team score six runs in the last five games, all losses.
He’s now seen his team drop 1 1/2 games out of first place, his team play nine games under .500 since they were 13-3, and are now just a half a game ahead of the Braves in the National League East.
The problem is, the Mets may have yet to hit rock bottom with their offense despite being no-hit 13 days ago and no-hit into the fifth inning three times in the last week.
The sad truth for the New York Mets is there are no more players to call upon at Triple-A to even attempt to provide the Mets with any kind of boost.
And Collins knows it.
“We’ve had everybody from Triple-A here,” Collins explained. “One guy hitting .500, he’s here. Another guy hitting .375, he’s here. Another guy hitting .350, he’s here. I don’t know what you want me to tell you. We’ve done everything we can. We’ve brought all those guys up that are swinging the bats good. This is not the Pacific Coast League. You can make all the changes you want. When they come up here, they’ve got to get the job done.”
This sounded an awful lot like a plea for help from Collins to his General Manager, and he did so in public which indicates how desperate his situation is right now.
As well it should be. The players they’ve called up cannot get the job done because they are incapable of doing so. There are too many Triple-A players starting everyday for the Mets, many of whom are out of position, all of which are badly overexposed.
What’s worse are the veterans aren’t doing much, either. Sure, Curtis Granderson had a good weekend offensively, but his defense was once again poor. As for Michael Cuddyer, he has just been too quiet too often, grounding into too many double plays and striking out way too much particularly in key situations.
Cutter knows his struggles are hurting the team, and knows his performance on Sunday was sub-par.
“Two guys on and you’re down by one and you want to come through,” Cuddyer said of his game-ending double play with the tying and go-ahead runs on-base. “Unfortunately, I just didn’t get the job done.”
As Collins said candidly on Sunday evening, there really isn’t much left to say except if ownership and the front office want to contend like they said they did in camp, then it’s time to acquire better players who are major league caliber, and stop hoping the defense will improve or the bats will come around. This is who they are. Period.
They need players who can hit and field, and not players who are good at one or two things and belong on a bench or in a platoon. That’s going to require some risk, that’s going to require some courage to make some difficult decisions about parting with players within the organization, and making the necessary investments in the roster to get better and make a run for October.
That is, of course, if the status quo is really not as acceptable as they claimed it was four months ago and during the entire off-season.
Just Mets 