The Mets acquired some much-needed reinforcements ahead of Saturday’s game against the Dodgers, announcing they had imported Kelly Johnson and Juan Uribe from the Braves to help revitalize a Mets roster starving for offense.
And both players jumped right in and contributed towards winning their first games as players for the Mets.
Batting cleanup in the starting lineup, Johnson singled in his first at-bat as a Met and homered later in a 2-for-6 debut. He is now hitting .309 with a .923 OPS and four home runs in his last 18 games.
Before the game, Johnson was reminiscing about his days with the Braves early in his career before he started jumping around from team-to-team, and acknowledged it’s weird playing for a team he was used to fiercely competing against throughout his ten-year career.
“As a young player, being in Atlanta, coming in to Shea before Citi, this was intimidating,” Johnson said. “The place was rocking. The team was really good. It was just a big rivalry. Being there and seeing the way that guys like Chipper Jones and John Smoltz got up for this series, each way, home and away, and especially coming here to this city.
It is a little bit weird. It’s very weird,” he concluded.
Uribe didn’t start, but he entered the game late, singled and made a nice defensive play up the third base line in the ninth inning.
Both are experienced veterans who are tremendous clubhouse presences. Uribe in particular has been known to be the center of the room wherever he’s played, according to his teammates throughout the years. He’s a personality people evidently flock to, and he’s been a part of a whole lot of winning in his career.
“He’s great,” Johnson said of Uribe. “All the kids from the Latin countries flock to him. They love him, they go to him, he makes everyone laugh, he hangs out with everyone. He’s in the card games, he’s talking trash.”
Uribe is also a two-time World Champion – in 2005 with the White Sox and again in 2010 with the Giants. He thinks he knows what it takes to reach the pinnacle of the sport, too.
“For me, when a team wins a World Series, it plays together,” Uribe explained. “You see who can play together. And everybody on the team is doing something. Everybody, 25 guys. Not like one guy. Every guy is doing it, every day. When teams play together, they can win.”
Neither of these two guys are going to transform this team completely. They still need more from the outside, but they also need the other position players to get on-track, and fast. But as Sandy Alderson said on Saturday, both Uribe and Johnson help lengthen their lineup and deepen the roster in the process.
After all, they’re major league players, and anytime the team can replace minor league players with major league players, the roster is better, the team is better, and the club has the ability to win games they would otherwise lose.
“There’s definitely not one or two guys that can jump in and instantly transform anything,” Johnson explained. “But hopefully it creates some depth, creates different opportunities, different matchups.
“Obviously we’ve both been in the league a little while,” he continued. “We’re both swinging the bat good this year. That’s going to help.”
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