NEW YORK — After the New York Mets finally put an end to their 12-game hitting streak last week, setup man Luke Weaver had a quote that summed up the Mets in a way that few have ever been able to: “It’s not very often you have such a talented team where everything just doesn’t really click in the right way. It’s quite an impossible feat, but we made it possible.”
The Mets have long been known to make the impossible possible. A star-laden team should be better than this, but at 9-19 this, the Mets are tied with the Philadelphia Phillies for the worst record in baseball.
After being swept by the Colorado Rockies over the weekend to lose 15 of their last 17 games, fans were expecting a Monday bloodbath. The fact that the Boston Red Sox fired manager Alex Cora and six other members of the coaching staff over the weekend has little to no bearing on what the Mets are doing. President of baseball operations David Stearns is not reactionary. Rarely does he let what other teams are doing influence his own decision-making, so if you think the dominoes are starting to fall, then think again.
This is not to say manager Carlos Mendoza doesn’t have any responsibility in this mess, but he didn’t sign these players or hire these coaches. It was Stearns who let an All-Star first baseman known for his durability walk in the offseason and replaced him with Jorge Polanco, a middle infielder with an injury history who had never played first base before this season, and only played two games before getting injured.
Managers have fewer and fewer responsibilities than they used to. The top baseball ops executive makes most of the decisions, along with teams of analysts. Typically, managers are hired to be the fall guys for the executives, in today’s game, if the executives have all the power, then maybe they should be the ones to be fired before the managers.
Stearns chose the hitting coaches, promoting Jeff Albert to director of Major League hitting after a few years in the organization, and bringing in Troy Snitker after he was fired from the Houston Astros. Beyond them, the hitting group consists of roughly 20 or so coaches, assistant coaches and analysts whose jobs range from strategy and game planning to biomechanical information. They walk around with iPads and various other gadgets, working with hitters on everything from tendencies of pitchers to situational strategies.
The investment in the tech and support is good, but the results have not been good since the changeover. The Mets have the lowest OPS in the league and have scored the fewest runs. The Mets have been hitting the ball on the ground at a maddening rate, though no one can seem to figure out why. The fact that two dozen people can’t figure out why is concerning.
In recent seasons, hitters have said they’ve felt overloaded with information at times. Former hitting coach Eric Chavez said this stemmed from having multiple hitting coaches, and that the team would be better served with one main coach at the top. The Mets opted not to structure their staff like that.
Last season, fans practically ran Chavez and Jeremy Barnes out of town, but so far this year, there has been little attention paid to the new guys. For their part, Snitker and Albert have kept a low profile.
Stearns was Cohen’s white whale, a boy wonder who turned the team in the league’s smallest market, Milwaukee, into a perennial contender on a shoestring budget. A New York native who grew up a Mets fan before going to Harvard and joining the ranks of Ivy League baseball ops bros in quarterzips and khakis, Stearns was the executive who was supposed to legitimize the team.
Since coming to New York, Stearns has been less collaborative and more closed off when it comes to explaining his processes. Maybe this is a Cohen effect, maybe it’s him closing ranks in a big market to protect the narrative, but either way, the plot seems to have been lost.
Stearns doesn’t seem to be a fan of fun. Sources around the team have said he wasn’t crazy about Grimace or OMG because it distracted from the on-field product. What he failed to realize is that it all galvanized the team and the fans, leading to more fun on the field and more wins.
His people skills have been questioned since he took the job without even having a conversation with Buck Showalter, and former general manager Bill Eppler was forced to fire the respected veteran skipper.
The team seems to have been remade in Stearns’s own image. There is nothing flashy or exciting about them. They are buttoned up and corporate. The Mets are the baseball equivalent of a quarter-zip and khakis, with nothing to differentiate them or give them an edge.
The impossible has yet again become a reality for the Mets. With the way the roster has been constructed, there are no quick or easy fixes.