The New York Mets had a rough year, but they did have some bright spots here and there.
The New York Mets’ season may have felt like one long dark cloud that felt rolling along and sucking up good vibes, but it wasn’t quite that bad. Brad Doolittle of ESPN did a piece on silver linings for MLB’s non-playoff teams, and while he did hit the mark on one, there were several others that the writer missed on, so let’s go there and fill in some of the gaps.
The rookies
This is the obvious one that Doolittle nailed. Outfielders Carson Benge and A.J. Ewing provided offensive and defensive highlights, while starters Nolan McLean and Zac Thornton handled the pitching end of the optimism scale.
Per Doolittle, the Mets have a trio of top-10 NL rookies by AXE -- Benge (118, 2nd), McLean (116, third) and Ewing (110, ninth) -- plus Thornton at No. 20 (104 AXE). The Mets also just passed the Cleveland Guardians for the most rookie WAR in baseball, so the season wasn’t a complete waste.
The bullpen building
Doolittle missed this one, and it was significant. The Mets bullpen was the team’s biggest strength in the first half of the season, but they had to dismantle it completely when they declared themselves open for business for the fire sale that happened at the deadline.
That looked ominous enough, but what happened at the deadline was remarkable. The bullpen staggered initially, but the Mets found several relievers as they rebuilt the pen, with the most notable relievers including Nate Lavender, Daniel Duarte and Dedniel Nunez. (No, we are not including Kodai Senga.)
Yes, there was some bad in there. Jefrey Yan’s celebrations were fun to watch initially, but his forays where he had no idea where the ball was going half the time, not so much. Xzavion Curry lands close to that spot, and Jonathan Pintaro was surprisingly inconsistent.
The point going forward is that the Mets know how to build out a bullpen. That’s a useful skill to have in today’s game, especially with so many teams shifting over to using openers and starters who can barely go four or five innings.
Sneaky improvers
The Mets had several of these. First and foremost was catcher Luis Torrens, who rescued us from having to watch some of Francisco Alvarez’s many mental and phyical errors. Jared Young was another revelation at first, as he did the same by saving us from having to watch Mark Vientos try to shift over from third and produce one bad play after another.
