If there’s one thing we know for sure about the New York Mets, it’s that they can’t stand prosperity. After winning a tough three-game series against the San Diego Padres, the Mets turned right around and reopened the door for their playoff competitors by dropping a three-gamer to the hapless Washington Nationals.
In doing so, the Mets played some of the sloppiest baseball of the season, which is saying something. This was a series that featured terrible defense by both teams, along with some questionable managerial decisions that left fans of both teams scratching their heads.
Perhaps the most surprising aspect of this series was the sleepy Mets offense. Washington has the kind of bad staff that good offenses should feast on, and New York did in the first game, scoring 12 runs as they doubled up on the Nats.
After that, though, the offensive production shifted to crickets. Five runs in two games won’t win a lot of games against anyone, even teams like Washington that have been playing bad baseball for months.
But this is who the Mets are now. They play down to inferior competition on a regular basis, and if you watch them and compare the Mets to other contenders, you’ll see a big difference. The Mets blunder on the bases and fail to make basic plays all the time.
The best comparison here might be the Milwaukee Brewers, who are once again proving that you don’t need a big payroll or a lot of star power to win consistently. They just play the right way, execute the fundamentals and play good situational baseball, which is why manager Pat Murphy has an excellent chance to go back-to-back as Manager of the Year.
The worst part of this weekend was ruining the start of rookie pitcher Nolan McLean. McLean wasn’t sharp at all against the Nationals on Saturday, but he pulled himself together and made it through five innings.
Unfortunately, he didn’t get a lot of help from his defense. Right fielder Juan Soto and first baseman Pete Alonso both made errors in the Nats’ two-run second, and those two runs set the tone for the 5-3 loss.
One managerial call that deserves to be questioned is manager Carlos Mendoza’s decision to start left-hander Sean Manaea over starter Clay Holmes yesterday, reversing the order of the two hurlers that got the Mets an 8-3 win over the San Diego Padres last Tuesday. It was probably a reward in part for Manaea after he came up big against the Padres, or maybe it was about the matchups, but the adage “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” could easily have been applied.
It’ll be interesting to see if Mendoza can survive a collapse. The Mets take their traveling baseball circus on the road this week to meet the Chicago Cubs and Miami Marlins, and this week should provide plenty of nail-biting opportunities for bad decisions by both the Mets players and their manager.