This Week in Mets: Will the Mets be able to handle June's challenges this year? (2024)

“I only know what I have to do on paper. In real life, I have difficulty finding the right words.”

— “The Door,” Magda Szabó

The Mets arrived to June 1, 2018, an even 27-27, which belied the very uneven path they had taken to .500. They were a team in disarray to start the month, and they’d be a team at the bottom of the National League by its end. June destroyed the 2018 Mets, who suffered multiple seven-game losing streaks during a 5-21 month. It was their worst month in 36 years.

On the morning of June 1, 2019, New York was 28-29, just a game under .500. By the end of the month, the bullpen had collapsed every way possible, culminating in another seven-game losing streak and a 10-18 record for the month.

The Mets didn’t win a single game in June 2020.

And so, as June lurks around the corner in 2021, the Mets know they’ll be tested. This June will present unique challenges for a team that is riding high but still short-handed.

First, New York will play 11 of its next 16 games against teams over .500 in the Padres and Cubs. (The five exceptions are against the teams with the two worst records in baseball, Arizona and Baltimore.) The Mets have had a remarkably easy schedule thanks to the struggles of the NL East. They’ve played just a dozen games against teams above .500 — seven fewer than any other team in baseball, 16 fewer than the average team in baseball and 30 fewer than the Orioles.

New York is just 2-10 in those games; only the Diamondbacks have a worse winning percentage against winning teams this season.

Second, the Mets’ postponements will hit them hard in the second half of the month. Starting June 11, New York will play 33 games in 31 days into the All-Star break, with a single day off (June 24), three doubleheaders and a one-game makeup trip to Washington. It’s a stretch that will continue to test the Mets’ depth even when they get players back, especially their pitching staff.

With Sunday night’s rainout rescheduled for a June 21 doubleheader at Citi Field, the Mets will play three twin bills in a seven-day stretch against three division rivals — at Washington June 19, versus Atlanta June 21 and versus Philadelphia June 25. That schedule will require the Mets to get at least three starts (or bullpen games) from pitchers outside its usual starting five. We learned this week that Noah Syndergaard won’t be back by then. Carlos Carrasco is unlikely to be back by then. Jordan Yamamoto will be out past then. Joey Lucchesi will probably be part of the usual starting five at that point.

The Mets have done very well in their doubleheaders, going 6-2 in those games — the inverse of their record in four twin bills last season. New York’s relative pitching depth, which includes a good rotation and deep bullpen, has appeared a marginal advantage in shorter contests. The Mets have allowed just 21 runs in those eight seven-inning games, or about 0.382 runs per inning, which compares to the 0.422 runs per inning they allow in nine-inning games.

I wondered whether seven-inning games favored a specific type of team like this, so I looked at the teams that performed best in doubleheaders last year. The four teams that stood out were:

Let’s look at some basic measures for those teams last season:

A shortened season in which doubleheaders were distributed unevenly — St. Louis played 22 seven-inning games, Cleveland played zero — doesn’t exactly constitute an ideal sample. I don’t feel comfortable reading too much into how these teams did in weird baseball games last year.

But the teams that did the best in seven-inning games last season were better at preventing runs than scoring them (with Washington as the outlier). The Mets have an OPS+ of 89, a rotation ERA of 2.79 and a bullpen ERA of 3.51. Maybe doubleheaders won’t be such a bad thing for a team playing the way the Mets are. June will give us more of an idea, though.

The exposition

The Mets swept their division rival Braves in a one-game series bookended by postponements over the weekend. Nevertheless, New York has won four in a row to move to 25-20, pushing its lead in the NL East to a season-best 3 1/2 games. That’s the largest first-place margin in the sport, which is ironic because the Mets have the worst first-place record in the sport. They’d be 4 1/2 games out in multiple other divisions.

The Diamondbacks halted that pesky 13-game losing streak with a win over the Cardinals on Sunday in Phoenix. Arizona is 5-23 in May, which is worse than the 2018 Mets were in June, if you remember that. At 19-35, the Diamondbacks have the worst record in the National League and are 15 games behind …

… the Padres, who won two of three in Houston over the weekend. On the morning of May 1, San Diego was one game better than Arizona. The Padres have gone 19-8 this month, including 16-4 in their previous 20 games, to surge into first in the senior circuit’s most difficult division. They lead the Giants by a half-game, and they have a quick, three-game road trip to Wrigley Field before returning home for four games with the Mets this weekend.

The probable pitching matchups

at Arizona

RHP Jacob deGrom (3-2, 0.80 ERA) vs. RHP Merrill Kelly (2-5, 4.84 ERA)
LHP David Peterson (1-4, 4.91) vs. LHP Caleb Smith (2-1, 3.27)
RHP Marcus Stroman (4-4, 2.47) vs. LHP Madison Bumgarner (4-5, 5.15)

at San Diego

RHP Taijuan Walker (4-1, 1.84) vs. RHP Yu Darvish (5-1, 2.16)
LHP Joey Lucchesi (1-3, 6.56) vs. LHP Blake Snell (1-2, 5.55)
RHP Jacob deGrom vs. RHP Joe Musgrove (4-4, 2.08)
LHP David Peterson vs. RHP Chris Paddack (2-3, 3.61)

What can we learn about the Mets this week?

What do the Mets look like with some pieces back? Pete Alonso is the big one, providing the Mets with the middle-of-the-order bat they’ve lacked since he’s been gone. Luis Rojas was right in pointing out how that right-handed presence can assist Dominic Smith and give the Mets more of a normal front half of the lineup.

Kevin Pillar might be just as important a return, given how little the Mets have gotten out of center field in the past week. Cameron Maybin did get off the 0-fer train Sunday, but it’s obviously been a real struggle for the veteran this season. Pillar brings a better glove in center and a decent bat, especially with some lefties lined up this week. It’s also crazy to think Pillar’s absence from the lineup will be shorter than those of so many other players, which is a reminder about the frustration of soft-tissue injuries.

Seth Lugo’s return is especially intriguing because we’ll see how he’s used in a bullpen that has pitched really well. Lugo’s usage over the past several years has basically been as an emergency fill-in where needed most — set-up man, closer, starter, etc. I’ve long said the best use for Lugo would be when he is pitched every few days for multiple innings, and New York might finally have the other pieces in that bullpen to accommodate such a plan. “He’ll keep the guys we’ve been using a lot fresher,” Rojas said.

Three questions with a beat writer

Let’s chat with Zach Buchanan, who covers the Diamondbacks for The Athletic. Read Zach on how Arizona snapped its 13-game losing streak Sunday.

When the Diamondbacks visited the Mets a few weeks back, they were just embarking on this free fall. What happened?

At the time, they were really banged up. They are less so now, but only just a little. They still don’t have Kole Calhoun or Zac Gallen or Luke Weaver. But that doesn’t fully explain their sudden and precipitous drop. For a long time, they weren’t hitting. More recently, their starting pitching has failed. The defense has been atypically shaky. Basically, you don’t lose that many games all at once without a lot of stuff going wrong.

The NL West is a bear. Has Arizona lobbied the league to join the East? The Cardinals pulled that off in the NFL for a while as precedent and, come to think of it, maybe they should try it too. But seriously, how does the landscape of the division affect the Diamondbacks’ outlook in the near term?

It affects it pretty significantly. I wrote in December that this could be the last hurrah for the Diamondbacks’ core. This division was always going to be tough, and that presupposed good teams in Los Angeles and San Diego, not even San Francisco. Arizona’s core is older, dwindling in team control and clearly not enough to hack it in the division. With a strong farm system about to produce the next core, I’d expect a trade deadline reset to some degree.

What’s going on with Bumgarner, who had been on a roll until his last couple of starts?

The margins for error are just pretty thin. He’s never thrown hard, but his command and cutter movement allowed him to thrive. That command hasn’t consistently been there as a Diamondback, except for his amazing five-game stretch earlier this year. That span of starts shows he can do it, but the question is how often.

Recent series history

The Mets swept the Diamondbacks at Citi Field earlier in May, and they’ve won 10 straight against them at Citi Field. Out in the desert, though, New York hasn’t won a series since 2014. Arizona took two of three the last time the Mets visited in 2019.

The Mets and Padres split their six meetings in 2019, with each team taking two of three at home. New York is just 21-33 all-time at Petco Park, which opened in 2004. Among NL cities, only Chicago and St. Louis have been harder places for the Mets to win in that time.

Injury updates

You know, this section was supposed to be a quick-hitter — not like 300 words each week.

I covered Alonso, Pillar and Lugo up above, all of whom might be activated by the time you read this.

The big injury news last week, of course, was Syndergaard’s setback. Syndergaard left his second rehab start Tuesday with St. Lucie after a single inning, and he now won’t throw for six weeks. That timeline means he won’t start building back up again until around the All-Star break, which pushes a potential 2021 return for Syndergaard to about August 20 at the earliest.

Luis Guillorme and Albert Almora Jr. could start a rehab assignment this week. (Guillorme is ahead of Almora in that regard.)

J.D. Davis and Brandon Nimmo will start swinging when they stop feeling pain in their hands. When they can start swinging, they’ll go on a rehab assignment that will “probably be more aggressive” than their earlier rehab attempts, Rojas said.

Jeff McNeil and Michael Conforto haven’t done anything noteworthy in their recoveries. They’re slated to be out until late June at least, according to acting GM Zack Scott.

Tommy Hunter is progressing better than expected from his back pain, Rojas said earlier this week. A timeline for a return hasn’t been established.

A stat I looked up

When writing about why it was smart of the Mets to retain Robert Gsellman last December, I mentioned how poorly the team’s shuttle relief pitchers — guys who went back and forth from Triple A and the majors — had performed in recent years for New York.

Well, those pitchers are all doing a lot better for the Mets this year:

That’s been fueled by the work of Sean Reid-Foley, Drew Smith and Hunter. It doesn’t even count what Gsellman has done (18 2/3 innings of a 2.89 ERA). It’s a big reason the Mets bullpen has been good this year — their “other” relievers have basically pitched as well as Miguel Castro in more innings.

A belated elegy

The Mets designated Daniel Zamora for assignment earlier this month, with the left-hander being claimed by the Mariners. Zamora was a late-season bright spot for a bad Mets bullpen in 2018, but he hadn’t gotten a chance to pitch in the majors for New York since 2019 when he was let go.

Of course, I especially enjoyed Zamora’s appearances. There were 26 rhymes for his 33 Mets appearances, none of them repeated, and I managed to pair rhymes with Swarzak, Jeurys and Nogosek. My personal favorite came after a memorable game:

I didn't get a chance to use this Saturday night, but in honor of his first major-league win that night:

When your first big-league win
's the last for the captain…

…that's Zamora.

— Tim Britton (@TimBritton) October 1, 2018

So, in conclusion:

Thinking about good times,
Pour one out for the rhymes …

… that’s Zamora.

A note on the epigraph

One of my go-to habits in a bookstore is to seek out the minimalist spines of New York Review Books, publisher of little-known classics. (Some of my favorite bookstores, like the one on my college campus and Symposium Books down the block from my office at The Providence Journal, had entire sections devoted to the publishing house.)

“The Door” is one of several NYRB books I’d never heard of before picking it up, alongside wonderful reads like Frans Bengtsson’s “The Long Ships,” Intizar Husain’s “Basti” and David Jones’ “In Parenthesis.” It’s about class and adult friendship in communist Hungary, and it’s one of those books that gets a lot across in subtle ways.

To be fair, I chose this epigraph now, though, because it’s how I feel when I see friends or family in person after 15 months of relative seclusion.

What The Athletic is telling you to think

The Mets’ success with defensive positioning is the first tangible impact of a deeper investment into analytical infrastructure.

Prediction time

Does the rhyme scheme work as well for Almora?

(Photo: Sarah Stier / Getty Images)