Are the Mets Playoff Chances Evaporating?

With each Mets loss, I lose more and more hope about our chances for the playoffs. Now I don’t mean playoffs for 2021, I mean playoffs ever. And with each Mets win, I never get my hopes up because the Mets don’t know the definition of a streak, especially a winning one.

The Mets are seven games back of first place in their division, keep in mind, the red-hot Braves, who are cutting through everyone like a hot knife through butter, are in first, and the Mets are seven games out of the Wild Card. To even think about getting to the playoffs, the Mets need to get a better record than the Phillies, because they’re in front of them in the NL East and the Wild Card.

Then there are the Cardinals and the Padres in their way, both of them are first place teams if they weren’t in such a tough division. Finally, the Reds and Dodgers hold the Wild Card spots as of now. The Reds have one of the most potent offenses of this decade and as the Mets saw in 7 games against the Dodgers, they’re pretty good, as the Dodgers took 6 of 7.

For now, let’s rule out the Wild Card as a path to the playoffs. Ah, better now, right? The Braves are tearing through the league right now, but that could stop very soon. The Braves have an extremely tough schedule to finish August, and to begin and finish September. With games that consist of the Giants, Dodgers, Phillies, Nationals and Padres. Sadly, the Phillies have an easy schedule, consisting of the Diamondbacks, Rockies, Marlins, more Rockies, and Pirates. The Mets have a schedule leaning towards difficult, consisting of the Nationals, Yankees, Red Sox, and Cardinals.

In between these games, they have intra-division games and Wild Card opponents. We NEED to capitalize on those games.

Let’s take a look at the team.

The Offense: (Oops, scratch it)

Pete Alonso is our best offensive player, but one who lacks stardom in clutch moments. 12 of his 28 homers have been solo shots, he would have a lot more if his teammates would start getting on base. On 8/25, Alonso came up with the bases loaded. He worked the count to 3-2 and then hit the weakest ground ball ever to third base. If Kris Bryant hadn’t made an errant throw, we wouldn’t have gotten anything. He was standing on first base, not happily, the word to describe that would be sheepishly. Later in the game, the bottom of the 9^th inning, down by one, guess who comes up with the bases loaded and two outs again? Yup, you guessed it, Pete Alonso. In a 1-2 count, he sees a pitch he could square up, he takes a mammoth swing and hits and a grand slam! Ha, I wish, he lined out softly to the second baseman to end the game.

Each loss also makes me realize that we need a rebuild to come to Flushing. Personally, I believe that no one is tied down. Everyone is available, except for Fransisco Lindor, for obvious reasons, and Brandon Nimmo, because we have to keep him. This starts with firing our manager. Would you take out your All-Star starting pitcher, Taijuan Walker, after he threw just 74 pitches and allowed one run? I definitely wouldn’t. Luis Rojas did. Fire him. He makes the worst decisions. A four year old punching buttons on an Xbox controller in his sleep could make better decisions than this guy.

When Jonathan Villar is second on your team in home runs, you know you’re in trouble. He’s known for speed and decent defense, not hitting at all, really. “Fraudsisco” Lindor has only hit 11 homers and has a .224 batting average. Sure, he was injured for a while but 11 homers?? He also has the audacity to cry to the media about how fans are booing him. We’ll boo you more, you bum, if you keep performing like this.

Why did Dom Smith cool off? Why can’t he keep hitting? We need him to perform, Mets fans are calling for him to be traded in the offseason. I don’t agree with it, but if it means we get a better replacement or a consistent hitter, I’ll drive him to wherever he gets traded. Brandon Nimmo is amazing, he gets on base consistently and he’s a sparkplug for our team. On the day Javier Baez was traded to the Mets, non-Mets fans immediately warned Mets fans that he had way too much “swing and miss” in his game.

We were too enchanted by Baez’s presence that we didn’t care. Yeah, he hit a home run in his first game as a Met, but how many hits in general has he had as a Met after that? 4? 7? It’s actually been eight and he has 16 strikeouts, I can’t even begin to digest what I just wrote. And he has a .195 BA with us. Don’t extend him, leave him, don’t bring him back. We would be doing just fine without him.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Baez and Lindor, they’re great leaders in the clubhouse and as a fan, you can’t not like these guys, but they need to perform on the field, not just in the clubhouse. We need to sign Michael Conforto to a “prove it” deal, where we give him around $8 -$12 million and if he doesn’t “prove it”, he’s gone. Same thing with Jeff McNeil, the same type of deal, with less money. Also, we made one of the worst signings in history when we signed James McCann. I thought it was a good idea but now I see it wasn’t. We have the #10 prospect in baseball just a few years away (1 or 2 actually), Fransisco Alvarez, and, Tomas Nido is playing just fine as the backup, so give him the starting role for two years, then let Alvarez take the reins. You wanna hear a joke? The Mets offense.

The Pitching:

Not all hope may be lost for this season, as a few days ago, Noah Syndergaard (forgot about him, didn’t you?) started his rehab assignment and Jacob DeGrom (you definitely didn’t forget about him, right?) has started throwing again. If Carlos Carrasco could be pitching slightly better, then we could have assembled the Avengers in our starting rotation. Jacob DeGrom, Marcus Stroman, Taijuan Walker, Carlos Carrasco, Tylor Megill (or Rich Hill), and then Syndergaard coming out of the bullpen just for this year. That would be ideal.

Now if our offense would start producing, we could actually do something this year. Jeurys Familia has been really good lately, he hasn’t had a bad outing in a few weeks, and now I could feel comfortable watching him pitch. Also, Aaron Loup needs to be re-signed. Loup is a lockdown pitcher. Put this guy in any situation and he’ll work out of it. He deserves that beer with the boys now. Search up Aaron Loup/Anthony Banda beer comment and you’ll get it. The same thing applies to Miguel Castro and Trevor May. Even Edwin Diaz hasn’t been all that bad lately!

Wow, things are starting to shape up for the Mets bullpen, right? Now if our makeshift starting rotation can hold it together until reinforcements come in, we could keep games close enough for our offense to claw their way back into games.