The New York Mets pitching staff isn’t bad after all with the 20-inning marathon win over the Cardinals!
Who would have thought that the New York Mets pitching staff would be the strongest part of the team, while the batting staff would be the weakest? On Saturday, April 17, against the St. Louis Cardinals, the Mets batting team was close until the top of the 19th inning when Jose Reyes scored a run on a sacrifice fly off a position player-turned-pitcher during the play. All the regular relievers were already depleted in the Cardinals’ bullpen, and the only available pitchers were starters.
Cardinals coach Tony La Russa decided not to bring any of his starting pitchers to continue the game; so, he opted to use position players to make the shot. This decision eventually cost him the game, considering the fact that Mets hitters couldn’t hit a ball out of the Saint Louis infield if their lives depended on it.
The Mets’ batting staff couldn’t even score a run against Felipe López, the Cardinals’ third baseman who took over pitching duties, temporarily relinquishing his third base position in the top of the 18th inning; that’s how terrible the Mets’ hitters were. Even Jason Bay couldn’t buy a life-saving punch from him. He went something like 0-for-7 and only got a chance to get to first base when Joseph Mather (infielder and outfielder), another position player turned pitcher in the middle of the game, hit him in the hand.
With his teammates standing on top of the dugout watching every pitch from the shortstop, who won the 3-game series opener with a grand slam the night before, Felipe Lopez pitched a scoreless 18th inning. His Cardinals teammates, jumping up and down, high-fives all over the dugout, roared as he entered the dugout without allowing a run and a hit to the hapless Mets batting staff.
Every Mets fan in the stadium and at home must have been thinking that this could be the worst loss in Mets franchise history if the team loses this game. Fortunately, however, the worst did not happen and the Mets cruised to a 2-1 win over the Cardinals in the 20th inning.
When the season started, all the Mets fans were saying that the front office didn’t do much to improve the pitching staff. In fact, Mets fans are correct in their assertion because the team didn’t really sign any big-name pitchers. They only added minor league pitchers from their farm system in Jonathan Niese, Jenrry Mejia and Fernando Nieve and borrowed Raúl Valdés from the Mexican League. The team also signed two Japanese pitchers (Ryota Igarashi and Hisanori Takahashi) who are currently in the bullpen along with Mejia and Nieve, while Niese is in the starting rotation at No. 5.
With these unproven pitchers on staff, Mets fans had good reason to believe the pitch would be the undoing of the New York Mets team. But no, this is far from the truth, the pitching staff is proving everyone wrong. Apart from the lousy starts of John Maine, throwing poorly in his first two games, the pitching staff is proving to be the strongest part of the team, especially the bullpen which has allowed fewer runs in the Majors than most bullpens, the first two games. In the season
Therefore, it is surprising to see that hitting is the weak link of the Mets team. In fact, the Mets’ front office did much more this offseason to improve the hitting staff than the pitching staff. The team signed Jason Bay to a guaranteed $66 million-a-year contract. Many would say that he does not deserve all that money because so far he has been a flop. The veteran former Red Sox slugger, who hit .267 with 36 homers and 119 RBI last year with the Red Sox, has done nothing in the last 10 games to refute that claim, according to statistics provided by ESPN. Hopefully it’s coming soon for the good of Mets fans!
José Reyes, who is coming off calf surgery, hasn’t done any better either. In fact, his situation is a little different because he is coming off an injury and a thyroid condition. It’s obvious he’s not the same player he once was. In fact, he doesn’t run as fast as he used to run before the surgery, and his batting average has suffered greatly in his return, hitting a measly .171 on the season so far, stats provided by ESPN.
Overall, the Mets look more like a rebuilding team trying to stay competitive as they go through the rebuilding process. Who is to blame for this? It’s certainly not the fault of the manager, Jerry Manuel. If anything, it’s Omar Minaya’s fault for firing Willie Randolph, the only manager to lead the Mets to the playoffs in recent memory.
After Willie Randolph was fired by Minaya, the team went from bad to worse losing more than 50 percent of its games last season, although many of the starters were decimated by injuries, Carlos Beltrán, José Reyes, John Maine, Oliver Perez, Carlos Delgado. to name a few.
Jerry Manuel is a very good trainer. However, the jury is still out on him. Many Mets fans say he’s not strong enough. One of the main reasons for this is that there was an incident involving Jose Reyes and Jerry Manuel, days after Willie Randolph was fired, when Manuel came into the infield to take Reyes out of the game after the manager saw the shortstop move. He was injured in a field game.
Well, when Manuel approached Reyes, putting his hands around the shortstop to tell him that he would like him to leave the game because he didn’t want to risk further injury to the player, Reyes initially refused to leave the game. shrugging with a vigorous frown and walking away from his new manager Jerry Manuel. Since that incident, Mets fans have accused the funny manager of being soft.
On the other hand, Willie Randolph was hated by some of the players; some claimed that Willie was too pompous, spoke contemptuously to them, and at times he was very stiff and robotic, never showing a smile. No wonder they were winning games! A good leader is never friends with his employees. An outstanding leader is in a leadership position to lead, not to make friends.
So here we are again, hoping and hoping that the Mets start winning some games, so that Jerry Manuel and Omar Minaya can keep their jobs. In fact, switching to a new regime by firing the General Manager and Manager is not the answer to solving the Mets’ problems. The answer is to put the best baseball players on the field. So the New York Mets may have the best chance to win, which will make all Mets fans happy, and that starts with signing some good hitters! We saw the pitching staff not bad after shutting down the St. Louis Cardinals for 20 innings as the batting staff struggled for a hit against position players turned pitchers!
