They Are Who We Thought They Were

Well here we are, two or three games into a brand new baseball season (unless you're the Dodgers or Diamondbacks).  With so little of the season played, it is really far too early to make evaluations of the 30 teams across baseball.  There are questions that each team has to answer, and we probably won't be getting those answers definitively for the next two or three months.  The Yankees dropping two to the bouncing-back-from-rock-bottom Astros?  Like Carlos Beltran said last night, the Yankees "don't need to worry about it".  (After all, the historic 1998 club started 1-3 amid calls for Joe Torre's dismissal; we all know how that ended.)  Kansas City sitting at 0-2 after two tough losses in Detroit?  Probably not huge.  Heck, the Marlins and Astros are a combined 4-1 right now.  The first week of the season hardly means anything over the course of six months and 162 games.

But things are always different in Flushing.  Yes, the Mets have only played twice.  Yes, they weren't supposed to be great this year.  Yes, they've played an excellent Washington team that many expect to be playing into the final days of October.  But it's Queens, where every little thing carries more weight than it should.

On Monday, Dillon Gee made the Opening Day start due to injuries to Matt Harvey and Jon Niese.  Gee was his solid, serviceable self but lost his chance at a win when the bullpen went belly-up in the seventh.  Daniel Murphy has drawn the unjust ire of certain idiotic talking heads at the Mets' former radio home because he - gasp! - used his collectively bargained right to be present at the birth of his son.  Because, you know, God forbid someone be a good father!  The bullpen has struggled (more on this below) and Bobby Parnell waited until after blowing a save on Opening Day to tell the Mets of his arm troubles (a partially-torn MCL in his elbow that may or may not require Tommy John surgery).  After just one game, Jose "Papa Grande" Valverde - fresh off his release from the Detroit Tigers' minor league affiliate in Toledo - is now closing games for the Mets (at least, whenever the bullpen can actually get a lead to the ninth inning).

How about free agent signees Curtis Granderson, Chris Young, and Bartolo Colon?  The first influx of veteran talent Sandy Alderson has brought in has struggled thus far.  Granderson (0-for-9 with 5 strikeouts) has already drawn boos, Young was out of the Opening Day lineup and lasted just half an inning before re-aggravating his right quadriceps on Wednesday (he still hasn't had a plate appearance), and Colon battled through six innings and was at times hit hard by Washington's excellent hitters (and opposing pitcher Gio Gonzalez who took him deep in the fifth).

None of this is what really, truly concerns me about the 53rd edition of the New York Mets.  Injuries and life happen.  Every player struggles from time to time.  There are plenty of normal ups-and-downs in a long season.  And I'd bet that most Mets fans have no issue with losing a couple of ballgames to the Washington Nationals, the likely runaway winner of the National League East.  It's just the "how" that is very troubling, even at this early stage.

The biggest question marks coming in were first base, shortstop, and the bullpen.  At first base, Ike Davis, Lucas Duda, and Josh Satin are a combined 0-for-8 so far.  And while de facto shortstop Ruben Tejada has actually hit the ball well so far, the bullpen has been an abject nightmare, and there is nothing to suggest given the track records of these pitchers that anything will improve.  (The veterans out there have been all kinds of awful in recent years and the young guys aren't exactly the young arms we've all already fallen in love with.  [Thor?  Where are you, Thor?])  This bullpen is exactly what we all feared it would be once the Mets lost LaTroy Hawkins: inconsistent at best, and maybe even collectively below replacement-level at worst.  (Think about that for a minute!)  The contrast between a championship contender - which the Nationals are - and the Mets is just perfect this week.  The Nats have nothing short of THREE CLOSERS on their roster in Drew Storen (who looks like he's back to his pre-postseason-meltdown dominant self), Tyler Clippard, and Rafael "Untuck" Soriano.  Any of the three would be a dominant closer in this league, and together they make games against the Nats a six-inning affair.  It's amazing the difference a great bullpen can make.  And the Mets, who have specialized in blowing late leads since September of 2007, do not have one.

It doesn't take a genius or even a sabermetrician to figure out the flaws in the construction of this lineup.  Last year, the Mets finished the year tied with the Braves for the most strikeouts by a team in baseball.  And that was before they acquired the progressively-more-contact-challenged Curtis Granderson and Chris Young.  The Mets have been retired 62 times in two games (one out was when Tejada was thrown out at the plate last night on a Juan Lagares double), and an even HALF of them (31) have come via the strikeout!  Surely, credit goes to Stephen Strasburg and the Nats' great bullpen, but even Gio Gonzalez struck out six in six innings last night (twice fanning Josh Satin, who "hammers lefties").

The bullpen woes and strikeout issues are what separate this team from being a legitimate contender.  The rotation, even without Harvey, is still very good.  There is more power, and the outfield is improved.  They will eventually score more runs.  But these are fatal flaws, and they have already been exposed in just two games.  And that's where this conversation becomes about one man: fourth-year general manager Sandy Alderson.

Alderson deserves credit for re-stocking the farm system.  There is a full stable of phenomenal arms down there.  You know the names: Syndergaard, de Grom, Montero.  He traded for Zack Wheeler, Syndergaard, catcher Travis d'Arnaud, etc.  He has also drafted some promising bats who are still years away (namely, Dominic Smith and Brandon Nimmo).  In his first three years, he has had very limited resources to work with, and with the exception of the Frank Francisco deal, he has spent them wisely while waiting out the expiration of the many bad contracts that defined the later years of the Omar Minaya era.  But he is facing his fair share of criticism this year, and frankly, it's deserved.  Alderson remarked privately to Mets baseball people that it should be a goal for this club (that has won 77, 74, and 74 games in the three-year Alderson/Collins era) to win 90 games this year.  Yes, we should be happy that they're aiming high and that expectations are up.  However well-intended the comments were, they come across as delusional when they come from a man who assembled THIS roster.  Saying a club with zero reliable bullpen arms and a ton of strikeouts and injury problems should try and win 90 games is absolutely unreasonable.  In a city and with a fanbase that is hell-bent on being cynical about the Mets until the team proves it is worthy of optimism, this will no doubt turn into yet another epic misstep.

After a few short days, we don't know very much about how the 2014 baseball season will turn out.  For most teams, Opening Week will tell us very little in the grand scheme of things.  But for the 2014 New York Mets, the flaws are all too real and all too obvious to miss.  Forget 90 wins and "meaningful games in September"; this team will have overachieved greatly if it can even sniff .500.

Welcome to "The Sports Barron"

Well here we go again. 

I've dabbled with a blog before a time or two and stopped before finding my niche. There's no saying at this point what that niche might be, but I'm going for it again. I've loved the game of baseball from a young age. And while I love my life as a full-time parish youth minister about to enter into his lifelong vocation as a husband to the most beautiful woman in the world, for the sake of my own sanity I need a hobby. So this is it. That's right, I'm going to turn my favorite pastime into a blog. Like any Millennial loser would do.

I must say, this experiment is actually quite fascinating so far. I decided to split my Twitter account into two, separating the baseball from the non-baseball. With my baseball account (@SportsBarron, if you're wondering), I started following every beat writer, baseball columnist, and team account I could find from the entire Major Leagues. And let me tell you, what an experience it is! Following every baseball writer in the country on a game night is positively mind-blowing. These guys get paid to go to ballparks every night and write about baseball. I sit on my couch and watch their updates, flashing back and forth between two or three games, and writing a lowly blog that may never gain much traction and call it a "hobby". As a Christian man, I'm not supposed to be jealous, but I can't deny that those folks have it pretty good.

So, what will this blog be? We'll see. I'll definitely be sharing quick opinions on Twitter. Expect posts here to be a bit more thoughtful, better organized, and less emotional. You know, the way the professionals are supposed to write about baseball. Baseball is a beautiful game, a thinking man's game (especially in the NL), and one that has always appealed to me more than any other game ever could. Thanks for stopping by, and I hope you enjoy the read!