How would a fantasy team of Wright, Reyes, Beltran, Bay, Santana, K-Rod stack up? At least from a name value point of view, that is a pretty formidable core of players. But fourteen games into the season, the Mets are 4-10, which is good for the third worst record in the league, and their season may as well be over.
Bay and Santana have not yet played, and Santana may not pitch an inning this year (at least he shouldn’t in order to protect him for 2012 - which does sound strange considering there are about 150 games left to play in 2011). The pitching staff looked 2 or 3 deep, but has proven that no one is capable of making it through the opposition’s lineup three times in a game. Pelfrey, Niese and Dickey are good for the occasional 5 innings but are a wildly inconsistent group (although Dickey’s last outing was more impressive than the numbers suggest). And when things were looking great for Chris Young, today we learn that he will hit the DL after what was supposed to be a pushed-back start to avoid spending time on the bench. The Young misdiagnosis screams of classic Mets mismanagement, but is also a sign of how bad things have gotten in Queens. When you need Chris Young to be your ace, you are in an awful lot of trouble. Look around the league and you will be challenged to find many rotations, aces or bullpens worse than what the Mets can throw at you (just ask Tulo about the Mets staff).
The offense is lethargic and hitting with RISP is a problem…AGAIN. At least in the past the Mets usually got out of the gate fast, but it seems in 2011 they have expedited the process and fast-forwarded straight to losing. And this time there is no sentimentality surrounding a Mets legend in HoJo to protect the offense.
I say give up the year and give it to the kids, but there don’t seem to be any prospects worthy of competing without rushing them up. Fourteen games into the season and the Mets are already in no man’s zone. They are too good to rebuild (at least on paper) but they are too bad to compete. We can’t even turn to the draft as a sign of hope for the future because the MLB First Year Draft is no sure thing, and it often takes players a number of years before they work their way to the majors - that is if we temporarily forget the fact that the Mets continue to not take advantage of their big budget and spend overslot.
A hypothetical situation and a number of questions for all of you Mets fans out there: the Mets and Nationals are tied for the Wild Card with three games left to play against each other, do the Mets win out? Do they win the series? Can you argue that the Mets are not the worst team in the NL East?
And as if the future was not bleak enough, name the top 10 prospects in the NL East…are any of them Mets?