The New York Mets were 0-5, six outs away from going 0-6. And yet their misery went even deeper. In the second game of a doubleheader against the Detroit Tigers, the Mets also were getting no-hit.
First-year manager Carlos Mendoza turned to his bench coach, John Gibbons, a former major-league manager himself.
“I wanted to manage in the big leagues?” Mendoza said.
In that moment, Mendoza could not have imagined what was to follow. A bloop single by Harrison Bader leading off the eighth to break up the no-hitter. A game-tying homer by Pete Alonso leading off the ninth. A walkoff single by Tyrone Taylor to propel the Mets toward becoming the team they believe they can be.
The 2-1 victory was the first of a 12-3 turnaround that included six straight wins before the Mets fell to the Los Angeles Dodgers on Sunday, 10-0. Jose Buttó and Reed Garrett, the pitchers who ended the team’s season-opening losing streak, have emerged as the kind of surprises every contender needs. And the prediction by new president of baseball operations David Stearns in spring training — “we are a playoff-caliber team” — no longer appears far-fetched, if it ever was at all. The Mets won 101 games in 2022 before collapsing to 75-87 last season. And their $323 million payroll remains the game’s highest.
The only teams in the National League that look dominant are the Dodgers, the Atlanta Braves and perhaps the Philadelphia Phillies. The NL Central champion will claim another postseason berth, leaving at least two wild-card spots. The Mets figure to at least contend for one, but every hot team in the early part of the season faces the same question: How real is what they’re doing?
Reasons to believe
Starling Marte
A healthy Marte has been key to the Mets’ lineup so far in 2024. (Jonathan Hui / USA Today)
The single biggest difference in the Mets’ offense thus far: Marte finally is moving well again after undergoing double groin surgery in November 2022, then suffering renewed groin trouble that ended his 2023 season on Aug. 5.
This is the dynamic Marte who ignited the Mets in the first part of 2022, not the player who couldn’t rotate properly last season, swinging through pitches in the middle of the plate. Elevated to the second spot on April 9, he has hit three homers with an .824 OPS since. He seems relieved, happy. At 35, he looks like the Marte of old.
The bullpen
Edwin Díaz’s season-ending knee injury in last year’s World Baseball Classic seemed to set the tone for the Mets’ disappointing 2023 season. Now Díaz is back, Garrett is an out-of-nowhere success and the bullpen as a whole entered Sunday with the league’s second-lowest opponents’ OPS.
Regressions are inevitable, as are injuries — left-hander Brooks Raley, who had allowed only five baserunners in seven innings, went on the injured list Sunday with elbow inflammation. But the return of Díaz provides an anchor, and pitching coach Jeremy Hefner raves about the group’s hard-working, process-oriented approach.
Reinforcements
Nearly every team is waiting for injured players to return, knowing others will go down in the interim. Still, one of the most encouraging aspects of the Mets’ early success is that they demonstrated their mettle without two of their more important players, right-hander Kodai Senga and designated hitter J.D. Martinez.
DJ Stewart, after an 0-for-12 start, has made significant contributions as a DH, including a two-run, go-ahead eighth-inning homer against the Braves on April 8. But Martinez, who signed a one-year, free-agent contract, is expected to join the team when it returns home Friday, potentially making an improved offense that much better.
Senga isn’t eligible to return from a shoulder injury until May 27. Once he is back, the Mets again might need to go to a six-man rotation to accommodate him, but at least they would have their ace. And while the loss of catcher Francisco Alvarez to a left-thumb injury Friday night was a big blow, it was not season-ending. The timetable for his recovery from surgery is six to eight weeks.
The deadline
The Mets deconstructed after falling out of contention last season, trading David Robertson, Justin Verlander and Max Scherzer. No chance they do that again if the team is in the wild-card race. Owner Steve Cohen has demonstrated a commitment to winning. And Stearns has insisted the team is not punting on 2024 while pointing toward increased payroll flexibility and rising young talent in 2025.
The Mets already are well over the highest luxury-tax threshold. When you’re a billionaire like Cohen, what’s another few million dollars in penalties? The bigger concern, perhaps, is the quality of players that might be available. In this era of expanded playoffs, clubs are less likely to trade off parts. And the sellers that already are obvious — the Miami Marlins, Oakland Athletics, Colorado Rockies and Chicago White Sox — have precious little to offer.
Then again, no one would have predicted a year ago at this time that the Mets would trade Verlander and Scherzer. Who knows? If the Astros fail to rebound from their 7-16 start, maybe the Mets could get Verlander back. They’re already paying nearly three-fourths of his $43.3 million salary.
Carlos Mendoza
If Mendoza seemed unfazed by the Mets’ 0-5 start, it was partly because of the six years he spent across town as the New York Yankees’ bench coach. In 2018, Mendoza’s first season with the Yankees, the team won 100 games but the Boston Red Sox won 108, then a showdown between the clubs in the Division Series. Mendoza remembers fans and media, in his words, “calling for everybody’s head.”
“I learned quickly how it works,” he said.
Mendoza, 44, has shown impressive confidence for a first-year manager, occasionally opting for unpredictable matchups rather than the platoon advantage. On Saturday afternoon, he went to Díaz in the eighth with one out and a two-run lead, knowing Garrett had thrown 33 pitches the night before. Díaz walked Shohei Ohtani and Freddie Freeman to load the bases when they wouldn’t chase, but escaped unscathed. Garrett then struck out the side in the ninth.
Mendoza’s passion is evident in the way he emotionally responds to his players’ successes in the dugout. The players in turn, appreciate his aggressive style.
“He’s in attack mode all the time,” Pete Alonso said.
Reasons to worry
The rotation
As The Athletic’s Tim Britton pointed out shortly after the season began, this is not a collection of starters that pitches deep into games. Sure, the 200-inning starter is largely a thing of the past. But let’s see how many in the Mets’ current rotation even get to 150.
Jose Quintana once was a workhorse, but is 35 now and worked only 75 2/3 innings last season after undergoing bone-graft surgery to remove a lesion on one of his ribs. Sean Manaea was a reliever for much of 2023. Adrian Houser’s career-high for innings is 142 1/3. Luis Severino has not thrown more than 102 innings in a season since 2018.
The return of Senga will help only so much. A top-of-the-rotation starter might not be available at the deadline. Before Houser allowed eight runs on Sunday, the Mets ranked sixth in the majors in rotation ERA. It’s reasonable to ask how long they can remain at that level — and how they will get through the season without supplementing this group.
The sustainability of the bullpen
What’s the flip side of the starters ranking near the bottom of the league in innings pitched? Exactly what happened last season, when the Mets’ bullpen looked good early before succumbing to overuse.
Hefner does not hide his concern.
“You keep going to the well. You keep playing really close games. There’s the intensity component,” the pitching coach said. “. . . The starters are going to have to find some length at some point. That’s reasonable to ask of them. The bullpen has picked up the lion’s share these past few weeks.”
Mets starters have worked 103 2/3 innings, relievers 85 1/3. And one underlying statistic — the team’s major-league high 11.7 percent walk rate — is further cause for alarm.
An inability to throw out base stealers
The Mets finally got one Sunday after starting the season a major-league worst 0-for-28. The golden-armed catcher was not Alvarez’s backup, Omar Narváez, who has allowed 17 stolen bases in 65 innings. It was Tomás Nido, who joined the team in place of Alvarez only the day before, that threw out the Dodgers’ Will Smith.
A number of Mets pitchers do not hold runners well — Manaea and reliever Jorge López each have allowed four stolen bases; Houser, Buttó and Díaz three. But Nido, who cleared waivers and spent the rest of the season at Triple A after getting designated for assignment last June, could assume a greater role, particularly if Narváez is not hitting.
Overall defense
Defensive ratings are notoriously unreliable in small samples. Several of the Mets’ defensive mistakes occurred during their 0-5 start. But to this point, the Mets rank near the bottom of the publicly available metrics. They’re probably not that bad. But how much better will they be?
Stearns tried to improve the defense, adding outfielders Harrison Bader and Tyrone Taylor and infielders Joey Wendle and Zack Short. Bader helps the outfield, but Marte is a liability in right. The improvement of Brett Baty at third helps the infield, but Alonso at first and Jeff McNeil at second are average defenders at best.
Combine all that with an inability to shut down the running game, and the Mets figure to be less than airtight defensively — an issue that could become more prominent once their pitching levels off.
Regression
Will Buttó prove a consistent back-end starter? Will Garrett continue as one of the game’s top relievers? Will Bader remain an occasional offensive threat, Taylor more of a dynamic contributor than he was with the Milwaukee Brewers?
The flip side of such questions is that some players — notably, shortstop Francisco Lindor — are bound to improve on their early performances. Teams use elaborate statistical models in an attempt to predict outcomes, but so many variables come into play, such exercises often are futile. Executives admit they have no idea what is going to happen. Which, of course, is the beauty of the game.
Know this about the Mets, though. They’re more interesting than many of us expected. And they could grow a lot more interesting in the months ahead.
(Top photo of, left to right, Zack Short, Brandon Nimmo, Starling Marte and Francisco Lindor: John McCoy / Getty Images)
