Views from the Promenade

All that stuff I said about the Mets starting to get over the injury bug? Forget it — first Luis Castillo falls down the dugout stairs last night and sprains his ankle, then Jon Niese has to be carried off the field in the second inning of this afternoon’s game.

I think by now we’re all desensitized when the Mets’ veteran players suffer injuries. But are we really so cursed that our young prospects need to go down left and right too? Between Niese and Fernando Martinez’s knee problems, it’s starting to feel like the mid-1990s again, when the members of “Generation K” — Jason Isringhausen, Paul Wilson and Bill Pulsipher — were constantly injured and never had a chance to deliver on their potential.

At least the Mets are winning 5-0 as I write this. Also, Nelson Figueroa hit a two-run triple: how often do you see that? These days, we have to take what we can get.

Edit: And now Sheffield’s down too — amazing!

When it comes to the Mets and injuries, I never want to get anyone’s hopes up. That said, Carlos Betran looks like he could be on the way back. According to the Mets, Beltran took outdoor batting practice at Citi Field for the first time during his rehab work today, hitting from both sides of the plate for about 20 minutes. The plan is to have Beltran back in about two weeks, though with this team, that’s never a sure thing.

You might have noticed a little more facial hair on the Mets recently. It seems that several players have agreed to stop shaving until the team hits the .500 mark again, including  David Wright, Jeff Francoeur and Mike Pelfrey. The obvious joke is that they’ll be wearing those beards for the rest of the season, but you never know when one of these little team-building gimmicks can push the right buttons and lead to a little success.

Mets fans will be understandably pessimistic heading into the second half of the season. The team is struggling, we’re still suffering through one of the worst rash of injuries the Mets have ever seen, and management doesn’t appear to be looking to make a big trade to improve the team and make a run.

All that said, let’s not give up hope yet. There’s plenty of talent on this team, even if some of that talent is on the disabled list. If the Mets hang roughly where they are — within 6-7 games or so of first — until they start getting players like Jose Reyes and Carlos Beltran back, all is not yet lost. The Mets would need some help, because if the Phillies play as well as they can, it would be nearly impossible to catch them. But until the last two weeks, Philadelphia hadn’t shown the ability to start distancing themselves from the rest of the NL East; if their recent run proves to be the exception rather than the rule, there’s still a chance for the Mets to play themselves back into contention.

We’ll see how the Mets open up the second half tomorrow night in Atlanta, and hope they can start to turn things around — otherwise, it could be a long and boring summer. For now though, I want to give my take on the five biggest storylines of the first half:

1. Citi Field: The new home of the Mets quickly developed a reputation as being one of the most pitcher-friendly parks in the league, and commentators have noted all season long that home run numbers at the park are down significantly. Part of this is true, but some of the perception doesn’t quite match the numbers. According to ESPN’s Park Factors, Citi Field is near the bottom of the league in terms of how many runs it allows, ranking 26th out of 30. But this is mostly due to a big reduction in walks and doubles; homers are almost exactly where you’d expect them to be (technically, they’re up 0.7%) when you compare how the same players perform in Citi Field compared to everywhere else. I have a feeling this number will come down, and Citi Field will prove to have some effect on the long ball, but only a moderate one — not the extreme one we’ve been told about.
2. The Mets Power Outage: For a while, the new park made an excellent excuse for why the Mets weren’t hitting home runs. Before too long, it became apparent that the team was hitting even fewer away from home, making it obvious that something was up with the players themselves. At the midpoint of the season, the Mets are last in the league with just 52 home runs as a team, and they’re not likely to get out of the cellar; even 29th placed Pittsburgh has 62.
3. David Wright’s Strange Season: One player who has a large hand in the lack of power is David Wright, who is having the strangest season of his career. His home runs are down (5), his strikeouts are up (87), and he has gone through terrible slumps and incredible hot streaks. And yet, despite all this, you can’t say he’s having a bad year when his on-base percentage is at .410 — he’s just not having the same sort of good year he’s had in the past. Actually, his most recent slump has taken his numbers down enough that this season looks a little off from his career norms, but before then he had largely been making up for the lack of power. Hopefully he’ll get some of his pop back in the second half, because the Mets need some in the middle of the lineup.
4. The Injuries: Oh, the injuries. It’s often said that you can’t blame injuries for a team’s struggles, but rarely does a team get hit nearly as hard as the Mets have this year. Is there any doubt that the presence of Carlos Delgado, Carlos Beltran, and Jose Reyes wouldn’t have been worth at least a few games? And as much as they have struggled this season, wouldn’t a healthy John Maine and Oliver Perez have bolstered the starting rotation just a bit? The fact that the Mets haven’t fallen completely out of the race despite these injuries is one reason to feel just a little hope for the second half.
5. Church for Francouer: It probably won’t be the greatest trade the Mets ever made, but the more I think about it, the more it seems that the Mets can’t really lose. After all, they had no intention to actually use Church, so even if Francouer is a bust (and even after his hot start with the Mets, he probably will be), there’s no real loss involved. On the other hand, if Francouer really did just need a change of scenery, the deal could turn into a steal for the Mets.

It’s becoming harder and harder to have any faith in the Mets this season. Last night, they were the victims of another shutout, and have now been held scoreless for 22 consecutive innings. The offense is completely inept right now.

Even worse, it doesn’t look like help for the lineup will be arriving anytime soon. Yesterday, the Mets announced that there is no timetable for when we can expect to see Jose Reyes, Carlos Beltran and Carlos Delgado back in the lineup. The Mets “hope” Delgado can be back by mid-August. Beltran might arrive not too long after the All-Star break. And Reyes? There seems to be no information on Reyes whatsoever.

All of this is par for the course for Mets fans in the last few seasons. I’m not a medical expert, and it’s certainly possible that the Mets have just had bad luck with injuries over the last couple years. But maybe there needs to be a change made, because it feels as though every injury has setbacks for the Mets: there’s rarely a firm timetable for returns, and when there is, it nearly always gets pushed back. On the rare occasions when a player comes back earlier than expected, it usually turns out to be a mistake (Ryan Church, for instance). Every team deals with injuries, but it doubt many teams deal with them this badly.

Even though there have been a lot of complaints, the Mets have been far from terrible so far this year. They’re 37-34, two games better than they were this time last year — when the Mets had a much healthier roster. Much of the difference is rightly credited to the bullpen, which has improved dramatically over last year’s disaster.

There’s another reason the Mets have kept their heads above water, though, and I haven’t seen much written about it. The Mets have tremendous depth, in the sense that they have  a surplus of reserve players who can fill in and provide at least some value to the team. Some of these players — Gary Sheffield and Alex Cora, to name two — started the year on the bench and have stepped in with solid production after the Mets’ string of injuries left them shorthanded. Others, like Nick Evans, Omir Santos and Fernando Nieve have been added from the minors or free agency and have been critical in keeping the Mets in contention.

Baseball Prospectus’ Keith Woolner created a statistic known as Value Over Replacement Player, or VORP. I don’t want to get into the mathematics of this rather abstract statistic, but the Replacement Player portion of the title is relevant to this post. The idea behind VORP is that the best way to figure out just how much a player is worth to a team is by comparing him to what you’d get out of a “replacement player” who had the same amount of playing time, the type of player any team could pick up on a whim and get to fill in at their position. You can think of this replacement player as a free agent who nobody wants, or a typical AAA player who is not notably talented.

The Mets have been replacing their injured stars with lesser players, that much is true. But for the most part, these players have played above that replacement player level, which has helped prevent the Mets season from becoming derailed. While plenty of attention is paid to the big moves that are made (or not made) during the year, the Mets and Omar Minaya do deserve some credit for stockpiling solid backups and reserve players who can fill in and give the Mets a little more than most teams get from their second and third-stringers. When everything is going right, it’s easy to forget the importance of depth, but in an injury-riddled season like this one, it could be the difference between contention and a long, boring summer.

It’s been a while since the Mets had a nice, easy win where there wasn’t some level of drama in the late innings. Before tonight, the Mets had only won by five or more runs twice in the last month, both times against the Nationals. Isn’t it great not having to sweat during those last few outs?

Not only did the Mets win, but just about everyone had a good night. Fernando Nieve had an excellent start, and the bullpen allowed one hit in three innings of work. The lineup came through from top to bottom, especially David Wright (4-4), Ryan Church (3-4), Fernando Tatis (2-4) and the recently promoted Nick Evans (2-3 with a HR). Games like this prove that even a depleted lineup can produce  from time to time, and we don’t have to assume the Mets can’t score runs with the team they’re fielding. Things might not be great for a while, but the Mets won’t be held to two hits every night.

As Mets fans, we’re naturally inclined to look for bad news, and while there wasn’t anything to complain about during the game, the Mets did suffer yet another injury setback today — albeit a minor one. Gary Sheffield was given a cortisone shot behind his right knee due to an inflamed bursa sac, and will be out of the lineup until at least Friday. Sheffield has worked out nicely for the Mets, especially considering they signed him for next to nothing; while nobody counted on Sheffield to play every day, the current power-starved lineup could use him back as soon as possible.

One final note: after tonight’s performance, it’s hard to see a way to move Nieve out of the rotation in the near future. How that will work out when John Maine and Oliver Perez is anyone’s guess.

On the same day that the Mets learned they’ll be without Carlos Beltran for at least two weeks, a few unlikely heroes stepped up to earn a 6-4 win over the Cardinals. Omir Santos went 4-4, while Tim Redding picked up his first win of the season by going 7+ innings, giving the bullpen some much needed relief. Daniel Murphy also chipped in with a homer, and seems to be heating up over the last week.

Let’s face it: the Mets are beyond shorthanded right now, especially on offense, where only David Wright remains among the key bats they depend on. It’s going to be a long two weeks (or more — we are talking about the Mets here) until Beltran gets back. Every win the Mets can pick up in this stretch is big, and it’s going to take some unlikely heroes to keep the team afloat.

On a related note, wasn’t there a guy named Jose Reyes on this team a while back? I seem to recall him being pretty good, but it’s been so long now that I could be mistaken. Sure would be nice to get him back sometime soon, but apparently there’s still no time frame for his return. As far as some help for the pitching staff, both John Maine and Oliver Perez had rehab starts today. From what ’s being reported, Maine looked good, Perez not so great. I’m not sure the Mets can count on getting anything from either of them in the near future. I think we have to expect the Mets to be the team we see on the field right now for the next couple of weeks — any surprising contributions from returning players are a bonus.