\u201cThe one thing age teaches you is not fear and least of all more of truth, but only shame.\u201d
\u2014\u201cKnight\u2019s Gambit,\u201d William Faulkner<\/p>\n
Ten days before the trade deadline, president of baseball operations David Stearns was asked whether the lineup he\u2019d built in the offseason \u2014 the one where Bo Bichette was supposed to excel, Marcus Semien to bounce back, Luis Robert Jr. to flourish and Jorge Polanco to play \u2014 had enough runway to evaluate properly.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know that it matters, to be honest with you,\u201d Stearns replied. \u201cThe lineup we\u2019ve put on the field hasn\u2019t been good enough. I\u2019m certainly aware of that.\u201d<\/p>\n
That could be Stearns\u2019 no-excuses public stance before the deadline. It cannot be his philosophy now as he ponders how best to reconstruct the Mets\u2019 roster for 2027. It really does matter whether Stearns thinks that lineup has been given enough of a chance to show itself in 2026 and which parts deserve another shot next season.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s an interesting question looking at the Mets now. In the month of August, New York is scoring just under five runs per game. It entered Sunday with the second-most home runs in the league this month and a top-five offense in slugging and wRC+. And that continued a season-long trend in the right direction.<\/p>\n
And New York has done that in August without a single plate appearance from Juan Soto. (It was ironic and altogether fitting that, hours after Stearns\u2019 above quote about the offense\u2019s lack of health this season, Soto himself got hurt and hasn\u2019t played since.) So the optimist can examine that broad dataset and think that this offense could have some juice, that it just needed time for Bichette and Semien to settle in, for Lindor to get healthy, for Carson Benge and A.J. Ewing to hit their stride. You could think they\u2019ve really found something in Jared Young, and that Luis Torrens sure looks like he could handle more regular time behind the plate with Francisco Alvarez DHing more.<\/p>\n
On a more granular level, however, some of those points start to fall apart, especially with Plan A over on the right side of the infield. Semien\u2019s OPS this month still starts with a six, and he hasn\u2019t posted an OPS better than .700 in a single month all season. Polanco has been a shell of himself offensively whenever he has played this year. The primary backup plan entering this season, Brett Baty, is 4-for-29 this month and has a .615 OPS this season and a .652 mark over more than 1,400 career plate appearances.<\/p>\n
A lot of the jump in production this month has come from Torrens\u2019 unexpected power surge \u2014 much like a lot of July\u2019s jump in production could be traced back to the same for Tyrone Taylor. The Mets dealt Taylor to the Cubs at the trade deadline, suggesting they didn\u2019t view that stretch as sustainable for much longer.<\/p>\n
The context for this conversation is Will Sammon\u2019s report earlier this week<\/a> that the Mets may only tweak their position-player group, emphasizing competition on the right side of the infield. Now, \u201ccompetition\u201d is a nebulous term. It could mean Monty Burns hiring nine ringers to work at the Springfield Nuclear Plant<\/a>. It could mean proactively platooning at first or second base or being more open-minded to an aggressive promotion from the minors, after a pair of those worked so well in the outfield last year. There remains a wide range of possibilities for New York this winter.<\/p>\n But the Mets must be open to real offensive upgrades, more than just depth ones in the service of competition. Polanco and Semien have not been good enough on the right side of the infield, obviously. Baty has not been good enough as Plan B. Young has been a nice story; his wRC+ for the season ranks 18th among first basemen. (Three of the top five were available last winter, for what it\u2019s worth. Pete Alonso ranks eighth.) As much as you want to believe Benge and Ewing will take further steps next year, such development is rarely linear. You\u2019d expect Soto and Lindor to both be in the same lineup more than 31 times next season. But let\u2019s let Stearns finish that thought from above:<\/p>\n \u201cYou go into a season knowing you\u2019re going to face adversity,\u201d he said. \u201cThe nine position players you expect to have out there, the majority of the time, aren\u2019t going to be out there every day. And you\u2019ve got to prepare for that.\u201d<\/p>\n Stearns should remember that this winter.<\/p>\n The exposition<\/p>\n The Mets swept the Nationals at home and improved to 9-3 since the trade deadline. New York is 56-69 on the season, which would legitimately put it in American League wild-card contention. Alas, it\u2019s still 11 back in the National League.<\/p>\n The Padres shut out the Guardians Sunday to win that series. San Diego is 17-5 over the last three and a half weeks, surging back into playoff position in the NL. The Friars are tied with the Phillies for the second and third wild-card spots, one ahead of Arizona.<\/p>\n The White Sox rallied from an early deficit to cap a massive sweep of the Tigers in Detroit, which pushed their division lead to 5 1\/2 games. Chicago is 65-58 heading into a three-game set at Wrigley Field. The Sox also host Atlanta in a makeup game Thursday before the Mets arrive on the South Side on Friday.<\/p>\n The pitching possibles<\/p>\n v. San Diego<\/p>\n RHP Nolan McLean (8-8, 3.42 ERA) v. RHP Walker Buehler (7-5, 4.88) at Chicago<\/p>\n LHP Sean Manaea (4-5, 4.22) v. RHP Sean Burke (7-6, 3.15) Injury updates<\/p>\n Mets’ injured list<\/p>\n Player<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Injury<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Elig.<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n ETA<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Right forearm strain<\/p>\n Now<\/p>\n August<\/p>\n Right hand fracture<\/p>\n Now<\/p>\n August<\/p>\n Rib fracture<\/p>\n Now<\/p>\n September<\/p>\n Left forearm strain<\/p>\n Now<\/p>\n September<\/p>\n Left calf strain (Grade 2)<\/p>\n Now<\/p>\n September<\/p>\n Right shoulder strain<\/p>\n August 23<\/p>\n September<\/p>\n Tommy John surgery<\/p>\n Now<\/p>\n 2027<\/p>\n Tommy John surgery<\/p>\n Now<\/p>\n 2027<\/p>\n Red = 60-day IL Soto has begun running and still expects to return sometime in September. Triple-A: Syracuse v. Worcester (Boston) A note on the epigraph<\/p>\n I do enjoy Faulkner most of the time, though admittedly more when I read him for a class than when I\u2019ve done so for pleasure. But there are times when his, Faulkner\u2019s, style does get really annoying, as it does in the title novella of his, Faulkner\u2019s, collection of short mysteries, in which he, Faulkner, feels it necessary to specify who each pronoun refers to when he, Faulkner, writes it. The mysteries themselves are more atmospheric than confounding whodunnits, which I, Tim, should have expected going in.<\/p>\n Trivia time<\/p>\n Two White Sox-related questions for the price of one this week, considering one is significantly harder than the other (I think):<\/p>\n When Matt Harvey threw nine one-hit innings against the White Sox in 2013, which future member of the 2015 Royals got the one infield hit off him? (I\u2019ll reply to the correct answers in the comments.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cThe one thing age teaches you is not fear and least of all more of truth, but only…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":323683,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[9,11,320,10],"class_list":["post-323682","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-mets","tag-new-york-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323682","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=323682"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323682\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/323683"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=323682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=323682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=323682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
LHP Zac Thornton (3-3, 2.78) v. LHP Robbie Ray (10-7, 3.28)
RHP Robert Stock (0-2, 6.57) v. RHP Michael King (8-8, 3.41)<\/p>\n
RHP Christian Scott (4-3, 3.51) v. RHP Luis Castillo (4-9, 4.96)
RHP Nolan McLean v. RHP Erick Fedde (6-8, 4.51)<\/p>\n
Orange = 15-day IL
Blue = 10-day IL<\/p>\n
\nWilliams landed on the IL after feeling arm fatigue in early August. He expects to be back before the end of the season.
\nMinor-league schedule<\/p>\n
Double-A: Binghamton v. Altoona (Pittsburgh)
High-A: Brooklyn at Asheville (Houston)
Low-A: St. Lucie v. Lakeland (Detroit)<\/p>\n
\nWhen the White Sox claimed Tom Seaver from the free-agent compensation pool ahead of the 1984 season, what pitcher had Chicago lost in free agency?<\/p>\n