WHO WON:
Certainly not the Mets
WHAT HAPPENED, NO SERIOUSLY, WHAT HAPPENED?
In short, it was all very Not Good.
WHAT HAPPENED, A BRIGHT SPOT:
Not much happened that you can consider ‘good,’ but here is one thing that might give Mets fans hope: Paul Sewald threw really well. If you didn’t watch the game and just see his line, it doesn’t stick out all that much. 3.1 innings, four hits, one earned run, no walks, and six strikeouts. It is good, but doesn’t quite do Sewald’s outing justice.
Sewald offers a four-seam fastball, cutter/slider combo that worked well to miss a lot of bats. The 26-year old righty missed 12 bats on 58 pitches, and got seven whiffs in 12 swings on his secondary pitch. For a point of reference, over the course of the last two games, the Mets have only elicited 15 whiffs from non-Sewald pitchers. It is a cool note, but more important might be that he got a lot of the swings-and-misses in pitches in the strike zone. Clearly he has the stuff to miss bats, and did it on just two pitches. Watch out for Sewald going forward, if his stuff looks as good as it did yesterday, the Mets might have found a solid bullpen arm and a guy they could even try to test out as a fifth starter later in the year. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend that, but for a guy that only throws around 90 mph, his stuff looked great.
WHAT HAPPENED, THE NEWS:
In Mets land, there is no shortage of storylines. To start, Matt Harvey was suspended for three games without pay after violating team rules, and, for most of the day, there was a lot of confusion surrounding it. Some people thought it was related to the Kevin Plawecki, umm, ‘adult toy’ prank. Then it broke that it might be related to an early Saturday morning golf outing, which preceded a sick call about a migraine. It is still a fluid situation, but the latter is basically it. Harvey maintains miscommunication, while the Mets (apparently) saw something different. Harvey, who was supposed to start Sunday, did show up to the field. It should also be noted that Harvey, a Scott Boras client, will be filing a grievance against the Mets.
As if this fiasco weren’t enough, the ensuing roster move to bring up Adam Wilk to start the game on Sunday was also made interesting. At first it was done by moving Noah Syndergaard to the 60-day DL, then it wasn’t, and then it was. It was a mess, but so were most (all) of the events from Sunday.
Finally, we have Asdrubal Cabrera, who last played on Saturday before exiting the game with a thumb injury. The news is that there is no tear, but the thumb is still ‘pretty jammed-up.’ No surgery is good, but it looks like he might miss a DL-stint and go the infamous Mets day-to-day route. No Amed Rosario yet, but we’ll likely see more of an indication of how Cabrera will be handled in the coming days.
WHAT HAPPENED, YESTERDAY:
From the front office to the on-field play, it was bad. Just, bad.
WHAT HAPPENS, TODAY:
The Mets open a series at home against the San Francisco Giants, possibly the only team to have seen a promising season take such a, let’s say, quirky turn. Jacob deGrom will take the mound against Matt Moore, as the Mets look to finish out their six-game homestand strong.
Photo credit: Anthony Gruppuso – USA Today Sports