How many times has it happened to you? The Mets lift you up and then send you back crashing down to earth. That is the maddening way of this franchise, and anyone who’s been around for any appreciable stretch of times knows the feeling of those whims all too well. The highs feel dizzying, while […]
Author: Erik Malinowski
Sit Syndergaard or Let It Ride?
When Noah Syndergaard broke into the majors early last season, it was a seismic event for the Mets. With him in the shorthanded rotation, given the loss of Zack Wheeler in spring training to Tommy John surgery, the Mets played well enough in the first half to stay competitive and then steamrolled through to the […]
Saving Steven Matz May Mean Shutting Him Down
In a season ripe with disappointment and underachievement, Steven Matz has been a steadying source of happiness. After his superb performance in the playoffs last year, all the chatter was that he would stand as the primary challenger to the Dodgers’ Corey Seager for National League Rookie of the Year honors. That race hasn’t quite […]
Looks Like Our Time Is Up, Terry Collins
There’s a healthy debate that pops up from time to time about the role of a manager. More precisely, the discussion usually centers on what sort of actual, tangible effect a manager can have on a baseball game. It’s probably something that is inherently more case by case than suitable to be filed under one […]
The Slide Comes For Us All
There are a couple of ways to look at the trade with Cincinnati yesterday that brought Jay Bruce to the Mets. One is that the move was made to make back page headlines. Sure, it’s neat that Bruce leads the league in RBIs, but he’s done so while hitting after a guy posting a 144 […]
Hope Is Not A Plan (And Neither Is Zack Wheeler)
There is but a week left in July and we are officially well past Zack Wheeler’s long-awaited due date. All expectations were that he would be able to return from last year’s Tommy John surgery around July 1 of this season. Then that got pushed to the All-Star break. Now, we’re just a few sunsets away […]
DeGrom Just Keeps On Keepin’ On
Jacob deGrom pitched an absolute gem of a game on Sunday afternoon in Philly. It was his first career complete game in 68 MLB starts, featuring his best stuff (by far) since Game 1 of last year’s NLDS. If we’re going by his Game Score of 91, it was also one of the best Mets […]
The Way We Were: The First Half By The Numbers
The Mets were 47-42 going into the All-Star break last season, so in that regard they’re doing a smidge better this go-around at 47-41. And while it feels like there’s plenty to be pessimistic about as we go forth into the great second-half unknown, I just wanted to take this All-Star pause to put some […]
The Fine Line Between Hope and More
It felt positively fitting that the Mets’ 81st game of the season happened to coincide with Sunday’s complete drubbing of Chicago, that the midway mark of this back-and-forth 2016 campaign was capped off by a week-long stretch that witnessed a truly dreadful three-game sweep by the Nats segue neatly into that four-game sweep of the […]
Terry Collins Needs a Day Off
This past week was not a particularly stellar one for Terry Collins—although, to be fair, his truly bad stretches as a manager have historically involved some kind of player uprising, so his bar might look unreasonably high. Nonetheless, it was a pretty putrid string of recent days by almost measure. To wit: On Wednesday, he […]