What does a bad start to an MLB season look like? Entering games Wednesday the Marlins are 0-7 so at least the 0-4 Mets still have a team below them in the NL East. With Wednesday night’s game vs. Detroit postponed, a 12:10 start doubleheader will be played on Thursday. That’s no bargain for Detroit since their own home opener is scheduled for Friday and they’ve been in New York since Monday. But the Tigers being 4-0 is literally the opposite of the Mets being 0-4.
In the first four games of the season the Mets scored one run twice, and zero runs once. They’ve scored 8 runs total in 4 games on 25 hits. The best you could have hoped for was to win one of those games, but of course in the one game where they scored six, (and 4 of them came after the 7th inning) they lost by a single run.
Jose Quintana’s start was meh, Luis Severino’s a disaster, Tylor Megill wasn’t good and is now on the IL, and Sean Manaea without his signature beard was as effective as Jacob DeGrom but that effort was wasted after Michael Tonkin collapsed in the 10th inning of a 0-0 game on Monday night.
No grades are given out after four games. Clearly if Nimmo, Lindor, and McNeil continue at their current 3-44 pace the 2024 Mets season will be a disaster. Pete Alonso looks ok at the plate, Starling Marte and Francisco Alvarez are the only Mets producing although they have three RBIs between them.
The Brewers pitched well during the opening three-game series as did the Tigers on Monday night. New manager Carlos Mendoza already facing his first crisis even before his team has even won a game. Mendoza noted that the team is chasing bad pitches too often. There’s the news that McNeil will be dropped to 7th in the batting order with Brett Baty moving into the 5-hole. Baty has only has three hits in 12 at-bats, but he did deliver an encouraging clutch three-run home run on Sunday. Apparently, that’s enough at this point to move you up in the Mets batting order. Mendoza spun McNeil’s demotion as “trying to get him going” and that McNeil “just doesn’t care where he hits in the lineup”. As Mendoza put it ‘in a perfect world they will settle into a consistent one through five or one through six in the batting order. Moving McNeil down in the order also splits up the left and right-handed hitters, and Mendoza noted it was not about sending a message.
With the two rainouts, the Mets now will play 15 games in 14 days and the cycle of bringing pitchers up from AAA Syracuse will be in full force. That cycle has already begun with Reed Garrett replacing Tylor Megill on the roster, while Yohan Ramirez serves his two-game suspension after getting it reduced from three games for throwing behind Rhys Hoskins on Sunday. Garrett should keep his bags packed since he’ll be sent back down after Thursday’s game.
Who will come up to start in Megill’s place? Jose Butto is the most likely candidate although his first start for Syracuse was not stellar. Joey Lucchesi is another possibility. It won’t be any of the young guns like Cristian Scott, Dominic Hamel, or Mike Vasil. The Mets will hold back those bullets for later in the season, but it would not be surprising for all to pitch with the big club this season. None of those players are prepared to throw anything close to 100 MLB innings at this point in their career so the Mets will be judicious in when and how those players might be folded into the rotation at various points during the season.
After Thursday’s game, the Mets head to Cincinnati for a weekend series which will then be followed with a four-game series in Atlanta, never a fun place for the Mets to visit. This is not how the Mets envisioned the start of the 2024 season. A couple of days of rain has given the team and its fans too much time to dwell on their early season misery.
Doubleheaders are split more often than swept. The Mets will take a win any way they can right now.
