People kept telling me not to worry about the Mets. They were and will continue to be fine. They’re a good team with some flaws that have come up and that’s one of the reasons the Philadelphia Phillies were able to catch them. If you’re just waking up, the Mets are two games out of first. This isn’t last season. There are some new challenges. 

The Mets outfield isn’t producing enough. I feel like Juan Soto will come out of this like Mike Piazza eventually did. It happens. But while Juan Soto isn’t himself, the Mets have no offensive production out of center field and Brandon Nimmo isn’t right either. Jeff McNeil is a utility player so I don’t count him here. But he’s not been a solution either. Nimmo only has 17 extra-base hits this season. Detroit’s Riley Greene has 22 and he’s hitting .281 instead of .213 as an example. Starling Marte is a non-factor too. This is a current weakness. 

The bullpen is a mix of good and bad and reliable and unreliable. Some of this might get better when Sean Manaea returns but that still seems off in the distance. The Mets have eight blown saves. 11 is the worst in baseball. I think the Mets need to re-evaluate them and decide what the hierarchy is. I think lately, they are giving up way too many walks. There is room for improvement here considering how good it was in the early part of the season.  

David Stearns has done a lot of no-frills pickups that haven’t been working out. For every one that works there are 2-3 that don’t and that’s catching up with the team. At some point, he will have to trade a prospect, even Brett Baty to get a real need. Get a good young bullpen arm. A player under control for more than a year or two. You can’t keep operating the bullpen this way. The Mets haven’t produced enough young pitchers, not Stearns’ fault, that was the previous regime, but he can fix it especially when the Mets starters don’t go deep most games.