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The New York Mets have a comfortable lead in the National League East and it wasn’t until the first half of this week that they finally lost a series. In any case, their 2022 season couldn’t go any better these ways.
But as if it wasn’t bad enough that they were already two starters behind on the front line, it’s now three.
On Wednesday Max Scherzer was clearly in discomfort when he left during the sixth inning of his start against the St. Louis Cardinals. The news on Thursday is via Anthony DiComo of MLB.com that the three-time Cy Young Award winner will be sidelined for as much as two months due to an oblique load:
Scherzer, to whom the Mets signed a record breaking $130 million contract in December will add fellow Cy Young Award winner Jacob deGrom to the injured list. He has been out of action since spring training with a stress reaction in his shoulder. While he has made progress in his recovery, there is still no clear timetable for his return.
Also on the injured list is hard-throwing righthander Tylor Megill, who ended up there on Sunday with a biceps infection. He is out until at least May 27.
All in all, not the best news the Mets have ever had. The only question is how they will weather the storm.
Scherzer’s injury is an unsurprising blow
Needless to say, it hurts to lose a pitcher of Scherzer’s caliber.
Although he turns 38 on July 27, he still threw like a timeless wonder until he got injured. Through eight starts spanning 49.2 innings, he had thrown to a 2.54 ERA and struckout 59 batters against only 11 walks.
Basically, what the Mets got from Scherzer was exactly what the Detroit Tigers, Washington Nationals and Los Angeles Dodgers got from him from 2013 to 2021. All told, during that period saw him rack up a 2.81 ERA and a 5.4 strikeout-to-walk ratio next to 55.3 rWAR. The next pitcher (Clayton Kershaw) is only on 45.6 rWAR.
But even knowing this, the possibility that Scherzer would crash into a wall sometime in 2022 was never a gamble.
His signing was risky from the start, and not just because of his age. Even with the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, he still averaged 185 innings per year from his 30-to-36 campaign age. Of the pitchers who recently handled similar workloads in that age bracket, none came through with a top-notch season at age 37.
Furthermore, this is not the first time that Scherzer’s body has collapsed on him. He suffered from back and neck problems in 2019 and was on the injured list with groin inflammation last year. Coming into the playoffs, he also dealt with a dead arm.
It would have been unreasonable to expect a pitcher with these red flags to get through the season unscathed. Instead, the Mets may have just hoped that whatever glitch Scherzer encountered would at least happen at an opportune time.
This is not the right time
As far as there’s ever been a good time to put a Cy Young-winning ace on the injured list, that time is definitely not now for the Mets.
Yes, they started playing on Thursday with a six game lead over the Philadelphia Phillies in the NL East. And yes, neither the defending World Series champion Atlanta nor any of the other three teams in the division were even more than .500 at the start of the day.
As noted by David Lennon of news dayhowever, the Mets are heading for a brutal stretch in their schedule:
David Lennon †DPLennon
after today, #Mets enter a 31-game stretch against opponents with a combined win rate of 0.552.
That includes 18 road games vs. teams with a combined .602 (at Rockies, Giants, Dodgers, Padres, Angels, Astros).
Because they have the . have played fourth most difficult slate in the National League and even gone 7-3 against winning teams, the Mets have been battle tested relatively.
And yet it cannot be trivialized how important Scherzer and Megill have been to the success of the Mets. In 15 games they started as a pair, the team has gone 11-4.
Now that those two are out of the picture, New York will need more of the same from Chris Bassitt, who lost more than three earned points in just two of his eight starts. The Mets will otherwise need more consistency from Carlos Carrasco, who has been hit with a .326 clip in his last four starts, and Taijuan Walker, who has been hit or missed three times this month.
Trevor Williams and David Peterson come in the back of the rotation until Megill, Scherzer and deGrom get healthy. While they have a combined 3.43 ERA in their starting orders, neither is a likely candidate to eat many innings. Between the two of them, Peterson’s 90-field performance on May 3 is the highest point for pitches in a game.
What would really help the Mets in the coming weeks is if their attack got hot and stayed that way. But for that to happen, it has to come out of the light funk it’s been in:
- First 23G: .732 OPS and 4.7 R/G
- Last 16G: .686 OPS and 4.3 R/G
Bottom line: If the Mets need a village in the coming weeks to unite in the face of their injuries, their village needs to take shape.
Solutions in the trading market?
The trading deadline isn’t until August 2, so it may be too early to seriously discuss outside options for the Mets’ sudden rotational woes.
On the other hand, ESPN’s Buster Olney wrote about the Mets this Wednesday:
“It’s pretty clear that the Mets owner is on a mission to win a World Series and will do whatever it takes to win a championship. [Steve] Cohen’s team develops a roster problem, he gives permission to fill it even if it means getting a bad contract to get a player.”
Since it’s fair to call Scherzer and Megill’s recent injuries a “roster problem,” Cohen may not hesitate to put his $17.4 billion fortune to work looking for solutions.
At the very least, Cohen could ask general manager Billy Eppler to call the Los Angeles Dodgers about David Price. The 2012 Cy Young Award winner is available to any team that wants to give him a runway job, by Peter Gammons† The Mets fit right in, and they might get him for nothing if they take the rest of his $32 million salary. As it is, half of that is already on the Boston Red Sox.
For his part, Olney speculated that the Mets could strike a deal with the Cincinnati Reds in which they will include Mike Moustakas and the $50 million he still owes in the interest of adding a “coveted” player. The Reds made a similar deal when they sent Eugenio Suarez and Jesse Winker to the Seattle Mariners in March. This time it could be Moustakas alongside Luis Castillo or Tyler Mahle.
Speculatively, the Mets could try their luck with Nathan Eovaldi and Zack Greinke, who both have expiring contracts for struggling teams in the Boston Red Sox and Kansas City Royals. Also signed only for this year is Jose Quintana, who is having a nice bounce-back season for the Pittsburgh Pirates.
If the Mets would rather engage in a more traditional trade—that is, one in which they trade controllable talent for a reasonably priced player—they could poke around Oakland Athletics’ right-handed Frankie Montas. Jon Heyman of the New York Post reported that there was “nothing exciting” with him in April, but it’s no secret that he won’t be waiting long for Oakland.
Of course, any trade the Mets make in the near future could cause a block later when Megill, Scherzer, and deGrom get off the injured list. But given the circumstances, the Mets could nevertheless decide to act now and cross that bridge when they reach it.
Statistics courtesy of Baseball Reference and FanGraphs.
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