The bullpen doors do not emit a loud alarm when they open for the Mets, but perhaps they should. That moment in each game is the dark cloud before the rain or the stringed instruments before the killer comes round the corner in a horror flick — a way of warning you in advance, though never enough so.
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In a vacuum, maybe Thursday’s loss was the harshest of them, but repetition has a way of numbing. In each of their last six losses, the Mets have held a win expectancy of at least 68 percent at some point in the game. In the last five days, New York blew leads in the fifth inning, the sixth inning, the seventh inning, the eighth inning and the ninth inning. At least now they can’t blow a lead in the ninth or later until after the All-Star break.
The Mets have just 18 saves compared to 20 blown saves, but that’s a rather crude way of looking at it. A team can blow multiple saves in the same game, as the Mets have done three times this season. You can still win those games, as the Mets have done in two of the three. So just looking at the sheer quantity of blown saves and saying, “If they had blown half as many, they’d have x more wins” doesn’t really work.
So let’s take another approach to quantify the impact the Mets bullpen has had over this last stretch. I’m going to use FanGraphs’ win expectancy, and I’m going to look not at peak win expectancy (as mentioned above) but at New York’s win expectancy the moment its bullpen becomes involved. (This is because peak win expectancy can dock you points for pitching well in relief up to a certain point. If a starter leaves in the first down big and your pen throws eight shutout innings to give you a good chance to win the game, only for your closer to blow it, that loss isn’t really on the whole bullpen, for instance.)
So, in 30 games over the last 32 days, the Mets have consistently put themselves in position to win. By the time the starter has handed the ball to the bullpen, New York’s had at least a 50 percent chance to win in 19 of those contests. In half of those games, the first Mets reliever has taken the mound with at least a 69.7 percent chance to win the game.
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And they’re 11-19 in those games.
Had the Mets possessed a perfectly league average bullpen, they’d have won six more games in that stretch. (You just add up their percentage chance in each game to reach that figure.) Instead, their bullpen has blown six different games that it entered with at least a 74.5 percent chance to win.
Here’s the full list of games, for research’s sake. Games New York won are in italics:
May 27 at Los Angeles: 62.8 percent
May 28 at Los Angeles: 94.4 percent
May 29 at Los Angeles: 87.2 percent
May 30 at Los Angeles: 12.2 percent
May 31 at Arizona: 69.7 percent
June 1 at Arizona: 86.1 percent
June 2 at Arizona: 2.8 percent
June 4 v. San Francisco: 76.3 percent
June 5 v. San Francisco: 100 percent (Vargas shutout)
June 6 v. San Francisco: 50 percent
June 7 v. Colorado: 28.3 percent
June 8 v. Colorado: 71.7 percent
June 9 v. Colorado: 99.4 percent
June 11 at New York: 4.2 percent
June 11 at New York: 97.9 percent
June 13 v. St. Louis: 88.5 percent
June 14 v. St. Louis: 15.8 percent
June 15 v. St. Louis: 93.6 percent
June 16 v. St. Louis: 50 percent
June 17 at Atlanta: 11 percent
June 18 at Atlanta: 100 percent
June 19 at Atlanta: 6.4 percent
June 20 at Chicago: 19.2 percent
June 21 at Chicago: 30 percent
June 22 at Chicago: 99.9 percent
June 23 at Chicago: 64.8 percent
June 24 at Philadelphia: 30.7 percent
June 25 at Philadelphia: 74.5 percent
June 26 at Philadelphia: 85 percent
June 27 at Philadelphia: 20.5 percent
“It’s about seven on this road trip we could have won — and it’s not just this road trip,” Mickey Callaway said Thursday. “We’ve been way too close to have this many losses.”
It’s important when a season goes awry to be truthful about how and why it did. And we’re reaching the point, barely halfway through this season, that 2019 requires such an autopsy. In order to know how best to proceed from this point, the Mets need to do their best to be precise about why they’re here in the first place.
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And here’s one very strong argument that the bullpen is a major reason why. Just in the past month, it’s made them a 37-45 team instead of a 43-39 squad. It’s essentially been the difference between second place and fourth place.
Now, the goal wasn’t second place, and there are stretches this season when the Mets bullpen actually helped win it some games, rather than vice versa. There are more issues than just this one. But as the Mets diagnose what’s gone wrong in 2019 and how to fix it in 2020, the bullpen is, obviously, glaring brightest of all.
THE EPIGRAPH: “For an integrated understanding of itself, it [the state] needs a consciousness of the past.”
—Introduction to the Philosophy of History, Hegel
THE EXPOSITION: Things have not gone well for the Mets since late Sunday afternoon. They lost one game, their cool, then four more after that. A four-game sweep in Philadelphia finished off a 3-8 road trip and left New York eight games under .500 — where it finished last season. The Mets are 11 games behind the Braves.
Atlanta blew an early five-run lead in its own loss Thursday to the Cubs. Still, the Braves split four games at Wrigley and, at 48-34, have built a 4.5-game cushion in the NL East over the Phillies.
THE PITCHING MATCHUPS:
RHP Mike Soroka (8-1, 2.07 ERA) v. RHP Jacob deGrom (4-6, 3.25 ERA)
RHP Julio Teheran (5-6, 3.94) v. LHP Steven Matz (5-6, 4.85)
LHP Max Fried (9-3, 3.96) v. RHP Noah Syndergaard (5-4, 4.55)
THE ANTAGONISTS: What stood out most to me during these teams’ recent series at SunTrust Park was the gap in athleticism between the Mets and Braves. Atlanta’s young core is exceedingly athletic, which manifests itself most obviously on the defensive side of the ball. Look up the middle of the field, and the Braves have Ozzie Albies, Dansby Swanson and Ronald Acuña Jr. locked into premier defensive positions for the next several years.
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Contrast that with the Mets, whose core players are best suited in the corners. (New York still has to figure out what to do with Amed Rosario.)
When the Mets finally moved toward selling last July, then-kinda/sorta/maybe GM John Ricco talked about targeting up-the-middle athletes as a return. New York didn’t exactly get that: They traded Asdrúbal Cabrera for a pitcher and Jeurys Familia for a pitcher and a third baseman. The Mets have some up-the-middle athleticism in their lower minors with guys like Ronny Mauricio and Shervyen Newton, but they would still be well-served to seek that kind of return in deals over the next month. The positional flexibility that the club is trying to build with so many players is nice, but it’d be nicer if any of those guys could play the really important defensive spots well. They don’t have that right now.
WHAT CAN WE LEARN ABOUT THE METS IN THIS SERIES? Essentially, if the 2019 season remains watchable for competitive purposes.
Mickey Callaway on Wednesday already kinda sounded resigned to three more months of irrelevant baseball in Queens: “There is no ‘too big of a hole’ that’s going to affect the way we come and work every single day,” he said. “In the end, that’s really all you can do. If we sat here and felt like it’s too big of a hole, what good does that do to us? It doesn’t help us. At some point, people do dig too big of a hole and it’s a reality, but you can’t give up. I don’t think our team will ever do that.”
It’s entirely possible we’ve already reached the point where the Mets are too far back to make a run. I’d mention the ’73 Mets being only 11 back at this time in their season, but mentioning the ’73 Mets basically means it’s too late for you.
Still, there will be time to shift gears and look ahead to 2020 and what the Mets should learn about their roster in the final months. Let’s give them this last homestand against the Braves, Yankees and Phillies — boy, if that’s not a triumvirate of rivals right there — before we dive into that.
RECENT SERIES HISTORY: The Mets are 3-4 against the Braves this season, with all those games in Atlanta so far. New York went 3-7 against the Braves at Citi Field last season.
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A WORD FROM HOWIE ROSE ON THE 1969 METS: “They were my life. At the expense of school, at the expense of everything. Geometry was the subject that hit me the hardest. Because I missed some time and I was distracted, I couldn’t handle geometry and never could. It went all the way down to the wire. I didn’t pass a geometry test all year. Teacher said to me, ‘You’re a nice kid, you come to class, you don’t make any waves. I’ll give you two chances: Either you pass my final or you can pass the Regents. Just one of them, or else you’re going to have to make it up in summer school or next year.’ I failed the final, and now this is it. My parents got me a tutor — one of my cousin’s friends.
“This is the part that may sound like complete unadulterated BS, but it’s not: My motivation was the Mets because they had won in ’69. I just approached it from the standpoint of ‘If they did it, I can do it.’ They were my inspiration…. When I showed up to take that Regents, Gil Hodges, his coaches and 25 guys were with me in the room, and I got an 87 — with no cheating, no nonsense.
“The greatest thing I ever accomplished in school was an 87, and I attribute that to the ’69 Mets. They changed my life because they made me believe I could do it. And I passed that along to my kids. And I mean it and believe it 100 percent.”
A THING I HAD FORGOTTEN ABOUT: Jane Jarvis’ “Let’s Go Mets!”
WHAT THE ATHLETIC IS TELLING YOU TO THINK: There could be no broadcaster better suited to honor the ’69 Mets than Rose this weekend.
AND IN OTHER NEWS: A year after promising accountability, Mickey Callaway couldn’t meet his own standards.
PREDICTION TIME: Yeah, you’ll be humming that delightful organ tune all weekend, too.
(Top photo by Rich Schultz/Getty Images)
Tim Britton is a senior writer for The Athletic covering the New York Mets. He has covered Major League Baseball since 2009 and the Mets since 2018. Prior to joining The Athletic, he spent seven seasons on the Red Sox beat for the Providence Journal. He has also contributed to Baseball Prospectus, NBC Sports Boston, MLB.com and Yahoo Sports. Follow Tim on Twitter @TimBritton
