Let’s start with Francisco Lindor, who both plays and speaks like the ideal face of a team:
“I’m not going through the motions no matter what,” the Mets shortstop said Monday night. “I’m a professional baseball player. I’ve gotta go out there and give it my best, day in and day out. I owe it to the fans. I owe it to my teammates. I owe it to this organization, and I owe it to myself. So I will go every day and give everything I got.”
Let’s turn to Kodai Senga, who has been excellent in his first season in Major League Baseball and has made 22 starts after starting 23 games in Japan last year.
“It’s been a tough year for us, but I don’t think [the trade deadline sell-off] changes anything for myself,” Senga said through an interpreter recently. “I just need to go get to work every day.”
The players on the 2023 Mets will continue to play hard. Pete Alonso, Jeff McNeil and Brandon Nimmo are not known for slacking.
But as the players keep showing up, the Mets organization has reached a point in the season in which it is incentivized to lose.
After their 7-4 loss to the Pirates on Tuesday, the Mets are tied for the eighth-worst record in baseball with six and a half weeks left to play.
After the season, all non-playoff teams will be entered into a weighted draft lottery, in which the worse a team’s record, the better the chances at landing a top pick.
The Mets have extra incentive to want better lottery positioning: If their selection falls outside the first six picks, a luxury-tax penalty would be enforced that drops the selection by 10 picks. If the pick falls within the top six, their second-round selection would fall 10 slots, a far lesser punishment.
Each loss brings a rebuilding team, which just sold some of its roster’s biggest pieces for farm system help, closer to one of the top prospects in the draft.
Mets players are not tanking. The Mets’ front office will never publicly say it is tanking.
So, are the Mets tanking?
Saturday’s lineup for the 21-3 loss to the Braves sure included the scent of a forfeit. A left-to-right outfield of Abraham Almonte (since DFA’d and outrighted), Rafael Ortega (called up from Triple-A Syracuse) and DJ Stewart (also a call-up), behind starting pitcher Denyi Reyes (7.50 ERA) will be remembered as a nadir for the most expensive team in baseball history.
But the next day, Buck Showalter — who holds a career record of 1,706-1,644 as manager — demonstrated he did not want to approach .500. The Mets manager got six solid innings out of Senga and used his best four relievers to record the final nine outs. When Brooks Raley was struggling in a one-run game in the eighth, he faced his mandatory third batter and then was removed, Showalter asking for and receiving the inning’s final out from Drew Smith.
Showalter has said that when choosing lineups, tiebreakers will go to developing players, which is why Mark Vientos continues to find himself in lineups. That acknowledgment of the future outweighing the present, though, is the only sign thus far from the manager that winning no longer means everything.
Since that Saturday lineup, the Mets have fielded capable, if not always competent, lineups. The club could have moved Lindor, who was scratched Friday with side soreness, to the injured list. The club could have moved Nimmo, who is playing left field instead of center because of a tight quad, to the injured list. The Mets did neither.
The Mets could shut down Starling Marte (groin strain) and Edwin Diaz (returning from a patellar tendon tear), but they continue to believe, publicly at least, that there is something to be gained if both return healthy by the end of this season. If the Mets’ front office wants to tank, it is not aligned with the coaching staff.
A well-executed tank job is conducted with everyone on the same page.
When the Mavericks needed to lose their final two games to come up short of the playoffs and receive better odds they would keep their first-round pick this year, they worked in unison. Coach Jason Kidd benched starters, most notably Luka Dončić and Kyrie Irving, to ensure the result.
“We are trying to build a championship team, and sometimes you got to take a step back,” Kidd told reporters after an embarrassing and planned loss to the Bulls.
So, are the Mets tanking? Even after trading Max Scherzer, Justin Verlander, David Robertson, Tommy Pham and Mark Canha, probably not. At least not at the moment.
The Mets’ front office has waved the white flag, but no such flag is waving from their clubhouse. When Nimmo and Lindor are shelved; when Diaz and Marte are shut down; when Senga’s and Francisco Alvarez’s seasons end early with their workloads cited as concerns; and when Daniel Vogelbach is the DH against an opposing lefty, that is when the tank will be on.
It is possible the Mets reach that unfathomable point in an unfathomable season. For now it appears they are at least trying to win, even if they again were unsuccessful last night.
Today’s back page
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The Yankees are done
For the first time since May 1, back when they were 15-15, the Yankees are at .500.
For the first time, though, the season feels over.
The Yankees were one-hit and shut out in a 5-0 loss in Atlanta that highlighted two consistent problems. The Bronx Bombers cannot hit or get much from their rotation beyond Gerrit Cole and Clarke Schmidt.
Luis Severino predictably was knocked around again, but his five runs in four innings was not the biggest issue. DJ LeMahieu singled in the second inning, which might have been the most exciting moment of the night. The Yankees did not get a second hit in the final seven innings.
The 60-60 Yankees are 6 ½ games back of a wild-card spot and have one more matchup against the powerful Braves, who have laid bare just how weak the Yankees are in comparison.
The series that begins Friday in The Bronx against the Red Sox should look different. Bring up outfielder Everson Pereira. Give Austin Wells a shot behind the plate.
It’s time to look to the future, because the present appears finished.
Heat’s on Saleh from what Jets are cooking
The Jets’ signing of Dalvin Cook, made official Tuesday, raises everything.
The stakes, for a team with Super Bowl expectations. The temperature in the team’s running back room. And the pressure on Robert Saleh.
The Jets’ incumbent running backs, at least publicly, are handling the signing well.
Michael Carter called Cook, a Pro Bowler four years straight, a “great player.” Breece Hall told reporters that with another standout, “It’s going to be a good competition.”
Cook is not yet with the team, but when he arrives, he will test the team’s chemistry — a job that will fall to Saleh.
Through two seasons as a head coach, Saleh has impressed more off the field than on it. His teams have stayed together, even with a combined record of 11-23. Players appear to like playing for him. In dealing with media, he manages to both protect his players and come across as authentic, which is a tricky tightrope to walk. There are still some unknowns about the type of X’s-and-O’s coach he is mostly because the Jets have not been good enough for scheme to matter much.
But Cook presents a unique challenge. He is a player who is used to being an every-down running back, rushing for at least 1,100 yards in each of the past four years. He will join a backfield that already had Hall, who looked like the Offensive Rookie of the Year before tearing his ACL last year. Aaron Rodgers will expect to throw plenty, too, with Garrett Wilson surely expecting plenty of balls headed his way.
And then there are the accusations. In November 2021, a former girlfriend filed a lawsuit against Cook accusing him of battery and assault, including allegations that he beat her with a broomstick. Cook has denied any wrongdoing.
While at Florida State, Cook was accused of punching a woman in the face outside a bar, a charge for which Cook was found not guilty. Also while at college, Cook was cited for mistreating three chained-up pitbulls.
By adding a perennial Pro Bowler, the Jets added character and chemistry concerns, too. It’s on Saleh to ensure this experiment does not blow up.
