The New York Mets lost again on Saturday, dropping a 9-2 contest against the Pittsburgh Pirates (box score) that extended their recent slump. The Mets are now 12-14 in June, but that record belies the sharpness of their downward turn. Indeed, they’ve lost 12 of their last 15, causing their once sizable lead in the National League East (they were up by more than five games entering June 13) to become a half-game deficit. The Mets, in turn, responded to their latest loss the way that teams entangled in spirals always have over the course of baseball history: by calling a team meeting.
“Nothing but winning,” Lindor told reporters about the tenor of the meeting, which lasted around 20 minutes, according to The Athletic. “This is not ‘Rah-Rah,’ and ‘Now, the season is going to turn around.’ We are competing — still. We are one game or a game and a half from first place. And we are in the top for the wild card. This is not a magic thing. Nobody is hoping for that. This is not how it works.”
“As a team, we’re not playing very well right now,” outfielder Brandon Nimmo added. “There’s mistakes all over the field you can point at. It’s not one thing. It’s not [only] pitching, it’s not hitting, it’s not defense. It’s all of them at different times. We’re not putting it together right now. You’re not going to win games in the big leagues when you do that.”
The dirty secret about team meetings is that they often look more impactful than they are in reality. If timed just right — and they’re usually called when a team feels it has reached its lowest point — they’ll take place right before the kind winds of regression, one of the statistical principles that help shape the baseball season, blow into town and help a team revert to a more sustainable level of play. Sometimes the timing is a little off, or sometimes a team is dreadful and there’s no salvaging to be done. The Mets, though, are a good team (as evidenced by the names on the roster and their play in April and May) and it’s clear that they’re going to pull out of this tailspin sooner than later.
On that note, it’s worth checking out the schedule. The Mets will wrap up their series with the Pirates on Sunday before embarking on a homestand that will see the Milwaukee Brewers and New York Yankees come to town. Both of those clubs are projected to make the playoffs, so who knows how the Mets will fare. On the bright side, the Mets will then hit the road for stops against the Baltimore Orioles and Kansas City Royals, both clubs with losing records at this stage of the season.
Mind you, the Mets have some justifiable reasons for their recent downturn. They’ve lost ace Kodai Senga and fellow starters Tylor Megill and Griffin Canning to the injured list in the past three weeks. They’ve also had some other performers, like shortstop Francisco Lindor and since-demoted catcher Francisco Alvarez, go through uncharacteristic rough spells. (Lindor, for his part, entered Sunday with a .652 OPS in the month of June.) It stands to reason that getting veteran lefty Sean Manaea back in the rotation sooner than later and having Lindor (among others) correct course will have the Mets playing more like the playoff-caliber team and less like a club that requires a meeting.
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