Brad Hand STINKS, Billy Beane Rumors, and the Mets Lose Two of Three to the Phillies

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Speaker 1: Today's episode of the mets Ub podcast is sponsored by Anchor. If you haven't heard about Anchor, it's the easiest way to make a podcast. Let me explain. It's free. First off, that's huge, and that's what we use here on the met Stub podcast. I highly suggest there are creation tools that allow you to record and edit your podcast right from your own phone or computer. Anchor will distribute your podcast for you so it can be heard on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and many other streaming services, and you're allowed to make money from your podcast from day one with no minimum listenership. It's literally everything you need to make a podcast in one place, So make sure you guys download the free Anchor app or go to anchor dot fm to get started. What is up?
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Speaker 2: Mets Up?
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Speaker 1: Listeners back here for episode number fifty one of the Mets Up Podcast. I'm your co host Mark Luino Draftneckmark here with James Jeter had no range talking about the New York Mets series against the Philadelphia Phillies, and it's a really common theme that's been happening recently. The Mets played poorly, the Mets laid down, there was no fight, and the season is over. We've known this, we've known this for a couple episodes now, but we're really just we're twisting the knife. We're making it a lot worse. We want everyone to know that there's no hope left in this year, and that's just kind of how the team's been. It's kind of been the mL the last few months. It is the trade deadline. As much as guys like Habi Baias and even a guy like Rich Hill, who had a great start again on Sunday Night, those guys can only do so much. We need some of the other dudes to step up, and it feels like we haven't been able to get a full team performance in the last few months. Outside of that Yankee series. There haven't been a lot of highlights here. But hey, we're still gonna talk about every single game as we always do, Game one, two, and three, as well as some of the off season rumors that have been flying around a little bit, a little Billy Bean talk as a possible maybe new president of Baseball Operations. We'll cover it all here on the Mets Up podcas As episode number fifty one. Make sure you guys are following us on Twitter and Instagram as well as TikTok at Mets up YouTube channel if you want the video content metst up podcast. Big shout out to everybody who watched the last video on the YouTube channel, so at best performing one in like the first twenty four hours or whatever it was killing it. Appreciate you guys doing that. Make sure you're listening to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google podcasts, wherever you are, follow us there, subscribe, drop us a five star rating, drop us a review. Really does help us out. And that's all I got for the self, you know. Promo spiel James Mets Phillies series. Not a lot great to talk about here. How you feeling awful?
00:02:35
Speaker 2: Such a terrible series. This Mets team that we were so hopeful about for so long just has absolutely no fight. We can just smell them later because they're not really even waking up. They're not what's what's the phrase, taking the call, calling the challenge, something along those lines, taking the call to action the metsag Yeah, take the Mets are not taking the call to action in a season where we were legitimately just three games out of a playoff spot. When we spoke one week ago after an emotional Sunday Night. Again, Sunday Night baseball victory went over the New York Yankees. They just have this awful week of juiceless baseball where there was no juice to be found, completely dry baseball. It sucks. It really sucks.
00:03:16
Speaker 1: Yeah, it just it would have been great. And the Mets have been doing this all year, just kind of keeping us hanging around, and it feels like they even still did it in this series at times, because again a lot of close games that we just can't get over that hump and get that victory. Really frustrating to watch, really uninspired baseball. It's hard to watch as a fan, especially knowing that the season's over and then seeing the guys play like this. It's not the dog in it, which we've never accused guys of doing, but it's just like there's that fire doesn't feel to be there. It feels like the Mets themselves also know that this season is essentially over, and it feels like we're just kind of coasting into next season and trying to figure out what's going to be next.
00:03:54
Speaker 2: It's something that I regret to admit, but on Friday Night was the first time all season it turned down tickets to a Mets game.
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Speaker 1: Wow, turn down tickets?
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Speaker 2: Yeah sucks.
00:04:04
Speaker 1: Yeah, I do want to still go out. We've talked about we're going to the Marlin Series. We gotta go to one game because yeah, we just gotta, you know, have a send off. We're not gonna have baseball for a few months here. We need closure, need closure, need closure. A Marlin series is perfect. No way to really torture us more than watching us play really close baseball with a bad Miami Marlins team. But we'll have a few beers in us. We'll have a few free sandwiches from a bodega. We're gonna go the cheap way, but we're gonna have a good time. Let's talk about Game one, Zac Wheeler on the mound for the Phillies, and as you put so well in the notes, the Mets will never beat Zack Wheeler again.
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Speaker 2: It will never happen. I'm gonna drop some Zach Wheeler stats in a few minutes once we get through about what happened on Friday night. I'm shock that we've ever beat him once pitching for the Phillies, because whenever he walks to the mound, it's like every like little morsel of talent that some of the guys on this team still seem like they might have is completely gone from their bodies, their minds, their souls, everything is gone. And the first three inning we're just an unmitigated disaster. The only base runner of the Mets had against Zach Wheeler was Taiwan being hit by a pitch with two hours into third. That was it.
00:05:08
Speaker 1: It's different. We've talked about some of the pitchers this year that have you know, been stall or stalemate at us offensively, and there's stuff hasn't been Zaq Wheler. Zak Wheeler is a good pitcher. Zaq Wheeler is one of the better pitchers in baseball. He's having a cy Young caliber season. He has a clear ace on this Philadelphia Phillies team. So it feels a lot better when at least you're getting shut out by an ace and not Matt Moore or Chase Anderson like we've seen at times in se leicster John Lester, Oh god, jeez, I didn't even want to bring up John Lester. That guy stinks, but it just it still doesn't make it better, especially because he was a Met and me and you both un you know, it wasn't planned, but we both had the same take about Zaq Wheeler when he left the Mets, and this I don't think is a groundbreaking one, but I think we were a little more aggressive than a lot of people because when Wheeler signed with the Phillies for that twenty three million dollars a year contract, it was called an overpay. By the way, his market value at the time was considered to be twenty million. Imagine freaking out over three million dollars a year to get an ace starting pitcher like Zac Wheeler at the time. I know in my video I called him Garrett Cole light, saying that they basically threw similar type pitches, similar velo. Everything was very similar, even down to their mechanics was very very similar. And it felt like Zach Wheeler was getting ready to do what Garret Cole did when we went to Houston, which is take his game to the next level. And that's exactly what we see him doing in Philly. And it sucks because now we're gonna have to see this guy four or five times a year for the next four or five seasons, and we're, just like you said, not gonna be able to beat him. It doesn't matter. He's just that good.
00:06:34
Speaker 2: In that same offseason, I was going pretty hard applying to baseball internships, and I applied to a Phillies player development internship, and I wrote my entire application about how you can turn Zach Wheeler into Garrett Cole earlier in that off season, around November, and I wrote paragraphsupon paragraphs like going into his pitch design and like his repertoire, like his pitch percentages, like by starts and by months, and they didn't hire me, and they did it. I told that story a few months for all the new listeners. If you didn't think the Phillies were comebacks before, you should definitely believe it now, because they took my brain, took my knowledge. Possibly I'm sure someone read it because I got an actual, very nice email in response, and they applied it. And they're gonna rip my heart that way now for the next seven years, however fucking long he's gonna be on this team.
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Speaker 1: Didn't they sign your guy Leriano to that offseason? You were saying that which one was? There was another guy too, right?
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Speaker 2: That was a different story. That was I don't want to trash someone who's like nice to me, made amends. But there was a person who writes for a publication out there who I submitted an article too, and I talked about for Ciscle Loriano being transitioning to a relief pitcher and how he was a LEFTI special. This was before the three bad rule. He could be extremely effective, and I gave all these crazy stats, I mean, nice tables, and this person took everything I wrote and put it in their own article. A month later that was I messaged him like, okay, fuck, are you hitting me?
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Speaker 1: I wasn't sure if that was the same thing with the Phillies, but I knew that there was something there. Yeah, Zachler was really good and for a team that just has trouble hitting, like we said, John Lester, we are really not going to h Zach and we didn't.
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Speaker 2: He was dominant and like luckily he only threw five innings and came out of a game with ninety three pitches, and we did get to him in the fourth like brand new, We've got a lead off pace hit. Eventually, Hobby problem around to score after a lot of like struggling and actually trying to get Brandom around the base pats. But now since Zach Wheeler has left the mess. He has made eight starts against us with Philadelphia. He's a two point sixty RA, a one point zero one whip, and a four and one record. All of those numbers are actually far worse I thought they would be. Are far better. No, yeah, far worse than I thought that would be. I think it was gonna be like a one avra aero point seven whip, and.
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Speaker 1: I feel like there's the one loss. We roughed him up, I think, and that was like him coming off of an injury or coming off a layoff, and I remember being like we just got to him, like we just got kind of got lucky.
00:08:43
Speaker 2: It had to have been like August of twenty nineteen when we were hot.
00:08:46
Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe something like that's he's gonna dominate us. And it's just the guy we could have had, a guy who could have kept.
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Speaker 2: It's a guy we should have had, because if everyone out there remembers his free agent negotiation, he was either engaged or about to be married at the time. I mean, it's a girl from some of New Jersey, a town right near us, and he was completely committed to remaining in the Tristate area. Basically telling everyone to baseball the only teams he would sign with were the Mets, Yankees, and Phillies. And the Phillies I think we're the only team to actually offer him a.
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Speaker 1: Deal, which is just absurd. The quality of pitcher that was, especially, like just just knowing that the numbers were there, if me and you could see it, not that we're like these dumb idiots, like who are these schmos who were saying stuff? But if the a baseball fan can see it and it's predictable, there's no reason the front officer should have missed it. Thanks Brody, appreciate you, Bud.
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Speaker 2: Love Brolly Van Wagon. Another weird part about this game was that Taiwan also left after pitching five innings and he looked like not great, but he was fine. It was almost like Joe Girardi and Luis Rojas made like a handshake deal. It's like five innings each five We're gonna leave this to our to our subparer bullpens this. We're gonna have some fun here tonight. Guy.
00:09:53
Speaker 1: He was not particularly pleased with being pulled from the game again Taiwan. He brought it up at for the game that he didn't really have a say that it's just he kind of gets pulled, and he didn't agree with it necessarily, and that he didn't really know why he was getting pulled either. He was a little bit confused, a little bit upset. He wasn't, you know, oh fst like none of that kind of stuff. But he definitely was displeased with the fact that it's now a second or third start recently that he's gotten pulled before. He felt like he was really done.
00:10:26
Speaker 2: And I think that, well, I understand Taiwan being upset because he's a competitor and he was pitching fine results wise, like there were some general reasons for him to come out of his game, like his off speeds were not missing many bats at all, Like there wasn't a lot of whiffs to go around. His forcing fastball was his most whiffed unpitched and the pitch that got the most called strikes. So with Taiwan doesn't have the off speeds working, you don't really want to leave him in there forever. And he was leading off in the fifth inning and the Mets needed to get a base runner because they were down two one at the time, And again we talked about Hovey tying up the game in the fourth. After that Brandon I Willie Leff single. He gave up a home run directly after that to Brad Miller, So maybe and the Philadelphia Philly lineup was about to come around for a third time. And again, not that it seemed like they were seeing him like super well, but it felt like something could happen. But the big issue here is something that has happened a lot of times the Mets this season, is that's Taiwan Walker only throwing five innings meant that there was going to be one chaos inning because we had Loup Redy to pitch, we had Lugo Raty pitch, we had did haz Righty pitch. That's only three innings three plus five is eight and that chaos inning turned out to be none other than our favorite pitcher in the world, Brad fucking Hand.
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Speaker 1: It's it really is gotten to the point where it's like, how, how, how how are we still doing this?
00:11:40
Speaker 2: For me?
00:11:40
Speaker 1: Wants shame on you full or fool me twice, shame on me for me three times. You're a fucking idiot.
00:11:47
Speaker 2: Well about to get fulled six times?
00:11:48
Speaker 1: Yeah, that seems to have. Is that how many appearances brad Hand has a New York met I.
00:11:52
Speaker 2: Would probably even take the over on that.
00:11:54
Speaker 1: It's just it's it's it's insane, insane that they keep going to this bomb on the mound.
00:12:00
Speaker 2: But also they go to him in a high leverage situation, like Aaron Loop immediately came on to pitch the sixth inning after Taiwan Walker, and that's fine because Bryce Harper was due up, and Aaron Loop threw a clean six, like sure, but when brad Hand came in the eighth inning, first of all, brad Hand coming in the eighth inning is that's there's no reason for that to happen besides like ten to one or just like the fact that brad Han has saves in his career like a high leverage guy. But this was once again the top of the order and like odell Odu Bell Herrera and Geene Segura, Jean Jeene, the hitting machine just laced two balls off immediately and he actually got Bryce Harper out, which is the only thing this like stupid fuck is I guess can't do and then what do you get? Like then what are you gonna do out there?
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Speaker 1: What are you gonna do just so sick and tired of it. I love I don't love it because I wish it didn't happen, but I love now that when brad Han comes out onto the mound, it's me and you were just receiving tweets saying waiting for the brad Hand tweet, and it's like, yeah, because this guy stinks. You got you texted me. You're like, I think he's listening to the podcast because he shaved his mustache. I thought we were like blocked. I checked my Twitter and it was like, just brad Hand have one saw. I'm like, I'm not blocked. What could James be talking about mustache?
00:13:04
Speaker 2: Lists? Still stinks terrible, but I think he might be a little bit intimidated by us, maybe a couple more, a couple more poor addings, and he did give us another poor adding the series.
00:13:12
Speaker 1: Of course, more to come, more to come.
00:13:14
Speaker 2: I just just like talk about baseball for a second, because we can talk about how bad the Mets are forever. In this situation, when you're down by one run and your pitcher who's pitching okay, good, not great, is leading off an inning and you know you have to get through one more inning. What would you have done?
00:13:30
Speaker 1: I think if you asked me this question at the beginning of the year, I probably let Taiwan go because I didn't expect the offense to be so aneemic and so bad and just have no life whatsoever. But because the Mets, I mean, like a one run game has literally been the downfall of this team, losing by one run, and I mean we saw it again in this series, So I think that's probably the right move. I think you have to get a little aggressive, you have to try to make something happen. The problem is just that it doesn't matter because nobody hits on this team, so like it's picking the worst or the lesser of two evils. Really do you want to have the bullpen get extended out a little bit more? And the bullpen has been great this year, Like the guys who have been good have been really good. It's finding those lesser guys since like Drew Smith has been away, which God do we miss him.
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Speaker 2: I was literally about to say that that that is the spot that's been taken by Brad Hand for some tragic reason, like literally, that is a curse on us based on how much we love Drew Smith. And how highly we praised him this entire season, the offseason. Even to take him away and replace him with the bane of my existence. It's cruel, it's disrespectful.
00:14:42
Speaker 1: It is, and it's just the lesser of two evils. You want to go with the bullpen or do you want to try and keep Taiwan in the game. Loop got the job done, so it's not like they made the wrong decision. I don't think that's why they lost. They still can't score runs. That's that's really what it comes down to. So either way, you're just not gonna win with this team. It's kind of how it works. It's really shitty, it really sucks. I'm so tired of analyzing every single move that Rojas makes because there really is no right answer. With this team, the way that they play. You're gonna kill him for anything that he does. This one I get. I could see the reasoning behind it, and that's all I need. I need to understand what the plan is. When he put in Familiar in the eighth inning the other day, there was no rhyme or reason as to why that happened. There was no plan. I don't know what was going through his fucking mind, but this I could at least understand, and that's what I need to see. Yeah, the only part of this that frustrates me is brad Hand getting the eighth and that the sixth I would just bad. Yeah, I would rather brad Hand pitch earlier in the game so we have more time to make the deft up against the bad Phillies bullpen. Because the Mets did get to Archie Bradley, they put a couple of runs on the board, it just wasn't enough. We couldn't get to Ian Kennedy for some goddamn reason, Who's been awful with the Phillies since getting there.
00:15:56
Speaker 2: He's throwing beach balls down the middle of the plate, no one can hit them.
00:16:00
Speaker 1: Incredible how they've like got Zack Wheeler and helped him get to the next level, but seemingly every other pitcher there has just gotten worse.
00:16:08
Speaker 2: But that makes me think that the Zach Wheeler thing is just independent, like of everything else that happens in Philadelphia. He did it on his own or he was just always there. He just actually had to get healthy, had to shake the rust off his arm. You've heard Jacob de Grom talk about coming back from his Tommy John surgery. The Chommy John surgery happened before. We're not saying anything else that should be happening, whatever, whatever, But he just had to learn how to throw hard again. I think it took Zach Wheeler some time and probably some like general mental coaching to just throw hard again, just get your balls back.
00:16:36
Speaker 1: Yep. But you know whatever, we lost game one. There's nothing really much else to talk about here that's not going to be heartbreaking or devastating. I mean, we lose another close game to the Phillies because this team really, at the end of the day, has an inability to score runs. And I think that's probably why these brad hand moves get even more magnified, because any run that he gives up is one that we're not going to get back necessarily or in this game, that could be the difference between winning and losing. And that was that was the difference.
00:17:03
Speaker 2: Let's move on to the game too, because our guy Kyles Krasco was on the mound and you'll you'll never believe what happened.
00:17:09
Speaker 1: Mark, Okay, let me go out on a limb here.
00:17:12
Speaker 2: He gave up a first sinning run, first sitting home run. Jean Sigura, Jean Jean, the hitting machine.
00:17:18
Speaker 1: Jean Sigura. Man. That guy. For some reason, the Mets have no clue how to pitch to him, Absolutely no idea.
00:17:24
Speaker 2: I don't think anybody has a clue how to pitch to him.
00:17:26
Speaker 1: I know he is having a good year. But this is where we always go back and forth with this one. Is that I think in years past, before I've started to like learn a little bit more about like the deep numbers in baseball, I would have loved Jean Sigura. I would be like, that guy's a ballplayer right there. He is. He is a ballplayer, major ball player, big ballplayer, big like Keith and Nanda. Keith gotta love Jean Sigura. Keith's like, that's a guy I want on my team. He's having a really good year. But this is, like I feel like, one of the best seasons of his career outside of like that twenty sixteen year in Arizona. But he's just kind of been like fine until now. And the Mets have always struggled.
00:18:03
Speaker 2: But he's always been fine. He plays decent defense in multiple positions. He doesn't strike down, He'll never hurt you. He does the right things when he needs to, Like he'll make a productive out, like he's a one eighteen WRC plus this year, which you're twenty percent bet in league average. I'd love to have you on my team.
00:18:18
Speaker 1: That's what love you.
00:18:19
Speaker 2: I love you. And the home run he hit in the first ending was a fucking bomb. He got all of that ball and I looked it up, but that was actually the fourth hardest ball that Jean Sugur has hit his entire career.
00:18:30
Speaker 1: Well, I don't need to hear that. I mean, come out with the other one come against Edwin Diaz when he just destroyed our dreams as well too.
00:18:37
Speaker 2: And that one was not on this list. But three of those four highstoo balls have actually come this season, So Jean Sigura might actually be hitting like a power renaissance in his I want to say, mid thirties, about thirty three, thirty four have wells Geene thirty one.
00:18:48
Speaker 1: I looked up Geene Sugar's numbers against the Mets. You ready for this career sixty one games, two hundred and sixty three played appearances, ten home runs, fifteen doubles, four triples, thirty two RBIs He's even stole thirty team bases like he's he just does everything. And his slash line is three twenty four, three fifty nine five forty one, nine hundred ops. That is the second best ops against the team that he has. You know who's the first team, the Rockies. You want he gets to play in Colorado. He just doesn't hit like this against any other team. That's one hundred points higher than his slugging is this year at four to fifty three, and he's having one of the best power seasons of his entire career. Yes, Mets have no clue how to get him out, absolutely no clue.
00:19:27
Speaker 2: Watching the game tonight with my dad, he's like, we gotta sign this guy next year. I was like, I don't think he's a free agent. He's like, I don't care. We gotta get him in Queens.
00:19:34
Speaker 1: He has like an extreme he had. He got a really really good contract, team friendly. He's a free agent twenty twenty three.
00:19:39
Speaker 2: Wow, all right, good good Virginia five or seventh. That's a great deal for everybody.
00:19:42
Speaker 1: Good deal all round, all right.
00:19:43
Speaker 2: But bring it back to the Mets because we could talk. I could talk about Gene Sigurara for hours.
00:19:46
Speaker 1: And you know that I have happy to love Jean Sigura. You are a Jean Sigura guy.
00:19:49
Speaker 2: He's such a good ballplayer. I hate they's on the Phillies killing the Mets, but he does kill the fucking Mets. But just to come back to Carrasco in ten Stars, now, this year, he's given up sixteen earned runs in the first tinning. It's crazy, fourteen and a half. He already in the first hitting. It's really fucking dumb. It's so stupid, and of course, like every other start, he settled in super well. After that, he gave up just one more home run to Gene Cigarett, because how can you not give up home runs to gen Cegura?
00:20:11
Speaker 1: How can you not He's the best hitter in baseball.
00:20:14
Speaker 2: I literally lost the Fantasy Baseball Semifinals because of Gene Segura.
00:20:17
Speaker 1: Oh, I can't believe he wasn't on your team. That's your guy, No, my guy.
00:20:20
Speaker 2: I used to take him in rotistory because I get the batting average in a couple of stolen bases here and there. But after the first inning, Carlos Carrasco pitched five more, he got five k's. You only have four hits. One of them was the other home run to Jean Segurra. His changeup had five whists and eleven swings. His slider at five called strikes. Like I know a lot of these morons on Twitter that we love to refer to so callously and so often really just want to kill Carlos carrask He was a head of the stake like Piggy, but he's like super fine. Like if you want to pick out problems with this team, you can't start with Carlos Carrasco.
00:20:52
Speaker 1: No, he's not the issue here. I will say it's it's worth noting. First sitting, we've talked about his pitch selection. The first inning, fastball, sink, change up, no pitch outside of that, or he threw one slider and it was aid j t ram Mutto. He just I guess that's his mL I guess that's his thing. He just like, I'm gonna come out and throw fastballs. That's what I do.
00:21:11
Speaker 2: And the best pitchers in baseball are able to do that, like keep something back for when you go to the lineup a second and third time. But I guess that Carrasco just again doesn't have his sea legs yet, and he's not that top twenty pitcher. I says every single episode that he has been in years past. He might be next year. It's possible when he gets a real off season, real spring training and he doesn't have a torn hamstring the whole fucking time, it could. But maybe he just doesn't need to mix it up more, be a little bit more creative early, because when it's so tough to win a game, when you go into an early hole, when you can't fucking score runs.
00:21:41
Speaker 1: No, and if we could score runs, this wouldn't even be probably as much of a narrative. It would probably be like Carrasco gave up another one and people would be laughing. But the fact is that we play from behind, it feels like all the time, and it's not really the pitching fault. It's because we can't score runs. If it's not Hobby Bias, lindor Along or a Nemo where you got nothing.
00:22:02
Speaker 2: I can for though, has been hitting pretty well.
00:22:04
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, true, but for the whole year. I'm still not putting him there.
00:22:07
Speaker 2: Of course, and the first two runs we got in this game did not even leave the infield. The first two of three. I want to say it like the first two of eight, the only two runs we got until the last inning of this game did not leave the infield. No, it was just not a great offensive showing it's really really hard to win games when you can't hit. And this is like something we've even talked about with old Mets teams, the issue. Your pitching piak can be as good as ever. You can have the best pitching in the league, but if you just can't score more runs than the team that you're playing, you physically can't win. And that's kind of what the Mets are running into this year, not scoring enough runs.
00:22:43
Speaker 1: That's why they're losing. I feel like you can circle it and you can stamp it.
00:22:46
Speaker 2: That is the reason, definitely, especially when you're facing guy like Aaron Nola, who, for some reason, whenever he walks into the city field, he gets all the strikeout stuff back. He's had a pretty up and down season in terms of the way Aranola has pitched in his career. It's technical call a down year. I'm higher on him than most. He's fantastic, but that's probably because when every faces the Mets, he strikes everybody out. Every single person we struck.
00:23:05
Speaker 1: Out ten guys in a row, broke Tom seevers record. It's a killer string.
00:23:08
Speaker 2: Nine guys in five innings game.
00:23:11
Speaker 1: It was so frustrating, so frustrating, and what was the real cherry on top? This is who was great? Because we lose this game five to three. You know how those extra two runs came in or why or how it started? Brad Hand, Brad motherfucking hand, that dude again did go to him again. I don't understand. I can't even believe it.
00:23:32
Speaker 2: Back to back days. I think it was either the seventh or eighth inning again for some reason, Brad hen is just our new high leverage reliever. It was.
00:23:40
Speaker 1: It was unbelievable. It was unbelievable. He like, technically May gave up the runs or brad Hand got the earned runs. But May is the one who like had them score and come home. But like, whoa, how does brad Ann get the inning over Trevor May? I don't care if Trevor May is struggling. One guy has been good this year. The other one is Brad Hand. What is your choice? What is your option? I don't even care if Bryce Harper's I don't want to see brad Hand.
00:24:05
Speaker 2: It brad Hand was the first reliever out of the Mets bullpen on Saturday night.
00:24:09
Speaker 1: That's disgusting. That is disgusting.
00:24:11
Speaker 2: Also, I have a funny trivia question for you here. Who do you think has a lower ERA this year? Three guys, Trevor May, Miguel Castro. Neary's familiar.
00:24:20
Speaker 1: It's gotta be Miguel Castro.
00:24:22
Speaker 2: Is Miguel Castro. He's a low c ray of those three guys.
00:24:24
Speaker 1: Where's Miguel Castro been?
00:24:25
Speaker 2: By the way he pitched the eighth inning in this game after we gave up the runs in the setting.
00:24:29
Speaker 1: Okay, okay, okay. I was like, I feel like he went from being like so used a lot to now brad Hand pitches.
00:24:36
Speaker 2: It's just like, when this game was over, I'm just thinking to myself, like, how in the world could we have lost five straight games the Cardinals in the Phillies.
00:24:42
Speaker 1: Can you imagine how different this.
00:24:44
Speaker 2: Could have been if we could just have been three and two?
00:24:46
Speaker 1: Yeah, still got a fight.
00:24:48
Speaker 2: But this was just like a reliving of our childhood nightmares, Like all the horrible paranoia and anxiety and stress from like two thousand and six through two thousand and eight came just rushing and flooding back into my brain, my blood stream. At these teams aren't even good, Like we're not good either, but like I wish you could just like win, be five hundred against the mediocre teams.
00:25:07
Speaker 1: I feel like the most annoying part about it is, especially maybe for me, maybe not as much for you, but like then having to deal with the Cardinals and Phillies fans that, yeah, the team isn't good.
00:25:17
Speaker 2: The worst part about these losses are all my Twitter followers.
00:25:20
Speaker 1: Yeah, of course, but like because you can't you can't rationalize with people that this team isn't good because there's just like, oh, you're just upset because the Mets loss. I'm like, I am upset that the Mets lost, but I'm upset because they lost to a bad team, a team that's just simply not that good.
00:25:35
Speaker 2: The crazy thing is there's a good chance that at least one of these teams are gonna make the playoffs because of this run. If you look at the remaining schedules for both of them, it's kind of ridiculous. The Brewers the Cardinals the rest of the season have alternating series with the Brewers and the Cups. That's a great way for the Cardinals to again just go five hundred and just sneak right into that stupid wild card.
00:25:51
Speaker 1: Spot and beat the Dodgers.
00:25:53
Speaker 2: They're not gonna be the Dodgers. You can't. You can't put that in the universe.
00:25:56
Speaker 1: Say oh, it's been brewing on Twitter. Everyone is like it's gonna happen. Just wait. And I mean, granted, the Padres have been struggling, but they just trounced the Padres this weekend.
00:26:08
Speaker 2: The Padres are like half a baseball team right now. I remember when we were excited in June about beating the Padres with a joke that was maybe that's why.
00:26:14
Speaker 1: We should have known that the Padres were doomed. Is when we beat them and had had our way with.
00:26:17
Speaker 2: Them, won the season series against the Padres. That was fun. That was cool for a week, meant a lot.
00:26:23
Speaker 1: Then just this season could be so different, it should be so different, and it's not. And these last two series really just sum it up.
00:26:32
Speaker 2: Well.
00:26:33
Speaker 1: Game two, shit show, Thanks for nothing. Let's talk about Game three Sunday. So we win because we won what five street Sundays? I think straight Sundays, and I feel like at the beginning of the year we couldn't win on Sunday. We'd win the first two and we'd always lose Sunday. So it's another rollercoaster of emotions. It's just a different way of doing it. Now, now we win on Sunday and lose the other two.
00:26:54
Speaker 2: It's because nothing can be easy. The beginning of the series, the season, we couldn't get sweeps because we were actually good. Now we're not gonna get swept. We're bad. You know that. Canna let that happen. Well, we got swept out by the Cardinals. I can't say that just happened. We just got swept.
00:27:05
Speaker 1: But fuck damn, it wasn't on the weekend.
00:27:07
Speaker 2: That's why you know week this week, week day. See, no one's watching.
00:27:10
Speaker 1: No back pages, there no no back pages. Richill was good though, again because Richill has just like kind of figured something out that's gonna make him stick around a little bit longer.
00:27:18
Speaker 2: This probably goes against most of the things I say usually, but I want Richell on this team next year.
00:27:21
Speaker 1: Wow, that rich Spach things.
00:27:24
Speaker 2: He's a gamer. He just guy loves playing baseball. He wants the ball and he does not want to give it up.
00:27:28
Speaker 1: He like always had that role with like the Dodgers too, Like he would only throw five innings and like you'd be like, he has sixty five pitches, he's given up two hits. Why is he getting pulled after five? And he would fight and he was like, I'm not coming out of this game, and Dave Roberts like you have to man, Like come on, dude, Like you're older than me, there's just no way.
00:27:45
Speaker 2: And you're older than you're much bigger than me. And I know you got the rest of that one time but the Patriots game for being drunk. So I don't want to fuck with you right now. But I'm really happy I harped on richell slider for a couple of weeks because it's just totally dead now. He hasn't thrown one last two starts. I think that the slow curve is the slider because he's dropping the arm slot and it has like a little bit more horizontal movement than his curveball and much less vertical movement. And he got three whiffs on three swings. The Phillies are just just a flailing at that thing. But it's just fun. To watch chill pitch. He's just just watching baseball on the time machine.
00:28:15
Speaker 1: He doesn't particularly get you excited. You're not gonna be like, whoa eighty six on the corner. Yeah, but you could appreciate that despite not having this plus stuff by any means, he gets the job done. He's been really good with the Mets, a pickup that I feel like the Mets caught a little bit of heat for, like, oh, you grabbed rich Hill sticky stuff. He hasn't been that good and he's turned out to be better than advertised.
00:28:38
Speaker 2: The craziest thing about the second half is that the Mets absolutely had a slam dunk with the trade deadline.
00:28:44
Speaker 1: The guys that they got, they said, yeah, they didn't get enough, that was the issue.
00:28:48
Speaker 2: Well, I think they just believed in the guys in this team, like Jeff McNeil, Michael Conforth and Dom Smith a little bit too much, which, like, that's not the craziest thing in the world to believe that you would get bounced back from the guys who are like central parts of your organization, because like, at some point you have to think to yourself, these guys don't bounce back. We need to move elsewhere, So let me put them in a sinker swim situation. Like sure again, I've said time and time again, like I wish we had Adam Duval, He's naturally good, RBIs. I wish we got Eddi Rozzario hit for the fucking cycle today, the fewest, Hilaire, the fewest amount of pitches ever seen in a cycle. Eddie Rozario.
00:29:20
Speaker 1: He is allergic to walking.
00:29:21
Speaker 2: He's allergic to walking. He loves swinging at the first pitch, but when he hits, the cycle of fucking works. Jes Hilaire, we're listing braves right now. But it's the goddamn truth, Like you could just get three of those guys, two of them, one of them who's one just one even it makes one of the guys in the outfield who probably went two or three more games right now, and we're still losing, we're still not making the playoffs. But at least it wasn't as awful to watch.
00:29:40
Speaker 1: No, And at least I don't have to see Albert al Moro, which luckily didn't have to watch much of him because he's not on the team right now. I think he got sent down again, right or option.
00:29:49
Speaker 2: He was optioned. But it's back to the players on the field. It was nice to see Dom actually stroke one.
00:29:53
Speaker 1: He's kind of been doing it more in this like weird pinch hitting role, which is also weirdly something that earned him more playing time was he was coming off the bench and swing the bat a little bit better. No, today, I didn't pinch hit. But it's like the idea of that Dom's not this everyday player to almost get something going in his head where it's like I gotta make it worth it when I play.
00:30:13
Speaker 2: I don't know's I don't know. That's not something we can really rely on. But again, because Mets fans like love Dom Smith. A lot of Mets fans love Tom Smith. But when he hits the ball solidly, people act like he invented slice spread, and it's why could this be something that we are so like, oh, you get it. Tom Smith is back, Yeah, yeah. I just can't see Dom Smith being anything won a platoon players at this point for the rest of his career, anything.
00:30:35
Speaker 1: More than a platoon player, and again has to be at first base. It can't be anywhere else. You just can't cannot touch the outfield, can't it shouldn't even be near grass.
00:30:43
Speaker 2: And I think the Mets have confirmed that belief in the last few weeks.
00:30:47
Speaker 1: Dom on the season, his numbers eleven homers, eighteen doubles, and four hundred and seventy eight played appearances, a six seventy two ops as good as he'd been the last two years. It's a shame that it all kind of just gets thrown away because this is a awful, awful season. This is the worst season statistically almost of his career. Like he had those weird rough stretches in like those sixty games with the Mets in seventeen eighteen where he was bad.
00:31:15
Speaker 2: He's basically that player right now. And he just looks like kind of sluggish out there. The fitness level, not that he's like like he once was, but it just doesn't seem to have like as strong of a body.
00:31:28
Speaker 1: No, the swings have been weak. He hasn't been hitting the ball particularly hard, which would fall into why he doesn't have the extra base hits. I mean, twenty nine extra base hits on the air. That's just so that's miserable, that's so bad. I feel bad for the guy. He shouldn't be playing like this, but again, maybe this is a little bit on us for falling in love and overhyping what we saw in what was really a one hundred and thirty nine game stretch with a much bouncier baseball, Yes, with a very very different baseball, and not a lot of scatting reports.
00:31:56
Speaker 2: On him, no, nothing at all. No one really knew what was going on, and now it seems like people know exactly what's going on, how to get Dom Smith out.
00:32:02
Speaker 1: Yes, this also seemed to be a game of the guys who had been struggling kind of stepping up. Jeff McNeil, for the love of God, finally got his first home run since August first, which is insane to say. A lot of talk about Jeff McNeil on the broadcast from A Rod. A Rod loves Jeff McNeil, because of course he did, because A Rod was never even remotely the type of player that Jeff McNeil is. A Rod falls in love with these guys that just it doesn't even make sense. I don't know how that's the guy he falls in love with. We love Jeff, but for a Rod to love Jeff McNeil takes no sense whatsoever. But he was talking about he was talking to somebody, I don't know who he was saying. He's like, but they were like, Jeff McNeil needs hits. If that guy's not getting hits, he's not gonna be playing baseball well. And I was like, that's kind of a dumb thing to say, because you know that is Jeff McNeil's game. But I also one hundred percent understood what he said. And you've talked about him before, the red ass man. The dude is just pressed and he got robbed in Game two and a country made a sick play on him. He can't buy a hit this one. Luckily, nobody could get a glove on.
00:32:59
Speaker 2: He crushed it the power swing that we've seen Jeff McNeil have in the past, when he's had these hot stretchers with power, where he just has that low ingon wheelhouse and we'll just get the bad head out and crush the ball. Because he can't do that. That's possible, it's within his repertoires in that toolbox. It's just something is just so wrong and we don't see it enough. And I think he's basically played his way out of an everyday role for next season.
00:33:21
Speaker 1: I do wonder if the hamstring thing that has been bothering.
00:33:24
Speaker 2: Him one hundred thousand percent, he's still not running one hundred percent.
00:33:27
Speaker 1: Yeah, So like I wonder if that's also dealing a little bit with the inconsistencies and the fact that there's just been so many ground balls from him. They showed his spray chart on ground balls. It sit like ten percent of the ground balls to the left side of the infield and things that we talked about. Again, you just shift against Jeff McNeil, you're really gonna kill his game.
00:33:44
Speaker 2: Yeah, especially because he's not able to lift the ball right now, and when he does hit in the ground, it's not especially hard. He doesn't have the eggs of VELAs seas elite hitters and baseball had. I think he used to get by with like a spray approach, but I think it was a little bit overblown. He was able to get these cheap hits. Now that there's more day than more information, teams just around the league generally are smarter. He doesn't get those che hits anymore. And Jeff McNeil really thrived on those just singles hits.
00:34:10
Speaker 1: Scrappy baseball player, he was super scrappy he still is still playing great defense out in the outfield. His OAA this year is in the ninetieth percentile. Ninetieth. I couldn't even believe that because you watch Jeff out there and you don't by no means you don't go he's bad. But I don't think of him as like this great, fantastic level left field ninety percent tiles legit stuff.
00:34:31
Speaker 2: I think where Jeff McNeil lacks as an outfielder is that he doesn't run around with like grace yeacause you don't see Jeff McNeil like take a nice, leisurely stroll to a ball that looks like could be in the gap, like really just pulling in like Lagaris used to do. Just find the spot, walk over there, really casually, like how's he covering all this ground? Jeff McNeil is h He's kind of like a percussion set, while a lot of other outfielders are like a nice like nice like saxophone, nice jazz ensemble. Yes, smooth, Not Jeff, not Jeff. Jeff is anything but smooth. Glad to see him get the home run, though, Glad he smiled. He smiled for the first time in three or four months. So that was nice to see too. Jeff McNeil's last home run August first, That was like before preseason football began.
00:35:11
Speaker 1: That feels like another year. That's when the Mets thought they could still make the playoffs.
00:35:15
Speaker 2: We thought the mescaistm make the playoffs a week ago.
00:35:17
Speaker 1: That's true. We forget about that. We'll move past that positive note here too. I mean, Mets did win this game, and hey, we used Aaron Loop in a high leverage situation and it worked.
00:35:28
Speaker 2: Worked really fucking well. He belled out Seth Lugo after two base runers around with Bryce Harper coming up in the seventh, got Bryce Harper out and he continued to pitch. In the eighth. He got four out very easily, brought his season long era down to a one point zero zero, which is legit literally the best era in baseball for any pitcher with a minimum of fifty innings thrown.
00:35:50
Speaker 1: That's so crazy that Aaron Loop is the guy who holds that this dude got ran out of Toronto. He was bad there, the Rays tinkered fixed something, and now he's here in New York and he has been sick so much so where he's probably gonna get himself another contract with the METS. I would assume.
00:36:04
Speaker 2: I think he's gonna get himself another contract, but I'm not so sure it's with the METS. I think that the resign we.
00:36:10
Speaker 1: Got Brad Hand I forgot my bad. No.
00:36:11
Speaker 2: Yeah, we have our lefty stopper down for next year. But I think that the resigned chatter around Brett Aaron Loop. I almost said, Brad Hand if I would have said that with the end of the podcast on the spot, shut shut shut the laptop.
00:36:22
Speaker 1: Shut it down, shut it down.
00:36:24
Speaker 2: But when you get relievers like Aaron Loop who do this, it almost is counterproductive to then reward him with a large contract. I want him to get paid. I would love for Aaron Loop to go to Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim eight million dollars a year, twenty four for three, have a fucking ball out there for the rest of freshly career. Brother. But like, the whole point is that you have to try and do this again when the guy w costs a million dollars, Like, that's how you win this, not giving him a fat deal.
00:36:50
Speaker 1: Oh, I by no means want like the massive contract to come from us if he wants to stay around for the three four million. Hell, Aaron stick around. I'll give you ten years for three million a year, whatever, but four million a.
00:37:01
Speaker 2: Year and I bring him one case of bush Light a week. Deal.
00:37:05
Speaker 1: I'm in. Sign it up. Who says no, Who says no to that?
00:37:07
Speaker 2: Who says no, I'll say yes.
00:37:09
Speaker 1: I'll say we're in, Aaron loop. If you're in, We're in. That's all we're saying here. But he was good, and it was nice to see him used properly in a high leverage situation because, Wow, shocker, Aaron Lup can handle it. We didn't have to go to brad hand to get these outs.
00:37:21
Speaker 2: Well. Also, I'm sure brad han was unavailable after pitching him back to back days. We have to save brad Hans for the stretch. God.
00:37:27
Speaker 1: And then Diaz got it done. Boy did he make it interesting because he has to, especially against the Phillies. Bryce Harper points to the sky into the warning track. I go, oh God, no, please, you pointed. This can't be good. That balls hit hard. Jeff McNeil camped under it. Mets win the game.
00:37:44
Speaker 2: I had this crazy thought while Jean Segura was up and there was a man on first one out, Bryce Harper on deck as to whether or not Edwin Diaz could possibly get a double play, and I thought to myself, no one ever hits grand balls against edwind Das. I thought to myself, I don't know if I've ever seen ed Diaz get a double play well in the Mets. So I want to ask you, how many double plays do you think Edwin Diaz has been on the mound for as a Met.
00:38:08
Speaker 1: I know this year, I think there's been one, So I'm gonna say he gets one a year. That puts him at three.
00:38:14
Speaker 2: The answer is two.
00:38:15
Speaker 1: Wow, it's less than one a year, and one of them was a line drive. So literally like there's no like grounded into a double play double play, one ground ball double play as of Yeah, I mean, he just doesn't have that kind of stuff. He doesn't like living in low in the zone. Kind of isn't this thing either.
00:38:32
Speaker 2: I just still thought like, at some point, you're pitching so many innings, like there was gonna be some kind statistical anomaly a ball hitting the ground with a man out first it is.
00:38:39
Speaker 1: It is shocking that no one's just like gotten on top of one and hit it hard into the ground one time, like you would think that there's just like a pitch that like they were just a little off on at one point one time, one time this year, two times as a New York Met that's crazy fucking nuts. Doesn't really matter, but it is definitely a stat that is is worth talking about. It's eye opening here, Mets win, whooped? You fucking do? We took one of three from the Phillies because we just we don't got it. We don't got the juice. We definitely don't, which I think leads us into our next discussion here, which is gonna be about this executive front office chatter that's been going around Twitter world. Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic I believed, published an article about Billy Bean and the possibility with a New York Mets you know contract there I'll call the reunion reunion yes, with Bob Melvin as well being involved. What are your thoughts on? I mean, I think we know what you're gonna say about Billy Bean. I obviously would like him. He seems like he'd be a perfect fit for the president of Baseball ops. But if he comes to Bob Melvin, does that make you even more enticed? Or you like maybe a little less, a little hesitant.
00:39:53
Speaker 2: I think I'm definitely more enticed. I think Bob Melvin is a very good baseball manager. I'm not as down on Luis Rojas's most people are. It exists in the world. It seems like ninety nine point nine percent of people want to like throw Louise Rojas off the arison a bridge. I don't think he's done like a bad job. I don't think you can really point to Louis Rojas as a problem with this team. And I truly don't even know if he's done enough like to be fired, Like I don't understand how we could put all the problems with this team not being able to hit on Louis Rojas. But you can't really talk down on Bob Melvin's pedigree and the way he's been able to manage, especially under Billy Bean's like guidance. Like those two have very clear chemistry, a very clear rapport, and I think that it would be a legitimate slam dog to build them in. And Ken Rosenthal, as well as guys like John Hayman, Bill Madden, all of these very inside baseball guys have been saying this now for about a week straight. It's to the point where I'm really beginning to think that it's a legitimate possibility, something that I said I just thought could happen a few months ago.
00:40:52
Speaker 1: Yeah, if the Mets somehow we're able to swing Billy Bean as the president of Baseball Ops through the moon, I'm excited. That's a move that I think would be a really nice step forward into the offseason. That would be something that makes me feel like we're going in the right direction. We finally have the guy who is smart, he's ahead of things, he knows what to do, and now he's gonna have money to spend. That's scary for me. With Billy Bean. The reason why the A's had to do all this stuff is because they didn't have money to spend. He had to find, like you've said with Farhan anxiety, those market inefficiencies and find the gaps and all that. So if you can find those gaps and still get those cheap players to fill out roster spots lower down the list, and then mix them in with the stars that we can bring into New York, that's a damn scary combination right there. And I'm I'm super excited to see if we can make that happens. That's something I want to see. And then on top of it, to bring Bob Melvin, who I think is one of the most underrated managers in baseball. Guy just wins all the time with teams that are not nearly as good as some of the bigger payroll clubs in baseball. People say, you know, you said, how much can we blame Luis Rosas for the hitting? And I'm with you, it's not on him. He's not If these guys aren't gonna hit, it's not on Luis Rojas's fault. In the same aspect, if you want to talk about a guy getting the most out of his players, Bob Melvin is one hundred percent one of those dudes. Because I mean they'll pull guys out of their butt too that you go like, that guy's playing well, the guy's having a rejuvenated career. This guy's doing this. And his bullpen management is always pretty cash money too. They have one of the strongest bullpens every year with guys you've never heard of.
00:42:22
Speaker 2: Yeah, but while they're guys you've never heard of, they're all very talented guys like yes, sh Mara Petit I've said that before, his best kept secret in baseball. The guy's fucking incredible. And I just think that there is so much like narrative momentum that would make this move really like logical. Again, we're like, we're connecting dots right now and doing this kind of shit. But just the fact that Billy being his playing career like start with the Mets, the Mets draft of them in the first round of the melmb Draft. He a highly tathered prospect. What the shit didn't work out? Sandy Alderson get Billy being his first shot in front office role. I don't think in the scatting role, but I think in a front office role. I believe that's a major connection right there. Billy Bean needs a ring if he really wants to enter that pantheon of the greatest sports executives of all time, something that he has kind of been passed in the most recent years by a lot of other executives major League Baseball who's been better than him, more impressive than him. One more than him actually got into the mountain top of time or two. And Steve Cohen really really, really, very much, it's so obvious wants to do some crazy shit. This offseason. I think that starts with getting a very high profile name to come in and run this team. And on top of that, Billy Bean has been flirting the last few years with the idea of leaving the Athletics. I know he's I think, part of the ownership group for some European soccer club I believe, I want to say Liverpool. He jumped in that group with all the Americans who did that before because he talked about basically bringing moneyball to soccer, something that we've actually talked about off air I think would be fascinating development. And he even floated the idea of this offseason. He basically broke up with the A's for like a few weeks and left and went to like a private business group and ended up coming back. And I believe that this all because of the Markassemian issue in falling out, not offering Marcus Emi and a homegrown player who went to Berkeley from Northern California, not giving him a fucking qualifying offer eighteen million dollars for a guy who now is for the home runs a catalyst in literally the best offense in baseball. Like, you add all those things up and it really seems like there's a good chance that Billy Bean is not the head executive of the Oakland A's next year. And maybe he's not with the Mets, but I just don't see him being with the A's. You only hurdle to jump is his ownership stake in that team.
00:44:30
Speaker 1: Yes, that is one thing that's gonna make it super interesting because he cannot work for the Mets and have an ownership stake in the Oakland A's.
00:44:35
Speaker 2: Not only a lot of hope.
00:44:36
Speaker 1: Steve Cohen's got cash, so what we call a conflict of interest, Yes, paying that baby. I'd love to get him here, I really would. And it seems like the growing sentiment is that Rojas is gonna be on his way out, and as much as Sandy seems like he's gonna stick around, I think a guy like Billy Bean could be the dude to push him out. I think Sandy is the insurance policy right now, so we'll see.
00:45:00
Speaker 2: And I think that Sandy, while it's very clear that he's uh not really fit for this role anymore, he's very well respected still around the game, especially of the older generation of the game that Billy Bean falls into. And maybe Billy Bean is behind the guy like David Stearns or some of the other high profile executives from some of the more sharp teams this like that have come on recently. But I don't know, I think he could really bring a lot to what the Mets want to do, some instant credibility to the front office.
00:45:28
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think I'd be concerned with Billy Bean's, like, you know, falling behind if the A's were a team that have also fallen behind. But that's a team that continues to be towards the top of that division, So like for me, and not that you're worried about it, that's not what I'm taking away. But if I felt like there was that issue, I feel like I could see it more. But he's still putting out some damn good teams with absolutely nothing. That to me is is something I want.
00:45:52
Speaker 2: They are damn good teams with nothing. But I think he has fallen off a little bit recently, like just the last like four years. His teams haven't really packed the same punch as I guess like fifteen years ago when he was the only guy using math ins front office basically, but you can you can expect that and I don't want like Billy Bean to come to the Mets and become Dave Don BRASKI, Like I have money, now I have to use it like correct, You still need to like bring like I want to see like the moneyball sentiments to the Mets. You still want to be able to find those like gems on the way for wire. You still want to be able to pull like a Lutavino or Frankie Mantis or Chris Bassett. And then you have to have the analyst on your staff and your players development systems within to turn those guys into studs. And something that Billy Bean has lacked with tremendously over the last decade plus with the Oakland Athletics is developing high profile young players. The A's very consistently have these barren rosters because their prospects are generally dog shit. They very consistently take first round picks guys like high profile international signings and do not turn them into stars, don't even really turn them to useful players. Often you look up and down the Rays and the A's roster, and besides guys who were kind of locks like Matt Chapman, Matt Olson and Marcus Mmian literally first round picks, Like there's not a lot of filler there of guys who really should have been good and should have taken steps.
00:47:05
Speaker 1: That's a fair that's definitely a fair point that they have struggled a little bit with that prospect development for sure recently. I think more so than who's going to be the leader of this front office, I think the Mets need to reevaluate who are the other guys that are working the inner the inner workings of everything, because I mean I put out a tweet the on Saturday night when the Mets couldn't hit, and it was like, we got we got a clear house of everybody that's touching hitting whatever we're doing from a hitting spot here. I'm sorry. I know we had this big thing about Hugh. Hugh Quaddlebaum might be your boy, but holy shit, it's not working. The Mets offense has just plummeted. And whatever the planning, the approach, the philosophy is right now is broken. I think we're one hundred and forty games into the season. Now, there's no longer like it might. They just got to buy in one hundred and fifty, They got to buy in. It doesn't work. We need to get the right guys in the right spot. People are souper, especially in Mets world, it feels like very anti analytic right now, which I think the Sets are doing too many analytics. And you even said it, you think they might be doing some of the least probably in baseball.
00:48:09
Speaker 2: I wouldn't say the least in baseball, but I think that what people think are analytics are certainly not analytics. Like like the decision making processes that a lot of times people again perceive Luis Rojas been making, like this doesn't seem that it's analytic as most people believe it to be. Like people think like taking at a starting pitcher of the ADA pitches like fuck analytics, Like what are you talking about, man? Analytics is like processes you used to like build a team and like create again, Like I just said the word, a process of how we're gonna make these decisions day in and day out. We didn't take the guy out because the ADA pitches took the guy out because his last three innings were much worse, and we want to face bad at their time because we know this guy faced good at this pitch. It's just like the general action of using as much information as possible, and to say it doesn't work, there's a broken record. It's fucking ridiculous. If you watch any baseball player, do you see the best teams in the league. These are the smartest teams in the league. That these teams use the most math, teams have the most analysts, said a million times, Giants have the most fucking coaches in baseball. These guys, like, fuck, haven't you watched the race play baseball team is the best record. They're gonna go for one hundred wins.
00:49:06
Speaker 1: They're tied for the most runs in the league with teams like the Blue Jays and the Astros and the White Sox. And you can't name the average baseball fan cannot name three or four guys on that starting lineup.
00:49:17
Speaker 2: No way, no, definitely not. And this offensive jarna has come like recently, like they've exploded in the last month. They've been one of the best offensive teams in baseball since the trade deadline. We're getting off topic here, but like we need to model our franchise off teams like that, not the way the Mets have been over the last ten years, because like the Mets were under the Wolpons, especially like before Brody came in, one of the least sharp teams in baseball and of analytics. They literally it was very like noted that the Mets had the least analysts on staff in baseball for years, like single digit number of analysts, when teams like the Rays are already employing numbers in like the thirties and forties and fifties, Like, you have to be on top of this shit. Get as much information data as possible and fucking use it. YEP.
00:49:58
Speaker 1: I'm hoping Steve co and who has said that he wants to be, you know, one of the more analytically based teams, one of the leading ones in Major League Baseball. I hope that comes true. I hope it comes true because that combination of the you know, the smarts and the information along with the unlimited money that the New York Mets have is very scary. There's another team in baseball that has a very similar kind of budget and is at the top of the analytic game and as the Los Angeles Dodgers, and they've been one of the best teams of baseball for the last ten years. I would love to be the Dodgers.
00:50:27
Speaker 2: The Astros are also built of the exact same milk.
00:50:30
Speaker 1: And I don't know why built all the exact same milk ilk ilk oh, I was like built of the same milk. That's not an expression.
00:50:38
Speaker 2: Two percent baby a day in and day out. But the one executive name who I have not heard yet, who I really thought would have come up is Jeff Lunou.
00:50:47
Speaker 1: Yeah, I feel like he's kind of still a little bit of black cat here.
00:50:50
Speaker 2: He could be a player though still, I mean, I don't know. I feel like there's gonna have to be a mystery player comes in because theopstein is no chance, zero percent chance, it's not gonna happen. I don't want it to happen. It seems like Dave Starance has way too good of a thing going in Milwaukee and Billy Bean. While a lot of it makes sense, it's just because we're connecting dots and there's tons of hurdles I would have to be jumped through and do that, and tons of teams to try to lure Billy Bean before, and it's never worked out. And it does seem like he actually wants to be a part of a fucking soccer club. So there has to be another big name here that hasn't been approached yet and someone who would be very eager to take a shot, and he would need to go to an organization that was very willing to take a risk and not really that concerned with bad press, which it doesn't seem like this new Mets regime is.
00:51:31
Speaker 1: No. Yeah, I'd love to see the Mets. Lunaw built the Astros as we know them right now. And while he was very much caught up in the entire cheating scandal, Jeff Lunow knows something. I mean, that guy built a juggernaut, a juggernaut. They didn't even need to cheat. That's the worst part. I'd love to have him build that juggernaut.
00:51:52
Speaker 2: Hey, here, that guy is and I want to quote Rick James on this cold blooded he doesn't give a fuck, He doesn't give a fuck win. And I think Stevie is really fucking similar. And I think we get two like high profile big wig business economic executives in the front office here Twitter, we'll go the ballistic. The sj w's will freak the fuck out, but we would win some ballgames.
00:52:15
Speaker 1: I'm in, I'm in. I just want to win ball games. That's all I want. Man speaking of ball games. Here quick preview. We got who the Red Sox on Tuesday and Wednesday, two games in Boston.
00:52:24
Speaker 2: Said second two games set against the Red Sox this year, and remember the last one in April.
00:52:28
Speaker 1: That was hell, that was hell, absolute hell. And oh what do you know the Red Sox, Well, it was the Orioles that they beat around this weekend. They they got hot again. So it's it's perfect timing. We get to play the Red Sox when they're swinging the bats.
00:52:38
Speaker 2: Well. This will be fun, though, because I consider the series of win win. Either the Mets actually win games and I don't like, feel like death for these next couple of days, or the Mets lose games to a team that the Yankees are chasing, and that's okay too.
00:52:50
Speaker 1: That's okay too. I will take that victory as a we'll take that loss as a victory. At least the Red Sox are gonna still be at the playoffs over the Yankees, which, oh my god, what a disappointing season, so awful, so awful. Thank you guys for listening though, Thank you guys for being a part of this watching. Despite the season being dead in the water, we still are getting a bunch of listens, and the YouTube videos are doing well on the Twitter and the tweets and everything are going super great, So do appreciate all the may support you guys have continued to show us. Make sure you're following us on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok at, mets up YouTube channel, mets up podcast. Follow James on Twitter at Jeter had No Range, follow me at Draftnick Mark with the C. Yeah, that's pretty much it for episode number fifty one. Give us a rating, drop us a review. Thank you guys for listening, Thank you for watching, and we'll catch you after the Boston Red Sox series. That will be a short episode for sure. We will have two games to talk about. Eleven minutes eleven minutes. You heard it here first eleven minute podcast coming next time. But whatever it is, we'll be here after the Red Sox series. Thank you guys for listening, thanks for watching, See you next time.
00:53:50
Speaker 2: Peace out. Thank you guys, see you next time. And big shout out to all of the listeners who actually listened to the end of the episode and heard me drop dust to dust in the wind at the end of the last one. Because the season has become dust in the winds. Thank you guys,