Laura Albanese: Mets' starting pitchers making consistency impossible
Mets relief pitcher David Peterson against the Phillies on Sunday in Philadelphia. Credit: AP Photo/Chris Szagola/Chris Szagola
PHILADELPHIA
The Phillies trotted around the bases at will Saturday night and continued the conga line for two more innings the evening after that in a 6-2 victory over the Mets at Citizens Bank Park.
The Mets, wrapping up this six-game road trip against two beatable teams, did a dance of their own. This one was more like a mediocrity mambo — a three-step that seems to propel them forward when, say, Nolan McLean reverts to previous dominance and back again when Freddy Peralta has the worst start of his career, as he did against the Phillies on Saturday.
The result? Just two wins over two series, a 10-10 record since May 30, a 27-27 record since their 12-game losing streak ended and 34-43 overall.
Back and forth, back and forth, until time eventually runs out and they’re in exactly the same place they began.
“It’s tough,” Juan Soto said. “It’s just part of baseball. We’ve got to be a little bit more consistent…try to take some series here and there.”
But even that’s not likely to be enough, and a lot of that comes down to what’s happening on the mound. We certainly saw it Sunday as David Peterson, making his first start since May 26, imploded over the first 1 1/3 innings, allowing five runs (four earned) before settling down. No matter — in one respect, the damage was done, since he had to be pulled after four innings.
While the Mets have suffered ills of all ilk, their starting pitching has been a liability — one marked by internal inconsistency and an apparent inability to get rotational pieces “right” at the same time. So, while you can find solace in McLean’s performance earlier this week, or Sean Manaea’s ability to grit out 5 1/3 innings in a win Thursday, you also have to deal with the fact that whenever they seem to plug up one hole, another one erupts.
Clay Holmes is hurt. Christian Scott is hurt. And Peralta, who gave up a career-high 10 earned runs Saturday, has an 8.14 ERA over his last four starts. Then there’s Peterson, whose spot in the rotation is again in jeopardy.
“I have no doubt they’ve got the talent,” manager Carlos Mendoza said of his rotation. “They’re more than capable of helping us turn this thing around…[The rotation] knows it has to be better. That’s where it starts. We expect more from them and they expect more out of themselves.”
Prior, Mendoza expressed optimism that they’d be able to fix the scuffling starters “the same way we did with Sean, the same way we did with Nolan.”
But all these improvement projects aren’t cutting it anymore.
The starters’ 4.74 ERA is 27th in baseball. Those pitchers strike out plenty of batters but they issue a ton of free passes, too — putting their strikeout to walk ratio (generally considered one of the easiest metrics to determine effectiveness) at 2.28, or 23rd in MLB.
All of that means a lot of extra pitches, and a lot of abbreviated outings. They throw the most pitches per inning in baseball — an average of 17.34 — while also clocking less than 4 2/3 innings per start (granted, some of that is skewed by the fact that they’ve often turned to openers this season, but they’re hardly the only MLB team to rely on that strategy).
While the offense has hardly been stellar, and the defense has been well below average, it’s hard to get past the starter problem, and that, really, is what may finally doom their season.
The Mets will be forced to turn to Kodai Senga when they go against the Cubs on Monday, though Senga looked very shaky in his return from the injured list last week. After that, it’s the same tired carousel — hope McLean is good, hope Manaea keeps figuring it out, hope 2025 Peralta comes back from the dead, hope Peterson lives up to his potential. Hope, hope, hope until too many calendar pages turn and hope is useless.
All of it is a not-so-subtle indictment of David Stearns’ approach to starting pitching. There weren’t exactly a host of tantalizing options this offseason, but labeling Peralta an “ace” was a mistake. In reality, other than last year, he’s a good No. 2 or very good No. 3. This year, his 4.83 ERA is 60th among qualified starters. There are only 66 qualified starters.
The Mets have, for two seasons now, needed a true ace, and the Mets have, for two seasons now, have been stingy about offering the types of contracts that would attract said ace.
Instead, the Mets are relying on best-case scenarios during a season that has shunned best-case anything. And time is quickly becoming their worst enemy.
“I would say [time running out] is a concern because I don’t think that’s where our focus should be,” Peterson said. “We obviously have not put ourselves in a situation what we want to be in, but it’s not for lack of effort, it’s not for lack of commitment…We have amazing talent on this team.”
But talent alone doesn’t win championships, and this Mets team is quickly proving that it might not even get you in the conversation.
Laura Albanese is the Mets beat writer for Newsday. She's been covering MLB since 2014 after starting at Newsday as an intern seven years earlier.
