Mets owner Steve Cohen threaded a management needle deftly when he spoke to reporters a few days ago at Citi Field, conveying that he had no intention of firing staffers rashly but also that change is on the horizon if the team doesn't start playing better. If the players don't start playing better, he made perfectly clear. "There's nobody to blame," he said. "It's across the whole team."
The New York Mets finished 7-19 in the month of June, growing their NL East deficit from 3½ games to 18½, and the continued failure of the most expensive roster in baseball history has fueled a lot of macro speculation around the team's direction -- about whether the Mets will be adding or subtracting before the Aug. 1 trade deadline, about whether this will enhance Cohen's pursuit of Shohei Ohtani in the offseason.
Within the walls of Citi Field, however, there has been a lot of dissection of the micro. In recent days, the Mets' staff has been participating in what amounts to a long-scheduled midseason review. The Mets started Saturday 10 games behind in the wild-card race, and since 2012 -- when MLB went to multiple wild-card teams in each league -- no team has made the playoffs after being 10 or more games back of the final wild-card spot on July 1 or later. (It happened 10 times before that in the wild-card era, most recently in 2011.)
With Cohen beginning to draw boundaries and raising the specter of future change, the timing of the meetings could not have better -- and at the same time, it could not have been worse, through what has become a series of sleep-deprived days for a team increasingly exhausted by self-examination of on-going failures.
For now, the staff plans to fix specific problems with individual players. That is all it can do.
FOR JEFF McNEIL, the focus is on getting back to using the whole field, the way he did when he won the NL batting title in 2022. In Friday's series-opening loss to the Giants, he accomplished it: The left-handed McNeil hit the ball to the left side of second base in three of his four plate appearances, including two doubles -- a departure from a season-long trend of pulling the ball, softly. His rate of pulling the ball this season is 42.4%, the second highest of his career, and his rate of hard-hit balls is his lowest ever, 20.5% -- that ranks 150th of 153 batters who have enough plate appearances to qualify for a batting title.
"It's about trying to [hit the ball] over the shortstop's head," said Jeremy Barnes, the Mets' hitting coach. "He's pulled the ball a little more this year, hit more popups, and so it's about getting back to hitting the ball hard to the other side of the field."
There are drills in McNeil's daily work with machines, video work, reminders and cues, to try to reinforce that goal of trying to drive the ball over the shortstop's head, with backspin. What the Mets staffers have wondered is if McNeil is putting a mountain of pressure on himself after signing a four-year, $50 million extension in spring training. He's hitting .259, 41 points below his career average. The internal drive can evolve into performance strangulation. "These guys care, and they care a lot," Barnes said. "It's kind of the superpower that makes them good, and it can be frustrating for them at times."
The mantra that Barnes landed on repeatedly in talking about McNeil and others: Just try to control what you can control. Pete Alonso's rate of hard-hit balls is not that far off his career high, but his batting average on balls in play is .188, absurdly low -- 152nd out of 153 hitters in the majors. For Alonso, too, there is a reasonable expectation that the numbers will climb.
FOR JUSTIN VERLANDER, it's about improving the quality of his four-seam fastball. Through Verlander's Hall of Fame-caliber career, he has beaten hitters at the top of the strike zone in part because of how well his fastball remains on plane. But this year, his fastball has had different movement -- cutting right to left on its journey to home plate, rather than holding at the top of the zone, and this has made it more vulnerable. Opponents batted .204 against his four-seam fastball, with a .311 slugging percentage, and in 2023, those numbers have jumped to .261/.465. As one evaluator noted, sometimes Verlander's arm slot can get a little too high, affecting his ability to keep his hand behind the ball properly when he throws his fastball, and he needs to find the better delivery height to facilitate that ride on his fastball.
Jeremy Hefner, the Mets' pitching coach, noted that as Verlander has gone through his career, his arm slot has moved upward, with his point of delivery sometimes creeping to as high as 7 feet off the ground. In his most recent side work, Verlander has been working to deliver the ball at a point about 6 feet, 9 inches high -- a spot that they feel will give him the best chance to maintain the ride on his fastball. This is something that the Mets can monitor during a start and attempt to correct if Verlander falls off course.
FOR THE SWITCH-HITTING Francisco Lindor, it's about reversing his struggles as a left-handed hitter. He's batting .214 against right-handed pitchers this season, with a .303 on-base percentage and .386 slugging percentage. The Mets staff has seen improvement from Lindor with this in recent weeks, reflected in what coaches see as more patience when he bats left-handed. During a series in Houston last month, Barnes said, Lindor adopted some mechanical changes -- he moved back in his stance a little bit more, keeping his weight back, and moved with more effective direction in the batter's box.
FOR THE STARTING PITCHERS who round out the rotation behind Verlander, Max Scherzer and Kodai Senga, a range of fixes is needed. Because of the $43.3 million salaries for both Verlander and Scherzer, the highest in baseball history for any players, they have carried a lot of the scrutiny for the team's performance. But the starters who have worked in the back end of the rotation and when Verlander and Scherzer have been out have performed abysmally: Carlos Carrasco, Tylor Megill and David Peterson have combined for a 5.57 ERA in 30 starts.
FOR SCHERZER, it's about improving his slider and making that pitch sharper. Earlier in the year, Scherzer's changeup was not moving the way that he wanted, so he altered his delivery of that pitch, his arm swing and his arm action. But as Hefner explained, some of the adjustment on the changeup affected his slider, the weapon Scherzer often uses to finish off hitters. "We identified it, we corrected it," Hefner said. "He can differentiate [in the delivery feel] between his changeup and his slider." Over the past three starts, made after his slider fix, Scherzer has allowed five earned runs in 20 innings, with 25 strikeouts and four walks.
FOR STARLING MARTE, it's about regaining physical equilibrium. Marte played hurt through a lot of the 2022 season -- without detailing for the staff exactly how much discomfort he bore in his core, and after the season, he had surgery that was the equivalent of a double-hernia repair. That surgery typically requires six to 12 months for a full recovery, and Marte was back in the lineup early in that timetable. So it could be related that, so far this season, he has not hit with as much consistency or as much power. And as he has struggled, his plate discipline has diminished. For the month of June, Marte had just one walk in 103 plate appearances, with a .294 on-base percentage and a .357 slugging percentage.
But there are internal metrics that suggest Marte's swing is gaining strength, and in that, the Mets have reason to feel hope.
For now, hope is what they lean into.