Saturday Seasons: Enter the Grandyman and The Big Sexy

The 2014  Mets season saw the arrival the the Grandyman and The Big Sexy, but the biggest impact came from a shortstop-turned-pitcher whose made the most of a May call-up and an unexpected start.

               The team’s final record was 79-83, 11 games short of general manager Sandy Alderson’s 90-win prediction, and while it was good enough for a second place tie in a weak National League East, the team still finished nine games out of a wild card spot.

               Nevertheless, the trend line started pointing up, with the free agent signings of Curtis Granderson and Bartolo Colon viewed as an indication that the Mets were emerging from the financial constraints mandated by the effects of the Bernard Madoff scandal and the $162 million settlement agreed to by Mets owners Fred Wilpon and Saul Katz.

               It all started just before the winter meetings in December, 2013.

               December 7, historically known as a date that shall live in infamy, was an infamous one for New York baseball, at least as far as the New York Yankees were concerned. They lost both Granderson to the Mets and future Met Robinson Cano to the Mariners but signed former met Carlos Beltran, and in terms of news value, the papers devoted more ink to the Cano/Beltran ramifications than they did to the Mets’ landing Granderson on a four-year. $60 million deal.

               What they did write was generally positive: Andy Martino, in the Daily News, called it one of those signings that “restore a measure of credibility, announce that a downtrodden team is spending again, and promise to be the first of several moves over the coming years.” While characterizing Granderson as an imperfect ballplayer, Martino did note that he was “a real major league ballplayer. A proven power hitter. A guy other than David Wright who can scare pitchers. A start.”

               Fans only had to wait five days for the next big signing: starter Bartolo Colon, to a two-year, $20 million contract. Despite his age (40) and his bulk (his jerseys start at XXXL and go from there), the Mets viewed Colon as a particularly important acquisition because he was, above all, a reliable innings eater who could fill the void created by Matt Harvey’s Tomy John surgery that would keep the team’s ace out for the entire season. The Mets viewed the Colon signing as the best among other free agent options because of its modest length. “We want to maintain opportunity for our young guys,” general manager Sandy Alderson said. “For us to go out and sign enough pitchers to fill out a rotation, we probably thereby preclude some opportunity for young guys we think are probably ready.”

               The young guys mentioned in that story were Noah Syndergaard and Rafael Montero, but it was an unheralded young arm who would have the greatest impact on the team, in 2014 and years afterward.

               Jacob DeGrom’s promotion from AAA Las Vegas was almost an afterthought – a corresponding move to the decision to promote the much heralded Montero to make his first major league start as the pitching staff was getting decimated by injuries – to starter Dillon Gee and reliever Gonzalez German, whom DeGrom was expected to replace in the bullpen (a role he had never filled).

               Perhaps the only newspaper to make more than  passing note of the move was his hometown paper, the Daytona Beach News Journal, which noted that DeGrom, who played his college ball at Stetson, would become the 10^th Hatter to play in the major leagues (the 9^th was Corey Kluber, the only semi-memorable name on the list to that point).

               Montero’s first start, against the Yankees on May 12, was acceptable, if not impressive: six innings, five hits, three runs, three strikeouts.

               But DeGrom, who got a start the next day because of Gee’s lat injury, was electric: seven innings of four-hit ball, six strikeouts, only one run (not entirely his fault, the New York Post noted), and, to put a cherry on the sundae, one of the Mets’ two hits in a 1-0 loss. “DeGrom’s performance tonight was spectacular,” captain David Wright was quoted as saying in the next day’s Post.

Montero was returned to the minors two weeks later to make room for journeyman reliever Buddy Carlyle, who would yo-yo between Las Vegas and Flushing over the course of the season. But DeGrom stayed in the rotation and continued to impress, including a July 8 start in which he tossed seven scoreless innings and recorded 11 strikeouts in giving the Mets their 4,000th franchise victory. DeGrom was NL Rookie of the Month for July, as the Mets posted a 15-10 record in the month.

               August saw DeGrom’s first trip of to the disabled list, with rotator cuff tendinitis. (Montero took his place). But DeGrom’s stay on the DL was brief, and he returned to be just as effective, including a September 15 start in which he struck out the first eight batters. The Mets eventually shut deGrom down as the season neared a close, with his line a 9-6 won-lost record, 2.69 ERA, 144 strikeouts in 140 innings. DeGrom became the first Met to win Rookie of the Year since another electric starter, Dwight Gooden, in 1984.

               Colon performed as expected: 32 starts, 202 innings, a 15-13 record. Zach Wheeler started the same number of games as DeGrom, 22, followed by Jon Niese, with 19. But the other positive from the pitching staff came from Jeurys Familia proving he could assume the closer’s role in a competition that included Jenrry Mejia and Jose Valverde made necessary after Bobby Parnell tore his ulnar collateral ligament on opening day and underwent season-ending Tommy John surgery.

               But the hitting? That was another story. The lineup as a whole underperformed, so much so that in late May, with the team’s .352 slugging percentage last in the National League, the Mets fired hitting coach Dave Hudgens and replaced him with Lamar Johnson.

  The move had negligible impact at best. Under Hudgens, the Mets hit .237 with a .309 on-base percentage and .662 OPS. They scored 3.9 runs per game. For the remaining 112 games with Johnson advising the batters, the Mets hit .239 with a .677 OPS. Their on-base percentage was .307. There were improvements, but they were slight: Under Hudgens, Mets hitters averaged an extra-base hit every 15.7 plate appearances. With Johnson, it was every 14.2 plate appearances. They struck out in 22 percent of all plate appearances under Hudgens. Under Johnson, that fell to 19.9 percent.

               In the end, the responsibility lay squarely in the players’ laps, as general manager Alderson allowed in announcing September callups of over-the-hill Bobby Abreu and flash-in-the-pan Josh Satin. "My feeling is you can have the greatest coaches in the world but if the other players on the team are not modeling the same approach it doesn't happen," Alderson was quoted in a newspaper story.

               Of course, that didn’t keep Alderson from firing Johnson and his assistant, Luis Natera, when the season ended.

               Perhaps the only positive in the hitting category was Lucas Duda taking claim to the starting first base job, forcing an early-season trade of Ike Davis. Duda ended up hitting 30 home runs and driving in 92. Granderson hit only .227 (albeit with 20 home runs). Starting catcher Travis D’Arnaud, battling injuries, hit only .228 – the best of a catching corps that included Anthony Recker (.197), Juan Centeno (.200) and Taylor Teagarden (.143).

               Nevertheless, the team ended the season on an optimistic note, with, as the Bergen Record noted in its season wrapup, the organization pleased with a second-place finish (despite a losing record) and the belief that, with development of young players such as DeGrom and the hope for fewer injuries that the Mets were on the verge of establishing themselves as contenders. “I believe we’re going to be a good team, with the pitching staff we have and the emergence of some of those younger pitchers, plus some of the guys here,” Wright told the Record. “Offensively, we’ve had some guys who’ve made some strides, so lots of reasons to be optimistic. I’m really excited to be part of something special next year.”

It took a key mid-season trade to make it happen, but 2015 was something special. But that’s next week’s story.