Another bad news hit the New York Mets: The head coach of the New York Mets shed tears as four of his star players made a final decision…
Edwin Díaz is trying to find the mindset that has allowed him to be one of the best closers in baseball. According to SNY reporter Steve Gelbs, he’ll step away from his post and try to find it in the interim.
In five of his last eight outings, including his last three straight, Díaz has given up runs. On Saturday, he led the Mets by four runs going into the ninth inning but gave up four earned runs on four hits and one out in a 10-inning loss.
Just one month into the Mets season in May, there was silence in the visitor clubhouse at Comerica Park. Instead of the usual exhilaration of a vacation day, athletes were sitting at almost every locker, heads down, scrolling through their phones in a reflective manner.
The Mets had fallen to the lowly Tigers in a matter of 27 hours, their ninth defeat in 11 games, sending them back to 500. Amidst a fortunate season of 101 wins in 2022, something that hardly ever had to happen was interspersed with that last defeat in Detroit:
After the game, Buck Showalter convened a team meeting.
Showalter has long believed that the clubhouse serves as the players’ haven and that the seasoned Queens team will take care of itself. A day earlier, those athletes had convened on their own while losing a doubleheader. An experienced player summarizes it this way: “We really have to play better.”
Those there said that Showalter’s message on Thursday was “words of encouragement.” But the sense of urgency about taking action revealed a lot about the 2023 Mets’ early course.
One player told himself, “We’re still good, but I’m not sure.”
It was at this point that uncertainty began to creep into the New York Clubhouse; they had first deviated from the easy sailing of 2022, encountered rougher seas, and realized that maybe they didn’t have the equipment to navigate them.
Adam Ottavino, a reliever, stated that the series served as a sort of wake-up call.
“Hey, things aren’t really going well,” Detroit served as the high point of the manner in which we desired,” stated Brandon Nimmo.
Another player stated, “It wasn’t just Detroit,” and that was the issue. With four of the series defeats coming from clubs not predicted to contend, the disaster versus the Tigers would be the third in a sequence of five straight series losses. One of the worst months in franchise history was going to be June. A once-improbable sell-off of proven talent was scheduled for July. And they would fall to last place in August.
Even now, this late in the season, they are unable to satisfactorily respond to the most important query: How?
Following almost twenty interviews with individuals who were directly affected by the collapse, this is a behind-the-scenes look at how the $445 million Mets, the most costly squad in major league history, failed miserably.
