What’s Wrong With the New York Mets?

A quarter of the way into the 2008 Major League Baseball season, the New York Mets stand 2.5 games behind the juggernaut known as the Florida Marlins.

At 20-19, fresh off losing three out of four games at home to the lowly Washington Nationals and with a payroll four times as high as the fish, Mets fans are left scratching their collective noggins wondering what is wrong with their team.

To be honest, I really don’t think there is anything wrong, per se, with the 2008 incarnation of this team, other than the simple fact that the team really isn’t as good as their fans expected them to be.

Not that they’re bad, but competitive balance has crept it's way into the National Pastime over the last few years and the Mets just have too many holes and not enough patches to fix them.

Yes, the Mets have two legitimate “Aces” in Johan Santana and John Maine, but what about the other three spots in the rotation?

Oliver Perez, the most inconsistent pitcher this side of Chad Billingsley, can be as bad as he is good.

I think Rick Peterson and the 2006 playoffs have done wonders for this young man’s confidence, but the fact that he gets rattled very easily, and tends to lose it very quickly is not a good sign. Just look at the number of unearned runs given up by Ollie during the last two seasons (25).

I really feel bad for the team that Scott Boras convinces to give him a five-year, $60 million contract to front their rotation once the 2008 season concludes.

And I’m just not a believer in Mike Pelfrey. Watching him pitch once every five days, the one thing that comes to mind is the old saying “It’s better to be lucky than good”.

Remember “Generation-K”? Enough said. 

As for the revolving door known as the fifth starter—Kyle Loshe’s one-year, $4 million contract with the St. Louis Cardinals and Livan Hernandez’s one-year, $5 million contract with the Minnesota Twins, look pretty good right now.

The bullpen isn’t really anything special either. The Mets have a very good closer in Billy Wagner, a man who does have a little bit of “Benitez-Looper Syndrome”, albeit not as severe. But he has been utterly brilliant thus far, but outside of Wags the relief core is pretty mediocre.

Over-used and over-exposed Aaron Heilman isn’t as bad as he’s performing right now.

And little-used and protected-for-good-reason Scott Shoeneweis isn’t as good as he’s appeared either. In the end what you have is a bullpen that is no better than average, something this team cannot afford considering it's many other shortcomings. 

The one wildcard in the Mets' bullpen could be Duaner Sanchez. The hard-throwing young reliever that the Mets acquired from the Los Angeles Dodgers prior to 2006 was just coming into his own before a string of bad luck sidelined him for a year and a half. His return to form is something that this team has to have if it wants to be successful this season.

Thus far, injuries aside, the Mets' offense has been anemic. Sure, David Wright is putting together another typical David Wright season, on pace for 28 homers, 128 RBI and 20 steals, but what about the rest of the team? 

Between injuries and all-around poor production, the bats have been anything but effective.

Yes, Ryan Church is looking like Bernard Gilkey circa 1996, and Brian Schneider is hitting .318 in between boo-boos.

However, if history has shown us anything, these players are producing way over their heads and are likely to come back down to earth at some point in the near future.

On the same note, Carlos Beltran began to show signs of life last week before cooling off again. One can only wonder if knee issues are bothering the man who proclaimed the Mets “the team to beat” earlier this year. 

Whether it’s age, health or one of any number of other reasons, Carlos Delgado no longer looks like the slugger he used to be (doesn’t it seem like there is a lot of that going around the Majors this year? I wonder why). 

And we all know, even at 41 years of age, Moises Alou is a professional hitter, but we can only wonder how long before he lands on the disabled list again. Will he play 100 games this year? I’ll take the under.

There is a lot more parity in baseball today than there was 10 years ago, and even the most ardent Mets fan would have trouble convincing me that competitive balance is not a good thing. 

Outside of the Arizona Diamondbacks and possibly the Boston Red Sox, there isn’t really another truly dominant team in the Major Leagues today. That being said, the Mets still do have a good chance to win a division where 88-90 games should be enough to get the job done.

Regardless of what happens, it is my belief that the fortunes of the 2008 New York Mets live and die with Jose Reyes. With Reyes playing up to the standards he set for himself in 2006 and the first half of 2007, the Mets have the potential to be a championship caliber team.

When he’s going full speed he gets on and wreaks havoc on the base paths, throwing the opposition’s game completely offline. The problem is that the Reyes we’ve seen since the middle of last year is not the Reyes we’ve grown accustomed to.

I don’t know what’s causing the problems but he seems clueless at bat, and lackadaisical on the base paths and in the field. For the Mets to win, they need to fix Jose Reyes.