Bill Madden: The Mets hitting will come around, but the pitching is a different story

There’s no way to sugarcoat this. Steve Cohen’s $346 million Mets are off to an extremely disappointing start. They’re not hitting, having been shut out a major league worst seven times, one fewer than all of last season. And they’re not pitching, with only six quality starts, 28th fewest in baseball.

So what’s a manager to do?

Right now, Buck Showalter has to grin and bear it. He knew starting out he would be managing this year with a major handicap — one huge reliever short — after Edwin Diaz blew out his knee celebrating in the World Baseball Classic. What he did not see was his hitters going into such an early season malaise. But that he has to believe will soon turn around, although it may require an injection of Ronny Mauricio, who continues to tear it up in Triple-A, at second base and Jeff McNeil moving to the outfield (where both Starling Marte and Mark Canha have so far been mostly impotent). It is also worth noting that Francisco Lindor was hitting .239 as late as July 10 last year.

In other words, the Mets hitting figures to get fixed. It’s the starting pitching that has to be most concerning for Showalter because in the absence of Max Scherzer, the rotation is so far Justin Verlander and a whole lot of mediocrity that wouldn’t get any team to October. Going into the weekend, the Mets starters’ six total quality starts ranked 28th in baseball. Last season, their starters’ 72 quality starts were the seventh most in MLB.

I have never been a fan of the quality start stat (minimum six innings of three or fewer runs) but in this new era of pitch counts and innings limits and the disappearance of complete games, it’s unfortunately become one of the best measures of a starting pitcher’s value.

So considering where they presently are with their starting pitching, it is fair to question the Mets’ offseason strategy in re-making the rotation, especially the decision to let Chris Bassitt — who had 17 quality starts last year and led the staff with 181.2 innings — walk as a free agent. For whatever reason, they deemed Bassitt expendable and never even made him an offer, choosing instead to invest $75 million in Kodai Senga and $26 million in Jose Quintana. Senga has had trouble adjusting to the five-day starting pitchers’ regimen in the majors, pitching six innings in only two of his seven starts, while Quintana will be lost until at least July with a lesion on his rib — something nobody could have foreseen.

At the same time, however, Bassitt signed a very reasonable three-year, $63 million deal with the Blue Jays, and after shutting out the powerful Braves on two hits Friday night, he was 5-2 with a 3.49 ERA and five quality starts, which would easily make him the No. 1 in the Mets rotation.

The inability of the Mets’ starters to pitch deeper into games has placed an enormous toll on Showalter’s Diaz-less bullpen. As of Friday, Met relievers had already logged 141.1 innings which, according to the Elias Bureau, ranked ninth most in the majors. Meanwhile, the trio of Tylor Megill, David Peterson and Joey Lucchesi has a combined ERA of 5.49 and two quality starts. Sorry, that’s just not getting it done — and fixing the rotation isn’t going to be easy, and certainly not until Scherzer starts contributing and living up to his $43 million ace status.

Can Showalter count on the fragile Carlos Carrasco for some quality starts when he comes back, hopefully next week? If not, there may be a necessity to rush 6-5 righty Mike Vasil, who’s pitching well at Double-A Binghamton. But all of that right now is conjecture. If I’m Steve Cohen, I want to know why the front office didn’t think it was necessary to retain Bassitt.

IT’S A MADD, MADD WORLD

What’s with the Rays’ starting pitchers? One day after shutting the Yankees down with a brilliant two-hit, seven-strikeout, no-walk effort, Drew Rasmussen was placed on the 60-day injured list Friday with a strained flexor muscle in his elbow. Rasmussen thus becomes the fourth Rays starter since last year — joining Tyler Glasnow, Shane Baz and Jeffrey Springs – to blow out their elbows. …

The baseball scouting community lost two of its finest citizens this week with the passing of Deacon Jones, 89, a former hitting coach for the Padres and Astros who was the White Sox advance scout from 1988-2008, and Dave Yoakum, the White Sox’s chief scout and assistant to the general manager from 1991-2020. Jones, a wonderful raconteur, graduated from White Plains High and had a long minor league career in the White Sox chain with brief “cups of coffee” in the majors in 1962-63 and ‘66 before embarking on a second career teaching hitting and then scouting. Yoakum, who lost a long battle with bone cancer at 76 last Wednesday, was equally beloved throughout baseball and was a co-founder of the Professional Baseball Scouts Foundation. I was honored to have spent a lot of time with both. …

Have to imagine Cardinals owner Bill DeWitt is none too happy over the worst start in franchise history, which was further exasperated by the decision to remove Willson Contreras from the everyday catching duties. That one lies squarely on the GM John Mozeliak, who signed Contreras to a five-year, $87.5M contract to replace the retired Yadier Molina last winter. At the time, everyone in baseball knew Contreras was a way-below-average defensive catcher — that’s why the Cubs made no effort to retain him — and, in effect now, he’s being blamed for the ineffectiveness of the Cardinals pitchers (ex-Yankee Jordan Montgomery is their only starter with an ERA under 5.00). For DeWitt, that amounts to an $87.5M misjudgment. Another big factor in the Cardinals’ demise this year is one of the least productive outfields in the majors — which might not be the case if Mozeliak hadn’t traded Randy Arozarena to the Rays in 2020 for two minor league pitchers that never made it.

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