Laura Albanese: Mets hope struggles of young players will teach valuable lesson for future
Mets' A.J. Ewing reacts after his second-inning two-run home run against the San Francisco Giants at Citi Field on Saturday. Credit: Jim McIsaac
It was a “48-hour reset” — that’s what interim manager Andy Green called Friday’s decision to bench A.J. Ewing, who, entering the Mets’ 9-5 loss to the Giants on Saturday afternoon, had been mired in the type of offensive slump particularly suited to chipping away at a rookie’s confidence.
He had a .145/.217/.375 slash line in his previous 20 games before putting a charge into Anthony Molina’s knee-high changeup in the second inning on Saturday, blasting it 407 feet to right-center for a two-run homer, his first since July 8.
Ewing ended up going 1-for-2 with two walks, but it mostly speaks to the Mets’ greater philosophy, especially as they play out the string with their slew of young talent.
In short: Getting socked in the mouth is part of it, so you’d better learn how to take a punch.
Or, if you prefer, there’s Green’s more genteel version.
“This will serve him well,” he said of Ewing’s struggles. “This will serve these guys well in the long run.”
Of Saturday’s performance, he added: “He was really back to the plate discipline version of himself that we know him to be . . . I think [the two walks are also] indicative of him being in a good spot and trusting who he is.”
The Mets have made it abundantly clear that they’re OK with letting the kids fail (with certain protections in place, of course). They’re not overly concerned about the mental toll that failure might exact because right now, with very little on the line, the upside is too high to ignore.
One of the best ways to drag yourself out of the suffocating quicksand of defeat is the knowledge that you’ve done it before, and they’ll need all that information and more if they truly are to become cornerstones of this team’s future.
There are versions of the Mets that might have demoted Carson Benge when he hit .189 in the first month of the season. There are versions that might have panicked when Nolan McLean carried a 4.01 ERA into the waning days of June.
There are versions that would have pulled Zac Thornton on Saturday after he gave up two homers in a three-run fifth, perhaps preferring he not face lefthanded-hitting Bryce Eldridge, who is batting .299 against lefties this year (Eldridge doubled, but Thornton got the next batter to pop out to end the inning).
The six earned runs Thornton allowed marked the first time he allowed more than four runs in his major-league career.
“I’ll just continue to throw strikes,” said Thornton, who in his brief major-league career has shown an ability to not get too high or too low. “I think baseball is going to happen to a lot of people.”
Which brings us, too, to Jonah Tong.
Because, see, there are versions that would prefer to keep Tong in the minors. Instead, the righty, who was fast-tracked to the majors last year and pitched to a 7.71 ERA, is slated to take the hill against the Marlins on Monday — and it’s not expected to be a cameo, either.
Never mind that he struggled early on to adapt to an expanded repertoire intended to equip him with pitches with a more east-west profile. Never mind that he’s weeks away from having allowed five homers in a game and spent the early part of the season struggling to throw anything in the strike zone. He has a 4.45 ERA with Triple-A Syracuse, and so what?
Tong did the thing the Mets wanted to see — he bounced back. He has a 2.20 ERA in his last eight starts, the five-homer game included.
“He’s here,” Green said Saturday. “I don’t anticipate he’s going to be gone from here. He’s going to be with us. He’s going to take the ball and continue to take the baseball. I think we’re encouraged by that opportunity for him, and we want to see him come up and compete and be himself.”
Now that’s the type of thing that really imbues players with confidence.
No matter how high you are in the prospect rankings, every minor-leaguer dreads being the bust — the guy who did well at the lower levels but just couldn’t hack it in the majors.
Now, imagine carrying that albatross while knowing you have only a handful of shots to prove that you can be the real deal.
But that’s not what the Mets are doing, and it’s been one of the few luxuries afforded by this hellish season.
“We’ve had a lot of belief in these players,” president of baseball operations David Stearns said Friday. “We’ve placed a lot of trust in these younger players, but you never know how it’s going to go . . . To see each of them in various ways bounce back from, whether it’s a down couple of starts or a down start to the season or a down month, and stay with the type of level of determination that we see really good big-leaguers have, as much as anything, that’s been encouraging.”
That’s something that goes beyond the boxscore. Baseball is a game of failure, right? So go ahead and learn how to fail in a way that makes it count for something good.
Laura Albanese is the Mets beat writer for Newsday. She's been covering MLB since 2014 after starting at Newsday as an intern seven years earlier.
