At the trade deadline, the Mets were 57-50 and tied for second in the National League Wild Card race, just half a game behind first-place Atlanta.
Since then, the team has lost nine of 14 games before a 7-3 win over the Marlins on Friday and has slipped out of the wild-card spot.
On Friday, president of baseball operations David Stearns acknowledged the team’s inconsistent play over the past two weeks.
“We’ve been playing very inconsistent baseball,” Stearns said. “I believe in this lineup. I think we have a lineup that can work well. We know we’re going to have to play better than we’ve played recently to get into the playoffs.”
That includes cutting down on walks, which was especially painful after the Mets walked a season-high 11 batters in Thursday’s ugly loss to Oakland.
It’s all part of a year-long struggle in which the Mets have given up the most walks in the National League.
Sean Manaea and Jose Butt combined to issue just two walks on Friday night.
“It’s a confluence of a lot of factors,” manager Carlos Mendoza said. “I feel like some of the guys in the rotation and on our staff at times, we let our off the hook too much, not attacking hitters, not trusting their abilities, not working our defense.”
But pitching coach Jeremy Hefner said it’s more complicated than that.
He argues that the team’s high walk rate of 3.90 per nine innings — 29th in the MLB (behind only the lowly White Sox) — is a byproduct of the variety of weapons on its pitching staff.
“We have some guys that strike out swinging, and when you do that, you get walks,” Heffner said.
He noted that walks aren’t much of a concern, as the Mets are fifth in the majors with a strikeout rate of 9.01 per nine innings.
Hefner added that this isn’t unique to this season, as many of the team’s pitchers have had a tendency to issue walks throughout their careers.
“Our approach hasn’t changed at all,” Heffner said. “We’re never trying to bite the hitter or not try to hit the ball.”
What he wanted from his team was to pitch better in certain situations.
“We tell them when you’re down in the count, throw your best strikes and when you’re ahead, throw your best errors,” Heffner said. “That’s where we’re not doing our best yet.”
But the team has walked a lot of batters throughout the season, which Heffner said is to be expected when you have pitchers like Jose Quintana and Paul Blackburn who don’t throw fastballs and can’t afford to pitch home runs down the middle of the plate.
And when the team was doing well, the number of walks they allowed wasn’t considered an issue because they were able to limit the damage that extra runners could cause, Heffner said.
“I’m not happy with the number of walks, but you can’t just say don’t walk them,” Hefner said.
Veteran Adam Ottavino, who led a number of solid pitching staffs, said he was troubled by the numbers.
“It really sucks,” said the right-hander, who has a decent walk rate this season, “but I don’t understand it. There’s nothing wrong with what I’m telling the players. We all understand we need to get ahead in the count.”
“For whatever reason, you can’t walk that many guys,” Stearns said. “You’re not going to consistently win baseball games with that many walks.”
