Tuesdays with Brownie: An early case of Mets magic

(A weekly look at the players, teams, trends, up shoots and downspouts shaping the 2015 season. This week: On whatever it is that is happening to the Mets, the Rays maxing out on the bench, and – oh no – what’s Loria up to now?)

If you’d looked at the New York Mets at just the right angle, maybe dimmed the lights some, put a hand over one eye, you might’ve considered them something like legit in the NL East. You know, David Wright hits, Matt Harvey deals, the ninth inning gets taken care of, the Washington Nationals take up bocce instead, everything goes about perfect …

Then, maybe. Mayyyy-be. But still probably not.

Alas, the Mets being the Mets and all, not only does everything not go perfectly, but a whole mess of stuff doesn’t go perfectly, and in fact it all looks a little chaotic, so what good could come of that?

Well, a pretty terrific two weeks in Flushing comes of that. Eight wins in a row come of that. And 10-3 comes of that.

Huh.

On a Sunday afternoon in which Wright (and his strained hamstring) watched from the dugout as the Mets won again, catcher Travis d’Arnaud (and his fractured hand) and reliever Jerry Blevins (and his fractured forearm) joined him, along with Bobby Parnell, Vic Black, Zack Wheeler and, for mostly unrelated reasons, Jenrry Mejia.

Someone (right-hander Hansel Robles, turns out) will take Blevins’ place in the bullpen but apparently not Blevins’ role, which is – was – the lefty-lefty thing. That would go to one of the two left-handers remaining, Alex Torres and/or Sean Gilmartin, except Torres is better against righties than lefties and Gilmartin, the Rule 5 guy from Atlanta, is new to the big leagues and probably not the best option for critical late matchups against the league’s better left-handed hitters.

Through Sunday, only St. Louis Cardinals starting pitchers had a better ERA than Mets starters, and only San Francisco Giants starters – in a game more – had thrown more innings. So, if Harvey, Bartolo Colon, Jacob deGrom, Dillon Gee and Jon Niese can push deep into games, and Jeurys Familia remains close to perfect in the ninth, the bullpen might not be exposed.

But, who catches all these innings? Who takes d’Arnaud’s place?

Just as the Mets were maybe entertaining thoughts of taking back the division, the city and Sandy Alderson’s résumé, we meet 24-year-old, right-handed-hitting Kevin Plawecki. He was the 35th overall pick in the 2012 draft, out of Purdue. He has played 109 games above A-ball and was batting .229 in eight games for Las Vegas when d’Arnaud was hit in the right hand by a pitch from Miami Marlins reliever A.J. Ramos.

Given d’Arnaud’s regular backup, Anthony Recker, is a career .196 hitter, it looks like Plawecki is the guy, and it looks like he’ll be Terry Collins’ first option most nights, and those who have seen Plawecki say they believe he’ll handle the coming month or two.

“If he’s coming, he’s going to play,” Collins told reporters in New York on Sunday. “Can he handle it here? We will most likely find out.”

They’re just getting started, these Mets. They’ll get three games at Yankee Stadium this weekend and four against the Nationals the weekend after. In a season in which it was assumed so much would have to go right, they’ve had a near perfect two weeks. Except, of course, for all that’s gone wrong.

Power of the bench
The Tampa Bay Rays were looking surprisingly perky through 10 games, and we say surprisingly because we wondered about the Joe Maddon Effect, along with so much pitching on the disabled list (Alex Cobb, Matt Moore, Drew Smyly, Jake McGee), and non-pitching on the disabled list (John Jaso, James Loney, Nick Franklin), and a rather iffy lineup no matter what the disabled list looked like. Then the Rays were swept at home by the New York Yankees, and get Boston and Toronto this week. But, in memory of the Rays who won five of six before losing three of three (and now stand predictably average-ish on both sides of the ball), here’s something that has gone very right thus far:

Rays bench players – pinch-hitters, defensive replacements, pinch-runners, basically anyone who didn’t start a game – are batting .375 (15 for 40) with three doubles, a triple and three home runs. They’ve driven in 12 runs. That seems good.

Tim Beckham, the notorious 1-1 from seven years ago and the outlier in every Scott Boras draft filibuster, is batting .150 in six starts, but .500 (5-for-10, but still) off the bench, including 3-for-6 with two home runs as a pinch-hitter.

And David DeJesus, the club’s semi-regular DH, is 3-for-4 with a double and three RBIs as a sub.

The Rays, being the Rays, will have to find offense in places other teams don’t. In this case, and through three weeks, it’s often been sitting next to Kevin Cash.

Fishing for a scapegoat?
Not sure what Giancarlo Stanton was getting at with the observation this weekend that “the fire is not there” with the Miami Marlins, if that was a poke at manager Mike Redmond or a pitching staff dead last in the National League in ERA or an offense that’s drifted from mediocre to worse and back, or the whole big, early season Miami Confound Machine.

The answer surely isn’t to dump Redmond, though the Miami Herald is suggesting owner Jeffrey Loria is considering otherwise, which seems impetuous even by Loria’s Olympian standards of impetuousness.

The Marlins have three games in Philadelphia this week, then return to Miami for nine, against the Nationals, Mets and Phillies. What do you say we revisit this then?

The trading game
As part of a three-way trade that was supposed to – and still could – solve everybody’s problems, the Yankees traded Shane Greene (to the Tigers) and got back Didi Gregorius (from the Diamondbacks), and now the Yankees with Gregorius and the Diamondbacks with Nick Ahmed are getting almost no production from their shortstops. But the Tigers are.

The Tigers acquired Jose Iglesias (also in a three-way) two summers ago, watched him stagger around on bad shins for a couple seasons, and now Iglesias is part of the reason the Tigers started off 10-2. He batted .436, struck out twice in 43 plate appearances, is second among regulars in OPS (to Miguel Cabrera), stole four bases and committed a single error.

Another reason they went out 10-2? Shane Greene. Through three starts he’s 3-0 with a 0.39 ERA and 0.74 WHIP.

Cooling off?
Sal Perez poured a few cups of whatever over Lorenzo Cain’s head Sunday afternoon in Kansas City after the Royals’ series with the A’s, where it seemed nobody was going to be happy until somebody was seriously hurt. This would do for the celebration at the end of a funky, tense and belligerent kind of day. Clearly, commissioner Rob Manfred and his lieutenants need to step in and remind both organizations that none of this is worth a career.

So Cain was asked on television for his opinion of the series’ tenor and he said, “I thought it was over with. I guess it’s not. So, we’ll see what happens next time we face them.”

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