Tuesdays with Brownie: Mets need a helping hand

(A weekly look at the players, teams, trends, up-shoots and downspouts shaping the 2015 season.)

Every time the New York Mets come to Los Angeles, their manager, Terry Collins, sits at a desk on the visitors’ side where he conducts his business. This is where the lineup card is filled out, the phone calls are taken and the press is updated. The room becomes very crowded for the last part, when Collins answers questions about injuries, strategies and other daily notebook fillers, and occasionally if he’s in the mood he’ll make a little joke, and then the reporters will leave to go ask Collins’ boss if Collins is about to be fired. That doesn’t happen every time. It did at the end of last week, however, because the Mets were a thoroughly average ball club playing precisely to average (40 wins, 40 losses). Still, the expectations for the Mets are based on the way they played for 12 days in April, when they won 11 in a row, not for the way they’ve played for the other 75 days, when they’ve not, which is about the way things go in New York and for Collins.

“To put all of this on Terry,” the general manager, Sandy Alderson, said, “would be grossly unfair.”

He added there’d been “absolutely no consideration” to removing Collins and replacing him with someone who could magically create hitters where few exist.

When Collins is sitting back in that office, a couple dozen framed photos of great, well-regarded or simply familiar managers hang above his head. Men such as Joe Torre and Dick Williams and Sparky Anderson, Earl Weaver, Whitey Herzog and Tony La Russa, all in black and white, peer from under their stately ball caps. They look serious and eminently capable. Then there’s Collins at his desk. He can be serious and is quite capable, as well. He’s not wearing the Yankees’ interlocking NY or the Tigers’ Old English D on his cap, however, but a big, cartoonish, bubble-headed Mr. Met, and you think to yourself, “Really, what chance does the man have?”

Well, that depends on the coming weeks. The Mets had 15 hits and scored eight runs Sunday in Los Angeles, the sort of afternoon that was good for their souls and good for a win but ultimately did little to challenge the notion they’re in over their heads in the National League East and probably in the wild-card race as well. (They have since won three of four games in L.A. and San Francisco, are 43-41 and remain, as constituted, in over their heads.)

The Mets need help. More, they deserve help. Maybe that’s Ben Zobrist, maybe it’s Troy Tulowitzki, maybe it’s Addison Russell, but it has to be somebody. They’ll have competition for Zobrist, which means an overpay. They probably don’t have the money for Tulowitzki, as Mets fans need to understand payroll is going to stay in the mid-market range for the foreseeable future. If the Rockies agree to soften the Tulowitzki contract, what’s that cost Alderson? Steven Matz and Noah Syndergaard? You’re the Rockies, isn’t that the ask? You’re the Mets, do you dare?

Mets insiders believe the Cubs wouldn’t trade Russell until the offseason, if they would at all. In spite of them being pretty well boat-raced in the NL Central, the second wild card is theirs to lose. The Cubs are more likely to be in the business of maintaining their big-league roster while adding a starting pitcher or, perhaps, dealing Starlin Castro instead. The Mets are getting far more production out of their shortstops than the Cubs are, so what sense would that make?

Here’s the best scenario for the Mets and Collins and Alderson and the Wilpons:

Lucas Duda starts hitting right-handed pitching again. Daniel Murphy handles third base for at least as long as it takes David Wright to return, which could be a while. Curtis Granderson becomes something other than totally helpless against left-handers. Michael Cuddyer gives them something. Anything. Travis d’Arnaud pops back in and gives the lineup some length. Wright eventually gives them a month or so, though it might be time to stop banking on that.

Then, somebody walks through the door. Not Marlon Byrd, but remember what Byrd did for the Pittsburgh Pirates (after being traded from the Mets) for a month in 2013? That guy. It could be Zobrist. It probably won’t be Aramis Ramirez. It could be Martin Prado.

Meantime, eight runs in a single afternoon would have to do. Two wins over a weekend in L.A. would do. It won’t carry a summer, however. It won’t carry a franchise. There’s too much good going on for the Wilpons and Alderson to allow the Mets to stand around being so average. Even if they don’t owe it to themselves, they owe it to those 12 days in April and the folks at Citi Field who’ve sat through the other 75.

Dodging around
The Dodgers were 47-37 through Monday, good enough for a five-game lead over the San Francisco Giants, who’d lost seven in a row and 10 of 14. They were 47-37 after 84 games last year, as well. That’s a lot of work – a lot of transition – for a similar outcome. The assumption is the Dodgers are days or hours from buying up the NL East, sorting through whatever pitching they’ll need and throwing back the rest. Until then, it’s reasonable to wonder just how much of a second half they’ll have in them, and then if they are sound enough to win a series or two in October.

Among their best producers so far are Justin Turner, Yasmani Grandal, Joc Pederson and Andre Ethier.

The closest Turner has come to playing a full season as an every day player was with the Mets in 2011. He played in 117 games. Don Mattingly has him on a 140-plus pace. Grandal has played one full season, that coming last year. He hit .225. Pederson is a rookie whose numbers have slipped every month since April. Ethier, 33, could play 150 or more games for the first time since 2009, when he was 27.

Adrian Gonzalez just hit .207 for a month. Yasiel Puig has hit .161 for two weeks. Howie Kendrick always hits.

We expect the Dodgers to upgrade the starting rotation – Cole Hamels, Jeff Samardzija, David Price if the Tigers get in a sell-off mood, Johnny Cueto, Dan Haren, whomever (the team with the $270 million payroll has had two bullpen games in a month, which is sad) – and/or the bullpen. They might also tend to a lineup that has been OK until now, but might not last the season that way.

All-Star perspective
Just as not everyone who had a very good career is a Hall of Famer, not everyone having a good season is an All Star. The Participation Trophy generation seems to believe otherwise, which is why we cannot – or refuse to – separate the good from the iconic when it comes to Cooperstown, and why the first conversations after the revealing of the All-Stars is to martyr those who are not invited.

It’s supposed to be special, you know. By Monday evening, the fans, players and managers had selected 66 players. An additional fan vote will bring it to 68. By the time we sort through the injured, starters who pitch Sunday, and various other issues, we could be closer to 80 than 70. Last summer in Minnesota there were 80 All-Stars.

If a player is not an All-Star after 80, then maybe he wasn’t snubbed. Maybe he was good, but just not quite good enough.

Just buy ’em all
Another thought on the Dodgers: Why not buy Cole Hamels from the Phillies for, essentially, Ryan Howard? Offer a prospect or two, take all of the Hamels’ money ($84.5 million guaranteed through 2018), take Howard and all of his money ($47 million guaranteed through 2016), then do with Howard what you will. The man can still occasionally hit a right-hander. Use him as a pinch-hitter. Or not. Release him.

It’s just money.

They just spent more than $20 million on international prospects and aren’t done yet. Their payroll is more than $270 million. The boys at Guggenheim could hardly care less about another $130 million over the course of two contracts if the end result was Hamels in Game 3 against the Washington Nationals or St. Louis Cardinals, and certainly nobody’s embarrassed by the gluttony anymore.

So the Dodgers get Hamels, the Phillies get a useful player or two plus $130 million toward their rebuild, and everybody goes home happy.

Rebuilding gone mild
Combine the unique challenge that is small-market baseball, the enthusiasm of a first-year general manager, the patience necessary to see it through, the impatience of the people who funded the first-year general manager’s vision, the hasty decisions that come from that, and you have, sadly, the fourth-place and fading San Diego Padres.

They were not a great team on June 15, which is the day they fired Bud Black. They nonetheless had won 12 of their previous 21 games, which still wasn’t great, but they weren’t playing themselves out of anything yet, either.

Well, they could be doing that now. They are 7-13 since they dismissed Black, occasionally now pitch to their potential but have batted .214 for a month and .197 for the past week. Big picture, they are an average offensive team, a slightly below average pitching team, and a dreadful defensive team.

So what’s GM A.J. Preller, whose bold winter has netted three disappointing months, to do at the trading deadline?

Teams like Andrew Cashner. They love Tyson Ross. They see Ian Kennedy has been much better for the past month. If Preller sells, there’d be a market for all of them. The bigger the market, the more the interest there is in Craig Kimbrel, who is due $11 million next season and $13 million in 2017. Justin Upton – he’s been awful for a month – almost certainly could be had, and having him for his final three months into free agency seems a reasonable risk.

The right thing for Preller could be to sell. Softly. Not a full-scale, blow-it-up, how-could-I-have-been-so-wrong sell. Chase the vision that blew a little life into the organization, save a few bucks, circle back on the defensive element in a ballpark that demands it, and hope the coming three months are a lot better than the first three.

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