Analyzing Bullpen Usage and Team Identity

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Save on grills and patio sets with low prices guaranteed during Spring Black Friday only at the Home Depot. Now through April 22nd. While supplies last. Exclusion supplies see Home Depot.com slash price match for details. I do want to hear from the people. I know this is a very tough time. So let's hear from the Rico ers out there, the Rico B at Gmail.com . Uh Max writes, here's what we need: Wally Bachman . Meller writes, how many years will this dumpster fire set the team back? Who's ever going to want to play here ? Pay team, pay guys the most money, they'll want to play here. William writes, this is the least ent ertaining Met team I've watched since 2013 to this point in the season. I've been a Stearns defender and supporter, but I can't believe what this team is trotting out there in their starting lineup. Marcus Simeon is cooked. Tommy Fam looks like he can't even see the baseball. Every time he takes a pitch, he blinks about 400 times. Brett Beatty looks like he forgot how to play the sport again. Lindor making another critical mental mistake in the field . Luis Robert Jr. making uh beginning to expand the strike zone. Alvarez making piss poor little leak base running mistakes, and Bo Bachet is the worst Met signing since Jason Bay. At least Carson Bench hustles and NJ Melendez seems to be playing for his career. It's quite an assessment . That's quite an assessment you have. Peter writes, Mets discussed, and I have a proposal for a new geeky offensive stat. Ooh, oh, I like that. Evan and a half. I can't believe I stayed up for this garbage game. If the Mets playing like this, if the Mets keep playing like this, they will have to earn back the privilege of my attention. To get my mind completely off how opposing pitchers carve through the LD Mets offense, I'd like to propose a new batting stat. What are among the most finite resources in baseball? Fin ite? I I I apologize. We're doing this Rico at 1.30 in the morning. You cannot expect my brain to be sharp. Reading emails can be a challenge. Uh, outs and pitch counts for pitchers are the most important things. What do you think about measuring the number of pitches per out a batter has? That is, if someone grounds into many double plays, that weighs more heavily on their pit ches per out than someone who flies out in that situation. If someone grinds out an at-bat, even if they eventually make it out, they'll have a better PPO than someone who strikes out on three pitches . You know, I maybe I'd entertain this idea with a san er brain . I'm not against it. I mean, baseball's come up with so many bogus and crazy stats that why would I poo-poo anything? Plus I do like the long at bat. And sometimes the long at bat leads to good things. It didn't happen in this game because when Lindor struck out on eleven pitches, it ended the inning, and then the Mets, you know, didn't do anything the next inning. So it doesn't always work out that way, but I like that idea. John writes, John from Clearwater writes, there's a pattern emerging with the mistakes Lindor's making. The genesis of his mistakes are from mental laziness. He's not reacting quickly as we saw in the Tiasca Hernandez infield hit, which needs to be an out 100% of the time. If the time. This coupled and with other mental errors he's made this season makes me question if he really wants to be here. David Stearns and Mendy needs to ask some difficult questions and make difficult decisions. Boy, we jumped to a lot of conclusions on the Lindor mental mistakes, and there's no doubt there' re there. We were examining. Is he suffering a concussion? You're examining. Does he still want to be here? We've had uh the examination on is he upset about not being the captain or that Juan Soto's taking the team from him . I don't know how to explain it . Perhaps Carson Bench throwing his glove at the wall against the Dodgers is the catalyst the Mets team needs. Nick Pauli with a good email . That's right . Does Carson Ben ge in attempting to make a leaping home run saving catch and dropping his glove on top of the right field fence. Is that the equivalent of Jorge Lopez throwing his glove? That's a great question. That's a great question. Membership means more with American Express Business Gold. Earn four times membership rewards points in your top two eligible spending categories every month, including eligible U.S. advertising purchases in select media and U.S. purchases at restaurants, including takeout and delivery. What are you waiting for? Get the card that flexes with your spending every month. Terms and points cap apply. Learn more at Americane Express.com/slash business dash gold, mx business gold card, built for business by American Express . Austin writes, Evan, I became a Met fan last year. It'll be fun, my friend said. They're a great team, my friend said. Little did I know my life was going to be completely ruined. Hours upon hours, days upon days of watching this garbage, just to get excited for the 2026 season, just to then be hit in the face with the bleep less, it's a curse word, the she ness of the New York Mets. My God, have pity on my soul for choosing this goddamn organization to root for. With all that said, pleads fire Mendoza. It's midnight. Yeah, I've been using a clock analogy to really ask the Met fan how you feel about Carlos Mendoza, with midnight being the moment where you fire him and nine o'clock at night being you're close or noon being you're not that close. And I'll say this real quick because I get a lot of it's not Mendy's fault. And I don't think it's Mendy's fault. If you want to blame anybody besides the players, it's obviously David Stearns . David Stearns pick the players. So if we're crapping on the roster or crapping on the lineup , obviously it comes down to him , but you're not firing a team president in the middle of the season. That's just not happening. You're trying to save a season . And sometimes the way you try to save a season is you get rid of a man ager. So what time am I at? I've been at eight o'clock lately. Let's say I'm at about 8:15. So my clock hasn't moved much, even with the patheticness of these last two losses, but it moved. Not in a good way. And now they've got three games in Chicago. You know, you can knock one out of the park and raise the apple with Takara too high, a sparkling cocktail that blends real shochu spirits with the delicious flavors of fruits locally grown in Japan. Available at Citi Field and Fuji Apple, of course, white peach and lemon. I'm very proud of Pete Hoffman because all day and really all week I kept saying to Pete, look, I'm not sure if we're gonna do Rico's after the games. These are very late night games. We've obviously done them. We've done them the following morning. So you could download them wherever you download your podcast if you want to hear more breakdowns of the previous two games of this series. But I kept saying to Pete, you gotta stay up for the third game. Cause I wanna stay firm that we will do our Rico recap right after this game is over. I don't care what time it is. And for those that are consuming this live, and we have a lot of people in the YouTube chat. We appreciate that. That's some great loyalty. It's 1.30 in the morning. And I'll tell, I don't know if Hoff knows this, but I was texting Hoff about MJ Melendez because Hoff was a big MJ Melendez guy and I wanted to put him over for it. And he wrote me back. And then after that, I stopped hearing from him. And I'm like, oh God, did he fall asleep? I'm gonna be pissed at him. Like, I don't get pissed at Pete because he works so hard. And if he ever falls asleep more times than not, I'm like, man, that guy works hard. I got no issue . But this one, because I had said it over and over again, this would have bothered me. And so the ninth inning comes, still haven't heard from Hoff. I finally break glass in case of emergency and I call him. And Hoff answers the phone all calmly. And he says, I'm not watching the game . So Pete Hoffman, can you reveal to us at one o'clock in the morning or 1230, whatever time it was when I called you, what were you actually doing then if you weren't watching the game? Were you glued to the Clippers Warriors game ? Shockingly enough, I was enjoying time with my wife. Oh, she was up? Uh, for a little bit, yeah. She hasn't been. Sorry for calling you then. I feel No, no, no, no, no, no, no. She she hasn't been feeling well. So um dude uh thankfully she's she's healthier, she's getting better. But um we were just talking, you know? And I 'm just talking. Yes. Okay, good. I didn't I didn't interrupt anything. No, no, no, no, no. No. Um worse. No, no, not at all. But I gotta be honest with you. It was a peaceful Wednesday night. I had a good Wednesday night. Um, it sucks because I really did want to watch a lot of this game. And I have that thing that listen, I'm this was a rarity. I chose my wife over watching the Mets get their ass kicked. But I gotta be honest, like I I I I don't wanna be Mr. Negative and there's no way that I'd watch this game and be like, you know what? T today's a good day. Yeah. I I I can't do it. And I don't want to walk to work tomorrow, be as miserable as I usually am. So I'm I'm taking a uh mulligan. I don't blame you for that. I I wish I could do that. I wish I was able to like take a night off. Now, luckily the Mets have an off day on Thursday, which I am looking as a cleansing day. But I get it. This, this, this beat you up. I mean, not only three straight West Coast games, which is very tough for those that stay up, and I did stay up, and I know there's a lot of Met fans that do it, but to lose three straight games, and really all three games were very similar, don't be fooled by the eight to two final score. Obviously the Dodgers broke it open with the five in the bottom of the eighth inning. But it's like you're watching the same game. They struggle to score. They chase out of the strike zone. There's a lot of quick innings. There's lots of moments where they just look completely helpless. And the other common thing, maybe not to include David Peterson in this, but the pitching is actually pretty good. And maybe that's the one positive you can really try to glean from it. Like, I will take that positive a lot more than Stehenve Co telling me Marcus Simeon almost at a home run. You know what I mean? Like that's insulting. But I can admit: hey, I like this rotation and I feel good about it. And if this team ever does turn it around, the identity is going to be that because it's got a chance to be good. And at times it has been good. Right. And and I would take away the bullpen performance this, you know, tonight. I I know it wasn't great. I know again, this is why I was arguing with you the other day, like, why have we not seen Devin Williams? It's been a week. I get it. And and and we've seen now clo rel ief pitchers that had weeks off and they just blow up the game. And then he's not the only one. So it's like, what are we doing? There's a fine line between being careful with a guy, uh, not wasting bsullet in games where you're like, ah, but I have a few bunch of games in a row. I may have to use them a lot. And what happened to the Mets here is they saved Devin Williams because they didn't know what the next day would look like. And the next day never was a save situation because they're in the midst of an eight-game losing streak. And so it turned into not using Devin Williams for an extended period of time. And yeah, that probably affected him. Combine that with the Lindor mistake and you had Devin Williams' worst performance that we've seen as a Met. Uh, luckily, because they have an off day on Thursday, and then they have an off day on Monday, I think that Mendoza can be very aggressive with his bullpen usage in the series coming up against Chicago because you don't have a stretch of games where there's an unknown and you may need to use your bullpen a lot. It's tax season. And at lifeLcko, we know you're tired of numbers. But here's a big one you need to hear. Billions. That's the amount of money and refunds the IRS has flagged for possible identity fraud. Now here's another big number. 100 million. That's how many data points