Baseball is loaded with underachieving teams this season. Then there are the Mets, who have taken disappointment to a subterranean level.
A team with a record $344.1 million luxury-tax payroll — $67.8 million more than the second-place Yankees — went into the weekend 17½ games out of first place in the National League East. They are on pace to lose 90 games.
The Mets are 16th in the majors in runs and 12th in runs allowed. They’re a mediocre team with a giant payroll and a 40-man roster that includes nine former All-Stars, including two Hall of Fame locks in Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander.
“I don’t think anyone saw this coming,” said Verlander, who landed a two-year, $86.67 million deal in December.
Certainly not owner Steve Cohen, whose pursuit of a World Series championship was so determined that he soared past the highest limit of the luxury-tax tiers installed in the latest collective bargaining agreement.
Now, unless payroll is reduced, the Mets could owe as much as $99 million in luxury taxes after the season. The “Cohen Tax” didn’t deter him.
“There’s nobody to blame. It’s really across the whole team,” Cohen said when he called a news conference on Wednesday.
That’s diplomatic. But the players are largely to blame. Scherzer, Verlander, Pete Alonso, Francisco Lindor, Starling Marte, and Jeff McNeil are all performing below their career norms.
“We’ll see if they can get their act together,” Cohen said.
(And, yes, some owners are still willing to take questions from reporters in bad times.)
Manager Buck Showalter guided the Mets to a 24-win improvement last season. But what was supposed to be a much-improved roster has failed to gain much traction. That falls on the manager to some degree, especially with some of the team’s sloppy play defensively.
General manager Billy Eppler, who essentially had an unlimited payroll to build the team, also bears some responsibility. But the organization also has gone nine months without a team president overseeing Eppler since Sandy Alderson stepped down.
Once closer Edwin Díaz was lost for the season with a freak knee injury during the World Baseball Classic, the bullpen was left with only three reliable relievers: Adam Ottavino, Brooks Raley, and David Robertson.
Cohen, who still plans to hire a president, said he won’t fire Eppler or Showalter during the season. But he also doesn’t plan to stand by idly if the Mets don’t get back into contention.
“I’m preparing my management team for all possibilities. If they don’t get better, we have decisions to make at the trade deadline,” Cohen said. “That’s not my preferred end result. We’re preparing all contingencies.”
But who are the Mets trading? Verlander is 40 and Scherzer turns 39 this month. Even if Cohen pays down their salaries to get better prospects in return, how many teams would part with prime young talent to take back an aging starter with a long history of injury issues?
The Mets haven’t won a series since sweeping the Phillies at home from May 30-June 1. They play the Diamondbacks and Padres on the road going into the All-Star break, then host the Dodgers when the season resumes.
Lose those three series and Cohen could start making moves.
“It’s been incredibly frustrating. I watch every game. I see what’s going on,” he said. “Hopefully, we can right the ship … It’s kind of weird. It’s really strange to me.”
Mets fans viewed Cohen as a savior after the chaotic reign of the Wilpon family. He improved the team’s infrastructure, increased staffing, took needed steps to pay respect to the club’s history, and chased all the high-profile free agents.
When he bought the team, Cohen said the Mets would win a championship in 3-5 years.
A free-spending billionaire who was a legitimate fan of the team, what could go wrong? Right now, everything.
FINDING A ROLE
Pivetta has been a star in bullpen
That Nick Pivetta has pitched well in relief does not mean he should return to the Red Sox rotation. Quite the opposite: Stick with what works.
Pivetta has a 2.70 ERA and 11.3 strikeouts per nine innings over 12 appearances and 20 innings as a reliever this season. He had a 6.30 ERA and only 9.5 strikeouts per nine innings as a starter.
“He’s becoming a dude back there. His fastball is playing, the slider is good,” manager Alex Cora said. “He needed to go out there and become a solid reliever, and he’s become more than that.”
Pivetta didn’t agree with the decision to send him to the bullpen and even now only grudgingly acknowledges having pitched well.
“Things I’ve been working on have been paying off,” he said. “The team needs me in the bullpen and we’ve been doing a tremendous job back there. I think it’s a team effort.”
“Tremendous” is quite an exaggeration considering Sox relievers are 11th in the American League in ERA (3.94), 11th in WHIP (1.31), and 14th in strikeouts per nine innings (8.0).
But Pivetta is throwing more strikes and has better fastball velocity. If the Red Sox trade Kenley Jansen, he’d be a good candidate to close.
A few other observations on the Red Sox:
▪ Jansen appeared in only 28 games and threw 26⅓ innings in the first half.
That’s his fewest for a full season since 2015, when he spent nearly seven weeks on the injured list to open the season. Jansen averaged 37.3 appearances and 38⅔ innings in the first half from 2016-22, discounting the 2020 season.
The Sox gave Jansen $36 million over two seasons. So far it has been for cameos.
▪ Whatever your defensive metric of choice is, Triston Casas grades out poorly at first base.
He’s minus-5 in defensive runs saved and outs above average and is tied for sixth in the majors in errors.
Casas has too much faith in his range, all too often drifting to his right to chase a ball the second baseman is better positioned to handle.
“A step slow,” one scout said. “He hesitates and goes, and by then it’s too late.”
Casas played 284 games in the minors, 242 of them at first base at five levels. Presumably, he should have arrived better prepared.
A bigger question is whether Casas understands the need to improve. His confidence in his defense — “My footwork is immaculate,” he said last month — is more hubris at this point.
Casas has shown improvement at the plate in recent weeks, but his .404 slugging percentage is still 17th among 25 qualified first basemen. Casas was a celebrated prospect and he’s only 23, so he should get plenty of runway. But at the moment he’s a poor defensive first baseman who doesn’t hit for much power.
▪ Remember when the Sox gleefully touted Kiké Hernández as a pivotal first step to their rebuild when he was signed to a one-year, $10 million extension last September? Hernández’s minus-0.5 bWAR this season is the lowest of his career and he has a .629 OPS over the last two seasons.
▪ Righthander Noah Song pitched in his first minor league game for the Phillies on Wednesday and threw a perfect inning with one strikeout for Single A Clearwater.
In his first game since 2019, the 26-year-old former Red Sox prospect hit 93.5 miles per hour with his fastball and threw 7 of 12 pitches for strikes.
Song is on an injury rehab assignment that can last 30 days. At that point, the Phillies would have to add him to their major league roster or place him on waivers and offer him back to the Red Sox.
Dave Dombrowski didn’t come this far to let Song slip away. The Phillies will work hard to find a way to keep him.
▪ It cost the Red Sox $63 million to sign infielder Yóan Moncada in 2015 — $31.5 million for his signing bonus and a $31.5 million penalty paid to Major League Baseball for exceeding the rules at the time regarding international players.
In retrospect, it was not a waste of money. Moncada was the big chip that helped the Red Sox trade for Chris Sale in 2016, and Sale helped deliver the 2018 World Series championship.
That trade turned out to be a break in other ways, too.
Moncada had a .799 OPS and 8.3 WAR over 335 games prior to agreeing to a five-year, $70 million extension with the White Sox. He has a .710 OPS and 5.4 WAR over 338 games since.
Moncada hasn’t played since June 13 because of lower-back pain and isn’t expected back any time soon.
Back in 2015, Moncada was supposed to be a superstar. He turned out to be a little better than league average as a hitter, a little below as a defender.
▪ The Red Sox should do Bobby Dalbec a favor and trade or release him. Dalbec, who has a 1.051 OPS in Triple A, was called up for three games and given one plate appearance.
If the Sox have no use for Dalbec, let him take a shot somewhere else.
▪ The Red Sox are 2-13 against National League teams (Cardinals, Marlins, Pirates, Reds, and Rockies) at Fenway this season and have been outscored by 30 runs.
▪ Ken Rosenthal of Fox Sports and The Athletic picked an All-Star roster and included only Alex Verdugo from the Red Sox.
Verdugo or Rafael Devers would be acceptable choices. It doesn’t seem likely the Sox would merit a second All-Star. The team will be announced Sunday night.
The Sox haven’t had just the one mandatory All-Star since Brock Holt in 2015.
The team’s strength conditioning coach, Kiyoshi Momose, was named to the American League staff for the game. Momose has been with the Red Sox since 2016.
ETC.
Welcome back to the knuckleball
With little fanfare, the knuckleball returned from a two-year absence when Padres righthander Matt Waldron threw 13 of them against the Nationals on June 24.
Waldron, who was sent back to Triple A after the game, is not a pure knuckleballer in that the pitch is one of six he throws. But his were the first knuckleballs thrown in a major league game since Mickey Jannis last pitched for the Orioles on June 23, 2021.
Tim Wakefield doesn’t know Waldron, but he took notice of the outing.
“It hasn’t been around for a while,” said Wakefield, who spent 19 years in the majors throwing knuckleballs. “It was good to see.”
Considering the success Wakefield, R.A. Dickey, and even Steven Wright had this century, it’s a surprise more pitchers haven’t tried mastering the confounding pitch. In an age when pitchers are focused intently on spin rate, a pitch with no spin would stand out.
Maybe Rich Hill will learn to throw a knuckleball and pitch until he’s 50.
By the way, Hill’s 89 innings are 16 more than any Red Sox starter.
Extra bases
Even Yankees fans couldn’t have felt much joy celebrating Domingo Germán’s perfect game against the Athletics. Germán was suspended 81 games by MLB for domestic violence in 2020. It is the seventh-longest suspension in history and was the result of violent acts against a girlfriend. Germán also was suspended for 10 games earlier this season for having an overly sticky substance on his hand while pitching against the Blue Jays. The Athletics had gone 5,010 games, back to 1991, without being no-hit. That was a four-man no-hitter by the Orioles. The active record-holders now are the Nationals, who were last no-hit on July 18, 1999, when they were the Expos. That was David Cone’s perfect game … It’s understandable Twins manager Rocco Baldelli is aggravated by his underachieving team. But what purpose does banning reporters from the clubhouse accomplish? Baldelli closed the clubhouse to the media after a 3-0 loss against the Braves on Wednesday. “We have to make some really, really legitimate adjustments to what we’re doing right now if we’re going to go out there and compete and win games against that team or really any other team,” Baldelli said. “The second half is here but we have some work to do in this second half because we can’t play like this.” OK, great. But denying reporters the opportunity to do their jobs doesn’t help the Twins make adjustments. It just makes the organization look unaccountable … The Blue Jays demoted struggling Alek Manoah to the Florida Complex League on June 6. He pitched his first game on Tuesday and allowed 11 runs on 10 hits and two walks over 2⅔ innings. Manoah was third in AL Cy Young Award voting last season and now he can’t get 18-year-olds out? … Astros first baseman José Abreu may be snapping out of a season-long slump, putting together a good week to raise his OPS from .587 to .628. But his three-year, $58.5 million deal still looks like an overreach. The 36-year-old was signed in November when owner Jim Crane was running baseball operations with advice from Jeff Bagwell … Mookie Betts has played 202 innings at second base and shortstop for the Dodgers and has three defensive runs saved. He’s also an All-Star for the seventh time and plans to be in the Home Run Derby just for fun … Paul Goldschmidt went deep against the Cubs in London when he became the first major leaguer to play in five countries: Australia, Canada, England, Mexico, and the United States. The four games MLB has staged in England drew 228,945 fans at London Stadium. After 50 runs were scored in the two-game series between the Red Sox and Yankees in 2019, home plate was moved back 7 feet and the gaps were extended to 387 feet. The Cubs and Cardinals scored 22 runs. MLB will return to London in 2024, play in Paris in 2025, and go back to London in ‘26 … The best-of-three series to determine the NCAA Division 1 baseball champion started with LSU beating Florida, 4-3. The Gators won Game 2, 24-5, then the Tigers won Game 3, 18-4. LSU played 13 games in the NCAA Tournament from June 2-26. Just a thought, but might a single-game final be better for the sport? Nevertheless, ESPN averaged 1.65 million viewers for the College World Series, a 48 percent increase from last season. The final drew 3.58 million viewers … There have been some, shall we say, curious decisions by official scorers this season. Lately it feels like a fielder would have to pick up a ball and throw it in the stands to be charged with an error. But contrary to some reports, it’s not the work of Major League Baseball trying to artificially inflate batting averages. Scorers, several sources said, are operating under the same set of rules as always. It’s also worth noting that particularly egregious scoring decisions often get changed and that goes unnoticed. Via their agents, players can appeal to the commissioner’s office to have calls reviewed. The Twitter account @scoringchanges tracks the changes … Happy birthday to the ever-voluble Sean Casey, who is 49. “The Mayor” had a .773 OPS in 69 games for the Red Sox in 2008 and hasn’t been hard to find on assorted television, radio, and podcast appearances since.
Peter Abraham can be reached at peter.abraham@globe.com. Follow him on Bluesky at peteabeglobe.bsky.social.