All right everyone, let’s get caught up before the winter meetings start and the big names start to arrive.
I can’t think they fired Buck Showalter only to wind up with a Yankee coach nobody’s ever heard of, so it seems like someone miscalculated the ease with which they’d gather in Craig Counsell. I was no fans of Counsell anyway so I’m glad he’s not here but in the end I’d have stayed with Buck all along.
Carlos Mendoza will wear No. 28, and said all the right things at his press conference, but we’ve heard plenty of good press conferences before.
Mendoza’s staff will include returning hero John Gibbons as bench coach, Jeremy Hefner remains as pitching coach and Eric Chavez mercifully becomes the hitting coach again. New to the staff is first-base coach Antoan Richardson and third base coach Mike Sarbaugh. None of these new guys have been assigned numbers yet; Gibbons wore 8 for the Mets until Gary Carter came along, then took 43 and 45.
There’s been the beginnings of moves for a bullpen and bench. Tyler Heineman, claimed off waivers from Toronto, is a defensive catcher who can’t hit. There’s Cooper Hummel, a multiposition player claimed on waivers from Seattle. Joey Wendle is another versatile player and could serve in the same role as Luis Guillorme did last year, hopefully minus the getting the hurt and not contributing upon his return.
Pitchers include a few relievers I’ve never heard of: Kyle Crick and Cole Sulser each signed to a minor league deal from Tampa Bay; Carlos Guzman, signed to a minor league deal from the Cubs; and Austin Adams, signed from Arizona. Then there’s Luis Severino, the one-time Yankee ace who was one of the worst pitchers in the league last year. Severino wore No. 40 in the Bronx; that currently belongs to Drew Smith.
In addition to Guillorme, Daniel Vogelbach, Trevor Gott, Sam Coonrod and Jeff Brigham we not tendered contracts and became free agents.
I don’t pretend to know what awaits the Mets on the free agent and trading markets but reports that the Yankees somehow have a leg up in the Yamamoto sweepstakes by reserving his No. 18 seems worth a thought here. The Mets could play that game too if they weren’t suddenly retiring every number. They in fact used 18–a number traditionally reserved for aces in Japan–for Takashi Kashiwada and Ryota Igarashi, though safe to say, neither was an ace. But both came years after Darryl Strawberry left Flushing in 1990 and nobody seemed to care.
The Mets did the kindest thing they could and sprung Eduardo Escobar from this drifting shipwreck. The veteran infielder, who actually looked useful if redundant as a reserve, was traded to Anaheim last night for two minor league pitchers. It’s nice that Steve Cohen paid his salary on the way out which leads to a better haul of prospects in this case, /looks it up/ Coleman Crow and Landon Marceaux.
I didn’t get to see Vinny Nottoli make his Mets debut but he’s wearing the No. 68 most recently belonging to Adonis Medina. I have gotten a look at sidearmer Grant Hartwig, who is making history as the first Met to wear No. 93.
As to Narváez it looks like the available numbers are 2, 7, 15, 16, 18, 25, 29, 30, 33, 40, 43, 44, 45, 46, 48, before we get into the 50s. Alvarez may want one of those lower numbers himself. It’d be cool if Narváez gets 15, and Alvarez takes 16, while Escobar stays in 10.
Although closer Edwin Diaz signed a new 5-year deal already, there could be three starting pitchers on their way out: Jacob deGrom who apparently has interest in Texas; Chris Bassitt, who rejected the qualifying offer, and Taijuan Walker who didn’t get a qualifying offer.
He’s pretty much that now, I’d ague, even if Todd Hundley has a season’s worth more games played, more home runs (123-63) and way more RBI (388-212). But Nimmo has the superior OBP (a 9-best .385) and his slugging percentage is just a tick below Hundley’s at .441 to Todd’s .447. Nimmo is in fact 4th overall in career OBP among all Mets, so he’s not the kind of guy a contending team wants to lose.
We’re at a point in the Mets’ season where the injuries have piled up and so have the solutions, and my own failure to keep up has made the Mets roster resemble a junk drawer. You’re looking for something and you find an old watch, coins from a foreign country that you don’t collect, a half-a-dozen half-used Chap Sticks, leftover business cards from a job you no longer have, various pens and pencils, cheap earbud headphones that may or may not work and you definitely don’t want to stick back in your ear to find out.
Into the ziplock bag have gone designated-for-assignment Mets Travis Blankenhorn (27), R.J. Alvarez (71) , Patrick Mazeika (4), Jake Reed (72), Kramer Robertson (15), Chasen Shreve (43), Travis Jankowski (16), Yennsy Diaz (64), and Nick Plummer (18), making those numbers available. 
Those foreign coins I can’t spend and don’t collect are now in a separate pile reflecting number changes I’d failed to account for or through looking for additional free numbers are failed to realize till now. For example the database never reflected till now that Mazeika ever wore 4, I fixed that, or that Mason Williams was still “current” at 70, and forgot to note that Thomas Szapucki (63) was traded in the Ruf deal. No longer.
The used business cards are coaches who are tricky to get into the database due to a design error we haven’t yet fixed between the awesome Ultimate Mets Database, where I record and 
In two days, the momentum that seemed unstoppable ground to an abrupt halt, and we’ve been overpowered twice by the Braves who have the opportunity to make back all of what they lost during their humiliating 4-of-5 defeat in New York.
So I finally learned last night 
I’ve covered Katoh before and somehow missed both Sam Clay and Kramer Robertson. Clay is lefty reliever who’s done a tour of the NL East’s farm clubs this season being DFAed first by the Nationals then by the Phillies before he arrived as a Met depth guy and remains on the 40-man roster where he’s assigned 46.
It’s not all terrifying though. Anthony DiComo has 
baseman Brett Baty, is reportedly en route to Atlanta. Baty was a No. 1 Mets’ draft pick in 2019 and has been compared to David Wright. He’s killing it wearing No. 2 for Syracuse; on the Mets’ 40-man roster, that number belongs to Baty’s current AAA teammate, Dom Smith, which should be frightening if only for Dom and what remains of his cheering section.
As you may have heard last night the Mets made a trade for Oakland’s Chris Bassitt, a late blooming All-Star righthander. I can’t recall having ever watched him but the back of his baseball card looks pretty good recently, and he’s a big guy. He wore No. 40 in Oakland that’s been available since Geoff Hartlieb (who?) was selected off waivers by Boston late last year.
So that’s a wrap on a really disappointing 2021 season, and manager Luis Rojas’ career is over. Whatever promise he represented, the record shows Rojas’ clubs missed the playoffs in two of the easiest seasons ever to have made them, and with clubs that looked capable of getting there, especially this year when they’d allegedly shored up the pitching and defense deficiencies that prevented them from succeeding a year before, despite a more-than-adequate offensive attack.
So what’s up with Chance Sisco? During his stay on the 40 man in Syracuse, he was assigned #15, as befits his kinda sorta veteran status. Then he finally makes it back to the majors, and they give him #77? Maybe as a sign of respect to Mazeika?
It’s Tuesday, so we’ll be out at CitiField tonight. Hopefully we see what number they offer Hembree, but we’ll rooting against an appearance, given the recent trajectory of the career that landed him here. Of greater interest is the anticipated paring of Lindor and Baez in the middle infield for the first time. If there’s any kind of catalyst for this club–and it may well be too late, given the Braves have been even hotter than the Mets have been cold–this is it.
Almora wore No. 5 with the Cubs so will need to shop for a new uni with the Mets. In the meantime all the stuff I speculated on below with respect to adding another Cub or two to the mix seems even more likely.
The signing comes as Juan Lagares, whose brief return to the Mets last season included a stint in the ridiculous No. 87, has found a new home in Anaheim. Also spotted on the developing Mets roster: New lefty reliever Aaron Loup assigned 62, with current issuee Drew Smith numberless.