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https://www.google.com/amp/s/fiveth...-great-to-garbage-in-the-blink-of-an-eye/amp/
JUN. 5, 2017 AT 4:45 PM
The Mets Pitching Staff Went From Great To Garbage In The Blink Of An Eye
By Neil Paine
Filed under MLB
To say it’s been a challenging season in Queens would be an understatement. Originally slated to contend for the NL East crown, the 2017 New York Mets currently sit in a tie for third place, 7 games below .500 and a whopping 11 games back of the first-place Washington Nationals. The team has been accompanied by a near-constant stream of off-the-field controversies, and its playoff chances are rapidly approaching zero. Even the club’s jolly anthropomorphized baseball has turned belligerent.
At the core of New York’s on-field frustrations has been the performance of its pitching staff, which not so long ago was gracing Sports Illustrated covers and inspiring meditations about the ideal way to build a modern baseball team. The fireballing days of Noah Syndergaard — who hit the disabled list with a torn muscle in early May — and cohorts are a distant memory, and those stars have been replaced by fill-ins who barely register on the radar gun and a beleaguered bullpen asked to shoulder a historic workload. (In their latest outing, the Mets burned through five pitchers — a normal amount by the team’s recent standards — just to yield 11 runs against the Pirates.)
Just how much of a pitching drop-off have the Mets endured this year? Last season, New York led all clubs in the wins above replacement (WAR)1 it received from its pitchers, with the 39th-best tally any team had in a season since 1901. This season, they rank sixth to last in baseball in pitching WAR, putting them on pace for the team’s worst showing on the mound since 1996. On a per-162-game basis, that makes for the fifth-biggest year-to-year decline by any MLB pitching staff since 1901.