Oh yeah, Pete Alonso is the new New York Mets all-time home run leader. Other than that, there ain’t nothing good happening.

The team just looks bad. And don’t give me that crap that they have no heart, that they aren’t placed in the right spot in the batting order, the pitchers are used too much, they aren’t used enough…as Bob Newhart once said…STOP IT!

The kiddie corps is being jerked around. That’s all there is to it. There is no consistency, they just bounce them around like a bunch of rubber balls. They will never come into their own being utilized like they are kids on a Little League team where everyone gets a turn and you just have to play equal time.

There are three guys being rotated at third base – Brett Baty (lefty hitter); Mark Vientos (righty hitter); Ronny Mauricio (switch hitter). And Baty gets to play a little bit of second, as does Mauricio, and Vientos gets to DH a bit. NONE of the three have earned the everyday job, yet NONE have been given a REAL chance to get in a groove either. They have all had hot streaks here and there, but, for the most part, they have been sub-par offensively and below sub-par defensively.

Bottom line, either play them or cut them. Enough already.

Francisco Lindor hasn’t been the same since he got injured. His season has plummeted. It’s not his fault. The spirit is there but the body is just not willing.

Juan Soto may just be experiencing what Lindor and Carlos Beltran did before him, those first-year Mets jitters, but he is not playing like the kind of player he is being paid to be. Although he is having very close to a typical Juan Soto season. So the Mets are actually getting what they paid for. Chew on that one for a while.

The wonderful pitching lab has imploded. I love Jeremy Hefner and I believe him to be one of the better pitching coaches in the club’s history…right up there with Rube Walker, Mel Stottlemyre, and Bob Apodaca. However, the coaches don’t execute the pitches. They can only teach. And teaching does not assure outcome.

The fact is that these pitchers are just not very good. The starters are not reliable, other than David Peterson, but even he has had some hiccups. And the relief corps – all 30 of them, or so it seems – is worse than unreliable. They go through some good stretches and then one of them will somehow blow a game that was somewhat winnable.

And let’s be real…Edwin Diaz will NEVER be what he was in 2022. Diaz had a career year, the kind of year every player dreams about. But even if he HADN’T gotten injured, the likelihood of him duplicating that season was nearly impossible. The only closer to truly duplicate successes year after year, season after season, was Mariano Rivera. And even HE wasn’t perfect. Relievers, by their inherent nature, have ups and downs and when they go into slumps, it DIRECTLY affects the outcomes of the games. So while he is still a “dominant” reliever, that slider hasn’t been the same, and probably won’t be, since his injury. That’s just the way it is.

The same goes for the hitting. Do I think these hitting coaches – Eric Chavez and Jeremy Barnes - are great? No. Do I think it is their fault that the lineup is dreadful? No. In this day and age of analytics and the philosophies dictated by Harvard-educated brainiacs rather than old-school baseball people, computer-generated information dictates the split-second decisions made in the batter’s box. Having the knowledge of tendencies of the opposition is great. It helps. But you have to be able to adjust and react.

Oh…and the other thing…you have to have the skill. Either you can hit a baseball or you can’t hit a baseball. You either have the reflexes and hand-eye coordination to do it or you don’t. See the ball, hit the ball. It seems like a lot of these players just don’t have the ability to do that.

And the philosophies around hitting have changed. Batting averages have become meaningless. Striking out a lot is no longer a detriment. Being able to bunt is a lost art. Knowing how to actually run the bases apparently is no longer a part of the fundamentals. Baseball has become nothing more than a glorified form of Home Run Derby or the street game of “City Blocks” for those of us “city people.”

But this all seems to be a theme throughout the Major Leagues. It appears every team is suffering the same symptoms, at least for a while. Teams get hot and then they just head into a slide. There are no real dominant teams, or even dominant players, for that matter. The payrolls may not indicate parity but the performances certainly do.

This latest slide of the Mets is not unique. It’s just a part of modern day Major League Baseball. I guess we’re just going to have to live with it.