Bill Madden: Buck Showalter isn’t to blame for the mess that is this $345M Mets team

Suffice it to say, Steve Cohen feels little consolation over dodging a $185 million bullet with Jacob deGrom needing Tommy John surgery.

The bleak deGrom news out of Texas was announced Tuesday, but three days later Cohen’s $345 million Mets had been swept by the Braves in Atlanta and began the weekend three games under .500 in fourth place in the National League East.

Naturally, the talk radio yahoos are screaming for Cohen to start shaking things up at Citi Field, but while mistakes and miscalculations have been made, fault for this pratfall in Queens lies other than in the manager’s office. For it’s not Buck Showalter’s fault that Daniel Vogelbach has been an absolute bust as the primary DH, and it’s not his fault that Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander, his twin $40-plus million supposed aces, gave up 10 runs in a combined 8 2/3 innings against the Braves, and it’s certainly not his fault that Pete Alonso got hit on the wrist with an errant Charlie Morton pitch in Atlanta and will now be lost for close to a month.

If you’re looking for blame for the Mets’ current plight, you have to start with their player development department which has done a terrible job developing starting pitchers. Before deGrom, the last homegrown frontline Mets starting pitcher to win 15 games in a season was Mike Pelfrey in 2010. It’s because of this failure that Cohen had to gulp hard and give Scherzer a three-year, $130 million contract in 2021, and then another two years, $86.7 million to the 40-year-old Verlander after deGrom skipped to the Rangers. And unfortunately, the starting pitching draught goes on as there is no one in the system close to providing rotation help this year (although 6-5 right-hander Mike Vasil has made great progress at Double-A Binghamton).

Even before deGrom’s defection, Mets GM Billy Eppler saw this starting pitching problem coming. But he inexplicably made no effort to re-sign Chris Bassitt, last year’s wins and innings leader (who got a three-year, $62 million deal from the Blue Jays) and instead invested $75 million in Japanese import Kodai Senga, who only seems to be able to pitch every six days, and another $26 million on Jose Quintana who, through no fault of anyone, has been sidelined all year with a rib injury.

In truth, Eppler has been on a losing streak since last year’s trade deadline when he dealt a useful middle reliever in Colin Holderman to the Pirates for Vogelbach, and J.D. Davis to the Giants for Darin Ruf (.152, 0 homers and 7 RBI in 28 games). For some reason, Eppler’s analytics geeks love Vogelbach, even though he can’t run, can’t play a position and has a lifetime .216 batting average. It was thus left to Showalter to keep playing the guy, as deemed by the daily analytics spreadsheets, while absorbing the brunt of the unrelenting media criticism. Compounding that has been the media cries for Showalter to give more playing time to rookie Mark Vientos, another guy who has no position and, as of Friday, was hitting .162 with 12 strikeouts and one walk in 39 plate appearances.

In the absence of a bonafide DH, Showalter has toyed with the idea of using the lineup spot there to give his regulars a “half day” of rest — as he did Thursday night against the Braves when Francisco Alvarez, inserted into the No. 2 hole, hit two homers and drove in three runs. But the Alonso injury figures to complicate things and the absence of a backup shortstop prevents him from DHing Francisco Lindor.

But let’s face it: Once Edwin Diaz tore up his knee in the World Baseball Classic the Mets were going to be severely compromised this season. The inconsistency of the starting pitching has put a huge strain on the bullpen where Showalter has been operating without a second lefty since he’s been the manager.

Maybe Cohen didn’t realize it back in the spring, but this is a deeply flawed Mets team that was counting on two fragile aging aces to get them to October. The bench is woefully thin and the bullpen, other than David Robertson and Brooks Raley, is mostly mediocre, devoid of any high-octane arms. They’ve needed another power bat since before the trade deadline last year and instead they have 270 pounds of dead weight in Vogelbach.

If I’m Cohen I wouldn’t necessarily start firing people at this juncture although I’d sure be asking Eppler: “How did $345 million get me an under-.500 fourth-place team and how do you and your analytics experts propose to rectify this?”

IT’S A MADD, MADD WORLD

Meanwhile, as the Mets continue to crash and burn with Vogelbach as their DH, you had Gary Sanchez suddenly catching fire in San Diego. After going 1-for-6 in just three games for the Mets, Sanchez was placed on waivers and claimed by the Padres and proceeded to hit five homers in his first 10 games for them. As of Friday, he was hitting .310 for San Diego with nine RBI in nine games, having been inserted in the cleanup spot by manager Bob Melvin. “He’s there for a reason,” Melvin said. “I really feel like he’s felt at home here maybe, you know, as opposed to other places where he was fighting for his job every single day, every single at-bat.”… Very quietly, the Marlins’ Luis Arraez climbed over .400 last week. According to the Elias Bureau, the last player to be hitting over .400 with 60 games played was Chipper Jones in 2008. The Braves’ Hall of Famer did not fall under .400 until June 19 and he ended up hitting .364 for his first and only batting title. Unlike Chipper, however, Arraez, who led the American League with a .316 average for the Twins last year, is a slap hitter who makes constant contact and hardly ever strikes out and might just have the ability to stay over .400 throughout the summer. … Elbow injuries are an epidemic in baseball. DeGrom was the latest pitcher to need Tommy John surgery. And then there’s the Nationals’ Stephen Strasburg whose Tommy John surgery in 2010 has been followed by a succession of debilitating injuries, the latest being nerve damage in his neck which doctors are now saying may prevent him from pitching again. But what’s most astounding here is that, according to a report from Washington Post baseball writer Jesse Dougherty, the Nationals failed to take out any disability insurance on the seven-year, $245 million extension contract they gave Strasburg in 2019.

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