Grown-up Major League Baseball teams don’t regard on-the-field casualties as crises. They view them as opportunities.
And that’s basically what this Bobby Parnell news means for the Mets, doesn’t it?
Sports brings us manufactured “challenges,” like general manager Sandy Alderson’s well-intentioned goal to record 90 wins this year, and then we get the real thing.
One miserable game into this 2014 season, the Mets have lost their closer Parnell to an incomplete tear of the medial collateral ligament in his right elbow, and no one would be surprised if Parnell didn’t pitch in another major league contest until 2015.
Will the Mets mope, or will they cope? It’s an organization-wide challenge.
The well-run teams cope, particularly when it comes to fallen closers — a position more replaceable than you might think. Last year’s Red Sox lost two such pitchers, Joel Hanrahan and Andrew Bailey, to season-ending injuries, and rode third choice Koji Uehara all the way to a parade. The 2012 Giants saw their bearded wonder Brian Wilson succumb to Tommy John surgery in April, so they turned to Santiago Casilla and then Sergio Romo to pick up their second title in three years.
The 2011 Cardinals lost on Opening Day when veteran closer Ryan Franklin blew a save opportunity in the ninth inning and the Padres scored two more in the 10th. A total of eight pitchers recorded saves for St. Louis that season, Jason Motte running the final lap, en route to winning it all.
Now, no one will proclaim these Mets to be as strong or deep as any of the past three champions. Yet all three overcame their early adversity thanks also to unshakable managers, resourceful general managers and flexible owners.
Terry Collins must display both calm and canniness to navigate through this early bullpen crisis. Alderson has to get Collins more late-inning options — be they internal, external or most likely both. And time has arrived already for the Wilpons and Saul Katz to prove that yes, they’ll expand their payroll beyond the current $90-ish million in order to ensure relevance.
The players, too, must take it upon themselves to ensure their clubhouse remains a professional workplace with serious ambitions, rather than the haven for slackers it became too often in recent years following a characteristic slide down the standings.
The Mets’ first closer call will be to Jose Valverde, the reclamation project who began Tuesday tied with Philadelphia’s Jonathan Papelbon for fourth place among active pitchers with 286 saves. And who was set to be the winning pitcher Monday, following a strong debut of 1 ¹/₃ shutout innings, before Parnell blew the lead in the ninth and set in motion the Mets’ gut-wrenching, 10-inning, 9-7 Opening Day loss to the Nationals.
A scout who watched the Mets in spring training and attended Monday’s game said of Valverde’s three-strikeout outing, “He kind of surprised me. He was 92-93-91 [mph], but he had some sink. He was aggressive. He came in and threw strikes.”
Another veteran closer around on the cheap, Kyle Farnsworth, will join the team Wednesday. “That’s not going to help,” the scout said. Vic Black pitched his way off the team in spring training, but if he can right himself at Triple-A Las Vegas, “He can be a good piece of the puzzle,” the scout said.
We will see if and how the Mets target some of their many young arms for bullpen deployment, but surely, some will be involved at some juncture. The Triple-A Las Vegas roster features possibilities such as Jacob deGrom, Rafael Montero, Logan Verrett and Jeff Walters. Noah Syndergaard obviously will not be considered for a relief role.
On the outside exist free agents like Hanrahan, who plans to showcase himself to clubs shortly and whom the Mets already have watched once; Kevin Gregg; Ryan Madson; and even long-ago Met Octavio Dotel, who still wants to pitch at age 40.
The Mets desperately want to stop their five-year streak of losing records, declining attendance and dropping revenues. They gave significant contracts to Curtis Granderson and Wednesday night’s starting pitcher Bartolo Colon in the hopes of achieving better results and enhancing their brand.
None of those ambitions should be even remotely shaken now, just because Game 1 went even more horribly than anyone could have anticipated.
Earlier Monday, when the Mets still were undefeated and still believed Parnell to be healthy, a feisty Alderson asked, “What’s wrong with a hard standard?”
Only that you get ripped if you don’t live up to it. The Mets’ first test has arrived. Let’s see if they can pass.