Following another disappointing loss on Saturday — their 12th in their last 15 games — the Mets called a player's-only team meeting in hopes to revive what started off as such an impressive season.
What was said in the meeting is being held close to the chest, however, Pete Alonso described it as "a productive gathering."
Brandon Nimmo mentioned that while he didn't speak, about six or seven guys spoke, including Alonso and Francisco Lindor.
"I mean, we're not playing well,"Nimmo said after the 9-2 loss to the Pittsburgh Pirates. "We’ve won a couple games, but we haven't been able to put it together. So, you know, just put things out there, talk about it as a team and move on. But it just felt like, you know, we weren't really putting it together. So we ended up calling a team meeting."
Lindor told reporters that it wasn't one person's idea or anything like that. Instead, after the game, players just sat around and started talking "organically."
"It just happened," he said. "You know, collectively as a group we decided to start talking to each other and that's what good teams do. We all rely on each other, we all bounce ideas from each other and yeah this is a big team thing."
Last year, New York notably called a team meeting at the beginning of June after falling 11 games below .500 which kickstarted the team's complete reversal. Although this meeting came at the end of June (and with the Mets 12 games over .500 and only 0.5 GB of the Philadelphia Phillies for first place in the division), both were similar in tone and messaging.
"It was similar because I feel like that meeting last year was an open floor, too," Nimmo said. "So I feel like it's similar. And it's similar to other meetings I've had as well. I mean, this is not the first season that I've I've gone through a time like this.
"In fact, I think I've been here long enough to have seen a June like this, maybe even worse. So, it definitely felt, you know, good, productive and I think we'll look to build on that one step at a time. It's not going to be fixed overnight. I'd love it if it was, but it's not going to be fixed overnight."
Even though the players wouldn't go into specifics, Lindor did mention that "everybody is pulling for each other" and that "there is a sense of urgency."
"Everybody's on the same page," he said.
While that's all nice to hear, it won't mean much unless New York starts to turn things around. It has a chance to do that on Sunday in the series finale against the Pirates, a team that has outscored the Mets, 18-3, in the first two contests.
Step one of turning things around is starting with a clean slate, wiping away what's gone wrong in recent weeks. However, there's a fine line between starting fresh and ignoring what the problems have been.
"I think it's obvious we're not playing our best baseball," Alonso said. "Just collectively as a group, whether offensively, defensively, base running — we're not playing our cleanest baseball. We're not playing to our maximum potential right now and it shows with the record.
"Yeah, we're definitely not playing consistent. We’re playing good games or staying in games, but I think we need to do a better job finishing, for sure. Playing a complete nine innings. And overall, just like playing our most clean baseball on a consistent basis. I mean, that was our identity. We did a great job. That was our identity the first while there when things were excellent. But yeah, we've gotten away from playing our cleanest baseball for sure."
Of course, part of the struggles lately have been injuries to key players at a rather inopportune time like playing 10 straight games against division rivals. But perhaps another part of the problem is players putting too much pressure on themselves to pull the team out of it.
"It's natural, you know," Lindor said. "We’re all professionals here, but we're human as well. Everybody wants to get it done. We all want it just as bad. It's just we go through ups and downs in the season. This is adversity and we got to deal with it and try to come out and try to win us many games as we can."
Whether this team meeting sparks a change remains to be seen and even if change does come about, it'll be hard to say that the team meeting was the cause. But sometimes it's just good to talk about how you're feeling or what you're thinking, especially when things aren't going your way.
"This is a good group and the reason why we have those discussions is because A) we expect a lot, and then also we care for each other. We want to win not just individually, but collectively for each other as a group," Alonso said.
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