Today, the New York Mets kick off what is, one paper, their easiest remaining week of the schedule, facing the A's and Marlins at home.
Can the Mets take advantage of the road ahead?
Host Ryan Finkelstein breaks down why the Athletics are no easy task, but still are a team they have to beat.
Also, a Locked On Crossover with the host of Locked On MLB and Locked On A's, Paul Francis Sullivan
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It's the Lockdown Podcast Network, your team every day. This week there are no excuses for the New York Mets, they need to win and they need to win big. You are Lockdown Mets, your daily New York Mets Podcast, part of the Lockdown Podcast Network, your team every day. Hello to all you amazing Mets fans, you are listening to Lockdown. That's part of the Lockdown Podcast Network, your team every day. Thank you for making Lockdown Mets your first listen every day, Lockdown Mets is free and available on all platforms including YouTube. On the show today, I'm going to talk about why the Mets have to win this week with the A's and Marlins coming to town in the first segment, I'll go through that, the road ahead and what's left for the Mets this season. Second segment, I'll start to preview the Mets vs. Athletics series here, getting to some numbers behind what the Mets are up against and what they have to do to get a serious victory. Then in the final segment, I'm going to play for you our series preview from the locked on crossover I did with Paul Francis Sullivan of Lockdown MLB and locked on A's so it'll be a 10 minute clip or a 10 minute segment from that show that I'll plug into close things out to give you a fresh perspective on the series that lies ahead. Before we get to any of it though, I'm your host Ryan Finkelstein, if you want to find any of my work, follow me on X at Finkelstein and Ryan, you can also find some of my writing at JustBaseable.com where I work as the managing editor. There's a team that needed a day off, it was the New York Mets on Monday, an absolutely brutal road trip that was capped by an awful series in Seattle, now it's time to flush that series and move ahead because this team has a great opportunity here to make something out of this season and to actually be a playoff team. There's seven weeks left, there's 44 games and after the Braves won a one to nothing game against the Giants on Monday night, the Mets are only a game back that did drop half a game clearly but they're right there and they still have a series left against the Braves. So if it is a two horse race, they really got to make sure that they match the Braves pace from here on out to potentially beat them in that series and put themselves in position at the end of the season to make the playoffs. This is going to be a really tough stretch, just overall, it's a playoff push, it's not supposed to be easy and we'll see what the Mets are made of because they've been two very different teams this year. There's the team that we watched that went on that great run after they started the season 0 and 5 and got right back into the race, Francisco Alvarez goes down, the Mets go through a six week slump as they really struggled particularly throughout the entire month of May. They figure it out, they have an amazing June and amazing July, get through the trade deadline and since they have not been playing great baseball. Not terrible, they've been keeping their head about above water but they have not been the same dominant team that was the best of baseball for a few months and ahead of them, you have a Padres and a Diamondbacks team that seem to have figured it out and that's our five games back from both of them. You have a Cardinals and a Giants team, they're two and a half games back either one of those teams could make a run but the Mets have to just worry about themselves. And this is a week where you got to win baseball games every week you do but this is arguably the easiest week left in the schedule from the New York Mets. I'm going to run through it, right? Seven weeks left, like I said, this week, A's and Marlins at home, two teams that are below 500. Next week, Orioles at home and then you go for a four gamer in San Diego. It's a pretty brutal week. Following week, you have the Diamondbacks going to be a tough series and you got the White Sox. Not a horrible week but the Diamondbacks are going to be a tough team to beat. You then come home, you got Red Sox, Reds, Reds aren't the best team but Red Sox certainly have had a really good season. Then you have Blue Jays and Phillies on the road. Phillies makes that a pretty tough week. You then come home, Nationals and the Phillies. So that's going to be a stretch across a two week span where you're really going to have to go up against what's been a giant in your division this year. Then you close the season where hopefully the Mets are still in the race against the Braves and the Brewers. They do not have a cake walk by any stretch to close out their season but if they get there, at least the Mets will have kept us engaged for an entire season. As much as I want to see the Mets make the playoffs for me, that's the bigger thing. I want to wake up going into that final week of the season and still be believing in this Mets team that they're going to get to October and if it doesn't work out, I'll at least commend them for a hard fought marathon. This week is the beginning of that final leg. You can't drop the ball against the A's in the Marlins. You just can't. There's no excuses this week. Last week there was plenty of excuses and I spoke aloud them into my microphone here especially during that Mariners series but even when they lost the game to the Rockies or against the Angels and we talked about the travel and all these different things. Well now you're home. You had a day off and you got two bad baseball teams coming to town. With that said, the Oakland Athletics might be a little bit of a trap. They're not just a bad baseball team. You look at the record, right? The Oakland Athletics this year are 1569. They are 19 games under 500. But if you look at the split of their season, there was a stretch in May and June where they played 23 games under 500. The rest of the season they've been better than 500. In April they were 13 and 14 and they've been playing their best baseball since the calendar turned to July when they were 15 and 9 and this month they're 5 and 4. Now you look at the series splits across that span, right? Since July. They've played an 11 series. They have won seven of them. They've split one and they've lost three series. Now how does that break down? How have the A's stacked so many wins? Look at their opponents during this span. Who they beat. They beat the Angels three times. So that's the big thing for them. The Angels have just been their punching bag and they swept them twice. So that carries a lot of weight in that record that they've had since July. But they also beat the Phillies and they beat the Astros during this stretch. Over their past two series, they beat the White Sox and the Blue Jays two bad teams. But they're rolling right now. Now the series that they lost, they did come at the hand of some good teams, the Dodgers, the Red Sox and the Orioles. I'm not going to say the A's can't be beat. The Mets are a much better team on paper than the Oakland Athletics. But the A's absolutely can beat you. We've seen the Angels beat the Mets in the series. We obviously saw what the Mariners did. But we've seen other bad teams like the Marlins this year find their way to beat the Mets in the series. And those are the most frustrating ones. So this first series is a tougher test than you would expect. But as I'm going to get into the next segment, there is still no excuse for the New York Mets to not find their way to beat the A's put themselves in position for a great week with a struggling Marlins team come into town. And that's a whole other thing we'll talk about this weekend because man, put the 1999 Yankees in front of me or the Marlins in September. And I don't know who I'd rather see the Mets play because it's not September. But you get the point and spoiler Marlins always a frustrating one. Hey, I guess the bright side. This will be the last time the Mets see the Marlins this season. So at least you closed the book on that one this weekend. But the A's are first and foremost. What I want to talk about in the next segment again is some reasons why the Mets should win this series. I'll get into where the A's have a lot of strengths and also talk about where the Mets have to be better. So go through all that in just a minute. First, though, a word from our sponsors today's episode is brought to you by I Bada. It's summertime, which means it's barbecue season stock up on all of your grilling favorites and earn cash back on every purchase when you use I Bada. 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Today's episode is also brought to you by fan dual as summertime. So winding down, we get less games and sports just aren't sports and like I want them to, but Fandu lets me keep the sports going whenever I want because all I have to do is open up the app and dream up bets anytime I'm in the mood. And this summer Fandu was hooking up all customers with a boost or a bonus daily. That's right. There's something for everyone every day all summer long. Paul Blackburn's been striking out more batter since it came up to the Mets and he'll be facing off against his former team tonight. Maybe you want to look at Paul Blackburn in the same game parlay with the Mets winning might take over strikeouts for Blackburn. Maybe you want to look at Francisco Lindor getting multiple hits. You can find all of that over at Bandool. And again, broken up customers all summer along with a boost or a bonus daily. So head over to fan duel dot com slash lat on and start making the most out of your summer bandool physical sports betting partner of major league baseball. Stay up to date with all the latest in the world of sports by checking out locked on sports today streaming 24 seven on YouTube. As the New York Mets are going to win this series, what they have to do is jump out to some early leads against the Oakland Athletics. That's where they can win. If they win the early part of the game, they're going to fare really well. And obviously that is pretty commonplace in any baseball game. You get out to early lead, you stand a better chance to win. But against the Oakland Athletics, it's more important because if you look at the strength of their team, when it comes to the pitching, it's clearly the bullpen. They do not have a good starting rotation, but since they also break their bullpen as a 3.18 are right, that is six best in all of baseball. Hogan Harrison, Mason Miller have not given up run between the two of them. And Mason Miller is one of the nastiest closures in baseball, spent some time on the injured list. He's been back. He's still been throwing the ball well since coming back. And it's very similar to when we saw Ben Joyce take the ball for the angels in the beginning of that road trip that that tight game and Ben Joyce comes on for a four out save and he's throwing 105 miles per hour. Mason Miller is a similar experience where he's got a disgusting fastball slider combination and good luck hitting them. So if the A's have a lead late, you're probably screwed. So the Mets have to avoid getting into that position. They have to win these games early because that bullpen is really good. And the athletics have a good lineup. Okay. Since the all-star break in particular, Brent Rooker and Lawrence Butler have been on another planet. These guys have been great and that extends back to July when I know it's just baseball. We had both Brent Rooker and Lawrence Butler in our top three. We do players of the month each month. We have like a metal stand graphic that goes up. There's a gold medal player. There's a silver metal player and then a bronze. And I can't remember. I think it was Rooker was our gold metal guy and then Butler was bronze. But the bottom line is we've had those two guys in particular have been getting some recognition lately because of how good they've been and that has contained into August. So you have two hitters to really fear. You have JJ Blude who's been really good since the all-star break as well. He's got a 920 OPS. So the three of them all above 920 when it comes to the OPS and dad's Cameron since the all-star break has a 963 OPS. And he particularly plays against left handed pitching. He's a lefty masher. But the Mets are going to roll out two lefties in this series. So you're going to see that collection of four hitters that can be really dangerous. And Shane Lingaleers is right there with them. One of the better offensive catches in baseball. He's got an 830 OPS since the all-star break. So they can score and they can hold down leads. You got to win these games early. And that's where the Mets have a big advantage. Game one, the A's have not announced a starter. But the expectation would be that Ross Stripling is going to take the ball. Stripling is 211 on the season. He's got a 572 ERI and 72 and a third innings pitch with only 40 strikeouts. Paul Blackburn is going to pitch against him. And of course Blackburn came from Oakland. So we'll see what type of industry knowledge they have. Can they make Blackburn look bad? He's been really good in his first two starts. Granted, he's pitched against the Angels and the Rockies. Now he's pitching us the Rockies at course. And we've seen that lineup have some real ignitability to it. So I still believe in Blackburn, but that's going to be a really critical matchup for the Mets to win that early part of the game to get out to a lead and hopefully your bullpen could hold it down. You got Mitch Spence pitching for Oakland in game two. Got a 433 ERI in the season versus David Peterson. Peterson has been getting a lot of run support when he starts. So hopefully that continues. And then you got Joey Estes pitching the final game against Jose Quintana. That's this has a 470 ERI. The Mets have to score runs in this series. They got to get this lineup back on track. And that's really where we need to see some changes. Whether you're mixing up the lineup, doing whatever you can, you got to find some answers here. To me, Jeff McNeil should be batting second. That's the first thing that I want to put out there. That's the way that I would try to spark this lineup because guess what? Since the all-star break, Jeff McNeil has been the best hitter on this team. She's so absurd considering what he did in the first half, but he's hitting 324, 358 on base, 662 slug, OPS over 1000. No one else on the Mets is over 900. So he's the one guy who's really swinging it. He's leading the team of seven doubles, leading the team of six home runs, Tyler Piedelonzo. He's got 14 RBIs, which is just one less than Francisco Londor and JD Martinez for the team lead. And he's scored the most runs with 16. Jeff McNeil should be batting second behind Francisco Londor, in my opinion. We'll see if him. Let's go to that. But I would just stack your best two hitters right now and see what happens. Piedelonzo granted has an 866 OPS since the break. He has not been as bad as it seems because when he's gotten up in a big spot, oftentimes he's not coming through. He also has 30 strikeouts and 84 at bats. That's pretty brutal. So it's been very feast or famine for a Lonzo. Look, I've said it before. I'll say it again. This could be it for Piedelonzo to Mets uniform. So show up and show some support for him. Hopefully the Mets can rally around him and hopefully Piedelonzo can deliver because as much as fans want to look at him now and say he's horrible in the clutch, that's not who we had been prior to this season. He had been a good hitter with runners in scoring position in the past. If you get a Lonzo back into that rhythm and also J.D. Martinez as well because J.D. Martinez since the All-Star break has a 694 OBS. But he's swinging a little better lately. I've seen some encouraging of bats from him. If those two guys start to hit and let's say you slide Jeff McNeil the two hole with Francisco Lindor and that's your your top four and maybe a bump Nemo down to fifth in the lineup. Honestly, I wouldn't even mind bumping Nemo all the way down. Madam 9th making a double lead off situation. Having bat in front of Francisco Lindor, I think that could help him and not for the rest of the season. You need Brandon Nemo to hit if you're going to win, but maybe for a week or two until you get him going. Then you bring him back up. If Jeff McNeil struggles or someone else, I think the Mets are at the point where they should be making some drastic shifts to their lineup trying to find a combination that works similar to when they slid Nemo down to the two hole originally with Lindor batting or actually was sliding Nemo up into the two hole after having him bat third flipping places with Lindor. Lindor lead off has been a great thing for this team. They still haven't found that sweet spot for Nemo. Maybe he's batting fifth. Maybe he's the protection for Peter Lonzo. I don't know. We'll see what happens here, but they have to figure out this lineup. Jesse Winkers got to come through as well. He was the big deadline edition. They need to see some production there. Getting something from their back stops is going to be huge as well because they've gotten next to nothing from their catcher since the All-Star break. Terrence has been a little bit better than Alvarez in 267. Francisco Alvarez has been just brutal. It's been 179 since the break. It's got an OPS under 500. There's a lot of areas for improvement for this Mets team, but this is a series to get right on with the starting pitching you're going to face. You just went up against Miller and Gilbert and Castillo. Now you're going up against stripling Estes. Who's the third one? Mitch Spence. You've got to find a way to beat up on bad starting pitching, not just in this series, but also in the next one. This is a week the Mets have to dominate. You got to go out this week and win five games. Just do it. This is the time. 44 games left in the season. How many wins are the Mets going to need to make it into the post season this year? Typically, you need at least 86 in this wild card format. I mean, last year, actually the Diamondbacks meet with 84, but I would say general rule of thumb get to 86 wins. If that's the case in 44 games, the Mets need to win 25 of them. You go out you win five this week. All right, 20 left to go makes it a lot easier. Got to win this week. Hopefully the Mets can figure out a combination that works. They can shake off that road trip and put themselves in a really good position when they have a great team coming to town to close off this road trip in the Orioles. And then they hit the road for one of the more important road trips of this season against the Padres and the Diamondbacks. This is a pivotal homestand. There's only three left. So if you haven't caught a Mets game yet this year, go out, show your support, cheer on this team. They're going to need the help. So we'll see what happens with this. In the final segment of the show today, I will be talking a little more Mets athletics, but I was on the lack on MLB podcast today. We did a crossover. Paul Francis Sullivan, the host of lockdown MLB has also stepped in to host lockdown A's this year. So he's got a lot of insight there. And we did a series preview on that show that I thought would be good to include at the end of the show today. We didn't get into as much of the numbers as I've broken down in this segment, but he still talks about how the A's have been playing. You go back and forth a little bit. So I will play that for you to close up the show. First things first though, another word from our sponsors. Today's episode is brought to you by supply house. Get supplies from the site that's made for skilled trades, supplyhouse.com. Supplyhouse.com is the reliable way to order plumbing HVAC and electrical products online. But they're easy to use website, which is packed with helpful resources and the latest product info to help get the job done right. 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Grab wonderful pistachios and elevate your snacking game today. Visit wonderfulmostashios.com to learn more. Now this seems kind of weird to tell you to tune in to locked on MLB. But do you know what? Because you are, if you're listening to me right now, you're listening to locked on MLB. But maybe listen to the locked on Mets. I don't know check me out on your pal Salhi. I'm here all week long, five episodes a week of locked on MLB. It's part of the locked on podcast network where it's your team every day. However, if you really like what I'm doing, guess what you should also do? Check out locked on A's because I'm hosting locked on A's five days. That's right. If you like what I'm doing, guess what? You have 10 episodes a week of your pal Salhi hosting here at the locked on podcast network. Even if you're not an A's fan, we're doing some fun things there. It's the last season in Oakland and it's weird. I've an upcoming episode where I go to all the spots where they propose to build stadiums in the Bay area. And guess what? There are no new stadiums in any of those places. And you could have checked me out going to Sacramento where I sat basically on the surface of the sun in a July afternoon game where it was so hot that my phone overheated while trying to record a podcast. So check us out locked on MLB locked on A's. Check out Ryan showed locked on Mets. It's part of the locked on podcast network where it's your team every day. All right. So we're crossing over right now locked on A's locked on Mets and locked on MLB. Everyone's here in this right now. The A's started obviously the A's are a weird team this year. They were horrific. They were grotesque in May in June. And then they were the best team in the American League in July. And they remain a good team after winning that series in Toronto. Brent Rooker can homer it will. And they still and Mason Miller is back from the injured list. No one traded him. They still could pitch. They still can hit. So if Mets fans were circling in the A's series saying, well, there's three easy wins right there. You might be surprised. Where's your thoughts is the A's are seem to be relishing playing the spoiler beating teams like Philadelphia and Houston recently. What are your thoughts and concerns about the bets in a series coming up? It's funny. I for just baseball in the manager editor, I just decided started a talking about the best spoilers down the stretch in the A's were the first team that came to mind because they haven't played great baseball. And there's nothing worse to going into a series. I guess the team that's playing good but has nothing to lose. And yeah, I think Mets fans experienced that last week when the Angels took a series when the Rockies really pushed the Mets. And I said after the Mets won the second game of that series after they lost the first one, I was like, man, just get them out of Colorado. I'd almost want to see a good team because maybe the Mets play up to competition instead of down to competition. Then I met the Mariners over the weekend. I think I'm happy that we're not going to watch Logan Gilbert, Louise Castillo, all those great pitchers in this series. I think that the Mets have an easier task ahead than what they just went through, but it's not just a cakewalk by any stretch. It's not what's going to be the weekend series against the Marlins. This is definitely the tougher of the two series, but it doesn't get any easier after this. The Mets have to win this week because they got the Orioles coming next week to close out their homestead. And then they have made their most important road trip of the season going out to face the Padres and the Diamondbacks. So there's no time to lose series. They have to find a way to beat the A's, but that's not as easy as you would think if you just looked at the total season record. Well, it's been following the A's all year. And Brett Rooker, how he did make the All-Star team, I have absolutely no idea. And I like the fact, I would say, been following the A's the whole season, but I'd like the fact that they didn't do a total fire sale. They did trade, they made the deal with the Mets. They traded Erseg to Kansas City. They made a couple deals, but they kept the Andohar. They kept Rooker. They didn't trade Miller. They didn't trade Estes and some of their other pitchers who have been pitching well. They basically said, no, let's, and Rooker was relieved. Rooker didn't want to be traded. And by the way, here's a message to all the people, the people who comment and things like, was he not want to be on a winner? What does he not want to do with this? First of all, brush the Cheetos off your chest. All right. And maybe, just maybe, it's not exactly convenient to up and move at a heartbeat, sometimes across the country in the middle of the season. But in the case of Brent Rooker, he didn't want to be traded because he revived his career with the A's. He was a DFA dude. He couldn't find a job of Minnesota. He became an all-star caliber pitcher, and he wanted to be part of the A's as the, you know, for the organization that basically rescued his career, he wanted to be there at the end of this weird year to be at the final games in Oakland. He would say, hey, this team turned it around for me. I don't want to be traded in mid-season, so I could be a rental player in Philadelphia or wherever. So if you've not been in that position, kindly shutteth up-eth, all right? You know, they just, you know, it's a pain in the butt to move in mid-season. You know, maybe he wants, maybe he has a sense of loyalty. There's no loyalty in baseball. He was loyal. Now he's a loser. No, you're on your fifth, you know, French bread pizza, and you're calling him a loser. Come on. You know, just, you know, continue playing farmville or whatever and shut up. I got no deal, I don't, but, okay, back to reality. Yeah, I think this is going to be, the A's are playing with a certain swagger, and they're having fun. Lawrence Butler, I don't know who Lawrence Butler is. Lawrence Butler's been hitting a snot out of the ball, and he's been playing like a poor man's Kenny Lofton, basically. You know, Spark at the top of the order, going first to third. You know, they still, obviously they still have holes. This team's probably going to finish with 90-something losses. But even 90-something losses will be a 20-game improvement from last year. Go Sacramento. But anyway, I think that if net fans are only half paying attention, and they think this is the 110-some-out loss team from last year, they're going to be in for rude awakening when Rooker homers. Yeah, no, there is, they have a much better team. And I think their direction was sort of interesting, right? Because everyone, you know, said, all right, well, so all, why not? So everything you can. But at the same time, if you still have pieces that have control, you could build towards something. That front office is still trying to win baseball games and looking at next year and beyond. Well, you know what I mean? Yeah, okay, all right, fine, fine. Well, for the sake of argument, yes. I mean, I'm just saying they have to be doing something, right? They can't, they just because the ownership has given up until they get to Vegas doesn't mean that the front office has. And so it makes some sense to me that they kept Rooker, and ultimately for him too, I would say that, you know, he has a chance here to finish off a great season in Oakland. And then he might be an attractive trade chip in the offseason where he can start a year with a club from the beginning as a big piece of what they're doing. But yeah, this is a A's team that is definitely a lot better than, again, the total record would suggest. And it's not going to be easy at the same time. This is a series if you want to be a playoff team, then that's got to win it. They got to find a way to put some runs on the board. And I think the fact that they had such a rough series in Seattle to me coming back home, I feel like they are going to get going a little bit offensively. It's just a matter of what the pitching can hold up. And we'll see how that ends up working out against an A's lineup to swing in it really well. That's going to be all for today's edition of locked on meds. Thank you for tuning in. If you want to catch the full conversation with myself and Sally again, you find the over at locked on MLB and make sure you tune into tomorrow's show as I'll break down game one of this series. I also want to touch on some prospect notes because Carson Benj has made his professional debut. We'll go through that a little bit. The Mets first round pick finally getting on the field in the Mets uniform and much, much more. If you're listening on the audio side today, make sure you follow rate review wherever you get your podcasts. If you're watching on YouTube, do me a favor, hit that subscribe button. I got a goal to get to 10,000 subs by the end of the season. So I appreciate all of you who continue to subscribe. You can follow me on X at Finkelstein Ryan, follow the show locked on meds. Thank you for making locked on meds. Your first listen every day. Now for your second listener, your second launch, head over to YouTube and check out the first ever 24/7 streaming channel that covers everything. The world sports talking about locked on sports today with your local experts from each team and our legal experts from each league by locked on sports today streaming 24/7 on YouTube. A prime member. You can listen to this locked on podcast and free on Amazon music. Download the Amazon music app today. Delicious meets nutritious in the snack that packs a real protein punch. Wonderful pistachios, one the highest protein nuts out there. Miller Thomas of lockdown diebacks here. And I love these pistachios because each one ounce serving has six grams of protein, giving you over 10% of your daily value. So whether your pistachio purist who loves cracking open every night, or you prefer the convenience of no shell pistachios, wonderful pistachios has got you covered. Grab wonderful pistachios and elevate your snacking game today. 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