The Mets are spending the final stretch of this season making a clear bet on their young players: let them stumble, let them feel it, and trust they’ll be better for it later.
That was the backdrop Saturday afternoon, when A.J. Ewing snapped out of a rough stretch by launching a second-inning, two-run homer in the Mets’ 9-5 loss to the Giants.
The blast, his first since July 8, traveled 407 feet to right center off Anthony Molina’s knee-high changeup. Ewing finished 1-for-2 with two walks, a solid line that came after an especially rough 20-game stretch in which he was hitting .145/.217/.375.
Just a day earlier, interim manager Andy Green had called Friday’s decision to bench Ewing a “48-hour reset,” and the point was obvious: this is part of the process for a rookie.
“This will serve him well,” Green said of Ewing’s struggles. “This will serve these guys well in the long run.”
He added of Saturday’s game, “He was really back to the place discipline version of himself that we know him to be…I think [the two walks are also] indicative of him being in a good spot and trusting who he is.”
The Mets, for now, are willing to live with the growing pains. They’re not rushing to protect every young player from a rough patch, because the bigger picture matters more than the temporary hit to confidence. The idea is simple: if these players are going to become real pieces of the future, they need to learn how to handle getting knocked down.
There are plenty of moments this season when a different version of the Mets might have reacted differently. Carson Benge could have been demoted after hitting .189 in the first month.
Nolan McLean might have been yanked when he carried a 4.01 ERA into the final days of June. And on Saturday, the club could have gone another direction with Zac Thornton after he gave up two homers in a three-run fifth, even though he stayed in and got lefty Bryce Eldridge to double before the next batter popped out to end the inning.
The six earned runs Thornton allowed were the first time in his major-league career he had given up more than four.
“I’ll just continue to throw strikes,” Thornton said. “I think baseball is going to happen to a lot of people.”
That same patience is showing up with Jonah Tong, who is slated to start against the Marlins on Monday. The Mets could have kept him in the minors, especially after he was rushed to the majors last year and finished with a 7.71 ERA. Instead, he’s getting another real shot.
Tong had to work through early-season struggles after expanding his pitch mix to add more east-west movement, and he was also dealing with command issues while in Triple-A Syracuse. His numbers there sat at a 4.45 ERA, but the recent trend has been better: a 2.20 ERA over his last eight starts, including the outing in which he allowed five home runs.
“He’s here,” Green said Saturday. “I don’t anticipate he’s going to be gone from here.
He’s going to be with us. He’s going to take the ball and continue to take the baseball.
I think we’re encouraged by that opportunity for him, and we want to see him come up and compete and be himself.”
President of baseball operations David Stearns made the same point Friday, saying, “We’ve had a lot of belief in these players,” and adding, “We’ve placed a lot of trust in these younger players, but you never know how it’s going to go…To see each of them in various ways bounce back from, whether it’s a down couple of starts, or a down start to the season or a down month, and stay with the type of level of determination that we see really good big leaguers have, as much as anything, that’s been encouraging.”
For the Mets, that’s the lesson tucked inside all the losses: failure is part of the job. The challenge is learning how to turn it into something useful.
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