The Mets failed with their starting rotation
There was no actual moment when we crossed a line with this failure. The team appeared to do a lot of things right in the offseason. There was depth. There was talent. Everything looked surmountable.
What the team didn’t anticipate was the lengthy loss of Jacob deGrom, continued IL stint and rehabs from Noah Syndergaard, and the absolute collapse of just about everyone else in the second half.
A far more minor blow than some others the rotation received, they even lost Joey Lucchesi and David Peterson to season-ending injuries. What could go wrong, did go sideways.
The worst part about it all might be that there’s no one single person to blame. A lot of what made this a failure is the unexpected. Taijuan Walker was definitely pitching above expectations in the first half. That doesn’t help when we factor in how rough it has been to watch him pitch post-All-Star Break. Tylor Megill has also seemingly hit a wall while Carlos Carrasco hasn’t been the reliable veteran starter we hoped he could be.
It was an ugly season for the Mets starting pitchers as a whole. It’s tough to imagine, in only early July, deGrom was on his way to an MVP and one of the most magnificently pitched years in MLB history.