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If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all. Try telling that to talking heads on television. Steve Phillips didn’t listen to the sage advice we all began to learn in kindergarten. How could he? His job is to talk baseball. He didn’t have too many kind things to say about the New York Mets on his recent MLB Network appearance.
.@StevePhillipsGM thinks the Mets are one of the “least improved teams” from the offseason and predicts them to finish 3rd in the NL East 😳#MLBNHotStove reacts to the Mets taking a cautious approach with a handful of their players early in Spring Training. pic.twitter.com/zZWcidHFoV
— MLB Network (@MLBNetwork) February 18, 2026
Phillips sees the Mets as a third place team who’ll miss Pete Alonso. It’s a fair enough belief. Preseason is the time to make proclamations like this.
Calling them one of the “least improved” measured against where they finished last year is a debate because they didn’t really do anything other than shuffle players in and out. What’s most confusing about Phillips’ critique is why he has such a problem with the Mets slow-playing guys through the early days of spring training action.
The Mets are being cautious about players with injury histories and Steve Phillips doesn’t like it for some reason
Holding back Luis Robert Jr. and Jorge Polanco feels necessary. Robert ended last year on the IL. Polanco has had his own track record of getting hurt and missing time. If the Mets have identified something with Robert’s lower half to suggest building strength can help keep him on the field, you don’t allow him to play in games until at least a week into March. Why risk anything?
This part of Phillips’ analysis just seems to fall into the Buck Showalter family of disagreeing for the sake of arguing. The 2022-23 manager spoke about the state of the game today as well as the Mets specifically with some old-hat philosophies including why there shouldn’t be more than 60 players in spring training.
Robert is someone the Mets need to be cautious with early on because of his regular IL stints. One season of exceeding 110 games is preposterous at this point. He’s also coming off a season-ending injury.
Polanco is 32 and not a regular to play the number of games the Mets were used to with Alonso. Having him “midseason ready to produce right now” is an unneeded ask of Polanco a few days before spring training. What happened to saving it for when games matter?
Of all the things to criticize the Mets for, being mindful of a player’s health isn’t it.