Plenty of individual players have been in spotlighted headlines in a recent stretch for the Mets. The latest came when Drew Smith was ejected from the opening game of the Subway Series against the Yankees on Tuesday for a sticky substance violation. The ejection for “sticky stuff” comes with an automatic 10-game suspension. This marks the second violation for New York this season after Max Scherzer was suspended in April.
Buck Showalter addressed Smith’s ejection and the Mets’ experience with these violations.
“It has a lot of similarities,” Showalter said. “It changes some things that you have to do out of the bullpen. It puts an added need on people to pitch.”
“I tend to believe people,” Showalter added on Tuesday’s ejection. “I tend to believe Drew and I tend to believe Bill [Miller]. It’s tough to take the emotion out of it and look at things logically. They’re trying to be consistent. I think we all understand what they’re trying to accomplish. There’s something to be said for randomness too. There’s different circumstances because of them.”
The repeated violations from the Mets does bring up questions about the process of violations. While Showalter admitted he has his own questions, in-house accountability remains important.
“Four of the five in baseball have been Mets with two in Triple-A. I can do that math. One of the questions I asked is why I shouldn’t feel that way. You take each case. I don’t try to get into those conspiracy theories. I do look in the mirror and say, ‘Are we doing something wrong that we need to fix?’ That’s where I start with it.”
“It’s an uphill battle,” Showalter said when asked if appealing these suspensions is worth it. “That’s a nice way to put it. It’s just some isolated cases. I have some very personal feelings about it. Where we are, it doesn’t do anybody any good to air those. Everything that I look through is what’s best for the New York Mets. Having Max or [Smith] not with us is not good for us. There are things you have to wear.”
The New York manager also responded to the break from using Daniel Vogelbach in the lineup and gave an update on the left-handed bat.
“He’s in the process of meeting that criteria,” Showalter said. "He is getting close. He understands the job description of playing in the big leagues and in different environments. You control it. You can make it positive very quickly. It’s the David Cone theory. If they’re going to embrace me, I have to give them something to embrace me about. I don’t think that Daniel thinks that way that someone is picking on him. He’s frustrated that he hasn’t given them something to embrace. He’s done some good things here. Just obviously not as much as he’d like and has done in the past.”
With player availability shuffling, the Mets look to take the back half of the two-game set against the Yankees to split the first half of the Subway Series before the teams reconvene in the Bronx in July.