Enough is enough when it comes to Mets getting hit by pitches

It has been a sore subject, literally and figuratively, for two years. Buck Showalter talks a lot about how his team has been hit by pitches more than anyone in baseball and he’s not happy about it.

Yet the Mets never do anything about it either.

Wednesday night seemed like the right time to say "enough is enough," after Jeff McNeil was hit square in the back by a 96 mph fastball from Carlos Rodon, and reacted angrily by spiking his helmet as he fell to the ground, sending it bouncing away from him.

McNeil said after the 3-1 loss to the Yankees in the Bronx that he knew the pitch wasn’t intentional, that Rodon apologized to him, but as Showalter has said many times, at some point it doesn’t matter if it’s intentional when your players keep getting hit.

Outside the visiting clubhouse Wednesday night, however, Showalter dismissed the notion of retaliation when I asked him if the Mets need to do something to protect their hitters and let the other team know there’s a price to pay for all the hit-by-pitches.

He referenced the Rodon pitch being unintentional, despite what he’s said in the past, and asked, “So why would we do it? Two wrongs make a right?”

“Not necessarily,” I said, “but at some point teammates might expect protection from their own guys.”

“I’ve been on both sides of that,” Showalter responded. “Internally we talk about it a lot, but it’s not something I’m going to talk about here.”

And that was that.

Look, I know we’re a lifetime away from 1986, when the soon-to-be-champion Mets turned brawling into an art form, with Darryl Strawberry or Ray Knight charging the mound seemingly every other week when hit by a pitch, and they developed a mentality that nobody was going to mess with them.

Four decades later, nobody charges the mound anymore, mainly because the penalties are so stiff in terms of suspensions and fines, and to some extent the same applies to throwing at hitters.

But maybe there is still something to intimidating other teams with force, even if it merely makes a pitcher think twice about coming inside once too often on Pete Alonso.

And for sure I think there is still something to building a trust in a clubhouse, developing a winning chemistry, that sometimes demands pitchers stand up for their teammates when a team has been hit as often as this one.

Especially for a team that is going nowhere fast like the 2023 Mets. Is there more to their underachievement than players simply not performing? Do they need someone to rally the troops before the season is completely gone?

Would a brawl be the worst thing to happen to this bunch?

And let’s make it clear: I’m not condoning throwing at anyone’s head or anything like it. Pitchers know how to get the job done professionally without putting anyone in danger, basically by aiming at the hitter’s backside, just as a way of sending a message.

In any case, like Showalter, McNeil wanted no part of the retaliation question.

At his locker he said he had reacted angrily at the hit-by-pitch simply because he was frustrated getting hit in the middle of the back by a fastball hurts. But, no, he said, he didn’t think a pitcher necessarily needed to come to his defense.

“We have been hit a lot,” he said, “but I don’t think we’re in a position to lose players either (to suspension). We need everybody here if we’re going to make a push for the postseason.”

That all sounds good, but if the Mets have a push in them, maybe it has to start with playing with more of an edge, with more day-to-day intensity.

Let’s face it, something hasn’t looked quite right with this team all year.

If anything, that embarrassing finish to the 2022 season, blowing the division in Atlanta and then bowing out meekly in the Wild Card series, figured to give the ’23 Mets the drive and incentive to take the next step toward a championship.

You can blame the 47-54 record on the individual performances of just about everybody on the roster, yet there have also been too many nights when the Mets have looked unfocused on the ball field, making mental and physical mistakes and losing games in every way possible.

I never want to believe that pro athletes don’t care enough, because almost to a man they wouldn’t have gotten this far if they didn’t.

Yet these Mets haven’t offered much evidence, at least outwardly, that they have a lot of fight in them.

And by allowing this narrative of the poor, poor, picked-on Mets being the pin cushion for MLB pitchers to continue, well, right or wrong, it only adds to that perception.