Laura Albanese: Mets rookie A.J. Ewing can use Nolan McLean's blueprint to survive first slump
A.J. Ewing of the Mets reacts after a swing during the second inning against the San Diego Padres at Citi Field on Tuesday. Credit: Jim McIsaac
There was always going to be a stretch like this, though that likely was little consolation as A.J. Ewing sat in the visitor’s dugout at Rate Field on Sunday, contemplating the hellish half-hour he had just endured — and possibly the hellish last two weeks.
With a chance to give the Mets the lead with the score tied and the bases loaded in the ninth, he struck out swinging. In the bottom of the inning, he jumped just a hair too soon on a home run by Tristan Peters that smacked off the top of the wall to give the White Sox a 2-1 win.
It would have been a spectacular play if he had made it, but when the indignities begin to add up, you don’t think about how improbable that catch would have been — only that it marks another failure at the end of a long string of them.
You don’t think that it was Kodai Senga’s 3-and-1 meatball that lost the Mets the game, only that you couldn't give your team what it needed.
Ewing is 6-for-53 in his last 14 games. He’s 21 years old. He’s the centerfielder of the future.
But just like Nolan McLean before him and Carson Benge at the outset of the season, Ewing will have to navigate the brutality of a sport built on failure. And like them, there’s every reason to believe that he’ll be able to climb out of it.
In truth, he had about one hittable pitch in his ninth-inning at-bat against reliever Grant Taylor and simply got beaten by a 98.6-mph heater at the very top of the strike zone. He wore his misery plainly as he trudged back to the dugout.
Speaking last week after Ewing had struck out three times, interim manager Andy Green underlined the self-perpetuating nature of slumps.
“You don’t get a few hits . . . and then you feel like you need to make something happen, so you end up out of the strike zone more than you normally are,” he said. “It’s kind of classic in baseball. Everybody goes through it. It’s his first time going through it at the major-league level. I’m confident he’ll come out of it . . . Part of this game is his ability to control his heartbeat in big situations, and he has that ability.”
Organizationally, the Mets have made it a point to identify and foster players who exhibit the mental toughness needed to survive in suboptimal conditions.
Right now, the template is McLean. Thrown into the fire last year, he made his major-league debut as the team around him swan-dived into oblivion. He rose to the occasion, and when he struggled early on this season, pitching to a 4.21 ERA during the first two months, he figured that out, too.
Since then, he’s been exactly as advertised and would be a true Rookie of the Year candidate if not for his slow start. He has completed six innings in 11 of his last 12 starts and allowed no runs, one hit and four walks with six strikeouts on Sunday. He has a 1.97 ERA in his last 10 starts.
After Opening Day, Benge’s batting average didn’t crack .200 until May 6. After a two-hit day Sunday — one that included him scoring the tying run on Jared Young’s single in the ninth — he’s hitting .278.
There is every reason to believe Ewing possesses that exact makeup. Andrew Christie, the team’s director of player development, told Newsday last week that identifying that sort of internal resilience has “been a concerted effort for a while.” Ewing was among those identified in that group, which is why the organization promoted him after only 12 games with Triple-A Syracuse.
So as disappointed as Ewing may be with his recent returns, this has every chance to be a prime learning experience as the Mets play out the season. Stretches like these are inevitable, and surviving them is the key to survival in this game.
The franchise certainly has confidence in him: After playing Ewing in left to get Luis Robert Jr. reps at the only outfield position he’s ever played, Green has steadily moved Robert to left — something that occurred again on Sunday. Green has said keeping Ewing in center “is important for our future.”
Ewing didn’t magically lose the plate discipline that got him here. And he hasn’t let his slump at the plate affect him defensively. He remains good-humored, though he certainly wasn’t smiling Sunday.
But if he doubts his ability to escape this slump, he can look to his left at a teammate who did it just fine, and out to the mound at another who became this roster’s benchmark for rookie resilience.
Laura Albanese is the Mets beat writer for Newsday. She's been covering MLB since 2014 after starting at Newsday as an intern seven years earlier.
