Mets' pitching success does not stem from luck or magic

Caveats have followed this Mets pitching staff since the beginning.

That they’re injury-riddled (they are). That they’re exceeding expectations (they are). And then there’s the biggest leap of all — the one that says regression seems inevitable.

It’s hard not to feel that way when you’re watching Tylor Megill get lit up by the Rays, as he was in the fourth inning of the Mets' 8-4 loss on Saturday. Or the day before, when Paul Blackburn — slated to take injured Kodai Senga’s spot in the rotation — got walloped for four runs as the Rays came back to win.

There are other aspects, too: Although the Mets entered Saturday with the best ERA in baseball, no one — not even president of baseball operations David Stearns — could have predicted that a team that lost a slew of pitchers to injury, including three starters and a setup man, would have a 2.88 ERA this late in the season. If you’re into expected ERA (Stearns is not), you’ll see that Clay Holmes, Reed Garrett and David Peterson are all outperforming that number.

And while Citi Field likes to swat away homers like an anthropomorphic Dikembe Mutombo in the colder months, you can expect a lot of those same balls to start going out as it warms up.

It’s worrisome, yes. Frankie Montas (lat) is living his own personal hell in Syracuse, imbuing minor-league hitters with the type of confidence money can’t buy. The Senga news — a low-grade hamstring strain — is relatively good, but it'll likely be at least a month before we see him again. Sean Manaea and his ailing oblique keep on trucking, but he’s still a ways away, too.

But there’s a difference between concern and panic, and the Mets are nowhere close to the latter.

A game or two can be chalked up to “luck” — a bad command day, a wild hop, a slipped grip — but a season is the product of probability. You can’t luck your way into the best record in baseball and, by that tack, you can’t fully luck your way into the best ERA in baseball, either.

So fans can take solace in the process despite the ever-familiar anxiety that kicks in when you watch a carousel of Rays circle around Megill like larger, more predatory fish (no offense to rays).

It’s no secret that Stearns historically has eschewed long-term contracts for a reason: We live in an era in which pitchers specialize early, log plenty of innings before going pro and often are expected to throw exceedingly hard while also carrying an expansive repertoire. In other words, a lot of them can be bad long-term investments.

That, though, carries risks, too. Because who knows if Montas pans out? Who knows if Saturday’s Megill is the Megill we’re getting from here on out? (It was a remarkably ugly 3 2/3 innings in which he allowed six runs, three of which were earned, and included a fourth inning that featured four hits, a homer, a hit by pitch, two walks and a self-committed error.)

But Stearns also bristles at the notion that his pitchers are “reclamation projects.” His perspective is understandable: Sure, the Mets have what appears to be a very advanced pitching lab, but it’s not full of magicians.

“I think it undersells these guys when we look at them or label them reclamation projects,” Stearns said Friday. “The common thread among all of them is that they’re good pitchers, they have good stuff, they’ve had success at the major-league level and maybe there are things that they’ve gotten away from or maybe there are things that we noticed that we can help them get a little better at.”

Their success begins with talent and teachability.

The former is a credit to Stearns and the evaluators around him, and increasingly, it appears the latter is a credit to 1. Pitchers who are smart enough and/or humble enough to learn and 2. A coaching staff that’s capable of meeting them where they are, and growing from there.

Pitching coach Jeremy Hefner gets a lot of the glory, and Carlos Mendoza and Stearns agree he’s been impactful. But there are men who fly under the radar, including assistant pitching coach Desi Druschel, who was poached from the Yankees this past offseason.

Take, for instance, Holmes, who, during his introductory news conference, mentioned Druschel as one of the factors that went into his decision to sign with the Mets.

“He’s a guy who’s super-dependable, super-consistent” when both were on the Yankees, he said. “He makes sure we had every resource available to us. With that, he’s very knowledgeable about a lot of things but specifically, two things that pertain a lot to me, which was pitch design and workload management.”

Mendoza, who also worked with Druschel on the Yankees, said his coach has evolved over the years.

“When [we] first met in the minor leagues, [his strength] was more the pitch design and the numbers [that] come out of the technology,” Mendoza said. “But as he continued to develop as a coach and then spending a couple of years at the big-league level with him and I saw him coaching — not only the analytics and all that but mechanics as well, and having a feel for the game as well, and being in the dugout . . . He continues to get better.”

He and Hefner have an organic relationship, Mendoza said, with Druschel essentially being Hefner’s “bench coach.” The collaborative relationship extends beyond those two, with Stearns mentioning bullpen coach Jose Rosado, strategy coach Danny Barnes and catching coach Glenn Sherlock and lauding them for being able to “communicate with pitchers . . .  meeting them where they are in their careers, [learning] how they want to get better and working with them to be the best versions of themselves.”

Again, it’s not magic, and that’s a good thing. Because magic is fleeting. This approach, despite recent stumbles, is grounded in reality. And reality is worth believing in. At least for a little longer.

By Laura Albanese

laura.albanese@newsday.com@AlbaneseLaura

Laura Albanese is a reporter, feature writer and columnist covering local professional sports teams; she began at Newsday in 2007 as an intern.