'I believe in this roster': Eppler confident as Mets snap skid

NEW YORK -- A few hours before the Mets snapped an exasperating losing streak, earning a 1-0 victory over the Rockies on Friday to win for just the third time in a dozen games, general manager Billy Eppler sat in the Citi Field dugout and defended a ballclub that appeared fraught with issues.

“I believe in this roster,” said Eppler, the man who constructed it. “I believe in this team and the players that are here. There’s too much track record. There’s too much these guys have accomplished.”

Though this is largely the same group that won 101 games a year ago, the Mets produced a .500 record over the first five weeks of the season. For the most expensive assemblage of baseball players in Major League history, it wasn’t nearly good enough. But Eppler pushed all that aside, chalking such struggles up to small sample size and the like. Baseball, he said, borrowing a favored phrase of executives everywhere, is best understood when “taking a step back and trying to look at it from a 10,000-foot view.”

“There’s times of the year where you overperform in 10-game, 15-game stretches, and there’s times when you underperform in those stretches,” Eppler said. “So it’s kind of [about] striking a balance there and not succumbing to the recency bias.”

Inside the clubhouse, players offered more urgency. Kodai Senga, who signed with the Mets as a free agent in part because he liked their chances to compete, summed things up thusly: “L's don't look good for this team. We don't deserve L’s. We shouldn’t lose.”

So Senga did his part Friday to change the trend, overcoming four walks in the first three innings to pitch six shutout innings against the Rockies. Pitching on eight days’ rest as the Mets do their best to mimic a Japanese pitching schedule, Senga won for the fourth time in six MLB starts.

Call it a mini catharsis for the team, and certainly for Brandon Nimmo, who committed a key baserunning mistake in the ninth inning on Thursday as the Mets were swept in three games earlier this week in Detroit. Entering the night in a prolonged offensive slump, Nimmo homered for the only run off Rockies starter Antonio Senzatela, then added a double, a walk and a diving catch in center field.

“You’ve got to be like a goldfish in this game and have a short-term memory,” Nimmo said.

Like most Mets, Nimmo is not blind to context. He knows the Mets should be better. He wants to be better. He and his teammates returned to Citi Field on Friday feeling a bit of heat.

“We wanted to win really bad today,” said reliever Adam Ottavino, who pitched a scoreless ninth for the save. “Kodai did a great job. We didn’t want it to be for nothing.”

Even so, Friday’s victory was no panacea for what ails the Mets. The win seemed to require significant effort: a season-high 101 pitches from Senga over six innings; usage of New York’s three highest leverage relievers; and a lucky break in the eighth when Ryan McMahon’s potential game-tying single struck a baserunner for an automatic out. Even in the later innings of a game the Mets were winning, fans booed and jeered each microfailure.

It was, if nothing else, another data point for better and for worse. Like many GMs, Eppler tends to divide seasons into thirds. The first third is for evaluation, as he determines where the roster’s strengths and weaknesses lie. The second third is for action, as he tries to fix what shortcomings he can. The final third is for competition, as he watches to see what his creation can achieve.

The Mets, over the first third of the season, have demonstrated their share of weaknesses, from an underperforming lineup to an injury-riddled rotation that, statistically, has been one of the league’s worst. But they still have time to improve, perhaps to show Eppler they deserve the type of Trade Deadline upgrades that can change their narrative. To that end, Friday was a start -- not necessarily the most convincing one, but a step in the right direction nonetheless.

“It’s a club with a lot of experience,” Eppler said. “It’s a club with a lot of know-how. So we’re looking forward to continuing to watch these guys go.”