The Mets are in a painful slide that has knocked them out of first place in the NL East, a position the team held for three months before being swept by the red-hot Phillies this weekend, and acting general manager said the team simply has to play better if it wants to save the season.
"Obviously there's plenty of games left and we have a chance to compete and win this division…you can't get too down or too high when things are going well," Scott told reporters on Tuesday. "That said, we've played very mediocre baseball for most of the year. This recent stretch has been much worse than mediocre. We would've taken mediocre at this point. For this stretch it's been unacceptably bad and we need to be better."
There are still just under two months left in the season, but sitting 2.5 games out with key pieces like Jacob deGrom and Francisco Lindor still not available to return, the team as currently constructed has to turn things around in a hurry. The players have maintained their optimism when talking with the media, and while Scott was direct in the team's need to improve, he is also holding out hope that his group will right the ship.
"We're not gonna panic, because you can't do that in this game," Scott said. "Baseball is a tricky sport where it's a precision sport. Football you can get angry and hit a guy harder…you start squeezing the bat too hard or the ball too tightly, you're probably not gonna perform very well. You gotta find that middle ground between a sense of urgency…but you can't be too tight to where you can't perform to your abilities."
The Mets not performing to their typical abilities has been a major factor in their poor play of late. Michael Conforto and Dominic Smith are just two examples of hitters who have not performed to the back of their baseball cards this season, and while Scott knows that has to change, he can't pinpoint why there has been a collective downtick in production.
If the team doesn't find an answer to that question, its playoff drought will likely continue.
"That's the tricky thing, is figuring out why," Scott said. "Most of our hitters are underperforming their career norms. A little part of it is that offense is down across the league, but that' snot explaining our situation…there's never one simple reason…but it can be a lot of different things. It's hard to pinpoint exactly why, but it's usually pretty complex."
Follow Ryan Chichester on Twitter: @ryanchichester1
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