MILWAUKEE — When Starling Marte swiped second base in Game 2 of the NL Wild Card series between the Mets and the Milwaukee Brewers on Wednesday night, it almost felt as though the Amazins’ were sending their opponents a message.
The Brewers might like to steal a lot of bases, but the Mets can do it too.
The basepaths have become a focal point of this series, which makes sense given that offense has been somewhat hard to come by. Taking an extra base makes all the difference, and the Brewers like to take a lot of them.
However, the intention behind Marte’s swipe wasn’t to show Milwaukee anything. It was simply an opportune time to run.
“At the end of the day, we can’t try to do what they do,” Marte said Thursday at American Family Field through a team translator. “We have to play our game the way we know how.”
Much has been made about Marte’s season and what kind of player he can be at 35 years old. The right fielder was so important to the Mets in 2022, but groin injuries derailed his 2023 season and he missed time this year with a knee injury. While he didn’t quite look like the player he did in 2022, he wasn’t always far off when healthy.
Marte’s range has diminished in the outfield, but he’s still got a cannon of an arm, which is important when facing a team like the Brewers. Hitters aren’t going to be as inclined to take extra bases to test his arm.
And with one more season left on his contract, it will be important for the Mets next season as well.
“We know that his arm is an above-average arm and he can shut the running down because guys respect his arm,” said manager Carlos Mendoza. “I feel like his routes, the way he’s getting to baseballs is pretty good.”
Marte’s -8 OAA doesn’t exactly speak to good route running. He was accused of being lazy in right field earlier this season and the conversation grew louder when the Mets were in London, when a misplayed ball cost the Mets the first game of the series.
The sun was a factor in a stadium made for soccer with a partially enclosed roof, strange sight lines and more seats than venues in the U.S. typically hold. But what we didn’t know at the time was that Marte was playing through a knee injury. Marte missed nearly two months of the season with what the Mets initially called a bone bruise. The actual injury is still somewhat mysterious, but Marte said doctors told him it was an overuse injury. His knee was close to fracturing.
“It was a struggle for him at the beginning,” Mendoza said. “He wasn’t getting to balls, whether it was because of these routes or [his knee], but you’ve got to give him credit because he’s been really good defensively since he got back from the injured list.”
There were questions about what kind of player he would be at his age after two major lower-body injuries in two years. The questions were valid given his regressing numbers, and Marte himself had the same ones queries.
“I think first when you get hit with a lower-body injury, you may feel like you may be a little bit more limited to being able to do what you want to do,” Marte said. “But I listened to the trainers. I was able to recover the right way. When I ended up coming back and I started practicing, started ramping up, started playing rehab games, I started to feel good. When I came back, they saw me stealing bases, they saw me playing hard the way that I always have in my career…
“At that point, it’s more of just doing what I’ve always done because if I slow down, that may actually be worse for me.”
The Mets protected him by managing his playing time after he returned on Aug. 18. Marte rarely played more than two games back-to-back and Tyrone Taylor was often moved to right field late in games.
Now that the Mets are in the postseason, the restrictions are gone. The Mets hope they’ll be gone to some extent next season as well.
“I think this is the first time for him playing three [in a row] in a while, but I continue to check with him and he knows what’s in front of us,” Mendoza said.
Make no mistake, Marte can still run. His sprint speed might not be what it was used to, but he’s adept at picking up on pitchers’ cues and getting good jumps. He’s been hitting the ball hard over the last month and the Mets have liked his at-bats.
He’s not the Marte of 2022, but this is as close as he’s come.
“I like the way he’s moving,” Mendoza said. “A stolen base yesterday tells you that he’s feeling a lot better. But, yes, I think this is probably the best version of Marte that we’ve seen since he got hurt.”
