Inside Baseball

When Mo Is Less  

The Mets' winter spending spree, which included Mo Vaughn, hasn't paid off

By Stephen Cannella

The Mets made so many off-season moves to punch up their offense that at least one of them figured to work. It hasn't happened, and the club has hovered around .500 for most of the season. Leftfielder Roger Cedeño, who was signed as a free agent to fill the leadoff spot, was hitting .242 with a .308 on-base percentage at week's end. Second baseman Roberto Alomar, acquired in a trade with Cleveland, was batting .267, 38 points below his career average. Rightfielder Jeromy Burnitz, who was picked up in a trade with the Brewers, was hitting .203 and had no home runs and three RBIs since May 25.

Vaughn's slow bat is one reason that he had struck out 56 times this season. Chuck Solomon

But perhaps the biggest disappointment was first baseman Mo Vaughn, whose slump had reached Titanic proportions -- his average was sinking fast, and he was taking others down with him. Three weeks ago the Mets' struggling first baseman, who was hitting .237 through Sunday, arranged to meet with Mike Easler, his hitting coach with the Red Sox in 1993 and '94 and currently a roving minor league instructor for the Reds. Easler and Vaughn got together in a New York City hotel room to work on the slugger's swing, a highly unusual move. Easler drew a reprimand from Cincinnati for tutoring an opposing player, and New York hitting coach Dave Engle's already tenuous position became more shaky. Engle was fired on June 10 with the Mets hitting .244 (14th in the league).

The 34-year-old Vaughn had only four home runs and 21 RBIs until his game-winning, three-run shot against the Yankees on Sunday night ended a homer drought dating to May 27. Worse, he had struck out 56 times in 189 at bats.

When they acquired Vaughn from the Angels for righthander Kevin Appier in December, the Mets believed that Vaughn was healthy after missing all of last season with a ruptured biceps tendon in his left arm and that he would approach his 1995 American League MVP performance (.300, 39 homers, 126 RBIs). Vaughn's comeback was delayed by a fractured right hand that sidelined him for two weeks in April, and since then he has often looked lethargic and lost at the plate. Says Mets infielder John Valentin, Vaughn's teammate with the Red Sox and in college, "I've never seen him have a stretch like this. Never."

Scouts say Vaughn's bat speed is slow and that he appears timid at the plate, often letting hittable pitches go by without swinging. When Vaughn was in Boston, he was known for using an inside-out swing to poke pitches in on his hands off the Green Monster in leftfield. Now that his bat has slowed and his timing is off, he's lucky to make contact on inside pitches. "I don't know whether I've been overanalyzing or not," Vaughn says. "It's a black-and-white situation. You just have to get hits."

Issue date: June 24, 2002

For more Inside Baseball see this week's issue of Sports Illustrated, on newsstands Wednesday, June 19. Click here to subscribe to SI.

 

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