New York Mets’ Player of the Week July 24-July 30: Rene Rivera
It was supposed to be a week of celebration for the New York Mets. Mike Piazza was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame on Sunday and the festivities would culminate in an evening honoring the great catcher on Saturday evening. Instead, the Mets fell further out of the playoff race with a series of frustrating defeats in which their offense was a complete joke. This week’s honor for Mets’ Player of the Week goes to of all things, a backup catcher. However, Rene Rivera was no joke this week at the dish.
Courtesy: nypost.com
Although he is not the starter, Rivera is outperforming the regular catcher, Travis d’Arnaud, even when taking the latter’s disabled list stint into account. Rivera has doubled d’Arnaud’s home run output and has almost twice as many RBI’s in 46 fewer at-bats. The 33-year old veteran played in only three games over this past week but he was a force in two of them. He delivered the big blow on Tuesday with a two-run home run, supplying the only offense as the Mets dropped the first game of a doubleheader by a score of 3-2. On Thursday, Rivera’s double in the second accounted for his team’s only run as New York lost another excruciating game by the score of 2-1. Besides Jacob deGrom, Rivera was the only bright spot with three hits in four at-bats. The fact that Rene Rivera is this week’s Mets’ Player of the Week shows you how sorry the state of affairs is in Queens.
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