Willed To Lose

The Mets seem to find an awful lot of ways to lose road games, usually by coughing up a late lead or pecking and scraping back from a deficit only to have some schmo hit a walk-off HR in extra innings, but I think yesterday's game is the first time this season that bad vibes caused the Mets to lose.

Consider that Johan Santana just pitched his heart out for 7 innings and 123 pitches, and by all rights deserved to win the game. Consider also that the Mets scratched out 1 run and spent the rest of the game not hitting and looking their usual putrid selves with bats in their hands. Consider also that these Padres are one of those annoying teams that creeps and pecks and scrapes and gnaws until there's nothing left but a carcass. Add all that up and you just had a bad feeling that the Mets weren't going to win this game 1-0. And I'm pretty sure that about 95% of Mets fans felt this way. Therefore, the collective stink just willed the Mets to lose. One strike away and Frankie Rodriguez naturally allowed David Eckstein and his .238 OPS to hit a dinky little single to score the tying run.

It would have been very convenient if Eckstein had scored on Gonzalez's subsequent double, because it would have spared us the prolonged misery. The game was already dead, I figured it was just a matter of time before someone like Chase Headley or Will Venable or Luis Salazar hit a walk-off HR to win the game. But nooooooooo, the Mets rose up and threw Eckstein out, thereby allowing them to spend two more innings looking foolish before Adrian Gonzalez hit the almost totally predictable walk-off grand slam.

These losses are frustrating, but what can you do when the Mets basically fell victim to their own self-fulfilling prophecy? It's OK, though. They're coming home. Expect them to win as many games this homestand as they lost on this road trip.