The Futile Three

Starting with Wednesday Night's game, there were three games left on my 15-Game plan. Believe it or not, I'd planned to go to all 3, and I had several offers from friends and colleagues who wanted to go with me. If you simply judged things by the people I know, you would think the Mets were the hottest ticket in town.

The Mets should probably try reaching out to them, because when I arrived at the game tonight, there appeared to be more people outside Citi Field scalping tickets than going in to the game.

Inside the stadium, the crowd seemed rather mild. It's a recycled comment, but whatever the paid attendance was for tonight's game, I would cut that in half and then cut it in half again, because I'd be surprised if there were over 10,000 people at the game. We were there looking to see the future, in the name of Matt Harvey, but also to see if the Mets could back him up with a few runs and pull themselves out of the miserable streak they've been on. They also might have been looking to see Stephen Strasburg's final start of the season, but Davey Johnson pulled the plug on him last week.

We got one out of two.

Matt Harvey did his damndest to keep the Mets afloat, striking out 10 over his 5+ innings of work, and looking rather good doing it in his next to last start of the season. He was also helped out by Robert Carson, who rather neatly cleaned up the mess Harvey left in the 6th. The rest of the bullpen did a good job as well. The pitching, in general, wasn't the problem.

But, of course, the Mets were done in by a pair of solo Home Runs. Try as they might to respond to those Home Runs, the Mets could generate no more than 8 measly singles off of 6 National pitchers, and none of them in enough of a sequence to score any runs. So, basically, the Mets were screwed once Zimmerman's Home Run went out in the 4th, and Ian Desmond's HR in the 8th was just pouring salt on the open wound.

Sigh. A 2-0 loss that lasted 3 hours and 12 minutes, and a boring 3 hours and 12 minutes at that. I enjoy going to Baseball games quite a bit, and late in the season you realize how fleeting it is. So, two more games to go for the season, unless there's a random game I don't have tickets for mixed in there. I don't have high hopes for these games, but I'd like to think that at least they might be more entertaining than the game I watched tonight.