Spoiled

After winning the first two games in Washington last weekend, I had a bright thought percolating about how the Mets could be the spoiler going down the stretch if they continued to play well, and they could give some good teams a hard time, and maybe throw a wrench into the playoff hopes of certain teams...And then Sunday night happened and the Mets just went from spoiler to spoiled in the matter of an inning, because since the 8th inning Sunday night, the Mets have yet to wake up and fight back. Monday was an embarrassment of ineptitude and Tuesday was somewhat more of the same, even if for a while the Mets looked like they might be able to pull themselves out of it.

The game tonight was eerily reminiscent of Dillon Gee's ill-fated outing in June, which you probably missed unless you're as ridiculous as I am and stayed up until 1am to see the horrible ending. Carlos Torres, who has acquitted himself reasonably well while basically being a warm body to eat some innings, put forth a strong outing through 6 innings which is all well and good except that, of course, Major League Baseball games are 9 innings long and the Mets aren't very good. By this I mean that it took every ounce of the first 6 and a half innings for the Mets to plate a run, and it took some aggressive baserunning from Eric Young, Jr, who pimped out a triple that was followed by an RBI double from Daniel Murphy in order to accomplish said run. Unfortunately, the Braves took advantage of their remaining turns at bat and opportunistically had a pair of their most obscenely irritating players bash Home Runs off of Torres. After that outburst, the Braves led 3-1 and the Mets had no particular response other than to get some runners on base and leave them there.

You knew it was coming. You knew Torres was only going to keep them down for so long. But you just hoped that the Mets could squeeze one more inning out of him, and of course, it was that one inning that everything blew up on him. The upshot of all this, if there is an upshot to be had, is that the Braves scored in the 7th inning instead of waiting until the 9th inning, which would have just turned the knife a little more.

So, one final game in Atlanta tomorrow afternoon. Thank God. I've had enough of the Braves for a lifetime at this point.