Flailing Away

There are many ways to lose at Baseball. The Mets, lately, seem to be adept at finding them. Tuesday night, they basically bored themselves to death in a 4-hour stinker. Wednesday, I was on hand to watch them get a multitude of singles, often in the same inning, yet only manage to net 3 runs for their 13-hit effort and wind up losing again to the Dodgers, 4-3.

On a night that I was tired from a long day at work, the Mets also looked tired when there were men on base. Only once did they go down in order for the night, but against Hyun-Jin Ryu and his large and loud bevy of supporters, they managed nary a key hit. Ryu struck out 9 Mets in his 6 innings of work, enough to offset the 9 hits he scattered. 8 of said 9 hits were singles. The 9th was Eric Campbell's first Major League Home Run, which brought the Mets to within a run in the 6th inning, and yet that one run sort of felt like too wide a gulf for the Mets to cross. Not that they didn't try. Wilmer Flores followed Campbell's Homer with one of his three hits, but Ryu followed by striking out Anthony Recker to squash the threat.

Flores was one of three Mets to pick up three hits on the night. Juan Lagares was another, he tried to kick start rallies in the 7th and 9th innings, first by bunting for a hit (then getting erased on a Daniel Murphy Fielder's Choice), then by tripling and scoring on a Murphy groundout. David Wright also had 3 hits, one of them a 7th inning double that barely ticked off of Puig's glove. Had it rolled farther away from him, perhaps it would have allowed Murphy to score the tying run, but alas it did not, and Puig, who boasts an arm not to be trifled with, retrieved the ball before too much damage was done (not surprisingly, Chris Young followed with an inning-ending groundout). Wright was at the plate in the 9th as well, but struck out to end the game.

The victim of all this on the pitching side of the ledger was Jacob deGrom, who in his second Major League start pitched admirably well despite getting tagged for three truly monstrous Home Runs from Adrian Gonzalez, Yasiel Puig and Hanley Ramirez. Outside of those three bad pitches, deGrom looked fine from where I was sitting; just as good as he had against the Yankees and perhaps proving himself worthy of a continued spot in the rotation. He also chipped in with his second hit in as many games, if such a thing is worthy of consolation.

There is, I suppose, a limit to how worked up you can get over games like this. It's frustrating to see them get hit after hit after hit and then have someone kill the rally by striking out or hitting into a Double Play, but that's what happens on a team that's scuffling. But what can you do. It's the Mets. It's just the Mets.