Stupid Town

All right, all right. The photo is from last year, when the Mets went to Colorado and all it did was snow for 4 days straight.

The weather was, I assume, tolerable in Denver tonight, but whatever the weather was, the Mets still managed to get beaten rather soundly by the Colorados, in a 7-4 game that was only 7-4 because Travis d'Arnaud put some lipstick on the proverbial pig that this game was with a 3-run Home Run with 2 outs in the 9th inning. Things were settled long before that happened.

Bartolo Colon was hit early and often in a 4.2 inning outing that saw him get raked all over the Coors Field confines by the NL's top-hitting team. The Colorados aren't exactly a team of household names; while names such as Troy Tulowitzki and Carlos Gonzalez have been doing it to the Mets for years (particularly Tulowitzki, when he's managed to stay healthy and dodge trade rumors so incessant that one might assume he was traded three years ago), they've also somehow gotten a surprising amount of production out of a lineup of lesser men, most of whom seem to be named Charlie. There's Charlie Blackmon, whom I know from my Fantasy Baseball team, Charlie Culberson, who seems to have future-Met-killer written all over him, Charlie Aredondo, Charlie McCharlieman, Charlie Dickerson, who had 3 hits and is somehow hitting .382, and, of course, Justin Morneau. It seemed like these guys spent most of the early innings stringing hits together and then scoring when their pitcher, Juan Nicastro, helped his own cause, first by singling home two runs and then hitting a sacrifice fly for a 3rd RBI. Colon was racked for 10 hits in all, in the kind of outing that he's unfortunately going to have once every few games, because he's Bartolo Colon and that's what happens.

On the other side, the Mets welcomed Juan Lagares back to action, and he fortunately picked up where he left off, with a pair of doubles and an RBI, and I mentioned d'Arnaud's Home Run, and that's pretty much it as far as interesting accomplishments by the Mets offense tonight. The 3 hits and 3 runs were, as I said, purely cosmetic and the sparse audience that remained at the game was evidence of that. They didn't even have to bring in old friend LaTroy Hawkins to clean up the mess that Jerome Bettis was creating on the mound.

I'd like to say shake this off and come back tomorrow, which is generally how I react to these losses, and with Zack Wheeler set to pitch tomorrow that may well be the case. But you don't know how these young pitchers will react to the rarefied air of Colorado and the absurdly hot Colorados lineup. You also have to take into account that Coors Field is one of those certified House of Horrors for the Mets, where they seem to have a record of something resembling 13-72 since the place opened in 1995, and we all know what happened that night, and it seems like most games the Mets play there resemble that, or tonight, or both. At least this year, the temperature is slightly warmer than the 23˚ they played in last year, and the team doesn't have to shovel snow out of the Outfield before the games.