Wonder Of Wonders

It seems to be that, about once a week, the Mets have these anomaly games where the offense wakes up and decides to hit with authority, and they score a bunch of runs early and coast to an easy win. Sunday in Los Angeles of all places, they had one of these games. Lucas Duda continued his renaissance season with a pair of Home Runs, Travis d'Arnaud hit another Home Run, and even Ruben Tejada joined in on the fun with his 3rd Home Run of the season, all in support of Bartolo Colon, who had another of his typically efficient outings as the Mets cruised—cruised—to a 11-3 win in, of all places, Dodger Stadium, where they had enough of a lead that there was no way they could screw it up and let the Dodgers backdoor their way into the game.

It seemed fitting that the Mets would explode offensively and even manage to turn a Triple Play on defense in support of Bartolo Colon, who was certainly pitching with a heavy heart following the passing of his mother, but true to the stoic gamesman that he is, Colon found his sanctuary on the mound and his teammates rallied around him. You can certainly say many things about Colon. You can't doubt his heart, and Sunday's game was certainly an example. It certainly seemed to inspire his teammates; they attacked Kevin Correia from the start, belting Home Runs in each of the first 3 innings, and for good measure mixing in a Juan Lagares RBI triple.

The Dodgers best chance against Colon came in a 6th inning that saw them rally for a run on an Adrian Gonzalez single that put runners on 1st and 2nd with no outs and brought Matt Kemp to the plate. But Colon induced Kemp to ground into a rather easy Double Play, which would have been just fine in and of itself. However, Yasiel Puig, who had been the runner on 2nd, had an attack of whatever it is that makes him Yasiel Puig, and decided to steam right on through 3rd base and try to score. Alertly, Lucas Duda threw home, in time to nail Puig by a good 20 feet and seal the deal on the Triple Play, something the Mets seem to manage once every 4-5 years or so, and the kind of play that seemed to typify the way things were going for them this particular afternoon. Spurred on even more by the Triple Play, the Mets went out and iced the game with 3 more runs in the 7th inning.

So, the Mets actually won a game in Los Angeles, where it feels like they constantly do nothing but foul up and throw games away (somehow it seems that they'd only lost 6 consecutive games in LA—it felt like they hadn't won there since 2008), and finish off this somewhat abbreviated road trip at 2-3. This is mediocrity at it's finest, winning 2 of 5 games on a road trip, and yes, I suppose that the quality of the opponent has to be taken into account, but considering they frittered away two of the three games in LA and exploded for 19 runs in the two games they won, they ought to have had better results. Now, they come home and don't have to go back to the West Coast until 2015, where hopefully the schedule makers do a better job of building these road trips.