Slightly Fishy

The Mets closed out their season series with the Mickey Mouse Marlins by losing a sleepy affair, 4-3, in a game where they fell behind early and didn't hit enough to catch up.

Though the Mets did end up winning the season series from the Marlins, 11 wins against 8 losses, this particular series sort of speaks to the inconsistencies the Mets have shown this season. Monday night, they hit enough to put themselves in position to win, but the bullpen blew the lead. Tuesday, they bludgeoned the Marlins en route to a 9-1 victory. Last night, they pitched reasonably well, behind Dillon Gee and 4 relievers, among them Jeurys Familia, who rebounded from his poor outing Monday with a fine inning, and Jenrry Mejia, who pitched a scoreless 9th, but try as they might, they couldn't get enough key hits to scratch across a tying run, in spite of the fact that they had opportunities to do so.

The Marlins went up early against Dillon Gee, and with the Mets not accomplishing much against Henderson Alvarez, the story of the game then turned to Kevin Burkhart, who was given a rousing sendoff after 8 seasons with the team on SNY by The 7 Line crew, among many others. Kevin is, of course, moving on to much greener pastures on Fox Sports, having established himself as an excellent play-by-play guy on NFL Broadcasts and has also done some studio work for their overproduced Baseball games as well. Perhaps he's in line to unseat the painfully boring Joe Buck, but not likely—Burkhart, for his talents, doesn't possess Buck's lineage or matinee-idol looks, so he's likely going to remain in a second-fiddle role with Fox, but that's OK. Burkhart established himself enough on Fox's NFL coverage that he earned himself a playoff game, a high honor considering the number of broadcast teams they have (although I've gone into how none of them are that good—Burkhart by comparison is Gary Cohen). But Burkhart's contribution to the SNY team has been invaluable over the years. We at The Ballclub will miss him and wish him the best as he moves on to a new chapter in his career, and it's well and proper that SNY gave him proper acknowledgement on the day of his final Home Game broadcast, and the fans did as well.

It's unfortunate that the Mets couldn't send Ol' Kevin off with a victory, but, hey, I guess you can't ask too much from the Mets. So their penultimate Homestand of the season is now over and it's off to Atlanta and Washington for the season's final road trip.