17 Extra Pitches

The Mets played 27 innings of stupid over their horrible weekend in Colorado, but it seems like nowhere was it more on display than on Sunday, when the Mets afforded themselves a slim lead, but continually shot themselves in the foot and allowed the Colorados to come back on them. The end result was a 4-3 loss that the Mets absolutely deserved to have happen.

Never mind the bad baserunning, or the continually getting rooked by Umpires, or Michael Conforto's inability to figure out the Coors Field Jet Stream, nowhere was the stupid exemplified more than in the 5th inning, when Right Fielder Alejandro De Aza decided to play right-hand hitting Pitcher Tyler Chatwood as though, I can only assume, Carlos Gonzalez or Charlie McCharliemon were at the plate. I don't know much about Chatwood other than to say he probably hits like a Pitcher, and as such probably wasn't going to get around much on Jacob deGrom, but were he to put a ball in play, perhaps a flare to Right might be in order. So, that's what Chatwood did, but since De Aza was playing somewhere in Boulder, he couldn't catch up on that flare and it fell in for a hit. Harmless enough, and it didn't lead to anything, but what it did was kept the inning going, and deGrom subsequently had to slog through a long At Bat with McCharlieman, who ultimately walked, and then he had to deal with Flavor of the Week Trevor Story, and when all was said and done, that was an extra 17 pitches deGrom had to waste because De Aza wasn't playing a few steps further in.

This is, mostly, Baseball crotch-grabbing and things like this tend to happen on a regular basis, but it was pretty stark the way it threw the game down the toilet for the Mets. deGrom worked into the 7th, but allowed a hit to D.J. LeNosehair and was then removed from the game in favor of Jim Henderson. And, of course, Henderson allowed a 2-run Home Run to the Pinch Hitter Ryan Raburn, and of course, the rest is misery on toast.

And, of course, as Gary Cohen astutely pointed out, had deGrom not had to waste those 17 pitches two innings earlier, perhaps he finishes out the inning without any further damage and the Mets carry things home from there.

It's not something worth dwelling on beyond the game itself, but it certainly screwed up this game. Then again, the Mets did a good job of screwing up every game in this series, and now can go home, still in 3rd place after this 11 game road trip that felt like it was 43 games, but perhaps that was a result of all those late night starts. West Coast road trips are difficult enough, but this one felt a little too long, and the 4-7 record the Mets put up might be indicative of that. More than anything else, the team looked tired in Colorado and that's not good for anyone.