The Stink

I sometimes think that my luck at Mets games tends to run from season to season. It may or may not matter how well the season goes, but my record at games can often be telling. A good example might be 2007, when the Mets won 88 games, but my record, 8-11, revealed the actual struggles of the team. Then, there's years like 2009, when I suffered through a miserable 8-game losing streak and kicked off Citi Field with a 5-11 record that was just as bad as it sounds.

I've been on a good run these past few seasons, a combined 25-13 in 2014 and 2015, but it seems like this year, I've got the stink. Tonight was my 10th game of the season at Citi Field, and the Mets completely lifeless effort against the generally lifeless Atlanta Braves resulted in a 5-1 loss, which was my 4th loss in a row and dropped my 2016 record to an awful 4-6.

When I start getting into losing streaks like this, I feel compelled to break from my usual OCD patterns. Tonight, I tried new company, an Actor colleague from my job, I tried buying my program from a vendor outside the stadium and I even tried writing in block letters in my scorecard. None of these things worked. When I went on Tuesday, I tried a different set of escalators, on the 1st base side as opposed to the 3rd base side. No luck there either.

I can always try my own methods of mojo reversal but really the problem is the Mets altogether. Though Matt Harvey and his white shoes regressed in a haze of gap-to-gap line drives across several innings, the real problem was the Mets inability to hit. John Gant, who I'd later learn was one of the pieces in the Uribe/Kelly Johnson trade last season, and his weird toe-tapping, balk-baiting pitching windup stifled the Mets over 6 innings. He allowed a leadoff double to Curtis Granderson and then nothing for the next several innings, while Mets batters stood around and did nothing particularly useful. The Braves kept tacking on runs and the Mets kept wasting opportunities. Nothing could have saved this one.

Really, the stink is bigger than just me. The Mets have stink crop up from time to time and, sure, one good hot streak could fix everything, but this season seems to be dissolving into 2001-ness. There's too many injuries to too many pieces and there's been no consistency so far. They've now dug themselves a 6-game hole behind Washington, which is bad enough, to say nothing of the fact that they've been completely blasted off of the MLB backpage by the World Series Champion Cubs. And now, they have a stretch where 7 of their next 10 games are against the Braves, a team that they should be flossing their teeth with, and they come out and shit the bed in the first game. That's a bad sign. This is all a bad sign.