Taste Of Your Own Medicine

I was late in putting on the Mets/Marlins game on Monday afternoon. I was, in fact, originally in possession of tickets to the game, but I'd long ago swapped them out for another date, because I figured I had other things to do on the 4th of July, but that's another story for another time. But at any rate, I put the game on and I was wondering why the Mets appeared to be playing the Washington Nationals, because the schedule said the Mickey Mouse Marlins were in town. Then, I realized that it was in fact the Marlins, they were just wearing the Nationals' uniforms. I guess because they decided they just didn't want to be themselves anymore. 

Then, of course, I looked at the score, which was at the time 6-2 Marlins, and I got very angry. After spending the weekend kicking the team with the best record in Baseball in the nuts, the Mets were now looking like idiots again at the hands of the Fucking Marlins. Matt Harvey once again shit the bed and everything was terrible. Throw the whole weekend out the window. I mean, come on. The Marlins, again?! This is a team with its head so far up its own ass that Celebrity Manager has his Catcher batting leadoff. The fact that this team is in contention at all is an embarrassment to the National League at large.

But, as can sometimes happen, the Mets get behind and somehow it's as though they have their opponent exactly where they want them. The Mets bullpen, Erik Goeddel, Logan Verrett, Hansel Robles and Jerry Blevins specifically, stopped the Marlins cold and kept the game where it was, and the Mets offense just chipped away, and chipped away, and chipped away some more. Travis d'Arnaud and Curtis Granderson had already hit Home Runs by time I checked in. The Mets plated two more runs in the 6th thanks to a d'Arnaud RBI single and a run-scoring DP. So now, the Mets had at least put the game in reach.

Ultimately, they managed to put the Marlins back in their place in the 7th and 8th innings. David Phelps (duh ex you-know-who), who was recently seen Marlining it up after a win over the Cubs a few weeks ago, came in the game and immediately walked Neil Walker and gave up a double to Yoenis Cespedes. So already he'd started his own BBQ. James Loney followed and spent his at-bat fouling off 27 2-strike pitches before grounding out to score Walker. Wilmer Flores followed and fouled off another dozen 2-strike pitches before hitting a Sac Fly to score Cespedes and tie the game.

In the 8th, Ichiro Suzuki, who's probably too good for this Marlin business, doubled to start the inning and Robles followed by walking J.P. Realmuto. This brought up Martin Prado. Prado, of course, is the perfect Marlin, because he's at best a career .240 hitter who hits about .620 against the Mets. But because he's too busy sniffing his own underwear, Celebrity Manager called for a bunt, and Prado laid one down almost directly in front of James Loney, who pulled the patented Keith Hernandez 3-5-4 Double Play and kill the entire rally. The Marlins had missed their opportunity to flex their Marlinness and in the last of the 8th, newly-acquired Fernando Rodney (who had to shave due to Celebrity Manager's facial hair policy and thus no longer looks like a vagrant) gave up a 2-out, 2-run double to Cespedes to give the Mets their first lead of the game. Jeurys Familia had a brief moment in the 9th inning when he walked the leadoff hitter, but he struck out Stanton and then got a Double Play from Chris Johnson to close out the game and give the Mets a rousing 8-6 win in an excruciatingly long 3 hour and 38 minute affair.

I was rather interested in seeing just how the Mets would come back after their weekend of feeding the Cubs their lunch, and at least for one day it seems like it's thrown the Mets back on the right track. They're not gaining any ground--Washington keeps winning their games because they're not playing real teams right now--but they're also not losing ground and the more they can do what they're supposed to do against the Marlins, the more it makes these clowns as irrelevant as they deserve to be. So, you know, based on the way they dressed today, maybe they really were telling us all that they're sick of their own existence.