Thursday, June 22, 2017

That Internal Fight

Something happened in the 4th inning of last night's game that kind of piqued my interest. And I don't mean Yasiel Puig taking too long to admire his Home Run and pissing off the entire Mets team, because those things tend to get overblown and players are often good at policing themselves.

It was, however, the initial source of the Mets ire that caught my attention. I know that if you make the rounds, most of the chatter involves something to the effect of "fweh fweh stupid Mets and cwybaby fwores," and "maybe don't throw a fastball down broadway stupit mutz." And in reality, I don't care much what Flores said or who he happened to be saying it to, but more that he did it. It's sort of his way of saying that he's getting a little sick of this shit. I think we're all getting a little sick of this shit, and, you know, you kind of want your players to show that sometimes. Flores has a history of not really being the "silent, methodical" type. You saw that two years ago when he was—and then wasn't—traded. And here the Mets are, getting their heads handed to them for the third day in a row, their overmatched Pitcher Tyler Pill just served another one up to an arrogant, underperforming headcase and he hot dogged it. I mean, didn't Wilmer Flores basically just do what every Mets fan wanted to do at that point?

Beyond that, you're starting to get a little bit of leadership out of Flores, which is important because the Mets seem to be kind of leaderless right now. David Wright probably won't be back unless some divine intervention occurs, and other guys are old, not playing well, injured, or have one foot out the door and in some cases all of the above. So it's incumbent on these younger guys to kind of make their case here. Flores to this point has had a very good season, which doesn't especially surprise me. People will listen to young guys if they're backing it up. I think you're seeing the beginning of a future leader.

This is sort of juxtaposed against an asinine article I read earlier on WFAN.com, the gist of which can be summed up as "dur dur dur stupid mets didn't sign turner and murphy and lookit them now." And, I mean, yeah. I get it. The past six games have just been a series of the Mets getting their heads bashed in by Justin Turner and Daniel Murphy, former Mets who were let go ostensibly because they hadn't proven themselves worth keeping around. I mean, Justin Turner was around for three seasons, and basically proved himself to be an inconsistent role player with a goofy personality who liked to throw pies in people's faces. At no point did he pose as a .330 hitter, because if he had, the Mets probably wouldn't have let him go. Murphy, of course, just makes me angry. Like, now, he makes me legitimately angry. I mean, think about it. We saw Daniel Murphy here for 8 years. Not a few cups of coffee. 8 years. And 8 years as a starting player. And if at ANY point in those 8 years, he'd shown that he was at all the kind of player he's turned into since he went to Washington, then the Mets would have given him a contract, and none of this would be happening, and everything would be fine. But nooooooo. We got 8 years of the anthropomorphic version of "the Yips," got tantalized by a well-timed two-week hot streak, and then an era that ended with two of the most egregious, Murphy-typifying errors in backbreaking spots in the World Series. And in case you forgot, nobody wanted him that offseason, he was probably Washington's 4th choice, and now he's Joe Fucking Morgan and the Mets are the jackasses.

Grumble. This is why it's important for guys like Wilmer Flores to get a little pissed off. It's just a reminder that these guys actually do care about this debacle of a season.

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