Can I Leave Yet?

Wednesday night was my 3rd game of the season at Citi Field. It was actually supposed to be Tuesday night, but extenuating circumstances forced me to change my Tuesday tickets to Wednesday. Then, weather forced the cancellation of Tuesday's game altogether. Then, what I had assumed would be a most entertaining pitching matchup of R.A. Dickey and Noah Syndergaard dissolved into Julio Teheran vs Robert Gsellman...which meant that through three games this season, I've seen Julio Teheran pitch more than anyone else.  It was still somewhat misting when I arrived at Citi Field although it seemed like the game was in no particular danger of being delayed altogether.

Then, of course Gsellman came out, started flittering sliders all over the place and gave up 5 runs before most of the paltry crowd that showed up had even made it to their seats. When that happens, and the Mets are in an instant hole like that, and I immediately wish I hadn't shown up that particular night, well, those final 8 innings just can't go by fast enough. It's one thing if the Mets are playing well and you think they might actually be able to pull themselves back from a 5-run deficit, but the Mets continue to not hit, and even the return of Yoenis Cespedes and Travis d'Arnaud didn't help. Teheran was more than ripe for the taking in this one, as the Mets had opportunities in the middle innings, but the stink was on this one already.

So, yeah. By 7:40 I was ready to leave. That's not a good feeling. And of course being that I obsessively score all my games I have to at least pay some kind of attention to what's going on, so I can't just meander around the stadium, even with access to all these clubs and whatnot. The point of all this is that the game becomes mostly scenery to an evening out and, yeah, I'm keeping score but I couldn't exactly tell you what happened from there. I know Gsellman didn't improve in spite of gritting his way through 5 innings and I know that Teheran wasn't particularly sharp, but the Mets continue to not hit and not hit in key spots so he was let off the hook every time. Then I went downstairs at some point just to give myself a quicker exit and slunk off into the night once the game ended.

As nights at Citi Field go, this will probably rank among the least memorable. This recent malaise has taken the sheen off the Mets' hot start and now they're on one of these death valley stretches that seem to hit them in the middle of the Summer. I can't tell if it's good or bad that it's happening here in April because on the one hand you'd rather get the stupid out of your system early, but on the other hand it's bad that this happens at all because the Mets are supposedly better than this.

No More

As a blogger, I've tried my best to keep on top of every game and keep this thing up to date or at least relatively speaking. Sometimes it's more difficult than others. And, quite honestly, it's difficult to come up with something interesting to say about a game day after day because most games tend to be more mundane than anything else. And then you have what happened last weekend, which was basically the perfect storm of bad, and who the hell wants to go into it when the entire weekend can be summed up in a few sentences.

It's not so much that the Mets stink. I don't believe that's the case. Consider that the strength of the team is supposed to be the starting pitching. Against Washington, the Mets pitched Matt Harvey, Jacob deGrom and Zack Wheeler. On Friday, Harvey pitched 7 innings, gave up 3 runs on 4 hits, 2 walks, 2 strikeouts. Saturday, Jacob deGrom pitched 5.2 innings, gave up 3 runs on 8 hits, 6 walks, 10 strikeouts. Sunday, Zack Wheeler pitched 7 innings, gave up 4 runs on 4 hits, 2 walks 6 strikeouts. These individual games certainly don't represent any of these pitchers at their respective best, but you could find many, many pitchers that would do a lot worse. Irregardless, the Mets lost all three games. The issue isn't so much that good pitchers had off games. Even if they'd pitched great, it's dicey that the Mets would have won because they're not hitting at all right now and it's killing the whole deal.

The Mets having offensive issues is nothing new in these parts. It seems like we talk about it every season and of course the fact that 6 guys went down with injuries in the span of 3 days doesn't help. It speaks to the continued ineptitude of Cortisone Shot Ramirez and his brigade of mental midgets for the repeated lack of conditioning and injuries that are probably avoidable. Yoenis Cespedes goes down with a cramp and misses an entire weekend. Travis d'Arnaud has been clogging up the bench for 5 days and forced the Mets to call up Kevin Plawecki, who appears at this point to be a lost cause. Meanwhile, because the Mets continue to insistently carry 8 relievers, and continue to refuse to put guys on the DL (or call up guys that they have to save for "emergencies"), they end up in these bizarre situations where Wheeler or deGrom are sent up to pinch hit or Robert Gsellman is pinch running and I know that these guys are good athletes and all, but what the hell kind of strategy is this? If you really need a guy who can come off the bench and pop one out, I don't know that Zack Wheeler is the first guy I'd look to. I do, however, know that our old friend Kelly Johnson is sitting around waiting for someone to call and this time he wouldn't cost another low-level pitching prospect.

Bottom line here is that things are pretty terrible right now. After a hot start, the Mets stopped hitting, the guys that were hitting got hurt and so right now the lineup is Michael Conforto, who's basically forcing Collins to play him because he's hitting everything in sight, and a bunch of .230 hitters. The only solace I can take out of this is that the past two seasons, the Mets went through entire months of this shit and things turned out OK. It just took a while and cost a lot of fans their sanity (and led to the "castrati" having a field day in the process). And, well, this will probably happen again. It seems late now if only because the Mets sit 3 games under .500 and 5 1/2 games behind Washington but it's not like the old days where Washington would come in here and belt 27 Home Runs in a 4-game series. The Mets didn't help themselves at all this series but they also didn't get outright stomped. Unfortunately, they also didn't win any games and so I have to reach for dopey second-rate excuses like that to try and explain what the hell is going on here.

It took me 4 days to come up with nothing?

Flat Team Friday

After the elation of my last game on Monday night, I was feeling pretty good as I headed out to Citi Field for my 17th game of the season. After all, the Mets were rolling along at a pretty good clip, gearing up for a nice weekend grudge match with the Nationals and a well-rested Noah Syndergaard pitching. And for once, I was going to a game where he was actually pitching. I hadn't seen a Syndergaard start since back in May, against these same Nationals and the results were pretty good. Since then, I've seen him pitch once in relief, and also had him twice scheduled to pitch when I would be in attendance only for him to be scratched for one reason or another.

Not that Syndergaard pitched at all badly; after a hairy first inning where he threw a ton of pitches and had to deal with Nationals players bedeviling him with Stolen Bases and bloop hits, Syndergaard instead began pitching to contact and managed to navigate his way through 7 innings, allowing only 3 hits, walking 1 and giving up 2 runs. Certainly an outing good enough to get him a victory. Problem was, the Mets did nothing of any consequence against Rookie A.J. Cole, who gave up a 4th inning Home Run to Asdrubal Cabrera and nothing further. Cole, combined with Marc Rzepczynski, Hoda Kotb, Drew Storen, Craig Stammen, Oliver Perez, Chad Cordero and Mark Melancon lulled the Mets and basically everyone at Citi Field to sleep as they faded into the night amid a string of ground balls and pitching changes, as the Nationals won the opener of this series, 4-1.

I realize that, at this point, the Mets are not going to catch the Nationals, and although the Nationals aren't lighting anyone on fire, they also don't have to. Essentially, they're doing what the Mets did last season down the stretch and pulling the Baseball version of running out the clock. But they also took advantage of their opportunities in this game, while the Mets didn't. In the 1st inning, Trea Turner, who looks to be no older than Michael Taylor, their 15-year old Outfielder, blooped a single to right on an 0-2 pitch to start the game, stole second, stole 3rd, scored on a Bryce Harper sacrifice fly, and the Nationals just took it from there. They led 2-1 going to the 9th, and the Mets certainly had every good opportunity to come back and win, but Jerry Blevins, brought into the game specifically to get Daniel Murphy and Harper out, instead gave up a single and a double before being removed for Hansel Robles, who promptly allowed a 2-run single to Anthony Rendon that incinerated the game.

This game seemed emblematic of the games I've attended this year. Though things seem to favor the Mets, nothing goes right, they come out flat, they get great starting pitching, they hang around and then the bullpen torches everything and they have no recourse. This was my 10th loss of the season and in order for me to finish over .500 for the year, they essentially have to win all 4 remaining games I have tickets to. It's just been that kind of year.

At Least I Wasn't There

Tuesday's game stunk. I know, because I was there. But when the Mets play a game on Wednesday, and my takeaway is that at least I was at the game on Tuesday and not Wednesday, well, Wednesday's game must have been absolutely putrid.

And it was.

I've been to no less than 3 separate and distinct 13-inning games between the Mets and the Diamondbacks and two of the three have been detailed explicitly in the annals of this blog. The Mets won all 3 of those 13-inning affairs. Wednesday night's game did not go 13 innings. Perhaps if the Mets had been able to extend the game that long, things might have ended up better for them. Though, the way things have been going for the Mets, I'm not so sure of that. Regardless, the Mets lost, 3-2 in 12 innings and, really, the only person I can blame for this is Kelly Johnson. Because if Kelly Johnson hadn't gone and hit a Pinch-hit, 2-run Home Run off of nervous Rookie Closer Jake Barrett in the 9th inning to tie the game, the Mets would have lost 2-0 in 9 normal innings and instead we could just talk about how boring and horrible everything is.

But instead, Johnson tied the game and extended things for another hour or so so that the Mets could still lose the game and we're still talking about how boring and horrible everything is.

Bartolo Colon and company did their admirable best to try and keep the game somewhat respectable. Colon, who was sweatier than David Dinkins in his prime, allowed a run, which is as good as you can hope for from a 43-year old. Addison Reed allowed a run, and we'll forgive him for that because he's given up like 4 runs all season. Jeurys Familia threw 2 innings, and hairy innings at that, so you can forget seeing him on Thursday afternoon. Even Erik Goeddel and Jon Niese split a clean inning. Jerry Blevins allowed the winning Home Run to Oscar Hernandez, which is bad, but then again should Blevins really have been in that position in the first place? The Mets offense is totally devoid of respectability right now. They should be throttling the Diamondbacks. Robbie Ray, who is at best a future journeyman, no-hit the Mets into the 5th, shut out the Mets through 7, and looked a lot better than he deserved to look in general. Then again, the Mets made it easy for him, throwing out a lineup featuring Ty Kelly, or, 2016's version of Danny Muno, T.J. Rivera in his Major League debut, where he was clearly going 180mph, and for all I know they had Darrell Ceciliani and John Mayberry in the lineup too, because they did literally nothing for 8 innings, and then for the subsequent 3 innings after Johnson tied the game. In the 10th, Rivera picked up his first Major League hit to start the inning, and then Travis d'Arnaud followed in a clear bunt situation, but he popped up the bunt, didn't advance the runner, and Rivera remained glued to 1st. That play right there seemed to typify the entire night for the Mets so I can't blame everyone for picking on it.

Meanwhile, I could focus on everything else that went wrong, like the D'Backs stealing another 5 bases off a totally befuddled d'Arnaud, but who has the energy? There's another game in 12 hours. Maybe the Mets will get it right. I'm not optimistic.

A Man for All Time, A Team for None

I wasn't at Citi Field last night for the retirement ceremony of Mike Piazza's number 31. I'm not proud of this fact. I do feel as though I missed out on something pretty special. Considering how many of Piazza's iconic moments I was present for, yeah, I probably should have been there. Think about it. I've gone over many times just how much Piazza is revered by all Mets fans, and just how deserving he is of the honor. I can go back to the day he was acquired on May 22nd, 1998, hearing about it as it happened on Mike & The Mad Dog, and then being there and being part of the welcome wagon that following Saturday afternoon, and being there for 27 memorable Home Runs, and being there on September 21, 2001, and being there when he hit his 352nd Home Run as a Catcher in 2004, and on his last day on October 2nd, 2005. I was even there the night he came back with the Padres and hit two Home Runs off of Pedro Martinez. Want me to keep going? Last game at Shea. First game at Citi Field. Mets Hall of Fame induction. Throwing out the first pitch at the World Series last year. Should I have gone last night? Yeah. Probably.

But as I'd mentioned yesterday, the Mets performance over the past several days just took me out of it. Plus, you know, the ceremony is readily available for viewing here. So, regrettably, I was not there.

Yeah, I'll probably hate myself a little bit for missing this piece of Mets history.

On the other hand, I won't hate myself for missing the 9-inning turd sandwich the current version of the Mets treated the sellout crowd to after the ceremonies concluded.

Usually, when the Mets hold a big ceremony, it doesn't bode well for the game to follow (or precede in the case of the closing of Shea Stadium). It's really weird. The Mets do a wonderful job of feting their conquering heroes. You can complain about a lot of things the Mets do, but when it comes to honoring champions and past heroes on the field, in front of the fans, it never disappoints. Unfortunately, juxtapose the ceremony and the honoree against what the team puts out on the field, and there's a major disconnect. The Mets do a wonderful job of throwing a really nice party, and then completely shitting the bed afterward.

Mike Piazza is and will always be remembered as a Mets hero for all times, and as he instructed us, whenever the team needs some inspiration, just look to the top of the stadium in the Left Field corner at that newly-minted 31 plaque and remember that Ol' Mikey is always there with us. Unfortunately, he can't will the team to hit right now. In fact, Mike at age 47 could conceivably do a better job of driving in some runs than half the lineup the Mets threw out there last night. Bartolo Colon on short rest didn't have it. Once again, the Mets were throttled by the Colorados and Jorge De La Rosa, who I think has made a career out of pitching to a 5.38 ERA, had no problem swatting away the Mets hitters like flies.

I seem to keep finding these weird parallels between this year's Mets team and some historic era Mets team, and right now, maybe these Mets are like the early-1998 Mets, before Piazza showed up on May 23rd. They're a nice little team with no particular direction, except that right now, there's no Mike Piazza floating around on the open market to be acquired and save everyone's hide. I know that everyone seems to be hot on Jonathan Lucroy, but the Brewers seem to want a king's ransom in return and he's already rejected a trade to the Cleveland Indians, so that's a bad sign. Plus I seem to remember hearing somewhere that he didn't want to play in New York, so there's that little wrinkle too. Regardless, for as much as Lucroy might be viewed as such, he's no Piazza. One player isn't going to fix the issues here and I wonder if the what the Mets really need is a sports psychiatrist and maybe a team-wide prescription for Lexapro or Ativan so they all relax a little bit.

Otherwise, 2016 will just dissolve into 2012, the team will fade back into obscurity and all the haters will crawl back out of their caves, pointing and laughing and screaming about how last year was a fluke and now the real Mets have come back (duh slobbuh drool see yuh next week).

(Yawn) Another Night With The Mets

I don't have tickets to the Mike Piazza number retirement ceremony tonight. I was thinking I would try to snag something on Stubhub (there are, in fact, tickets available from the Mets, but, you know, you have to be comfortable spending $250 a pop, which I am not). But after the two games I attended this week, I've decided I don't feel like going. I can watch it on TV.

I realize that yes, I'm passing on Mets history, and the honoring of an iconic player, but you know, I was also there for his first game, his last game, and his Mets Hall of Fame induction 3 years ago, and many key moments in between. I feel like I should be there. But the problem is that I can't justify spending money, and good money, on a ticket, going back to Citi Field for a 30-45 minute ceremony, and then follow that up by subjecting myself to the Mets slobbering all over themselves for another 3 hours while sitting in front of some back-seat-driver fan who's really a closeted rooter for the other NY team.

Friday night was my 14th game of the season, and you know, there are years when I just have the stink on me, and I think 2016 is one of those years. Most of the games I've attended have been patently awful. Wednesday's game was bad in that having-the-rug-pulled-out-from-under-you sense. Friday's game wasn't just bad. It was boring. And I'm not the only one who felt that way. I had the sense that there were literally people falling asleep watching this team play. My poor other half came with me last night, and she spent the whole time complaining that the game was unexciting. She's been to 2 games this season in roasting heat, and she's seen the Mets score a total of 3 runs in those 2 games. Somehow, they won the first game. This one, not so much.

Steven Matz, bless his heart, did yeoman's work. The Colorados kept singling him to death and he was working at an absolute crawl, but he allowed a single run in the 1st and nothing until the 6th. In between, he gave up plenty of hits, including so many to Charlie McCharlieman that I was ready to jump onto the field, run up to him, punch him in his dopey, bearded mug and yell "STOP!" Of course the Mets responded with a James Loney Home Run in the 2nd and nothing more than that. Tyler Chatwood, who if you'll recall was the starter for the Colorados in the "NNNNNNNNEY STINK" game 4 years ago, ensured that this game would leave me with the same feeling. The Mets, going into the 6th inning, had 2 hits. Once Matz allowed an RBI single to Nick Hundley to score the second Colorados run, I knew the Mets were screwed.

The remainder of the game could have been scripted, that's how predictable it was. McCharlieman got another 4 hits. Matt Reynolds hit a Home Run in the 8th, because Matt Reynolds always hits a Home Run when I'm at a game. The Mets got 2 singles off Jake McGee to start the 8th, and then Mcgee was replaced by Scott Oberg, who proceeded to get the next 3 batters out ON THREE PITCHES! Antonio Bastardo was summoned out of the Gulag for the 9th, worked at a pace to rival Steve Trachsel, essentially put my wife to sleep, and I guess spent so much time scratching his crotch that he forgot he was on a mound, in a game, and grooved a slider for Carlos Gonzalez to hit a 3-run Home Run, at which point 75% of the people in the stadium immediately got up and left.

In the last of the 9th, my wife said one of two things would happen: Either it would end quickly, or something stupid would happen and the game would go 11 innings. I reminded her that the Mets would need to score 5 runs in the 9th to get the game to go 11 innings, and they hadn't scored 5 runs all week. Fortunately, they did not somehow muster up the 5 runs. Not that anyone actually thought they were capable of doing so.

The entire season seems to be teetering on the edge of the abyss right now. I mean, I know this happens to the Mets every season, or at least it feels like it does, but doesn't it seem so much worse this season? It was one thing when ney stank, back in 2012, because that team had no expectations. That's part of the issue here, is that the Mets are falling victim to the curse of high expectations. And I wonder if management here fell victim to the same line of thinking that bit them in the ass between 2000 and 2001, because they went to the World Series the year before and that made them believe they were good enough. I know some improvements were made, but now they need more improvements and nobody seems to be quite sure how that will be accomplished. And for some reason, I keep hearing that they need another pitcher. THEY DON'T NEED ANOTHER PITCHER! I just said yesterday how they seem to have more pitchers in the bullpen than they know how to use. The starting pitching has been excellent. I mean, excellent. It's not deGrom's fault that he threw 7 shutout innings and the Mets lost. It's not Matz's fault that this happened last night either. When your starter gives up 2 runs in 6 innings, he's given you a very good chance to win the game.

The issue lies with all these hitters that are just up there swinging out of their shoes and not doing anything useful. There was some promise in this lineup, but right now it's all evaporated. To wit: after the game, I was thinking to myself, "Hey, you know, Michael Conforto looked really good tonight, he had four solid At Bats." Conforto went 0-for-2 with two walks. And somehow, in my mind, this is a success. Compared to the rest of the lineup, sure. But this just underscores the point. Not only are the Mets boring, but this is getting depressing. I sat through a Baseball game last night and it literally felt like a majority of the crowd didn't actually want to be there watching this team. And it's bad enough that they've made me willingly skip the Mike Piazza ceremony tonight, because I just can't get up the energy to go watch this bullshit team again after what they subjected me to last night.

So, Now What?

Well, if Wednesday night's game left a bad taste in everyone's mouth, the Mets made sure it stayed there on Thursday. After a game where they displayed minimal offensive ability, they somehow managed to outdo themselves against the Colorados, once again turning over a 1-run lead to Jeurys Familia and then watched him blow it again as the Mets lost 2-1.

The only upshot to all this is that I wasn't there, and because for some reason this series against the Colorados started with a weekday afternoon game, I didn't watch it, either. Who would want to watch a game like this? I know that Jacob deGrom was awesome and threw 7 shutout innings, but that can only take you so far. Against the Colorados, who it seems every year now comes in here late in the Summer, boasting some sub-.500 record and really, looking like a team that has absolutely no business coming in here and winning games. The past few years, the Mets have handled them. Right now, the Mets can't handle themselves.

Blah, blah, blah, 1-0 lead against Tyler Anderson. Jake McGee comes in, Mets load the bases with no outs and then Scott Oberg (you know, the great Scott Oberg) comes in and retires the next three batters with not so much as a cookie. And that was the game right there. Just like on Wednesday, the Mets had boatloads of opportunities to open up a lead and cruise home, because the Colorados weren't hitting deGrom, but they're just unable to do this and I can't understand it. All season long, the Mets have insistently played shorthanded on purpose because they insistently believe in carrying a dozen pitchers, most of whom they don't bother to use (anyone seen Seth Lugo recently? Antonio Bastardo still on the team?), and leave themselves with a 3-man bench because both Jose Reyes and Yoenis Cespedes are hurt. But because the offense is so putrid, I guess Collins must have begged Cespedes to pinch hit in this stagnant rally, except that he sent him up with men on 2nd and 3rd...the perfect situation for him to get intentionally walked.

This is the problem. The problem isn't Familia blowing two Saves in two days. Closers blow saves. That's normal behavior. What isn't normal is going 1-for-34 with men in scoring position like the Mets have the last two days. What isn't normal is essentially playing with a 20-man roster when you're allowed 25 for no good reason.

Self-Aggrandizing Pricks

Citi Field on Wednesday night was hot, sweaty and full of Cardinals fans. It was a perfect storm of awful and it seems that the Mets were all too happy to oblige in the misery. After mostly muddling their way through the early part of the game, the Mets exploded to life in the 7th, finally running Adam Wainwright out of gas and taking the lead on Yoenis Cespedes' absolute missile of a Home Run. But the roof ultimately caved in on the Mets in the 9th as Jeurys Familia blew his first save of the season, allowing the Cardinals to tie and ultimately take the lead. Instead of getting to revel in a steely victory, I was subjected to a bunch of Right-wing, underwear-sniffing Cardinals fans squealing and humping each other in the aisles. My Citi Field record for the season once again slipped under .500 in this 5-4 debacle of a game.

It was headed down a bad road from the start. Wainwright was eminently hittable all night, but for all the hitting the Mets did against him, nothing resulted in any runs. This is, of course, the ongoing problem. Neil Walker drove in a run in the 2nd inning and until the 7th, that was it. The Cardinals grabbed a lead in the 3rd because they, unlike the Mets, actually hit the ball with men on base and the result was a 3-run inning against Logan Verrett. So you think that Verrett somehow battled through the night. Wrong. Verrett, outside of that one inning, was just fine. The rest of the team just couldn't get out of their own way. Twice, Michael Conforto came up with a runner in scoring position and 2 outs, and even a measly single would have made some kind of a difference, but each time, he did nothing. It was so bad that Mets fans couldn't even muster the energy to react.

It took until the 7th for the Mets to finally get their asses in gear. Travis d'Arnaud singled, and Alejandro De Aza singled, and the Mets had their opportunity with men on the corners and no outs. But this hasn't been a sure thing by any stretch, and sure enough, Curtis Granderson struck out, and then Asdrubal Cabrera struck out, and George and I were just sitting there in muted agony, while the Cardinals fans were hooting and hollering. One fellow, in particular, was sitting in front of us, by himself, wearing headphones and after each strikeout, he jumped up and did some weird Frank Drebin strikeout impression. That left it up to Yoenis Cespedes, probably the only savior left in this godforsaken mess of a lineup. And Cespedes was game to a tiring Wainwright, and worked the count a bit instead of squeezing the bat into sawdust. Finally, on 2-2, Wainwright bounced his trademark curveball and it skipped past Yadier Molina, and d'Arnaud scored. Amazing. After all that, that was what it took to get a run home. I wasn't complaining, but this was beginning to border on the criminal. Two pitches later, Wainwright again tried to slip a curve in there. We've seen that before. But this time, Cespedes was in full hack mode and he just smoked it. And I mean he Smoked it. Off the 2nd deck, Home Run, and somehow the Mets had taken the lead. You know, after all that mess. As soon as the ball landed, the jerkoff with the headphones stood up, gave me a nasty look, and left. I assure you, for all the epithets I wanted to scream at this turd, I bit my tongue, because I'm far too diplomatic and I try my best to be a good host, even if the houseguest keeps doing things like leaving the toilet seat up and eating all the Frusen Gladje. So I said the nicest thing I could: "One pitch too many!"

In the 8th, Addison Reed did his job and retired the Cardinals without a peep. Now, the Cardinals fans were sitting on their hands, if they hadn't departed altogether. The Mets again had an opportunity to pad their lead in the 8th, but didn't, but that didn't bother me much. They had Familia in the 9th.

And, of course, we know what happened from there. It figures that Familia blows a Save for the first time in a year the night I'm there. It figures that Molina was the one that did it to him. It figures that instead of holding the Cardinals there and keeping the game tied, he gave up a double to Judy-hitting Kolten Wong to give the Cardinals the lead. It figures that the remaining Cardinals fans started standing and grab-assing again. It figures that the Mets went down meekly against Seung Hwan Oh once again. It figures that all the way down the stairs, and outside the building, and on the Subway, Cardinals fans were holding a virtual mosh pit.

The bitch of it all is that it didn't have to go this way. Pick any inning between the 1st and the 6th, and if the Mets could have managed one more hit, it would have meant another run and maybe we wouldn't be in this mess. But noooo. That seems to be too tall of an order for this group. I mean, this is the 4th year in a row I've been to a Mets/Cardinals game, and every year I have to deal with the Cardinals and their obnoxious fans who basically expect us to bow down to them. They really have no clue as to how they appear. Cubs fans are annoying like a 10 year old with bad manners. Fans of the other team in town are annoying like your generic frat bro. Cardinals fans are a different level of annoying and after last night I'm feeling more convinced that they might be the worst of the bunch. And if I say your fan base is worse than that other NY team, well, that's saying something. But at any rate, each of the last 3 seasons, I went to a Mets/Cardinals game and the Cardinals won 9-0, and if they didn't, it felt like 9-0. Sometimes, after games like this, I almost wonder if we're better off if the Mets just didn't score and lost 3-1. But that's besides the point. Then I'd just be writing about how the Mets were simply noncompetitive and the Cardinals Fans were jackasses. What's the use?

At least we're done with the Cardinals here for this season, but more importantly, we're done with their fans. I think I've seen enough of Cardinals fans for the next decade.

And This Continues To Be The Problem

As is usually the case on Summer Saturdays, I was out all day and didn't actually see any of the Mets Phillies game, but based on the results, a 4-2 Mets loss, I see that even after a few days to rest and get their heads straight, the Mets still have a hard time getting out of their own way against lesser opponents.

Logan Verrett, whose entire season may be that he's just the victim of these kinds of games, started for the Mets, pitched passably well, kept the Mets in the game (and became the 143rd Met pitcher to allow a Home Run to Ryan Howard), and the Mets offense, in his support, got plenty of runners on base and went 0-for-18 with men in scoring position.

This is a continued problem for the Mets, who over the past several years have turned stranding runners in scoring position into some sort of stupid art form. I keep writing about this, and I think about 85% of Mets Bloggers keep writing about this but what difference does it make? The same dopey thing still happens. I can't even single out a culprit here because basically everyone is guilty, except maybe Yoenis Cespedes and he didn't play, so maybe it's his fault for being hurt, and also I can't blame Wilmer Flores, because he didn't play either, and I can't really understand why since he usually does reasonably well in those spots. But the rest of the bunch, come on! I know there's still a bunch of games left to play but it feels like this whole season has been Mets fans saying "I'm not panicking, there's still a lot of games left to play." I'm still not panicking, but the point here is I'm tired of talking about it. I said it yesterday, I'll say it again, and I feel like I'm going to say it a lot more over the remaining games this season: Do Better.

This year still feels like 2001, even if the Mets probably aren't going to run up to 54-68. I didn't like 2001, though. I like this less, probably because in 2001 we were still in the stone age and there wasn't so much information readily available and there weren't happy-talking Nationals fans that are already acting like they've won the division and last season was a fluke. It's like listening to fans of that other team in this city. There's too many people with too much to say. Perhaps that's the real problem.

Go To Hell, Murphy

In the top of the 1st inning on Sunday, Daniel Murphy teed off on a Steven Matz curveball and whacked it into the Pepsi Porch Coca Cola Corner for a 2-run Home Run, which if you're keeping score gave him 33 Home Runs and 121 RBI this season against his former team.

At that point, I realized what the Mets needed to do: They needed to dust him. Not hit him, not hurt him, just, dust him. You know, like what Syndergaard did to Escobar last October. Just put one under his chin and knock him on his ass. Get him uncomfortable.

Of course, given how this has played out, Murphy will probably hit another 3 Home Runs and run the bases backwards.

I and basically every other Mets fan continues to maintain that letting Murphy go was still the right move, because come on. Who the hell thought this was going to happen? This is a guy who once spent an entire season grounding out to 2nd base, and another season getting thrown out trying to stretch a double into a triple 39 times. And now, as I said yesterday, he's Dork Jeff Kent. It almost figures that this would happen, because it's the Mets and this is the sort of shit that happens to them. Why the hell couldn't the Anaheim Angels have jumped in, offered him $50 million and saved us from this? It wouldn't bother me as much if he were hitting like this in the American League because a) we wouldn't have to see him skipping around and waving his towel in our faces and b) everyone does that in the American League anyway.

So, yeah. That happened, that sunk Matz, sunk the Mets, sunk the weekend and sent us into the All Star Break not feeling so good about things. The Mets over the last 3 games looked like a team that needed a break, and, well, now they've got one. They finish out the first half 47-41 and tied for the 2nd Wildcard, but a rather distant 6 games out of 1st place behind a team that's gone back to thoroughly pounding them to the tune of a 4-9 record. I mean, given everything that's happened to the Mets this season, with a constant stream of injuries and a whole host of inconsistencies, I suppose we should be fortunate to be in this position hanging tough, but come on. The Mets have looked outright miserable against a bunch of teams they should have beaten soundly, and those are games they're not going to get back. It makes it that much harder to make up the ground between them and Washington, even the ground between them and the Dodgers, who hold the first Wildcard spot.

I don't know what the second half of the season will hold here, and I suppose I felt the same way last season. The only difference here is that there probably isn't a Yoenis Cespedes trump card that can be brought in to save the day. I don't know if there's enough chips left in the system to pull something like that off, and, well, I don't know where an additional piece would fit here? I have a feeling that what we're seeing here is what we're going to the whip with the rest of the way. I hope it works. Otherwise, I'll be trashing Murphy even more. If that clown could have performed like this when he was here, maybe we wouldn't be in this mess.

Outliers

I'd been on vacation for the past several days, and out of any sort of range of being able to see any of the Mets games over the past 5 days. In fact, a brief internet outage prevented me from hearing anything about Tuesday's game until Wednesday's game was almost underway.

I see I missed very little.

I'll try to sum up my thoughts right now in brief, but I, like most Mets fans, don't feel very good right now. Yes, it still feels like 2015 and the Mets could snap themselves back into place and into contention, but as it sits right now, I don't know where the savior is going to come from. The Mets could at least rely on whacking around some lousy teams for a while last year to keep them afloat, but this year, they've struggled against Atlanta, they're behind the Fucking Marlins in the standings altogether (and I assure you nothing would be more galling to me than getting assed out by the fake team) and they just got their doors blown off by the Nationals.

And, if all that weren't bad enough, here come God's Gift to Baseball, 2016, the Chicago Cubs, the team that's been annihilating everyone in their path for months, and, I'm quite certain, itching to stick it to the Mets after what happened last October. I'd been toying with going to Friday night's game, but I kind of have the feeling I may want to skip this one. Maybe tonight will dictate my behavior.

Regardless, the problems with the Mets right now just feel more insurmountable than they do last year. When the offensive issues hit, the Mets tried to weather it as long as they could and then made some moves. This year, it seemed like it wouldn't be the same case, considering Cespedes was here, and Neil Walker would be an adequate enough replacement for Murphy, and sure, Walker and Cespedes and Cabrera have all played well enough. But that hasn't solved the problem. Again, the Mets came into a season with a team predicated on starting players performing to their expected levels. Not everyone has done that, and nor could they have been expected to. Larger issues, the Michael Conforto dilemma, Lucas Duda missing extended time, Kevin Plawecki's failure to ascend to name a few, magnify the offensive issues. The pitching, so talented and yet so fragile, has looked alternately amazing and miserable. And now there's bone chips or bone spurs or whatever in two of their elbows and while everyone insists everything's fine, the results seem to indicate otherwise.

But more than anything, the killer instinct isn't there. I know it's one of those weird intangible buzzwords that people like to talk about but there's something to it. How many times late last season were the Mets dead in the water only to rally and kick the other team in the teeth? Hell, they did it to Washington so many times they basically ran half their bullpen out of town. That's not happening now. Now, when they get behind it seems like the game's over, and that's really a horrible way to feel about a team.

By the end of 2008, I'd become convinced that the Mets of that era were simply good enough to contend, but not a championship team, and that 2006 was the anomaly. When they fell into the abyss in 2009, I was proven right, although I can't say I'm at all proud of that. I'm not going to go and say that what happened last year was the anomaly for this era of the Mets. If it was, that would be an embarrassment, because this thing should be shaping up to be the Golden Age of the Mets. This could still happen. Teams overachieve, as the Mets probably did in 2015, and then regress the following season after the league catches up before launching to the next level the following year. Then again, teams overachieve and then take it one step further the following year, too.

Point is, it's too soon to say that 2015 was a fluke, especially since the 2016 season is barely half over. But it doesn't look especially encouraging right now, and I'm not sure I can see where the fix for this team is coming from, and maybe that's what's most frustrating about this season to this point. They've proven, at times, that they're as good as they looked last season. But they haven't sustained that level and right now they're not even approaching it. People are already dropping out on this team and when you have a fan base that's as fragile as this one, it's not especially surprising.

Spare Me

I didn't see any part of Sunday's game, and clearly I'm better for it.

No half-assed exegesis today. The Mets don't deserve my time after an weekend like this.

System Breakdown

It seems like, without fail, the Mets play these June series against the Braves and no matter what the state of either team is, the Mets usually do a great job of handing every game to the Braves. I know there was one year, I think 2008, when the Mets were on a little bit of a roll, and then went into Atlanta and got swept in a 4-game series. Last year, they played in Atlanta at home and then in Atlanta in June and I believe they lost 2 of 3 at Home, and had to mount a furious comeback in the final game just to get to that point, and then went to Atlanta and got swept and shut out by two guys making their Major League debuts.

And if it didn't exactly happen that way, at least it felt like it did.

The Mets are now doing the same thing once again, where for the second night in a row they basically did very little to stop the Braves from kicking them in the nuts and really enjoying it much more than they should.

For about 5 innings, everything was great. Cespedes hit a Home Run, Flores hit a Home Run, James Loney even hit a triple, Steven Matz was cruising along and all was well. But then the Braves started singling Matz to death, and then Jeff Francoeur dialed it back to 2005 and hit a Home Run, and Jim Henderson gave up the tying Home Run to Tyler Flowers and the whole game turned into a bad fish sandwich that someone tried to slam down the toilet.

In the 8th inning, Ender Inciarte led off against Addison Reed and slashed a double down the Left Field line, and started clapping and bouncing around like he was Shane Victorino once he reached 2nd Base. I knew right then and there the Mets were screwed, and of course I was right. It didn't matter if Curtis Granderson lollipopped a throw back into the infield and allowed Inciarte to reach 3rd, and it didn't matter that Inciarte charged home on a ball that trickled just far enough away from Rene Rivera. That's what actually happened, but if it hadn't, he still would have found a way to score. Sometimes, you can just tell from the way a guy looks out there.

The Mets have no such spark. Their attempts to dig themselves out of this 1-run deficit turned into horrible failures as in the 8th, Cabrera singled and was subsequently planted at 1st, as Terry Collins had the either brilliant-or-totally-stupid-but-definitely-divisive idea of pinch hitting for Michael Conforto once the Braves went to lefty Hunter Cervenka. This is OK, except that the best he could do was send up Matt Reynolds, who did nothing useful. In the 9th, Wilmer Flores got aboard and then James Loney hit a double up the gap. Certainly, the Mets would have been in good shape with men on 2nd and 3rd and none out, but instead, Flores was sent home, and in a sequence that just typifies the luck the Mets have had lately, the Braves executed a perfect relay and nailed Flores at the plate, and with that went the air from the Mets.

So...now what?  This game put me in a legitimate bad mood and I thought I was beyond the point where the Mets do this to me in June. I wasn't even at the game and it pissed me off. I mean, if this is going to turn into last year, that's one thing. But why make this so damn difficult?

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.

Terrible And Terrible

It seems, just because of the nature of Baseball, that there are a few times each season where the Mets just deserve to be absolutely humiliated, for one reason or another. Whether it's because they don't hit, or they don't pitch, or they don't do either, or they're just not putting a team on the field worthy of a Major League game, they just deserve it.

Tonight at Citi Field was one of those nights.

It was my 9th game of the season, and I just kind of had an ominous feeling about things. I think most Mets fans probably did. If it wasn't bad enough that half the lineup was on the DL, the remaining useful pieces were somehow injured and yet not on the DL, meaning the active roster was clogged up with dead weight, meaning the Mets had to throw out a starting lineup with Alejandro De Aza leading off, and Kelly Johnson hitting 5th...and what's the use?

Jameson Taillon, in his 2nd Major League game, by all rights probably should have no-hit the Mets tonight. The Mets were just screaming to be no-hit. They spent most of the game swinging out of their shoes and mostly rolling over pitches to the point where I think I'd marked "4-3" in my scorecard before the batter even swung. Taillon threw 6 pitches in the 1st inning, and by the end of the 5th he'd barely cracked 50, and the Mets hadn't even sniffed a hit. I was beginning to think that they'd just bored the crowd to death until the end of the 6th inning, when, after another inning of Mets batters hitting weak rollers to 1st, there was an audible smattering of boos coming from the crowd. Most of them had had it. Hell, I'd had it. Here I was, about to watch the Mets get no-hit by a rookie for the 2nd year in a row. I'd already lived through the horror of Chris Heston. I didn't need to do this again.

Then again, when Curtis Granderson singled to lead off the 7th and break up the no-hit bid, the game turned from something ignominious to just plain boring. And the crowd that was slipping into the terror zone kind of just faded out into the night.

And all I'm thinking is Poor Jacob deGrom. Once again he pitched his ass off and for a while had the Pirates totally tied in knots. But he made one mistake pitch to Jung Ho Kang in the 6th, and Kang parked it in the seats and that basically was the entire game right there. I know somewhere, someone is blaming Jim Henderson for giving up the second HR to Starling Marte in the 8th or blaming Terry Collins for leaving Henderson in for a 2nd inning, and lord knows my initial reaction was to wonder why Henderson was still in the game, but in reality, did it matter? The game was already over. Why split hairs?

I guess the solace you can take here is that it seems like every June, the Mets go into stink mode where they stop hitting and everything is terrible, and last year they somehow managed to pull themselves out of the stew. Unfortunately, we still have to live through it. That's probably the most terrible thing of it all.

Toolsiness, Or Lack Thereof

8 innings of normal, run of the mill Baseball were played on Friday night in Milwaukee. I wouldn't say it was much to write home about. Matt Harvey continued his resurgence with 6 strong innings, looking, perhaps, as good as he's looked all season. True, I'm not sure if that's actually true or if I'm just saying that because Keith Hernandez deemed it so, but he gave up 1 run on 2 hits with 8 strikeouts, so I'd say that was pretty good if nothing else. The Mets, as they usually do, provided him with no run support, save for a Yoenis Cespedes bomb of a Home Run in the 6th inning off of Junior Guerra.

Otherwise, there wasn't much noteworthy about those 8 innings. Kelly Johnson, who's reappeared with the Mets this week in a deal for one-game-and-out-er Akeel Morris (and who probably shouldn't have left in the first place), made his re-debut, doubled in his first at bat and was promptly thrown out advancing later on. The Brewers made an attempt to cash in an early run but for some slick fielding and quick thinking by Asdrubal Cabrera, coupled with poor sliding by Scooter Gennett and the aiding and abetting of an Instant Replay that took too long, but, again, the follies of the game.

Yes, 8 mostly un-notable innings. Thing is, the game ended up going 11 innings. What happened in those final 3 innings was a melange of utter insanity.

Jeremy Jeffress, the Brewers closer, came in the game in the 9th inning and promptly got himself into an enormous mess. He walked Cabrera, gave up a chopper to Wilmer Flores that snuck through for a hit, and then a sharp single to Johnson, far too hard hit to bring home Cabrera. That's bases loaded, nobody out if you're keeping score. Unfortunately, this was the Mets at work here, and so in rapid succession, Kevin Plawecki popped out, Neil Walker (relegated to the bench after being punctured by a Baseball on Thursday) struck out, and Curtis Granderson grounded out to finish a perfectly Metsy inning.

Jim Henderson came in for the Mets in the 9th and got himself in a similarly sticky situation. With 1 out, he walked Jonathan Lucroy, who was pinch run for by Keon Broxton. Broxton then stole second. This is rather benign, but had Plawecki made a more accurate throw, Broxton likely would have been out. Again, not out of the ordinary. The real issue was that Johnson ole'd the throw and somehow allowed it to get through his legs, just far enough away for Broxton to get to 3rd. So, now the Brewers had their chance to win. Conventional wisdom would have had the Mets walk the next two batters just to give themselves a chance, but against the Brewers, who are mostly a bunch of walking Strikeouts, Terry Collins was having none of that strategy business. His strategy? Go get 'em. Henderson walked Chris Carter, which brought up old friend Kirk Nieuwenhuis, who, of course, struck out. Aaron Hill followed by grounding out. So after each team probably should have found a way to win the game in regulation, we were going to Extra Innings.

The Mets did nothing in their half of the 10th. Conventional wisdom would have had a different pitcher in for the Mets in the bottom half, given that Henderson usually doesn't fare well in second innings or second days in a row. Therefore, Henderson came back out for the 10th and immediately walked Ramon Flores on 4 pitches. After another ball to Miguel Maldonado, Ray Ramirez appeared at the mound. Whenever Ray Ramirez shows himself on the field, it's not good, not so much because it means that a player is injured, but that said injured player must then be treated by Ray Ramirez, who I believe holds a degree from Hollywood Upstairs Medical College. Fortunately, Henderson was simply suffering from blisters, but nonetheless was removed from the game in favor of Jerry Blevins. Maldonado sacrificed Flores over to second, and then Flores took off and tried to steal 3rd. This was a good move, because he was safe, but in his attempt to be safe, Flores made what we'll generously call an overzealous slide into 3rd and the momentum carried him off the base, while Matt Reynolds alertly held a tag on him, resulting in Flores being called out. The subsequent review only confirmed what we'd already seen. Jonathan Villar then struck out, and the game continued.

The Brewers were already having a pretty toolsy night but they outdid themselves in the 11th inning. Much like they did in the 9th, the Mets attacked early, with Cabrera singling and Flores (who's really come on of late in the kind of way we knew he would if he just got the playing time) doubled, and Johnson was intentionally walked. So, here we were again. Bases loaded, no out, Kevin Plawecki up, and I'd have to be forgiven if I wasn't optimistic after the Mets shit themselves in the same situation 2 innings ago. Plawecki did his job and popped out to 1st. Reynolds followed by hitting a sharp line drive that probably should have been caught by Villar. But Villar didn't catch it and with that, the wheels just fell off of everything. Flores, trying to not get doubled off, went back to 2nd. Villar flipped the ball to Scooter Gennett at 2nd to try to salvage an out. Flores, realizing he was in a force play situation, took off for 3rd. Johnson, who was out once Gennett stepped on 2nd, then ran back to 1st. The Umpire, Ramon DeJesus, gave a safe call, presumably because he didn't know what the hell else to do. Gennett, upon seeing Johnson wheeling back to 1st, decided to get him in a rundown, and ultimately tagged him out...thereby meaning Johnson was out for the second time on the play, which isn't a thing in Baseball. The only players who managed to get things right were Cabrera, who I assume just said "Fuck it" and bolted for home the second the ball hit the ground, and Reynolds, who ran out the ball and was safe at 1st. Oh, by the way, after everyone was done scratching their heads, the Mets had the lead.

Somehow, Gary and Keith tried to rationalize this play, but how can you explain the absurd? It's just Baseball. Sometimes weird things like this happen.

Jeurys Familia, who probably should have been in for the 10th inning, came in in the last of the 11th and restored some semblance of order to the game by retiring the Brewers in order. I'm surprised he didn't walk the first 3 batters on 12 pitches and then pull off an unassisted Triple Play, but then again I think we're all relieved that that didn't actually come to pass.

So, the Mets ended up winning this masquerade of a game 2-1, their second extra inning win in 3 days, if you can believe it. Now, they get to turn around and come back this afternoon for some more.

Double Misery

I'm not sure it's not just easier to say that the Pirates beat the Mets 6-2 in 18 innings on Tuesday as opposed to breaking down the shit stew of Baseball we were subjected to.

The Mets right now look exactly like they did in June of last year, which I suppose on the one hand is a good thing because they turned it around last year, but on the other hand why the fuck is this still going on? I really believed that the issues of offense and depth had been properly addressed and we weren't going to have to deal with any more extended stretches of games where our awesome starters pitch as well as can reasonably be expected of them and lose because the offense can't score a damn run. But I see I was mistaken.

So, I mean, someone owes Steven Matz and Jacob deGrom a dinner or a new Car or something because neither of them pitched especially badly. No, Matz wasn't great in the early game but he at least kept the damage against him to a minimum. deGrom had a bad 2nd inning in the nightcap. That's it. But for all intents and purposes both games appeared over once they gave up a 2nd run, and that's not sustainable at this level of play.

I know, I know, it's only June, but I feel like we have to go through this every season. You mean to tell me that the Mets couldn't figure out a way to get a run off of Jon Niese? I figured all the Mets would have to do is get a guy on 1st and have him sneeze and he'd give up 4 runs. But not the way the Mets offense is going. Steven Matz hits a triple in the 5th inning and gets stranded there because the next two guys ground out. Niese throws 7 shutout innings. Is that totally galling or what? The Mets did a wonderful job in the nightcap of making Juan Nicasio look similarly awesome.

The larger issue here is that there isn't any relief in sight. At least for the immediate time this is what we're stuck with because the 4 injured guys aren't close to coming back and there isn't exactly adequate talent available to call up. But, again, that was the same issue last year. Instead of dealing with Muno, Ceciliano, Mayberry and Recker we have Plawecki, Campbell, Reynolds and Kelly...are we at all convinced?

So, yeah. The Mets were sort of heading for a day like this. I'm not sure why I get worked up about it anymore but I guess I can't help it. Or am I that worked up at all? It seems to me in 2007/08 when this was happening, I'd go into a full-scale Francesa-level meltdown. Perhaps I've mellowed in my old age. Tomorrow, of course, the Mets send Noah Syndergaard to the mound against Jameson Taillon, the hotshot Pirates prospect making his Major League debut. Is there anyone out there who isn't convinced that Taillon is going to throw 8 shutout innings, with 1 hit and 12 strikeouts? Wouldn't surprise me at all.

Your World Series

I was late in putting on Sunday's game. So late, in fact, that by time I did put it on, it was the top of the 7th inning, and the Mets had 2 men on, and 2 out, and Wilmer Flores was at the plate. Jose Fernandez had been dealing most of the day to that point, but he'd been mostly matched by Matt Harvey as the 1-0 score indicated. Of course, it was the Marlins with the one. So Fernandez strikes out Flores, and then he starts screaming and yelling and pumping his fists and basically rips his jersey off in the middle of the field.

I was beginning to compose a blog in my head about how sophomoric Fernandez was behaving. But it dawned on me. Fernandez has spent his entire career pitching for the Bum-ass Marlins, essentially a fake team that has no aspirations, no direction and is little more than a stain on the underpants of Major League Baseball. Pitching 7 shutout innings against the team that went to the World Series might be the biggest thing that's happened to him in his career. In fact, for the Marlins, this was probably their equivalent of the World Series. So, you know what, I don't blame Fernandez for going over the top like that. Let him be excited. That's probably as good as it's going to get for him this season.

Of course, what's besides the point is that the Mets continued to have a hard time generating offense, as they didn't hit Fernandez, but also didn't do anything against Corbett Conley in the 8th inning or their irritating fidgety closer A.J. Ramos in the 9th. So, you know, it's not like they posed much of a challenge. At least Harvey pitched well again, so you can take that as a moral victory, and at least they won the first two games of the series, so it's not a total loss.

On to Pittsburgh.

Punch And Punchy

Over the final 5 games of this 6 game homestand, the Mets scored a grand total of 9 runs. It should come as no surprise that their record in said 5 games was 1-4. The numbers are positively 2015.

The finale of this stretch was a real humdinger of a game, a total shit show that lasted 4 hours and 41 minutes, ran 13 innings, and was decided by Colon-like Pitcher Matt Albers drilling his first hit since 2007 and eventually scoring the game's winning run in a 2-1 mess of a game.

Lost in the box score, then, was Jacob deGrom's best outing of the season, a sterling 7-inning effort that saw him regain some of the luster he'd been lacking at times this season, giving up 5 hits, walking 2 and striking out 10. Unfortunately, in that 7th inning, he allowed a Home Run to Todd Frazier, a real sin of a thing to do because the Mets had already plated their daily run and he clearly needed to make it stand up.

So, 1-1, and away we went. As this was an afternoon game, I was relegated to sporadically following things on Gamecast, but, as usual, I have work that gets in the way, so after seeing 1-1 in the 7th inning, by time I looked again it was 1-1 in the 10th inning, followed by 1-1 in the 12th inning. This, I suppose, shouldn't have been much of a surprise. Once again operating with a short bench and a lineup that lacked Yoenis Cespedes, the Mets trotted out a lineup that included Ty Kelly, Rene Rivera, James Loney and Juan Lagares. Combine that with Michael Conforto earning the dreaded Golden Sombrero and Curtis Granderson hitting .211, and, well, you know where this is going.

I'm sure plenty of people decided instead to complain about the bullpen blowing the game again, but, much like Tuesday night, how much of that is true? Addison Reed, Jeurys Familia, Antonio Bastardo and Jim Henderson allowed a whole lot of nothing over their innings of work, and Hansel Robles also didn't give anything up, but I'm told he left with an injury so maybe that's got something to do with it. Logan Verrett was probably thrown in in the 12th with instructions to just suck it up, and he was well on his way to doing so until Albers stole the show by hitting a double to lead off the 13th, moved to 3rd when an obviously stunned Verrett threw a Wild Pitch, and then scored on a Sac Fly by Jose Abreu. Given Albers physical appearance and the fact that he's been an American League pitcher his entire career, I suppose this must be the White Sox version of a Bartolo Colon Home Run. It certainly seems to be the story of this game.

And that only underscores the problem. This is kind of embarrassing.

Cold Stop

Colorado has always been a nerve-wracking place for the Mets to play. I'd have to imagine that's the case for any team that has to go there, but it seems like ill happenings tend to befall the Mets in Denver moreso than most places. I'm not saying it's as bad as Atlanta or San Diego, but, then again, when every trip to Coors Field inevitably results in some mention of Dante Bichette, you know it's not exactly a happy place to be.

Last year of course was a different story as not only did the Mets come in raging hot but they also just blew the Colorados out of their own building in a 3-game sweep.

Friday night seemed to be more of every other season and less 2015. Matt Harvey regressed back to his struggling self, once again unraveling in a series of ringing hits in the middle innings and was ultimately bounced from the game in the 6th inning, leaving all sorts of questions and snibes in his wake.

Meanwhile, the Mets bats were stopped cold by Jon Gray. This isn't unprecedented; Gray pitched a rather strong, albeit abbreviated, game against the Mets last season and had them on the ropes until he was removed and the Mets came back. When the Mets saw Gray in Colorado, they ate him for lunch but again that was a different time. Gray, if you're willing to look past the fact that he pitches in Colorado half the time, is a pretty good pitching prospect.

That being said, Gray benefited from facing a Mets team that's stopped hitting, and this is a pretty inopportune time to stop hitting because on a normal Coors Field night, they probably could have figured out a way to offset Harvey's poor outing and maybe take some of the focus off of him. However, they're not hitting. They're not hitting Home Runs period and of course this gets people antsy because it seems like they've abandoned fundamentals. This isn't quite the case. The fundamentals are fine. This team just happens to hit more Home Runs than what we're used to seeing out of Mets teams.

Regardless, the Mets didn't hit Home Runs, didn't hit period and instead ended up losing the game 5-2 and now everyone's right back to asking "What's up with Harvey?" This is a question I'm sort of tired of hearing about, and I'm sure if I'm sick of it Matt Harvey must be completely apoplectic. These mechanical issues can be completely baffling but Harvey's not even alone on this staff as having to work through a mechanical issue. deGrom has at least identified his issue but identifying the problem is one thing, fixing it is something else entirely. These things take time and pitching in Colorado isn't exactly the best place to work through these issues.