You Jerks

The Oakland A's are in town this weekend, for one of those obscure interleague matchups that only occurs once every three years and seems much odder than, say, the Orioles coming to town. We'll get another one of these really weird matchups next weekend too, but I'll worry about that when I have to.

Currently, the A's are on my shitlist. Not because I hold some residual bitterness from 1973, because that was 6 years before I was born, but because of something they did earlier this week, totally under the radar. I know the A's aren't going anywhere this season and they're generally one of the more active teams around the trade deadline, but they went and dealt their two best relief pitchers, Sean Doolittle and Ryan Madson, to the Fucking Nationals, thereby strengthening their weak spot. I mean, what the fuck? Why help those clowns out? Now, I know that Billy Beane is a pretty shrewd judge of talent, to the point where I'd be leery of dealing him prospects he wants, simply because if he wants someone that badly, he may know something you don't. I'm not certain that was in play here, because I don't know who Oakland got in return (and in fact I didn't even know about the trade until 2 days after it happened), and, I'm not sure I care. The A's are by and large never the Mets problem. We have to see the Fucking Nationals 44 times a year and dammit, I don't want them getting any better. In fact, I'd like to see the other 29 teams purposely collude to NOT trade them pitching help and let them inevitably screw things up on their own. To wit: The Mets themselves have a few relief pitchers on the trading block, and Sandy Alderson has essentially said outright that he wouldn't trade them to the Fucking Nationals.

So, yeah. The A's pissed me off. So hopefully, the Mets teach them a lesson this weekend. They got off to a good start this evening, running out to a lead thanks to a pair of Home Runs from Michael Conforto and 5 solid, if unspectacular, innings from Steven Matz, and then surviving a hairy late charge by the A's to win the series opener, 7-5.

I'd like to talk about Matz and Conforto a little more, but of course since it was Friday and I wasn't at the game, I went home and fell asleep, and by time I woke up and put the game on, it was the 8th inning and Erik Goeddel was busy making a mess of things. He'd gotten lit up by Josh Phegley and Jed Lowrie, and then was removed in favor of Addison Reed, probably earlier than one would prefer, and, well, he wasn't good. He walked Rajai Davis and gave up another run-scoring hit by Marcus Semien, and then he was removed for Jerry Blevins. Because when you think 5-out Save, you think Jerry Blevins.

So, of course, Blevins got the 5-out Save. He got around Yonder Alonso and Khris Davis, the punch in Oakland's lineup, to finish the 8th and got through the 9th rather quietly to seal the victory.

Now, of course, the Mets did plate some of their runs against Blake Treinen, one of the pitchers Oakland acquired in their trade with Washington, if you can take some consolation from that. I wouldn't. In fact, I'd rather have the Mets take out Treinen with him still in a Washington uniform. I mean, Conforto hit his two Home Runs off of Paul Blackburn and Frankie Montas, the latter being another Beane Deadline Special, acquired from the Dodgers last season. Where I'm going with this now, I'm not sure. I guess the bottom line is that generally when Beane is making deals, usually nothing good comes from it.

BAI

I only managed to catch an inning or two of Thursday night's game, which is more or less how I'd been watching this series. I think it could only be stomached in small doses. But at any rate, the Mets were behind when I turned the game on, which stands to reason given that the Dodgers had hit 44 Home Runs in the series to that point, half of them by Cody Bellinger, the other half by Corey Seager, and another half by Justin Turner because the Mets needed more reason to look like assholes. I'll give Steven Matz a little bit of credit for only allowing two Home Runs, instead of the requisite 6 that the other Mets starters had given up in this series, which meant that when I tuned in, the Mets only trailed 3-2 instead of 11-2.

But at any rate, Lucas Duda hit a double to score Jay Bruce and tie the game 3-3 in the 6th inning, and that gave me some blind hope that maybe the Mets could salvage something here, but that was not the case. I shut it down around the 7th inning because, you know, it was late and I was tired, and of course everything went to shit from there.

This series reminded me of those years when the Mets were terrible and Washington would come in to Citi Field and hit 87 Home Runs, most of them by Rendon and Fire Hydrant Head. But the Mets lost all four of these games not so much because they'd quit or weren't trying, it seems more a matter of the Dodgers are to 2017 what the Cubs were to 2016 or something like that. I do realize that based on the last 7 games the Mets season is probably toast and we're probably going to start seeing some of these pieces get traded off in the coming weeks. It's sort of the curse of the middle ground. Not good enough to hang with the big boys, but dammit, I still think the Mets are better put together than the Fucking Marlins. Not that it counts for anything at this point but you take what little victories you can get.

Not Just Me?

I guess it's not just me that has a thing with the Braves this season. Though my record in Mets/Braves games this season is done at 0-3, I feel like that's the record of most Mets fans against the Braves this year. The Braves have already lost 90 games this season, the Mets have 80 wins and sit at the top of the Wildcard race, and yet when these two teams have met, the Braves have had the upper hand basically every time out, and especially at Citi Field. The Mets won 2 of 3 against the Braves here in April, and they haven't beaten the Braves here since.

Tuesday night was a bit more of a jarring loss than Monday, which was a debacle from the get-go. The Mets had a lead early against Julio Teheran, who they never seem to hit, but the Braves tied it after the Mets abandoned fundamentals in the 6th inning, and then put the game effectively out of reach in the 7th when Adonis Garcia hit a 3-run Home Run off of Jerry Blevins, who for some bizarre reason was left in to face the righty who's killed the Mets on multiple occasions.

The Mets rallied gamely late, but could get no closer than 5-4, and sure, you can take the moral victory of this being the first time the Mets have scored more than 3 runs in a game in a week, but it didn't do them a damn bit of good. They had Yoenis Cespedes up with a chance to win the game in the last of the 9th, but he got frozen by a Jim Johnson curveball, struck out, and the Mets ended up once again falling to the Braves.

I know there's a whole shitstorm over Terry Collins hitting for Jay Bruce in the 8th inning but let's be serious here. That's scenery. It's backstory. It's not important. There's a lot of eerie symbolism at work here between a series of curious managerial moves, and stagnating in the crisis point of a pennant race, and running out of logical things to say.

One more chance to get this right.

Pole Position

Sunday seems to have exemplified just how well things have been going for the Mets of late. Terry Collins essentially threw his "D" lineup out there against the Minnesota Twins, and in spite of holding a slim late lead remained firm in his desire to not use any of his everyday players, and won the game anyway. It's either that or this is just the sort of luxury you can take in the middle of September when you have 39 players on your active roster and you're playing a team that's on the precipice of 100 losses for the season.

Not playing at all were Jose Reyes, James Loney, Curtis Granderson, Jay Bruce, Addison Reed or Jeurys Familia. Asdrubal Cabrera made only a cameo appearance. Yoenis Cespedes refused a day off and ended up leaving early anyway due to illness. Appearing instead was a veritable motley crew of players involving Gabriel Ynoa, Michael Conforto, Alejandro De Aza, Matt Reynolds, Kelly Johnson and, for the first time in months, Lucas Duda and Juan Lagares even saw some action in the 9th inning. This lineup wasn't exactly gangbusters, but the 3 runs they generated against Kyle Gibson was enough as they won, 3-2, to finish off the sweep of the Twins.

It appeared early as though this lineup was going to run Gibson off the mound before he'd even gotten started. A walk, a hit and a hit batter loaded the bases with no outs, and cleanup hitter Michael Conforto picked up a 2-run single, and then Gibson walked the next guy, and already there was action in the Twins bullpen. But Travis d'Arnaud, who's totally off kilter with no clear direction to get him out of this tailspin, hit the ball right on the screws--right at Brian Dozier who easily doubled Conforto off 2nd and kind of righted Gibson's ship. After that, the Mets did little off him except for a T.J. Rivera Home Run in the 3rd that ended up holding up as the winning run.

Ynoa, on the other hand, acquitted himself well enough over 4.2 innings. Aside from some 2nd inning difficulty, Ynoa was by and large fine on a day in which Collins basically said anything beyond 4 solid innings was gravy, and he did that, and he probably could have finished the 5th, too, and Collins probably outfoxed himself by pulling Ynoa after allowing that 2 out hit in the 5th and it nearly bit him in the ass. It ended up taking two pitchers to get that 3rd out. Fortunately, nothing of consequence happened during that span.

After that, it was basically a by-committee day for the Mets. Erik Goeddel got the last out of the 5th, worked a clean 6th and vultured a win for his troubles. Josh Smoker handled the 7th. Fernando Salas allowed a monstrous Home Run to Kennys Vargas and a subsequent hit to Robbie Grossman, but he too got a pair of outs to start the 8th. Jerry Blevins came in and got Eduardo Escobar to finish out the 8th, and what the hell, at that point they may as well send him out for the 9th as well, and they did, and he very quickly and quietly set down the Twins in order to pick up his second save in the past week.

And, of course, later in the afternoon the Cardinals beat the Giants once again, and with that the Mets now find themselves clean in front in the NL Wildcard race. I'm still baffled at how this has all come to pass, but at the same time I'm not sure anyone can legitimately complain. After everything that's gone on, the Mets now find themselves heading into the season's final two weeks in possession of a Playoff spot and not only that, they'd host a Wildcard game on top of it. I know that in the past the final two weeks of the season have involved a lot of weird things for the Mets, and who knows what's coming down the pike this season, but the trepidation of prior seasons maybe doesn't seem quite so bad this year.

Then again, ask me that question in a week. Then ask me again in 10 days. And so on, and so forth...

Drivera Me Crazy

Several years ago, during one of those years where the Mets were a contending team that wasn't really a contender, Braden Looper became the first Pitcher to successfully blow two Saves in the same game, in an instance where the Mets had a lead in the 9th inning, blew it, took the lead in the 10th inning, blew it again, and then lost the game altogether (I had to go to the internet to look it up, but I've successfully found it).

Last night's game had that sort of eerie reminiscent feeling. Fortunately, Jeurys Familia didn't equal Looper's feat (Terry Collins being slightly the wiser than Willie Randolph, Familia didn't actually get the chance to blow the Save again). But in a harrowing affair that ran into an Extra frame, the Mets managed to emerge victorious thanks to the exploits of T.J. Rivera. Rivera picked a fine moment to hit his first Major League Home Run, in the 10th inning of a tie game off Mark Melancon, which ultimately proved to be the winning run in the Mets 4-3 victory in Washington.

This was another one of those games where I was late in tuning in, and as such I missed Noah Syndergaard's 7 scintillating innings of work. This was April Syndergaard, where he basically stoned the Nationals cold, giving up 1 run and striking out 10, while the Mets scratched out a run here, a run there, and by time I'd tuned in, they had a 3-1 lead and everything seemed just fine.

Then, of course, the 9th inning happened and Daniel Murphy interjected himself into the proceedings and everything kind of turned to mush from there. It wasn't an especially hard hit ball, and lord knows that Murphy probably spent at least 25% of his Mets career hitting ground balls towards Second Base like that, and 9.75 times out of 10, he was thrown out. But this newfangled Daniel Murphy beats the play at 1st, and the next thing we know, Jose Reyes is airmailing throws and Ryan Zimmerman is bunting, and there's more hits, and Fire Hydrant Head is involved, and my head was spinning, and Keith Hernandez wasn't making sense, and the game was tied and I was waiting for Danny Espinosa to hit the Walkoff Grand Slam and put us all out of our misery. Except that Familia managed to induce someone to hit into a Double Play, and I think the Nationals hit for Espinosa. Regardless, the game hadn't ended, and the Mets were still alive. Barely.

Then, of course, there was Rivera hitting his first Major League Home Run to put the Mets back on top, which as I already mentioned was good timing on his part but just another in a string of fine performances he's had so far in the Major Leagues. He is, perhaps, Murphy-lite, in that we don't know very much about him other than he's from the Bronx, and he can hit a little bit, and nobody's really sure what his best position is in the field so we just have to throw him somewhere and hope for the best. But if he comes up with hits like this, it's all good.

Of course, the Mets had to survive the Nationals again, and Fernando Salas was in to try to pick up his 1st Save as a Met, and he got the first two guys easily enough, but then Jayson Werth singled, because Jayson Werth always singles at inopportune times, and that brought up Murphy. Of course it did. Jerry Blevins was then summoned to try to get his first Save as a Met, and I'm sure every Mets fan had some horrible image of Murphy getting a hold of one and skipping around the bases. That would be a fitting epitaph for this mess, wouldn't it. But it didn't happen. Blevins made it as hairy as possible before finally slipping a 3-2 curve past Murphy to end the game, and that, coupled with a late-night Giants loss has now sandwiched the Mets equidistant from their Wildcard competitors. Half a game up on St. Louis, half a game behind San Francisco. 17 to play, and after tomorrow afternoon, none of them against teams that are over .500. That's a mighty fine Pennant Race.

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.

More Reasons to Not Like You

So, even when the Mets beat, and beat up on everyone's least favorite team, the Miami Marlins, they still seem to find a way to stick it to us.

We by now all know about Jerry Blevins and Travis d'Arnaud leaving Sunday's game after being hit by balls projected off of Marlin arms or bats. The end result of this is that the Mets are now without their best lefty specialist for what appears to be close to two months, and their starting Catcher, who'd been off to a blazing hot start offensively and defensively, for probably a month at least.

Figures it would happen against the Mickey Mouse Marlins. These guys routinely find ways to annoy me, and if they can't beat us—and clearly, they can't beat us—their only recourse seems to be to beat us up.

If that wasn't enough, there's now the rumor circulating that their pompous ass of an owner, Jeffrey Loria, is sniffing around the Mets trying to poach Wally Backman to manage the team, as he's apparently grown tired of Mike Redmond. I wouldn't go so far as to blame the Marlins 3-10 start on Redmond. Remember, this is a guy who fired Joe Girardi after he overachieved with a team that had Miguel Cabrera and nobody else in particular and won Manager of the Year. It might be more likely that he overplayed his hand by giving all the money to Giancarlo Stanton and then pinning his hopes on Mat Latos and Dee Gordon, and some other guys that are all style and no substance. So, I guess he figures he'll stick it to the Mets and hire Wally Backman because he figures all the Mets fans want him to be the Manager, so he must be some great hidden secret.

Problem is, Wally Backman is never going to be the Mets manager. And the only people that want him to be the manager are the same misguided Mets fans that seem to think they can fire the owners and stage a hostile takeover of the team. At this point, I'm convinced that Backman is all hype, because if he wasn't, he would have been named the Manager 3 years ago. It's not going to happen. Get over it. Let him go manage the Marlins and go 77-85 for 2 years before Loria guts the team again and fires him.

But, Marlins and their 4 fans aside, let's worry about the Mets here. The pitcher is out, the Catcher is out, and now we get to see what Kevin Plawecki is made of. The #2 prospect in the Mets system, Plawecki is one of those guys that has been around for a while but didn't get much notice because he wasn't named Harvey, Wheeler, Syndergaard, Montero, deGrom or Nimmo. He might actually be better than d'Arnaud, if a little raw, but he's going to be up for the time being, and he's going right into the lineup from what I hear. Also up is Hansel Robles, who I know even less about, and as proof, I assumed the Mets had procured him from the Dodgers. But that's not the case. The Dodgers had a guy named Oscar Robles, and that was a long time ago. Hansel Robles has been in the organization since 2008, but it's taken him a bit of time to find himself, and now he's here. He won't be thrown into the fire quite like Plawecki will, and in fact he may find himself further down the depth chart than, say, Erik Goeddel, but for now, he's here and more power to him.

So, lick their wounds, the Mets will, and now get ready for the Barves to come into town. I'll be in attendance tonight for my 3rd game of the season as the Mets attempt to remain undefeated at home on the season, a major story in and of itself.