That Blue Place

Dodger Stadium is one of those "odd" ballparks. It has a look so particularly unique to it so that when you're there, or watching a game there (I've never been to a game there), there's no mistaking what you're looking at. I know that this era of "retro" ballparks  has made the Baseball stadium more aesthetically pleasing but by and large it can be difficult to tell certain stadiums apart (i.e. who the hell could figure the difference between Anaheim Stadium, The Ballpark in Arlington or Newer New Busch Stadium?).  There's only a handful of places like it, and generally they have names like Fenway or Wrigley. Dodger Stadium is now the 3rd oldest stadium in the Major Leagues but nobody in Los Angeles seems to care. You know what you're looking at because there's that light blue motif, those accordion pavilions in the Outfield bleachers, that random 5th deck behind Home Plate and the overmodulated PA system that makes the ambient ballpark music sound like it's in your living room.

In recent years, the Mets' visits to Dodger Stadium have sort of paralleled the success of the team. When the Mets go to Los Angeles and do well, they've been having a good year. When things are bad, of course, they get really bad. Then, of course, there was last year, when the Mets went to Dodger Stadium and stole a pair of Playoff games, including a clinching game. So instead of coming in there this season with a bad taste in your mouth and a feeling of general ennui, now it's like a pleasant reminder of what went before.

Curtis Granderson helped continue those feelings by hitting Scott Kazmir's first pitch of the game into the seats to get the Mets out to a quick lead. George texted me earlier in the day regarding Kazmir being a good candidate for the Charles Barkley "Who He Play For?" discussion that we had a few weeks ago regarding Jake Peavy. I agree to a point, because while Kazmir has bounced around from team-to-team quite a bit over the past few seasons, there's still always going to be some residual bad taste in the mouths of Mets fans because of the infamous trade of Kazmir, what's now a generation ago. Since that time, Kazmir has made the Mets look both stupid and prophetic. What I can say, though, is that generally, the Mets have had Kazmir's number. Yes, I know that's not saying much since he's only faced the Mets 4 times.

Granderson got the Mets going and later Kevin Plawecki hit a Home Run as well, and Steven Matz helped his own cause by driving home another run with a double, and for the most part things seemed to be going smoothly. Matz nursed things through 6 innings and left with a 4-2 lead. Then, of course, the Bullpen turned into the Bullpen and we had a bit of role reversal in the 8th inning. Sunday, Antonio Bastardo was summoned to clean up Jim Henderson's mess. Last night, Jim Henderson was summoned to clean up Antonio Bastardo's mess. Both times, the messes were cleaned without any significant damage and Jeurys Familia finished out the game, just like he did last October.

So, just when you think the Mets are about to fall off the precipice once again, they come back and quickly run off 3 straight wins. This is what happens to good teams, and right now, the Mets are playing like a good team. Nice when that happens, isn't it?

Thud

If you fell asleep early, you probably spared yourself a nice headache, because that's pretty much what I ended up with from watching the Mets play in San Diego.

The Case History for the Mets playing in San Diego, particularly at Petco Park, hasn't been good. Since Petco Park opened in 2004, the Mets have played there I believe about 40 times. In those 40 games, the Mets are, or at least seem to be 6-34, and of those 34 losses, 26 of them were by the score of 2-1. The remainder of them involved some kind of terrible thing happening, like a complete meltdown by the bullpen or a walk-off Grand Slam. 

None of those things happened Thursday night/Friday morning, but things didn't go well for the Mets anyway. This time, the obvious culprit was Jacob deGrom, who was going through some sort of mechanical difficulties throughout his rather laborious 5 innings of work. deGrom's velocity was down, his pitches were up, he wasn't getting anybody out and he seemed to be getting progressively angrier and angrier as the game went on. And things didn't exactly start out well for him to begin with. The first batter for the Padres, Wil Myers, who's one more injury away from bust-dom, took him deep. In the 2nd, he gave up a 2-out RBI single to Colin Rea, the opposing Pitcher, and in the 3rd there was more crap.

That being said, deGrom only left a 3-0 game, which was still in control, or at least it was until the Padres topped off their tank against Logan Verrett in the 6th. Derek Norris, who appears to essentially be another Wilson Ramos (meaning a big, loafy Catcher who hits sporadically but for whatever reason batters the Mets to the tune of an .840 BA) hit a Home Run and something else happened. But the larger issue for the Mets was their inability to hit Rea at all. The Mets made solid contact, but basically everything they hit was into whatever dopey shift the Padres had on, or it was a well-hit fly ball that got run down by Jon Jay, who seems to have materialized with San Diego after essentially being a Mike Matheny All Star for so many years. Rea took a No Hitter into the 7th inning, which is an accomplishment in and of itself considering that Rea is a relative unknown and the Padres have never thrown a No Hitter, a plight we as Mets fans are familiar with but can no longer empathize.

Fortunately, Yoenis Cespedes finally hit a ground ball where a Padre infielder wasn't with 2 outs in the 7th inning and removed that potential stigma from the game. Still, Rea continued to mow down the Mets into the 9th, when they mounted an irritating 3-run rally. I say it's an irritating rally because yes, while it's nice that Granderson homered and Cespedes homered, all it did was just prolong the inevitable: To lose 5-3 instead of 5-0, but lose nonetheless.

At least it wasn't a 2-1 loss with Jay hitting the walk-off Home Run and pogo-sticking his way around the bases. Then again, the Mets still have 3 more games in San Diego. Anything's possible. 

Infernal Shit Show

I last year mused about the Dodgers being The Hot Team in Baseball, and how they were getting every conceivable break on their way to a Division title and a trip to the NLCS, where they were ultimately beaten by the St. Louis Cardinals, who might be considered the Golden Boys to the Dodgers' Hot Team. Last August, the Mets went into LA and were swept, and the Dodgers really made them look like a second-class team in the process. True, the Mets were (and perhaps still are) a second-class team, but the way that the Dodgers went about winning those three games were simply mind-boggling.

After last night's game, another Mets loss in Dodger Stadium in which they played like a bunch of idiots and really handed the game to the Dodgers, I'm starting to think more that maybe it's not so much that the Dodgers are The Hot Team as much as the Mets just have a Dodger Stadium thing. Or maybe it's just a West Coast thing, because they didn't play especially well in most of their other West Coast stops either. This has gone on much longer than just last season. Last night's simply scintillating affair was just another in a string of miserable performances the Mets have vomited up at Chavez Ravine. Four errors, two of which were committed by Wilmer Flores, served to do the Mets in, while Jon Niese had another one of his good bad starts as the Mets lost 6-2.

Things certainly got off well enough, as Curtis Granderson hit a leadoff Home Run off of Dan Haren. That was the high point of the night for the Mets. It was all downhill from there. Haren allowed the Mets two more hits over the remainder of his 7 innings, while on the other side, Niese was getting beat by guys like Dee Gordon and Erisbel Arruebarrena (you know, the great Erisbel Arruebarrena). It wasn't until the 5th inning that Flores had his attack of the blahniks and, following a bobble of a Yasiel Puig grounder, managed to trip over his own feet before he could make a throw to 1st, in a play that seemed to typify the Mets performance in this game. That particular error ultimately didn't lead to a run, but in the 7th, with Niese one pitch away from getting out of a jam and keeping the game at 2-1, Flores fielded an Adrian Gonzalez grounder cleanly, kept his footing...and unleashed a throw not especially close to Lucas Duda at 1st Base. This plated one run, knocked Niese from the game, and immediately led to two more runs when Matt Kemp doubled off of Carlos Torres. Game. Set. Match.

Though the game was for all intents and purposes over after that, the stupid didn't wear off for the Mets. They kind of creaked their way into a little rally in the 8th, and did manage to get a couple of men on for Curtis Granderson. But, in a scene reminiscent of last season, Granderson watched a 3rd strike that might not have been a 3rd strike, and then stood there and scowled at the umpire a little bit before slinking off. Later, Lucas Duda ole'd a foul pop in another play that didn't lead to any runs, but did typify the way the night was going for the Mets.

Fortunately, the Mets will get Jacob deGrom back from the DL tonight after being out for two weeks. That's a good sign since he's been one of the more brighter signs of life for the Mets this season. Unfortunately, he's got to come off the DL and pitch in Dodger Stadium, because the Mets still have two more games to play there this weekend. I expect that he'll hopefully pitch well, but something stupid is bound to happen. Gotta love those self-fulfilling prophecies.

Another One Of Those

Oakland has always been a bastion of all things a little offbeat when it comes to Baseball. Their 70s-era teams were generally a bunch of brash, bushy ruffians, guys like Jim Hunter, Vida Blue, Rollie Fingers and, of course, Reggie Jackson. They did things differently and won 3 consecutive World Series championships in the process. Since then, they've had the Bash Brothers, and now continue to be entrenched in the Moneyball era, thanks to their intrepid GM Billy Beane and his continued penchant for finding cheap ballplayers that somehow win when all banded together. The A's have won over the past decade or so with more regularity than you'd think, all the while adhering to the principle that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Particularly when those parts involve things like overgrown beards, using WHAM! as your at-bat music, and playing in a ballpark with excessive amounts of foul territory, thanks to it being the last multi-sport stadium currently in use, and an inscrutable name that nobody can figure out (and that sometimes has plumbing revolts that can cover the clubhouses in sewage). Somehow, this has led to the A's having the best record in Baseball for a majority of the season, and though they've slumped recently, they're still right in the thick of the AL West race, coming into Tuesday night's affair with a 73-51 record.

This whole long preamble is sort of meant to mask having to talk about said game on Tuesday night, a 6-2 Oakland win that I didn't bother to stick around for the end of. I already went through my sleeping pattern adjustment and the fact that 10pm West Coast starts don't really work for me anymore. I managed to get through the first 4 innings of the game, and although I didn't go to sleep directly after that, I'd seen all I needed to see. By that point, Dillon Gee had suffered through his 4th inning meltdown, surrendering a 3-run triple to Coco Crisp that for all intents and purposes put the game out of reach, and Scott Kazmir, whom the Mets roughed up but good back in June (but in typical Mets fashion they could do nothing with last night), took things from there.

The Mets once again did not hit much at all, save for a Travis d'Arnaud Home Run off of Kazmir, and this seems to be nothing new of late. However, in checking the box score this morning I do see that the Mets had 7 hits in last night's game, a significant step up from the 4-a-game run they were on in the Cubs series. Still, averaging between 4-7 hits per game isn't going to do anybody any good, and if it keeps up when the Mets aren't on the West Coast, maybe I'll start going to bed even earlier.

Even Flow

For the second straight night, I failed to make it to the end of the late-night Mets/Mariners tilt way out in Seattle. Unlike Monday, when I got through one inning, last night I made it to the end of the 5th, which is a marked improvement, but still not enough to prevent me falling asleep without knowing who won the game. Only when I woke up and checked my phone did I see that the Mets had emerged victorious, their 3-1 victory marking the first time they've ever won a game in Seattle—granted, it's only the 5th game they played there, but still. Worth at least making a note of.

Jacob deGrom was the beneficiary of this particular win, and deservedly so. After fizzling out with a series of losses and no-decisions in games where he's pitched well, he's now started to turn those efforts into some W's, and all of a sudden he's starting to be a little less under-the-radar. After stifling the Mariners for 7 innings last night, allowing all of 1 run and 5 hits, winning his 3rd consecutive start, he now sits with a 4-5 record and a rather shiny-looking 3.01 ERA, numbers that could conceivably throw him into an NL Rookie of the Year crop that lacks a particular standout. And the more you think about it, you have to ask yourself, well, why not deGrom? Even at his worst, he hasn't pitched particularly poorly more than 2 or 3 times he's took the mound, and as he's gotten his sea legs under him, he's been brilliant. For the month of July, his numbers could rival pretty much anyone in the league that isn't named "Kershaw;" in 4 starts, he's posted a 3-1 record, a 1.73 ERA and struck out 34 in 26 innings pitched against 5 walks. For a guy who was sort of regarded as talented trade bait for the past couple of years, buried behind the big names, this is a pretty damn good statement that he belongs in the Mets rotation for this year and beyond.

deGrom did most of the job himself, only allowing a run on a Dustin Ackley double that nearly got really ugly when Daniel Murphy's cutoff throw landed in the disease-covered Puget Sound. On the offensive side, the Mets didn't exactly generate much in the way of fireworks off of non-entity Erasmo Ramirez (non-entity in the sense that he was called up from the minors to start one game and then promptly get sent back to the minors for today's starter Taijuan Walker). Travis d'Arnaud had the big hand in things when his line drive to Center did kind of a knuckle and sailed past James Jones, who made an ill-advised slide and saw d'Arnaud's hit sail past him and all the way to the wall for an RBI triple. Jones probably should have just pulled up and played it on a hop, or dove for the ball rather than slide, but I suppose when you play to the immediate left of Endy Chavez, you feel you need to try to be as flashy as possible—Jones got burned on this one and it cost the Mariners 2 runs, the one that d'Arnaud drove in and then d'Arnaud himself when Ruben Tejada singled one batter later. Lucas Duda hit a non-Lucas-Duda in the 8th inning—that is to say that his moonshot of a Home Run off of Tom Wilhelmsen was actually useful because it provided an insurance run as opposed to padding a safe lead. Jenrry Mejia finished the job in the 9th inning while I was snoozing away.

The Mets have but a few more of these late-night, West coast games this season. I know there's a trip to Oakland and Los Angeles looming next month, but for now, they're done with 10pm games. Today, a 3:45pm start which once again means I won't be able to see the game—not because I'll be sleeping, but because I'll be at work—but I'll be home to catch the replay so maybe I'll get to see more than 4-5 innings of today's affair. Hopefully, it'll be worth staying awake for.

Sleeping In Seattle

I lack the general fortitude I had in my younger, sprier days, and as such a 10pm start time on a weeknight has become a bit of a dicey proposition for me, at least from the standpoint of my ability to make it through the duration of the game awake. Last night's game in Seattle was an extreme example of just how dicey these late starts are for me. As I'm still shaking off the effects of some jet lag, I managed to make it through the first inning of the ever-elusive Mets vs. Mariners game before dozing off. By time I woke up, the game was more or less over.

It seems, based on what I've read on the proceedings, that the Mets were about as awake as I was during last night's game. Though the Mets banged out 9 hits off of Roenis Elias (their second consecutive tilt with a crafty Cuban), one in each of the 9 innings of the game, but as usual, none of them were key, and their best chance at a key one—Travis d'Arnaud's deep drive in the 6th inning—was snuffed out by Dustin Ackley, who clearly has benefitted from having dear friend Endy Chavez as his teammate; his leaping grab was reminiscent of any one of Endy's greatest grabs during his Mets tenure. The net of all this was that the Mets marked the much-covered DavidWrightiversary with one of the more painfully boring efforts that seem to have pockmarked much of Wright's recent history with the team. It's not necessarily David Wright's fault; he's been whatever the Mets have wanted him to be, but without a decent supporting cast around him, Wright sort of sticks out like an island among the Lucas Dudas around him.

On the other side, there are the Mariners, a team that's suffered through their own particular wilderness, not having made a Playoff appearance since their 116-win 2001 season. They've had a rather Met-like arc over their recent run of forgettable seasons, but only now does it seem as though they've turned a bit of a corner. The Robinson Cano signing sort of brought them a bit of attention, but really, it's guys like Kyle Seager and Mike Zunino that seem to do a bit of their lifting on offense. Seager, who's one of these Jeff Cirillo-types that hits better than he looks, drove home a pair of runs and Zunino, a lunch-pail Catcher, hit a Home Run off of Jon Niese, who had a forgettable return from the DL in this eminently forgettable 5-2 loss. Something tells me that if I hadn't fallen asleep on my own, this game likely would have bored me to sleep.