Not So Fast

By all rights, the Mets should not have won on Wednesday night. Consider everything that happened in the early part of the game:

Matt Harvey came out and allowed a Home Run on the first pitch he threw to Anthony Rizzo. One batter later, he allowed another Home Run to Ian Happ. Later, he allowed a third Home Run, this one of the moonshot variety to Kyle Schwarber. All the while, his velocity dropped down to some disturbingly low levels, and after 4 innings and 4 runs, he was done, complaining of a "dead arm."

In the 3rd inning, Neil Walker attempted to lay down a bunt for a hit, came up lame and went down hard, leaving the game with what looked to be at worst a bad hamstring pull.

Michael Conforto missed his 3rd straight game with back stiffness and Yoenis Cespedes was given an off day and, given his bizarre preparatory routine, was unavailable to pinch hit in the 4th inning, resulting in the Mets needing to send up...Steven Matz.

So at this point in the game, everything has gone wrong, Cubs fans are once again hooting and hollering and throwing pizza pies in each other's faces, and the Mets are hanging their heads down 4-1.

But something funny happened. The Mets fought back.

Matz, who we already know swings like he means it, hit with one out and the bases loaded against Mike Montgomery and, well, it wasn't a thing of beauty, but his chopper to 3rd was well-enough placed that he beat the throw and drove in the run. Juan Lagares followed with a sac fly and 4-1 became 4-3, and in the 6th, it became 4-4 when Lagares hit an RBI triple off of Pedro Strop.

Thus the game was turned over to the bullpens, and with the meat of the Cubs lineup hitting, Jerry Blevins was summoned, and, you know, all he did was whiff Rizzo to finish the 7th, whiff Baseballs Jesus in the 8th, and finish out his 1 1/3 innings by making Willson Contreras look like an arrogant jackass by tossing his bat away on strike two and then freezing him for strike 3.

It remained tied in the last of the 8th, and the Cubs went to Carl Edwards Jr., one of those weird single-digit-wearing pitchers. Curtis Granderson led off and you kind of had a feeling something was going to happen, you know, late and close, packed house, and as no sooner did Gary Cohen mention that he was at 299 career Home Runs then Granderson uncorked himself and drove a pitch into the Right Field seats to put the Mets ahead. But that was just the start of things. Josee Reyes hit and Yoenis Cespedes hit (and was promptly run for by Robert Gsellman), and Reyes stole a base, and at some point Hector Rondon appeared and Lucas Duda blasted a pitch into a spot similar to where Granderson's hit landed for a 3-run Home Run and, dare I say, he skipped across Home Plate. The Mets still weren't done but the consequential part of the inning had occurred, and the Mets had gone from seemingly dead in the water to ahead 9-4, which Addison Reed locked down after an unnecessarily hairy 9th inning.

So, now, maybe there's something going here, as the Mets have rallied back to win 5 of 6, and take a series from the "unbeatable Cubs juggernaut," and send them out of town and send their obnoxious fans back to their cave. The key, then, would be if they can keep this going through the weekend against Washington. This has all the makings of a series that could either give the Mets more momentum or just kill the entire season. I'm not sure there's much in between. 3 of 4 is a tall order but if you want to make a statement, that's what needs to happen here.

Deserving Fate

Going through this season to this point, I guess, what, 60 games in, has been kind of a chore. That's what happens when you come in pretty well convinced that this team is going to break through and find the greatness that they've been chasing for 31 years now...and then the bell rings and the whole thing just falls flat. The Mets ran out to 7-3 and since then the whole story has been win 1, lose 2, win 1, lose 3, win 2, lose 3 more. But Friday night's game in Atlanta was one of those games that, in my younger, angrier days might have just thrown me over the edge.

You can basically blow through the 1st 8 1/2 innings in a few sentences. Matt Harvey was OK. Not great, just OK, and managed to make it through his start not allowing any runs. Unfortunately, because he threw so many pitches—I mean, what else is new—that start only lasted 5 innings. Curtis Granderson hit a Home Run and the Mets led 1-0, and that lasted all the way to the next inning, when Paul Sewald came in, gave up a couple of hits and got Dansby Swanson'ed when Swanson doubled home two runs to give the Braves the lead. The Mets tied it on an out-of-nowhere Home Run from Travis d'Arnaud and thus it was tied into the bottom of the 9th.

Fernando Salas was in after having pitched a reasonably quiet 8th, and with 1 out, here was Swanson again, and at this point the game basically turned into a microcosm of the entire Mets season. You know, Swanson hasn't had a great season but that should hold little bearing on anything because he tattooed the Mets up real good late last year and I expect we'll see more of that. So Swanson hits one up the middle, and really this should be a single probably 100 times out of 100. And there's Curtis Granderson, moving after the ball with no particular sense of urgency, like he's going for another helping at the clubhouse buffet. So Swanson takes off for second and makes it, and not only does he make it, he makes it easily. So already, I'm incensed. Never mind the "maybe a Shortstop with better range makes the play" argument, because I'm not worried about that. Curtis Granderson played that ball like an asshole, and Swanson promptly made him look like an asshole. One pitch later, the game was over when Rio Ruiz singled through the hole where Cabrera probably would have been if Swanson had properly been on 1st, and Swanson scored and the Braves had a veritable Marlins party on the Infield. Probably because they all knew that they just stole this game from under the noses of a team that's totally fucking asleep right now. You could have seen Ruiz's single coming a mile away. Doesn't matter if Conforto didn't have a handle on the ball. He wasn't throwing out Swanson anyway.

I don't often outwardly think that the Mets deserve to lose games, but the Mets deserved to lose that game. They played like a bunch of assholes and they should feel like assholes. Sometimes, humiliation can be a good thing and if the first two months of this season wasn't bad enough, maybe a game like this will wake them up. The Mets, even in their neutered state, should be feeding the Braves their lunch. Instead, they're standing around with their thumbs up their asses while opposing players circle the bases at will. This isn't a Manager thing and it's not as though Granderson's the only culprit here because you see it in bits and pieces constantly. It seems like an annual thing, actually, that the Mets go into Atlanta in June and it seems like that Atlanta air just sucks the life out of them, and they look slow and tired and that sun is beating down on them and they get swept. A sweep wouldn't surprise me at this point.

That Old Ace In the Hole

I mused the other day to nobody in particular that I missed the old Matt Harvey, who used to come out with smoke coming out of his ears ready to throw the ball through a brick wall and would snarl at anyone that deigned get in his way or, worse, attempted to remove him from a game.

I keep this blind hope that someday the old Matt Harvey will come back, and maybe that will happen, but the more I watch, the less likely it seems. Twice spotted a lead against the Pirates, Harvey fell victim to the irrepressible Elias Diaz, who drove in 6 runs, and to his own bullpen, who melted down once again as the Mets fell to the Pirates at home 12-7.

This was another one of those games that was thrown at me as part of my original plan, but as seems to have been the case many times this year, I've swapped it out for another game. A couple of times, this has happened and ended up biting me in the ass, because the Mets won the game I missed, but I suppose if there was ever a game I was going to be glad I didn't go to, this would be it. Were it two years ago, or even four years ago, knowing I had tickets to a game when Harvey was on the mound, I don't think I would have been so quick to pass (although to be fair, I was prodded to swap out this game by my other half, still reveling in the graduatory afterglow). Hell, there were nights when I specifically swapped in to games I knew Harvey would be pitching. It was can't-miss Baseball.

Now? It's If ya got the time, and it seems like that attitude has overtaken the whole ballclub. The Mets find their way back to within some sort of shouting distance of .500 and then go out and lose 3 games in a row. It's not improving. I'm still not sure how it can improve and the chatter I'm hearing now is a little more of what can we trade guys away for as opposed to what can we get to shore up the team. It's depressing. This season wasn't supposed to go down like this.

Can't See

You'll have to excuse my once again totally half-assing this past weekend's games. My other half and I were away for the weekend, off to Boston, where it's All Red Sox, All The Time and if you're not the Red Sox you may as well not exist. So I didn't see much—or really any for the most part—of the weekend series in Pittsburgh.

Friday night, we were in transit, driving up to Boston and so the game was a mystery. Only when we stopped for dinner somewhere in Connecticut did I check my phone and see that the Mets were ahead by a sizeable margin, thanks to Neil Walker, who returned home and I suppose it could be said he Daniel Murphied the Pirates, hitting two Home Runs in support of Jacob deGrom, who's looking much more like himself lately and—gasp—pitched into the 9th inning! Mets win 8-1, malaise-induced losing streak stopped.

Saturday, we were out and about in Boston and although I entertained trying to see a Red Sox game at Fenway Park, I couldn't sell my other half on this and so I decided to pass. I ended up missing a Complete game Shutout tossed by Brian Johnson—something any Mets starter would be hard-pressed to accomplish these days—but I figured I'd at least get to see the latter part of the Mets game from my hotel since it was on FOX. Yes, for once, I was looking forward to a game on FOX. So I get back to the room, put on the TV, search for FOX...and find the Astros and Orioles. That's not the Mets and the game was a total bore, although the Astros seem to have a bunch of wonderfully enjoyable players, among them George Springer. who had a nice game. But no Mets. So I don't know what happened to the Mets up until the 9th inning, when Addison Reed blew a slim lead, the game went into extra innings, Rookie Tyler Pill was inserted in the 10th and immediately pitched like a Rookie making his Major League Debut on the road in an extra inning game, and the Mets lost 5-4.

Sunday was more of the same, although this time I knew I was guaranteed to see at least some brief snippet of the Mets game as they were scheduled for The Biggest Game In The Galaxy on ESPN and therefore wouldn't be subjected to a regional blackout. Further, we'd been taken to dinner by some local friends at a roadhouse with TVs. The TVs being the only redeeming feature of the joint because at least I could peer over and see what was going on. Matt Harvey seemed to look a little bit like his old self, and by time we left, the Mets had gone ahead 2-1 thanks to an Asdrubal Cabrera 2-run double. It was 5-1 when I resumed watching and only up from there. Harvey looked better than he'd looked all season through 6 innings, Lucas Duda hit a Home Run and the Mets did not make asses of themselves in front of a national audience, winning 7-2.

Still, the Mets went 3-3 in a week where they probably should have gone 6-0 and beat the tar out of some lousy teams. They continue to be unable to find a toehold or momentum off these wins and as such, the team appears about as boring as the teams they're playing. 21-27 on Memorial Day isn't what any of us were thinking.

Happy Harvey Conforto Day!

I was back at Citi Field on Tuesday, though I have to say I did so with some reticence. I knew I'd be going to at least one of the Padres games this week, but I was trying to pick my matchups. For as much as I'd like to see Matt Harvey do well, I at this point felt he'd had too much to overcome and too far to go to get his act together to comfortably assume it safe to attend one of his starts. That left me to choose between Wednesday and Thursday, and initially, I'd been leaning toward Wednesday as deGrom was scheduled. But some factors precluded me from going ahead with the switch. First, when I checked on Monday, I saw that Gsellman, not deGrom, was scheduled for Wednesday. Then, I attempted to go ahead and change my tickets online, only to be blocked from doing so because I forgot that I could only exchange tickets up to 48 hours prior to the game. So, I had to suck it up, go on Tuesday and hope for the best.

I did get someone's best on Tuesday. It wasn't Matt Harvey's best. This was just as well. It was actually Michael Conforto's best. While Harvey pitched 5 innings worth of ugly, Conforto pretty much stole the game from his first At Bat. Leading off against Jhoulys Chacin, Conforto got behind in the count and then started whacking everything Chacin threw him foul. Some gentlemen sitting behind me in Section 418 were yelling at him to "Lay the bunt down! Show some strategy and get a bunt down!" but Conforto seemed to be having none of that. It took him until the 10th pitch of the At Bat before he finally got something he could handle and drove it out into the Mets Bullpen. Having thrown Conforto basically everything he had, Chacin summarily turned to mush from there and the Mets just clobbered him to death. Jose Reyes got a hit, as did Bruce and Walker, Wilmer Flores drove in a run, Lucas Duda doubled home two, Rene Rivera singled, and all of a sudden there was Conforto up again and driving in two more runs with a single to Left, making the score 7-0 and ending Chacin's night before he could negotiate through the 1st inning.

Handed this bounty, Matt Harvey went out in the 2nd inning against a completely punchless Padres lineup and walked the first batter, Ryan Schimpf. He then gave up a double to Hunter Renfroe, and then back-to-back run-scoring ground outs. The rest of Harvey's evening was similarly laborious. He walked two more batters, including Craig Stammen, who relieved Chacin, in the 3rd. In the 4th, he walked Austin Hedges with 2 outs and was fortunate that no further damage was done because although Erick Aybar hit a shot, the ball hit Hedges and resulted in an inning-ending out (haven't seen that happen in a while). In the 5th, he did not walk anyone, but he did allow a single, and in fact also struck out the side. But by that point Harvey was up over 100 pitches, and even in the 400 level I could tell that he didn't look especially comfortable through most of them. He was dragging. Watching him was a drag. It was a good thing that the Mets had run out to such a large lead.

It was 7-2 when Conforto came up for the 3rd time in the 4rd inning and hit his 2nd Home Run of the night, a shot way out into the high-130s seats in Left-center. Conforto had basically taken over the storyline for the night. Afforded two more opportunities to hit a 3rd Home Run, he grounded out in the 6th and was hit by a pitch in the 8th, which drew plenty of jeers in spite of the fact that he took a curveball off his back. Irregardless, when I remember this particular 9-3 Mets victory, I'll remember two things: I'll remember the loud group of Long Islanders that were sitting a row in front of me and kept getting up, getting drunk, taking selfies and generally interfering with my view of the game, and I'll remember how Michael Conforto stole the show because Harvey couldn't get out of his own way. Although, right now, I think Conforto stands a pretty good chance of stealing the show most nights. He's proven this quite emphatically.

Gets Late Early

I know last week I didn't see and barely followed the midweek afternoon game against the Giants and my conclusion was that it was just as well since the Mets spit up a lead and lost the game. I think the same could basically be said of yesterday afternoon's game in Arizona. The only difference being that as it was on the West Coast, or as West as Arizona can be as they float between time zones for reasons I am not meant to understand, the game started at the bizarre time of 3:40 and ended up dragging out long enough that it ended as I was getting home at around 7.

What did I miss? From the end result, another 5-4 Mets loss that took 11 innings to negotiate, I would assume not much. I've mentioned innumerable times that I follow, often halfheartedly, the game on MLB Gamecast so I knew that Michael Conforto hit an early Home Run—which seems to be an almost regular occurrence—and Matt Harvey summarily tried to hand it back rather quickly. I'm not quite certain whether this outing is going to be spun as a "building block" game for Harvey or whether we just have to temper our expectations for him that this is just going to be the norm and he's turned into another Marcum. I of course hope that it's the former but every time he seems to take a step forward, he short-circuits himself. He gave up a run in the 1st, a 2-run Home Run to Jake Lamb in the 3rd, and yet was in a position to win when he left in the 6th, because Juan Lagares hit a rare  Home Run in the 4th and spurred a rally.

But, Arizona tied the game against Robert Gsellman, who mysteriously appeared in relief when I was expecting to see him start back at home on Friday, and maybe that's a bit of a relief as well since I wasn't exactly relishing the thought of his mixed bag. And then I left work and as the game was tied I wasn't quite certain what to expect other than at some point I figured I'd get a final score buzz. Eventually, I did, and it was the eye-rolling result of F/11 ARZ 5 NYM 4. That was all I really needed to know, but the backstory of course was that Jerry Blevins and Addison Reed pitched well, and then as the game moved into extra innings Rafael Montero got the call and when Montero gets the call, well...you know. He was at least courteous enough to allow the walkoff Home Run to his first batter, Chris Herrmann, but it still took him 7 pitches to get there, so I guess he can't even blow the game right.

Ugh. Is there anything else that can be said? I thought the Mets might have been able to wash the stink off in Arizona but they've instead just managed to make it worse. At some point I'm going to have to stop kidding myself into thinking they'll snap out of it. Unless they actually snap out of it.

Curious Case

For obvious reasons, Matt Harvey's start on Friday night seemed to be bigger than the game itself. The game was important for the Mets—at this point I think they all are, particularly after the news of yet another major ailment affecting yet another key player—but perhaps more important for Harvey given everything that's gone on for him over the past week. I care less about the need for Harvey to repair his name in the public eye. That may be forever ruined just based on his actions, although I still believe all Mets fans want him to do well and as I've mentioned before, he owes fans nothing as far as the idea that he should succeed on their terms rather than his own. But that's the thing. He needs to figure out his own terms. I'm not certain he's done that yet. I, of course, want Harvey to do well so people will shut up, but I need to get over that idea because it probably won't ever happen.

The larger problem is, of course, that it feels less and less likely that it will ever happen just based on what we saw from him last night. While Harvey did manage to shuffle his way through five laborious innings, he was sent out for a 6th in a tie game and came totally undone, as the Brewers raked him for a pair of damaging Home Runs and never looked back on their way to beating the Mets 7-4.

The Brewers seem to be doing better than anyone expected and I'm not totally sure how, given that their roster seems to be comprised of youngsters and castaways that you haven't heard of and won't hear much of again after the end of the month when the Mets finish dealing with them for the season. Harvey was beaten early by a fellow named Jett Bandy, who I'm not entirely convinced wasn't around a few years ago under the assumed name of Jaff Decker, later by Hernan Perez, not to be confused with 16th Century Conquistador Hernan Cortes, and finished off by Bruce Bochte-like Eric Sogard and Orlando Arcia who is too young to be confused with someone else. The Mets didn't exactly back Harvey well, as Neil Walker was the only one who managed to solve Matt Garza and any other offense came after it was far too late.

So, sigh. Redemption did not come for Harvey tonight and really, in a string of really disastrous outings he didn't even seem to show any marked improvement. I still think that he has it in him to get it together and honestly I would like to think it's not simply blind faith and my hope that he'll magically revert to the fucking animal that almost singlehandedly saved the World Series two years ago will actually be rewarded. And it's not enough to say that he wants to do it because I know he wants to do it, he just needs to put the work in to make it happen.

Double Disaster

You know when you wake up, look at your phone and see an ESPN alert that reads "New York Mets P Matt Harvey suspended three games without pay for violating team rules" that it's going to be a great day.

In what shook out as yet another ugly chapter in the checkered career of Matt Harvey, the embattled pitcher was suspended on the day he was supposed to take the mound against the Marlins. Of course, in the Mets' typically macabre fashion, it was reported as reasons that were "going to be kept internal," and when you leave things like this up to the imaginations of the press and the public, well, everything kind of went haywire from there. Reports of reasons for this were typically ridiculous and thoughts of the obvious cause—what was that dildo doing in Kevin Plawecki's locker anyway???—were eventually quashed when it was reported that Harvey no-showed Saturday's game.

Sigh. I try to give Harvey the benefit of the doubt but then he does things like this and I wonder why I waste my energy.

At any rate, not only did he screw himself, he screwed his team, since instead of throwing him at the Marlins on Sunday, we were subjected to poor Adam Wilk, who ostensibly was the closest thing to a warm body the Mets had available to pitch a game. And, you know, when the best guy you can throw out on the mound is a guy who maybe 10% of your fan base has heard of...Needless to say, it didn't go well.

Wilk's afternoon could rather simply be summed up as he was screwed the moment Giancarlo Stanton stepped in the batter's box. In the first inning, he hit a Home Run off the facing of the 2nd deck in Left Field. In the 3rd, he hit one even farther. By the 4th, the game was completely out of hand and Wilk was done for the day, and one can assume into the Met annals next to such names as Chan Ho Park and Brett Hinchcliffe. Therest of the team, which was probably suffering from shellshock stemming either from the Harvey news, or Wilk's performance, or both, barely made a peep against Jose Urena and the end result was that they mustered one hit in a thoroughly embarrassing 7-0 loss.

And, you know, it's "now what?" time again. The Mets now sit at 14-16, which considering the state of the team health-wise isn't awful, but if you believe what you read about the Mets, the bloom is off the rose and the team is spiraling out of control towards a 90-loss season and a return to obscurity. I don't know. Right now, all I know is that that's their record and now they're finally going to play some games against teams outside their division and eventually, the truth will come out. About everything.

I Don't Like This Place That Much...

OK, OK. On the second night Atlanta turned back into Atlanta and nothing went right for the Mets.

After being spotted a 2-0 lead thanks to a Jay Bruce Home Run, Matt Harvey handed the lead back to the Braves almost immediately, and then just kind of slogged through the remainder of his outing as the Braves ostensibly waterboarded him to death with a series of singles and doubles, inching ahead and eventually out of reach and only a Pig-Lipstick Grand Slam from Bruce in the 9th made the final score a more respectable-looking 9-7 as opposed to the 9-3 mess this game really should be remembered as.

This was one of those games that I kind of kept tuning in and out of. I was late tuning in altogether, in spite of the fact that most Atlanta games start at 7:35 instead of the more customary 7:10, so if nothing else it was only the 2nd inning when I put the game on, but irregardless it was pushing 8:30, which wasn't a good sign. At that point it was already 2-2 and Atlanta went ahead 3-2 when Ender Inciarte injected himself into the proceedings and made a pain in the ass of himself, which is generally what he does against the Mets. Asdrubal Cabrera re-tied the game in the 3rd with a Home Run that was really tagged, but then in the 4th Harvey kind of melted down and the Braves just kept getting hits and scoring runs and by time the dust cleared it was well after 9pm, the Mets were behind 6-3 and everything was terrible. I couldn't even enjoy getting to see our dear old friend R.A. Dickey float that Knuckleball around like he used to.

Then, I turned the game off altogether, or, more appropriately, I was eating dinner with my other half and she asked that we watch something else. So I missed Josh Smoker/Fernando Salas turn the game into a tire fire in the 7th, but I guess that's just as well. But I was back in time to see Bruce hit a truly irrelevant Grand Slam in the 9th to serve no other purpose than pad his stats, force a pitching change and prolong the game for another 5 minutes.

I mean, yes, I know. The Mets weren't going to go Forever-and-0 at SunTrust Yards and that first loss was probably going to come at some point this week because the Mets just aren't doing that well. And I'm sure there will be days that this place will just rankle me to no end. But it's too early to tell whether it's as rancid as its predecessor, or some other similarly troublesome ballparks where nothing good ever happens to the Mets (see: Petco Park). Time will, I suppose, tell.

Now What?!

The Mets played their first mid-week afternoon game of the season on Thursday and it's a good thing that it was played then, because most of the work-going public (read: ME) didn't have to be subjected to the flaming turd they served up.

It was bad enough to have tickets to Wednesday's game and then have Noah Syndergaard scratched from the start. The same thing then happened this afternoon, which was accompanied with the much more troublesome news that he had "arm irritation" which I would have to imagine gave 99% of Mets fans a heart attack because that's what happens whenever the words "Noah Syndergaard" "Arm" and "Irritation" are used in the same sentence. Syndergaard himself poo-pooed the news, calling it something minor and apparently he seemed a bit rankled to have been scratched, but his health being as essential as it is to the success of the team it probably makes more sense to give him a break. Supposedly he'll pitch on Sunday. I guess as with most things I'll believe it when I see it.

The start, then, went to Matt Harvey, who's still regaining the lost luster and although he managed to escape some trouble in the early innings, he ran out of steam in the 5th and the Braves just started teeing off on him. Granted, the Braves touched him for a pair of runs and it felt as though the Mets had to muster up a herculean effort to simply tie the score, but Harvey just came undone. Kurt Suzuki hit a 3-run Home Run, other Braves did other things and 2-2 became 6-2 rather quickly.

Meanwhile, R.A. Dickey, our old friend, returned to Citi Field for the first time since he was dealt so many years ago and did his thing as he usually does. The knuckleball doesn't seem to float quite as devastatingly as it did back in 2012 but nonetheless he did what he needed to do, holding the Mets to 3 runs in his 6 innings of work. I can't say for certain since I didn't see any of the game but I would have to assume he was greeted warmly.

Then there was the Yoenis Cespedes injury, which seemed to be brewing for about a week, ever since he left a game against Philadelphia with a balky hamstring. Whether he was rushed or not is immaterial. Whether or not this is a Cortisone Shot Ramirez rabbit hole is as well. When these things happen it's hard for them to let go and maybe 10 days of rest might have helped, maybe not, but he obviously felt good enough to come back last night but of course the whole thing went on him this afternoon, so now I'd have to imagine he's definitely going on the DL for the next 10 days or however long it takes for this thing to heal up. As if the Mets needed more injuries right now.

The end result was a forgettable afternoon to cap off a forgettable series and a forgettable homestand that saw the Mets go 1-7, lose the last 6 and drop them into the cellar of the NL East, behind even these miserable Braves and the Fake ass Marlins at 8-13 with a trip to Washington looming and no conceivable help in sight. I mean, I hate to panic in April but the Mets are one lousy road trip away from this season spiraling out into 2011 and all the talk and good vibes dissolving into more jeers and laughter from the hoi polloi. The only thing I can tell myself at this point is the old adage that teams often aren't as bad as they look when they're losing. Of course, the flip side is that they aren't as good as they look when they're winning. At some point this ought to even out. I can't be certain as to whether or not it will be too late but this version of the Mets has been known to not have a "too late."

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?

Just Get The Hell Out Of Here

I was already apoplectic from too much Marlins after Saturday night's game, and I suppose the fact that the Mets had already played the equivalent of 4 games in Loria's Puke Green Hell Hole already this weekend didn't help. And just imagine if the Mets had lost on Thursday. But if all that wasn't bad enough, this nightmare of a weekend came to a fitting conclusion in the most typical Marlins game ever. Stop me if you've heard this one before, but the Mets fell behind the Marlins early, were stifled by a journeyman pitcher, somehow scraped their way back to tie the game in the 9th inning, and then lose the damn thing anyway in the last of the 9th on a 30 foot squibber that nobody can field. Or, in Sunday's case, the most Marlin equivalent, which is that a no-name Rookie hits his 1st Major League Home Run to end the game. Yes, you can mark the name J.T. Riddle in the book of "Stupid Marlin Tricks," since he was the culprit to cap off a perfectly miserable weekend by taking Addison Reed deep in the bottom of the 9th to give the Marlins a 4-2 win and give them 3 of 4 over the Mets for the weekend and 5 of 7 for the season.

Much like the other 3 Mets losses in this series, the end result masked yet another fine outing by a Mets starting pitcher. Rejuvenated Matt Harvey continued his solid start by holding the Marlins to 2 runs over 6 innings, this in spite of allowing 7 hits and 2 walks, which is rather unHarveylike, but also speaks in testament to the fact that he's still getting back to himself, pitching more to contact and also pitching like a pitcher and using all his tools to get himself out of trouble. Lest you forget that he's always had this in him, but the propensity to blow everyone out of the box can sometimes get the better of you. I know that none of these games turned out the way we wanted them to, but take these pitching performances in a vacuum and if nothing else, they're performing the way they're supposed to thus far. These things should even out.

They should even out because the Mets don't have to play the Fucking Marlins all the time. The Mets went from flying high at 7-3 and 5 wins in a row on Friday morning to 7-6 and everything is terrible and it's all because of the Marlins. The Mets have played 7 of their first 13 games against these clowns and that sack of shit Celebrity Manager and gone 2-5, and the 5 losses have been mostly of a totally mystifying variety. I mean, come on. Getting no-hit by Dan Straily? J.T. Riddle? I mean, I guess I shouldn't be too surprised, seeing as how the Marlins entire history is pulling crap like this and I let it bother me far more than it should, but come on. Please give me one good reason why I should pay the Marlins one iota of respect. I refuse. Fuck those dudes. The Mets will get them back when it counts.

Everybody Wins!

The Mets had been kind of dancing and jabbing their way through the first week of the season, riding pitching, more pitching and Jay Bruce. But, finally, in the 8th game of the season, everyone woke up at once. The Mets bats banged out 20 hits and hit 7 Home Runs, 3 by Yoenis Cespedes, 2 from Lucas Duda, and 1 each from Travis d'Arnaud and Asdrubal Cabrera.

To nobody's surprise this took place in Philadelphia.

It's now been 3 times in club history that the Mets have hit 7 or more Home Runs in a game, and all three times it's happened at Citizens Bank Park. And you wonder why I kept referring to it as Steroid Field I all those years.

The Mets already had a 3-0 lead before Matt Harvey ever hit the mound, thanks to Yoenis Cespedes. While I was getting home from work and nodding off for a brief nap, he was busy golfing a Clay Buchholz offering out into the garden in Center Field. By time I woke up, he'd hit another, immediately following Asdrubal Cabrera's first of the season in the 4th inning. By this point, the Mets were ahead 8-1 and Reinvented Harvey was humming along.

In the 5th, Cespedes hit his 3rd Home Run and of course once that happened, all the focus turned to how many at bats he'd get over the remainder of the game, and how once he gets locked in, those Home Runs can come in bunches. To say nothing of the fact that by time Lucas Duda homered in the 6th and d'Arnaud hit one in the 8th, the Mets had three players that were a triple shy of a cycle...and of course it happened to be three of the least likely players to hit a triple. On the other hand, John Olerud hit for the cycle twice and he was one of the most glacial players in Mets history, so anything was possible.

None of these Baseball Oddities came to pass, and even Harvey's injury departure in the 6th turned into much ado about nothing...so how do you spin a game like this juxtaposed against every other time they've gone into Philadelphia and bludgeoned the Phillies into submission?

You don't, I suppose. You just take the 14-4 victory, put it in your back pocket and be happy about it, because the bottom line is that when everybody hits, everybody wins.

He's Still Here

I have at times felt like I'm the last Mets fan in Matt Harvey's corner. I know that we all want him to do well, and I also know that he's brought some of his issues on himself for one reason or another, but I've seen no reason why Harvey couldn't persevere, shake off his issues and regain some of the luster that he'd lost over the past year. He's already proven that he can come back from a major injury and be successful. In reality, and I've said this before, people seem to just have a problem with Matt Harvey being Matt Harvey. This Spring, while every time he took the mound seemed to be scrutinized, most people were up in arms over the fact that he was seen cavorting around Miami with a model, drinking and smoking and generally having a nice little date for himself. And because he's Matt Harvey, this gives everyone free license to point and yell about what a jerk he is, and how the Mets need to trade him because he's a distraction and a cancer.

Does not compute. We've all been on dates with models and drank and smoked, and nobody's following us around with cameras and posting photos on the internet, and people at our jobs aren't yelling about how we need to be traded. So I say baloney. I think people's dislike of Harvey is based mostly on jealousy. He projects an aura of arrogance but in reality is probably just as insecure as anyone else. The difference is he pitches for the Mets and most people do not.

So that all lines up for this evening's game at Citi Field, which was Harvey's first start since he got run off the mound last July and then went under the knife for the second time in 3 years. It was hard to know what to expect, since his Florida outings were kind of a mixed bag and he wasn't throwing with quite the same pop as he used to. And he was facing the Braves, who'd cuffed him around more than once last year. But out of the darkness, Harvey re-emerged as a pitcher, and rather than trying to blow everyone away instead used what he had, working with a fastball in the mid-90s instead of the high 90s, and dropping curves and sliders and changeups and generally inducing weak contact. He shot through the 1st inning on 6 pitches, entered the 7th having thrown only 67, and by time he departed after 6.2 innings, he'd allowed 3 hits, no walks and 4 strikeouts, while only being touched up for a pair of solo Home Runs from Matt Kemp. More importantly, by time the 7th inning started, and Harvey kicked things off by striking out Dansby Swanson and Freddie Freeman, you actually started to hear those "HAR-VEY! HAR-VEY!" chants once again.

Offensively, the Mets again started slow, facing Jaime Garcia, the ex-Cardinal who seems oddly out of place on this Braves team. It took until the 5th for the Mets to finally break through, when Neil Walker singled, and Jay Bruce walked, and then Travis d'Arnaud doubled both of them home, a good sign since d'Arnaud hit something like .035 with runners in scoring position last year. In the 6th, the Mets extended their lead when Wilmer Flores did what he usually does against left handed pitchers and hit a 2-run Home Run, and in the 7th, the Mets put the game away with two more runs. Fernando Salas and Addison Reed then salted away the final innings of this 6-2 victory.

The story, however, will be Harvey, who embarked on a bit of a redemption of sorts and proved that although he might not be the pitcher he was two years ago, and may never again be the pitcher he was four years ago, he's still a good pitcher and he still is capable of being someone we can count on to deliver a good performance.

Continued Carnage

It was already a lousy day for the Mets on the injury front with the news earlier in the day that Matt Harvey's season was over, but then I put on the Mets/Nationals game at around the 6th inning only to be greeted with more lovely news of Noah Syndergaard's unceremonious departure from the game. Whenever Syndergaard leaves a game prematurely now, I think every Mets fan drops into heart attack mode. The game becomes secondary to waiting around for some sort of word about what the story is. It came down later that the issue wasn't elbow-related, but still, fatigue seems like a really vague description and doesn't make anyone feel any better.

The game, by this point, had already been decided, after Syndergaard was touched up for a Clint Robinson Home Run and an RBI double from Daniel Murphy, who continues to fuck things up for the Mets even though he's on another team. The Mets did nothing against Stephen Strasburg, who finally has decided to perform up to his potential, and the whole night had basically become a wash, proving once again that the prior day's momentum really means very little in the grand scheme of things.

After the game, Syndergaard spoke and was throwing around phrases like "my arm feels dead," "It's just that time of year," and "I've thrown a lot of pitches, a lot of innings." Certainly, I wouldn't expect to see him in the All Star Game on Tuesday at all, which I guess is just as well. The more time he can take to rest and regroup, the better, at this point, since there's a lot of season left to be played, and the Mets still have some winning they need to do.

Already, they'll have to do this without Matt Harvey, and even though this is disappointing that his season is finished altogether thanks to this Thoracic Nerve issue, but at least there's some kind of tangible answer to his struggles this season. He never seemed right, and even though he'd gotten some of his luster back over the past month, it was once again beginning to fizzle out. It's a double-edged sword. He could have had some temporary fix but who knows if that would work, and is it all really worth trying to suck it up and continue to pitch lousy when this surgery will likely fix the problem? Sure, I know it's risky. All surgeries are. But as I've kept saying about Harvey, it's not as though he's somehow yakking it on purpose. Nobody wants him to pitch better more than he does himself, and sometimes I feel like I'm on an island defending him but I believe this as fact. It's easy to forget that behind the bluster and the image he's created for himself, he's still human. He gets hurt, he feels insecure and he takes his criticism to heart. I know athletes are supposed to be these cold, unfeeling cyborgs but not everyone is wired that way. It's never been Harvey's strong suit. So I think a lot of him masking whatever issue he'd been going through to this point this season is sort of his way of trying to fix his own problem, and he tried to do this until he couldn't do it any further. It sucks to lose him in the middle of the season. But it's probably better to do this now and come back with a clear head and a rested arm next year rather than fumpher his way through the rest of the season not knowing where the ball is going to end up.

Taste Of Your Own Medicine

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ugh

The Mets managed to once again shit the bed in a June game in Atlanta this evening. After leading most of they way, generating a meager amount of offense against Matt Wisler and after weathering a rather middling performance from Matt Harvey, the roof fell in on them in the last of the 8th inning as Addison Reed gave up a 2-run Home Run to Adonis Garcia, turning a 3-2 lead into an irritating and irritable 4-3 loss.

Really, what's most mystifying about all this is the fact that the Mets have lost 4 straight games to the Braves, a team that they should be pounding into submission. Last season, the Mets did a pretty good job of handling these lousy teams and that's one of the primary reasons things turned out the way they did in the end. This year, that hasn't been the case. They've had a hard time with the Braves lately, and there's really no good reason as to why this has happened. I'm stumped.

Nobody seems to have exemplified this specific issue more than Harvey, who just seems to have a thing with the Braves more than anyone else this season. At least it's not the fake-ass Marlins, but it's just as annoying. Harvey has faced the Braves 4 times already in the first half of the season and each time it seems like he's had to battle uphill the entire game. Whether it was giving up Home Runs to Mallex Smith, or giving up 4 straight 2-out doubles, or getting raked over the coals by ancient A.J. Pierzynski, he just has no answer for any of this.

Still, he departed this game with a lead, thanks to single runs in the 2nd, 3rd and 5th, and thanks to a pair of clutch defensive plays from Michael Conforto. Conforto's throw home to nail Emilio Bonifacio to end the 7th inning was a real thing of beauty, and even more beautiful when you consider that this is usually the sort of play that would land Travis d'Arnaud back on the DL...except that he for once emerged unscathed.

And you start to think that once again the Mets will weather their way through a 1-run late inning lead...and then Addison Reed went splat on an 0-2 slider to Adonis Garcia that clearly didn't slide and wound up in the left field seats. And with one inning left to de-stun themselves, well, you know how it went from there.

So...yeah. I don't think any team with any sort of grand aspirations should be losing 4 games in a row to a team pushing 50 losses less than halfway into the season. But somehow they have.

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.

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.