Comic Book Farce

In this late part of the Summer, my co-workers (all two of them) have been in the office sporadically for one reason or another. I of course had taken my vacation earlier in the Summer, and as a result I've had several days where I've been in the office by myself. I have passed these days by harkening back to my old days and putting on the radio for a little while. It had been some time since I'd heard Mike Francesa, but Thursday was the first time that the Mets had a game on a day where I was in the office by myself. I didn't have a physical radio, but I did have a computer and an MLB.com subscription, so I was able to listen along with Howie and Josh while I worked.

I was, much like I did in the old days, listening with half an ear until about the 4th or 5th inning when I heard Michael Conforto batting and Howie say something like "And Conforto goes down!" and then, of course, my first thought was "Now What!?" Of course it wasn't good, and it looks as though Conforto has separated his shoulder and I'd assume this is the last we've seen of him for 2017. I assume. I'd like to hope otherwise. But doesn't it figure that the guy who's been one of the few legitimate bright spots for the Mets would g

In this late part of the Summer, my co-workers (all two of them) have been in the office sporadically for one reason or another. I of course had taken my vacation earlier in the Summer, and as a result I've had several days where I've been in the office by myself. I have passed these days by harkening back to my old days and putting on the radio for a little while. It had been some time since I'd heard Mike Francesa, but Thursday was the first time that the Mets had a game on a day where I was in the office by myself. I didn't have a physical radio, but I did have a computer and an MLB.com subscription, so I was able to listen along with Howie and Josh while I worked.

I was, much like I did in the old days, listening with half an ear until about the 4th or 5th inning when I heard Michael Conforto batting and Howie say something like "And Conforto goes down!" and then, of course, my first thought was "Now What!?" Of course it wasn't good, and it looks as though Conforto has separated his shoulder and I'd assume this is the last we've seen of him for 2017. I assume. I'd like to hope otherwise. But doesn't it figure that the guy who's been one of the few legitimate bright spots for the Mets would go down doing something as benign as SWINGING A BAT? It's just indicative of the farce this season has become. It's no longer 2001 or 2013 where everyone is sluggish and the team never got going. This is turning into 2009 where its not enough that everyone gets hurt, but people are now getting hurt in ridiculous ways. I at least give the Mets management some degree of credit for throwing in the towel and trying to build forward instead of trying to kid us into thinking this season was salvageable, which it's not. But what is next year going to be? That's what I find worrisome because 2009 happened and you figured. oh, it'll be OK, the injured guys will come back and 2010 will be better! and instead 2010 stunk just as bad.

Sigh. After all that, who really gave a shit about the game? The Mets lost anyway.

o down doing something as benign as SWINGING A BAT? It's just indicative of the farce this season has become. It's no longer 2001 or 2013 where everyone is sluggish and the team never got going. This is turning into 2009 where its not enough that everyone gets hurt, but people are now getting hurt in ridiculous ways. I at least give the Mets management some degree of credit for throwing in the towel and trying to build forward instead of trying to kid us into thinking this season was salvageable, which it's not. But what is next year going to be? That's what I find worrisome because 2009 happened and you figured. oh, it'll be OK, the injured guys will come back and 2010 will be better! and instead 2010 stunk just as bad.

Sigh. After all that, who really gave a shit about the game? The Mets lost anyway.

Rooster

Seattle is a place where the Mets seldom visit (and aside from that a place I've never visited, but that could be said of most Major League cities) and the Mariners are a team that the Mets seldom play. I know that these Interleague games work on a 3-year shift schedule but for whatever reason, it seems like the Mets and Mariners took a particularly long time to fall into that schedule. The Mets did play in Seattle in 2014, but prior to that they hadn't faced each other since 2008, which is the last time the Mets and Mariners played in New York, which means that the game was at Shea Stadium, which means that the Mariners have never played a game at Citi Field, one of only two Major League teams to not have done so (the other being the Cleveland Indians, who haven't played the Mets in New York since 2004). So if the Mets and Mariners seem like a rare matchup, it is.

The Mets can boast a native son of Seattle in Michael Conforto, who has come out of the land of Pearl Jam and Coffee and turned into a pretty good player, as he showed in his return home, in front of a passel of Confortos. In the 3rd inning, he hit a Home Run off of lefty Ariel Miranda which, at the time, put the Mets ahead 3-0. In the 8th inning, facing Mark Rzepczynski, another lefty, he hit another Home Run, this time dragging the Mets out of a deficit and tying the game at 5-5.

In between Conforto's two Home Runs was a Rafael Montero meltdown in which he took a 4-0 lead that had been handed to him thanks to, among other things, a 2-run Home Run from Jay Bruce, and summarily handed it back. First, he allowed a Home Run to Mike Zunino, the Seattle Catcher who's one of those "Trades High" guys because he has a ton of power and no particular plate discipline. So giving up a Home Run to Zunino was no great shakes. In the 5th, he had a Montero inning, where he started giving up hits, and throwing wild pitches, and walking guys and finally was pulled from the game after walking Nelson Cruz and loading the bases. But just so you remembered, Josh Edgin came in and allowed two of said runners to score by allowing a 2-run single to Kyle Seager (because of course it was one of the Seager boys who did it to the Mets).

Meanwhile, after a lousy first few innings, Miranda had settled down and quietly put the Mets to sleep. He departed after 6 with a lead, which Hansel Robles threatened to turn into a greater lead in the 7th. Then, of course, came the 8th, and Conforto's 2nd Home Run, and then a Met rally ensued when the Mariners brought in recently-acquired former Marlin David Phelps, whom the Mets usually knock around and they were kind enough to knock him around some more. Wilmer Flores managed to beat out a potential inning-ending double play and that opened the door for Neil Walker to double home the lead run, and Curtis Granderson to drive in the insurance run to put the Mets ahead 7-5.

Paul Sewald got the Mets through the 8th, and Addison Reed worked the 9th to finish off this series-opening victory up in the Northwest. Meanwhile, if one could use this as a segue opportunity, as the game was going on, news of another Mets trade broke, which seemed kind of mystifying to me, but while the Mets are and should be in sell mode, they traded for Marlins closer A.J. Ramos. This, I would assume, is insurance for an impending Reed trade, and nothing further. While Ramos is a perfectly capable pitcher, well, he was on the Marlins and you all know how I feel about that. I've particularly singled out Ramos for Marlin-ish behavior (excessive celebration, irritating gyrations on the mound) and part of me isn't convinced that this is another Marlin Ruse that's going to bite the Mets in the ass at some point. But, on the other hand, he is a capable pitcher, and he's a Met now, so, welcome, A.J. Ramos. We hope to wash the stink of your prior franchise off of you as quickly as possible.

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.

Just As Well

I didn't see any of Sunday's game as other commitments drew me out of the house for a majority of the afternoon. It's just as well. Based on the 7-1 final score I didn't miss much. Rafael Montero, from what I'm told, wasn't good, but also wasn't terribly lucky. Nonetheless, he battled, which I guess is sort of the zero-sum argument for the Mets this season. They've battled. But that only counts for so much. Montero might have battled, but he still stuck the Mets in a 4-run hole and they couldn't hit their way out of it against Nick Pivetta, who became the 13th Phillies player to appear in this series that I've absolutely never heard of before this weekend. His performance, I would think, assures him being the darling of Fantasy league Waiver Wires at this hour.

The only other noteworthy news was of course the announcement of the annual All Star Team. The game itself has become more spectacle than anything else, which I guess was inevitable, but nonetheless, you still root for your guys to draw the honor and Michael Conforto is the lone Mets representative. He's of course hurt now, and was finally put on the DL yesterday after spending the previous 5 days essentially sucking up a roster spot in spite of being unable to play. And he'd slumped through most of June. But, if there was a Met to deserve this, it would be Conforto, I'd think. Plus, guys are always dropping out of the game at the last minute and as such the potential exists for other roster changes, so perhaps a name like deGrom might find themselves in LoriaLand on July 11th, where Joe Buck will sneer his name during the pregame introductions.

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.

More Relevant Action

I was back at Citi Field last night to see the Mets move on from the gobble gobble turkey that is the Matt Harvey saga and cruise—cruise—to an easy 6-1 victory over the Giants on the strength of a wonderful outing by onetime Harvey undercard Zack Wheeler.

It seems rather odd that here, on May 9th, I was attending only my 4th game of this season. April seems to have been a bit of a blur and in my whisened age I've decided against going to games in April simply for the sake of going to games and ultimately freezing my ass off in hopeless situations. It wasn't exactly warm out at Citi Field for May 9th regardless. But at least the Mets won the game and got me back on in the win column. It was also the second time this season I'd been to a Zack Wheeler start, which of course means I have now seen him as many times this season as Julio Teheran.

But at any rate, I was slightly on the late side in arriving, which can happen on these Tuesday nights, and so I was on line getting food while Wheeler was carving up the top of the Giants batting order in the 1st. The Giants still have these names in their lineup that can cause some irritation (that means you, Hunter Pence), but for the most part they've played rather poorly and haven't been helped by a rash of injuries of their own. So it's not just us if that makes you feel better. Wheeler struck out the aforementioned Pence, as well as Horshoe Dunkley in the 1st, but that seemed to be a mirage; those two early Ks represented half of his ultimate total for the night. The remainder of his evening wasn't necessarily a thing of beauty, but it accomplished what it needed to. Though he still threw too many pitches too early in the game, Wheeler managed to make it through 6 very solid innings, allowing the Giants a Buster Posey Home Run, a single by opposing Pitcher Jeff Samardzija, and not much else as he picked up a well-earned win in what was probably as good a game as he's pitched this season to date.

Wheeler was helped, of course, by the fact that the Mets attacked Samardzija early and often, to the point where they'd ran out to a 4-0 lead before I'd even finished eating. Neil Walker drove in the first two runs with what was charitably scored a triple after Eduardo Nunez (duh yankee prospect) butchered a sinking line drive, and later Jose Reyes and Rene Rivera drove home runs of their own. In the second, the Mets continued their onslaught when Michael Conforto and T.J. Rivera hit back-to-back doubles to extend the lead. Rivera, who's been hitting basically everything in sight of late, had 3 hits by the 4th inning. Conforto capped off his night with a long Home Run in the 7th, and the game basically sailed home from there, on a night when for whatever reason Terry Collins managed a 5-run lead as though it were a 1-run lead and burned through Jerry Blevins, Addison Reed and Jeurys Familia in the 8th and 9th innings.

The win, of course, brings the Mets back to .500, which doesn't seem like much but, again, when half the team is injured, including the two players considered to be most critical to the team's success, and when they've been written off as tired and old and skidding back to irrelevance, it's sort of a leaping off point. You can write the Mets off all you want, and continue to kick them, but as some point you need to own up to the fact that you're kicking a team that's won 8 of their last 11 playing 2nd and 3rd string guys after most of the same group roared back from the dead to run into the Wildcard game last year. So, again, I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss the team just yet. Even if they appear to be a total shit show off the field.

Small Big Ball

The Mets continued their recent trend of great offense/lousy pitching again on Saturday, as they jumped on Odrisamer Despaigne early and often to the tune of a 5-run 1st inning, then survived another shaky outing from Robert Gsellman and another injury, this time to Asdrubal Cabrera, and eventually turned things back on late against the Marlins bullpen to come away with another win, this one by an 11-3 score, which gives the Mets 6 wins in their last 8 games and 3 series wins in a row.

As usual, it is the little things that add up.

Not that it matters much to the press, who seems more interested in cracking on the Mets than actually reporting on what happens in the games, but the Marlins were the victims of some stupid in this game. Their scheduled starter, Wei Yin Chen, went on the DL on Friday with the mythical "tired arm," for those who think that sort of thing only happens to the Mets one month into the season. The replacement, Despaigne, who famously no-hit the Mets into the 8th inning that one time, was a minor irritant, as the Mets hammered him early and often and led 5-0 after 1 inning. The Marlins played like you'd expect them to, as they kicked the ball around plenty, starting off with Nickleback mishandling a hot shot from Michael Conforto that started the rally. Later, balls continued to clank off gloves and fly balls were bungled as the Mets tacked on more runs late in the game. Once again, they did so without the virtue of a Home Run; most of these runs scored because the Mets were working counts and hitting singles and doubles and just moving the line along. Conforto alone had 2 RBIs without the virtue of a hit as he walked three times, twice with the bases loaded, the latter time coming after a brilliant AB where he fell behind 0-2 and managed to check his swing three times to work out the walk. But the point is, if you just hit singles and doubles and bunch them all together, you'll accomplish the job just as well as if you sat back and waited for Cespedes to hit the 3-run HR.

Gsellman was effective, if not especially good, in his 5 innings. It seems to be more an issue of location and execution rather than stuff, that's preventing him from pitching as solidly as he did down the stretch last year. I can't quite figure it out just yet. With a full complement of pitchers, he might be on thinner ice but as the numbers have dwindled, there's not many other passable options. Certainly not if Montero continues to make an ass of himself whenever he gets an opportunity.

So it becomes the offense that has to shoulder the load, and they've done so as they scored 5 or more runs for the 9th game in a row, which is a far cry from the days when they were hard pressed to score 5 runs in a week. Then again, this could just as easily flip so we should just enjoy it while it lasts.

I Like This Place!

The Mets played their first game in Suburban Atlanta's sparkling new SunTrust Park or SunTrust Field last night, a refreshing change after playing the past 20 years in a stadium that shall no longer be named, where they posted a record of 20-142 and suffered innumerable indignities. And after one batter in this new place, perhaps we saw signs that things would be different here. Michael Conforto led off the game with a Home Run, getting things off on the right foot, and spurred the Mets on to a 7-5 victory.

I like this new place already!

SunTrust Park or Field or Gulag or whatever they're calling it seems to be a fairly generic-looking "old new" ballpark, which is now what basically every stadium is nowadays. The other place wasn't especially memorable either, except for all the wrong reasons but that didn't even have a "retro" feel to it. I suspect, as time passes and these new stadiums eventually lose their shine, that the new retro will become the utilitarian, cookie-cutter stadiums of the 1960s, so maybe someday we'll get Shea Stadium and Fulton County Stadium back, but what the hell do I know.

The Mets scored early and often against Julio Teheran, which they could have done last week if they'd bothered to hit, since he was ripe for the taking, and on the other side, Robert Gsellman if nothing else didn't have the complete and total meltdown that he did last week and managed to get through 5 plus innings allowing 5 runs instead of giving them all up in the 1st inning, which was nice of him. In fact, it was actually good enough to net him a victory this time around.

Other good things happened too. Conforto supplemented his Home Run with a 2-run single in the 3rd inning. Jose Reyes, who has appeared to show some signs of consciousness lately, hit a Home Run late to give the Mets an insurance run. Addison Reed and Jeurys Familia finished out the game with some more cobweb-shaking performances or stabilizing performances as the case may be. Really, more than anything else, the Mets needed this victory just to heal everyone's psyche after the early-morning injury news regarding Noah Syndergaard. To say nothing of the fact that they needed to remind everyone that they were still a viable team after getting 23 runs hung on them on Sunday. What this will lead to, I'm not sure. It feels like a long road back to respectability at this point, but at least they didn't have to follow up Sunday's debacle with having to go to Atlanta Baseball Hell.

Remember That Kid?

The Mets won again on Saturday in Washington, giving them the first two games of this weekend series and spread all sorts of good cheer around in the process. Mostly, this was done by Michael Conforto, who hit a pair of Home Runs to sort of bookend this 5-3 victory, and by Jeurys Familia, who either shook off the cobwebs or finally stopped pussyfooting around, stoned up, and pitched a solid inning for his first Save of the season. On April 29th.

Zack Wheeler should also get some credit here, as although he once again only managed to get through 5 innings and worked through several jams and threw tons of pitches, preventing him from getting any particular length to his outing, he still minimized damage and departed having only allowed two runs and with his team in the lead. Unfortunately, he didn't get through 5 innings and Hansel Robles subsequently took the mound and vultured a win from him (Robles' 4th of the year, if you can believe it). Still, these small success in the big picture have to be considered a positive since if nothing else he's starting to find some consistency in his outings. And pitch counts and jams were an issue for him even before he got hurt.

I feel more inclined to give more credit to Conforto, though. After basically having a wasted season because of management's refusal to just let him play and figure it out for himself, Conforto has shaken off his own cobwebs and has broken from the gate like gangbusters. He's been the only real consistent bat for the Mets to this point this season, and although he doesn't pose as such, he's actually not a terrible fit as a leadoff guy. He can work a count, he can take a walk, he can hit a line drive, or he can hit it out of the ballpark and who cares if he's not really a basestealer? Last season, he just needed to be in there and for whatever reason he kept getting blocked. This season, there's been enough injuries around him that he's had to play and as such the results speak for themselves. He's forcibly interjected himself into the conversation and Saturday continued to strengthen his case to remain in the lineup on a daily basis as he not only hit a Home Run off of Stephen Strasburg to put the Mets ahead in the 5th, but he added an insurance run with his second Home Run off the gate, off a tough lefthander in Enny Romero. This marked both his first regular season Home Run off a lefthander and his first regular season multi-Home Run game to boot and I have to note that it's the first time he's done this in the regular season because he also did it IN THE FREAKING WORLD SERIES AS A ROOKIE. In case you forgot. This kid's good. Remember him?

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 Like They Drew it Up

On Monday, the Mets followed the script of just enough offense to back their pitching. Tuesday, the script was to just beat the hell out of the opponent.

On Wednesday, the script was apparently no script whatsoever.

The late scratch of Granderson prior to the series finale in Philadelphia led to the somewhat incongruous sight of Michael Conforto starting in Center field and batting 1st. I'm not sure if anybody ever projected Conforto as a leadoff hitter, but it seemed to work. In the 1st inning, he singled and scored on a Yoenis Cespedes double. In the 3rd, he blasted a Home Run out to left field off of Vince Velasquez. Later, he walked and scored on a Cespedes sac fly. Through 5 innings, he'd scored 3 of the 5 Mets runs, the Mets were running off with a 5-0 lead, and things were just lovely.

One of the reasons they were so lovely was that Zack Wheeler, in his second start back from his extended absence, was brilliant, shutting down the Phillies and looking more like what we'd hoped. I again think it will be a mixture of his first two starts for some time, but the hope, of course, is that we see more of what we saw through the first 5 innings last night as opposed to the dreck we saw against Miami.

Then, of course, Wheeler hit the 6th and ran out of steam, allowing two hits and a walk and then departing with two outs. This is OK in and of itself, except that in the 6th inning, the Mets seem to be in a bit of a grey area in their bullpen. This may right itself once Familia returns, but currently what we get in these spots is Hansel Robles, who was appearing for the 3rd game in a row. Robles, in the early going, is a leading candidate for a Ballclub Flog,  as evidenced by the fact that he came in and Maikel Franco immediately blasted his first pitch over the Center Field fence for a Grand Slam that turned an easy 5-0 lead into a hairy 5-4 game, results in doubt. And this is simply Robles. It's just Robles. No consistency and constant agita, and I didn't even have to listen to Joe Benigno to know he used that word to describe Robles.

So, now it's a one-run game and now this game has all the makings of one of those head-scratchers that gets away, and for whatever reason Robles is still in the game. He walks another guy before finally getting out of the 6th...and yet mysteriously there he was back out there in the 7th. Fortunately, after getting his good buddy Cameron Rupp to ground out he was removed and order was restored. The good quotient of the bullpen then followed, as Jerry Blevins got through the 7th, Fernando Salas commandeered the 8th and Addison Reed finished things off in the 9th, all of them accomplishing what they needed to with little drama. Which is just as well because the Mets stopped hitting after the 5th.

But, this Mets team has teeth, whether you want to recognize that or not. They won't win all the time and there will certainly be times that they will play those mystifying kinds of games where nothing goes right. But more often than not they're going to play like this, and in a situation where they need to lock it down, they're going to lock it down. It might not be quite the way it was intended, but in this series sweep of Philadelphia, they've proven they have many different ways that they can beat their opponent.

Sunday Hammers

I missed Saturday's game. That's nothing out of the ordinary since I missed most Saturday games last season, but at least unlike last season, I wasn't stuck on Long Island doing something I'd rather not have been doing. I was just out and didn't see the game, and based on how things turned out it's just as well. The Marlins once again did Stupid Marlin Things and the Mets couldn't recover.

So, in this early going, the Mets went into Sunday playing about as crucial a game as one could have for its 6th game of the season, trying to not get swept by the worms that are the Mickey Mouse Marlins and having to do so on The Biggest Game In The Galaxy, Sunday Night on ESPN. However, the Mets went out on The Biggest Game In The Galaxy with The Biggest Pitcher In The Galaxy and as such were able to ride 7 innings from Noah Syndergaard en route to a 5-2 victory to avert the sweep.

ESPN, as I've made note of in the past, has a tendency to latch on to one particular storyline during these games and run it into the ground. Usually, when the Mets are involved, this is at the Mets' expense. But when the opponent is the Marlins, who as a franchise are a punchline, there's not much they could do, and for as much as they tried to shove Giancarlo Stanton in our faces, he was little match for Syndergaard. In fact, most of the Marlins were little match, except for a 3rd inning hiccup that involved Billy Marlins, who further proved my theory that he's the most Marlin Marlin ever, and an untimely Yoenis Cespedes error. But after Dee Gordon doubled home two runs to make the score 3-2, Syndergaard knuckled down and, abetted by Rene Rivera, put the Marlins in their proper place. Gordon attempted to steal 3rd, and was thrown out. J.P. Regalbuto followed with an infield single and when he tried to get cute and steal 2nd, he got thrown out as well. From there, Syndergaard laid down the mjölnir and put the Marlins to sleep. There was something resembling a threat in the 5th inning, but little beyond that.

On the other side, the Mets ran out to a 3-0 lead in the 1st against Edinson Volquez, kicked off by an Asdrubal Cabrera bunt single. Later, Jay Bruce and Michael Conforto both hit Home Runs off of Volquez, the former in support of a continued hot start and the latter the kind of bomb we know he's capable of if he'd only just be allowed to start consistently. But that, then, is another discussion for another day.

For the Mets, it's now on to the first Road trip of the season and the hope that a little consistency will follow now that they're in the swing of playing on a regular basis.

Encore, Encore

After the breathless exuberance of Thursday night's game, the Mets, one would imagine, would be hard-pressed to come up with a fitting encore. And although it required far fewer players and two fewer innings than it did on Thursday, the Mets still did what was necessary in order to win on Friday. A 3-run Home Run from Michael Conforto capped off a 6-run 5th inning that brought the Mets back from an early deficit, and in spite of Gabriel Ynoa only pitching two innings and the bullpen figuring out the rest of the game, the Mets still managed to beat the Phillies 10-5 to keep pace in the standings for another day.

If you blinked, you missed Ynoa on this night. I did my usual Friday Night trick and came home and fell asleep, so I missed him entirely. I'm told, although I haven't seen for myself, that he wasn't especially good, and gave up 2 runs in the second inning before Terry Collins started stirring his Pot-o-Ballplayers and pinch-hit for him in the bottom half of the inning with men in scoring position. The ploy didn't work there, and in fact Logan Verrett followed Ynoa to the mound and allowed a Home Run to Maikel Franco in the 3rd, but that was it, as he pitched two innings before turning things over to Josh Smoker in the 5th.

The Mets didn't managed much of anything off of Jeremy Hellickson early, although they'd had some earlier success against him. Travis d'Arnaud's RBI double represented his first RBI in close to a month, but until that 5th inning, the Mets hadn't done much. But then they started hitting, and it turned into one of those groundswell rallies, where they load the bases, and then start moving the chains. Curtis Granderson singled to drive home a run, Kelly Johnson singled to put the Mets ahead, Hellickson was done for the night, and his replacement, Frank Herrmann, allowed the 3-run Home Run for Conforto that extended the Mets lead to 7-3.

These Phillies, as I've said all season, are game though, in spite of their porous pitching staff, and they fought back in the 6th against Smoker. Darin Ruf hit a 2-run Home Run to make the score 7-5, and in the 7th, both Erik Goeddel and Josh Edgin had a hard time as they loaded the bases and brought Tommy Joseph to the plate. Collins then went to Hansel Robles, who is an adventure in and of himself, but Robles on this night was game to the challenge and induced Joseph to ground to Reyes, who started the 5-3 Double Play to end the Philly threat.

From there, it got easier, as the Mets took advantage of the awful back end of Philly's bullpen to tack on 3 more runs, and Robles ended up pulling a reverse of what he did in an emergency against KC and finishing out the final 2.2 innings himself en route to his first Major League Save.

Then, of course, it was on to watching the scoreboard, since this game, while not as lengthy as Thursday's 4 hours, 23 minutes, ran a good 3 hours and 40 minutes, overlapping the start of the Giants in San Diego. The Padres did what they needed to do in order to help the Mets, winning 7-2, and once again giving the Mets a lead in the Wildcard race, however temporary it may seem. And with now 8 games to go, it all has a temporary feel to it. Tomorrow will bring what it will.

Literally, Tired

As can sometimes be the case on Fridays, after a full week of work, I'll come home and proceed to fall asleep for about 60-90 minutes. Game be damned. And lately, most of the games have been damned. Tonight was no different; I came home and after tooling around for a while, I started to nod off. But as I was about to fall asleep, I glanced at my phone and MLB At Bat to see how the game had been going. I saw that Logan Verrett had managed to load the bases with no outs, and some fellow named Detlef Schrempf was batting, and a little blue ball pops up, accompanied by that dreaded phrase: "IN PLAY, RUN(S)."

Schimpf, of course, had hit the Grand Slam, and from there I fell asleep, because I knew that nothing good was coming out of this game. After the bluster from Terry Collins yesterday, and after the roster shakeups of this afternoon, the same stupid thing was going to happen anyway. I suppose it makes no difference whether or not Michael Conforto is here. The Mets have once again managed to take a really promising young kid and screw him up so badly that he's now incapable of performing at the Major League level. They can toss him back to AAA where he'll inevitably hit .360, and then call him back up, jockey him around from position to position in order to placate whoever, and then shrug as he continues to hit .200. Then they'll trade him to Baltimore for Darren O'Day and two retreads and watch as he develops into a .320 hitter.

Meanwhile, Logan Verrett continues to start, and for Verrett the pattern tends to be one good start, one middling start, one completely putrid start and tonight was the putrid. Against a Padres team that, like Arizona, is barely trying, he allowed a Steve Trachsel-esque 4 Home Runs in 3 innings, shuttling the Mets off to an 8-2 deficit.

By time I woke up, the Mets had actually cut that deficit to 8-5. Somehow, this was enough to get me up and get me to turn the game on, even if I knew I was setting myself up for more misery. I know that we're all trying to finesse this one into something positive by saying that the Mets could have died after the score hit 8-2 but somehow battled back to make it 8-6, but what's the point? The loss counts the same whether it was 8-0, 8-2 or 8-6. You want to talk about the Mets being gritty and gutty, talk to me when they come back from an 8-2 deficit and win 9-8. There's nothing fluffier in Baseball than touting offensive statistics that come in meaningless situations. It's like when everyone would yell about that guy who retired hitting Home Runs late in games when his team was already up by 4.

So, yeah. I'm tired. Literally, tired. Of this team, of this season and in general.

Treading Water

Let's just punt Saturday's game, shall we? After a long day of hooting and hollering, I returned home at around 6:30 and promptly fell asleep, in spite of a loud, obnoxious block party being held directly outside my window. I woke up some time later and instead of watching the game or even checking the score, my other half insisted we go out to dinner, not so much because she wanted to go out, but she wanted to get away from the party. So, what I ended up missing was the sort of game I hate the most, the game where the Mets fall hopelessly behind, but then start mounting some thinly-veiled comeback that ends up falling short, and so the only thing accomplished was making the game longer.

Sunday, then, was going to be Waterloo for the 2016 Mets. They have been, as I keep saying, teetering on the brink of 2012 but yet every time that perilous loss seems to be at hand, they end up fighting back and winning a game, and that's what happened on Sunday. Jacob deGrom was his usual brilliant self, and I know at the end of the season his numbers aren't really going to tell the story, but no need to sugarcoat: He's been the Mets best Pitcher to this point this season. He was once again on top of his game on Sunday, keeping the Tigers off the scoreboard, which was fortunate because the Mets did squat against Anibal Sanchez and his 6.06 ERA. Sanchez, whom we've seen plenty of in his days playing on the Fake Team, has been patently awful this season, to the point where he lost his job and only got it back thanks to someone else's injury (you know, sort of like Nate Eovaldi). So of course the Mets couldn't hit him.

Until Michael Conforto got a hold of one in the 7th and hit a Home Run out to left-center field, the kind of ball it seems like he hadn't hit in months. I know that the Mets have basically done just about everything possible to screw up Conforto, but after all this he's still here plugging away and he might actually be starting to find his swing again. He's looked reasonably good over the past several games and now he drove one out of the park, so that's a good sign. A better sign would be if he starts doing it on a more regular basis.

But, alas, the Tigers tied the game in the last of the 7th thanks to a pair of 60 foot singles, one of which, by Austin Romine, loaded the bases with 2 outs and knocked deGrom from the game, and the second, by Ian Kinsler, "drove in" the tying run. The situation seemed ripe for the Tigers to then get a long hit or a Grand Slam from Jose Iglesias, but Addison Reed came in and would have none of it, so instead Iglesias was kind enough to pop out.

In the last of the 8th, the Tigers again threatened, and in fact Casey McGehee, another ex-Marlin, probably did the most Marlins thing he's done in his life, skipping an 87-hop single to right with 2 on and 2 out, that somehow got past 4 Met Infielders and appeared primed to score the lead run. But, fortunately, the Mets were playing the Tigers and not the Marlins, and instead of the run scoring, the Tigers managed to run, or not run, themselves out of the inning when J.D. Martinez decided to not run and Justin Upton decided to keep running, so the Tigers had two men on 3rd base and instead of scoring the lead run, Martinez and Upton basically just had to take a bite out of 3rd base and cut their losses.

In the 9th, Francisco Rodriguez came in for the Tigers and promptly hit Alejandro De Aza to start the inning. Rodriguez, who left New York in abject shame, continues to do the job since he's closing games, but he seems to be making things as difficult as possible. Just like a Good Closer should. He came perilously close to blowing Saves on Friday and Saturday, and on Sunday the Mets finally got him when Neil Walker hit a 2-run Home Run to win the game, 3-1.

So, the Mets somehow managed to not get swept in Detroit, which was nice of them, and now they get to come home to play Arizona and San Diego. I have no idea what will happen to them from here. I don't even know what to say anymore.

Past and Past

The day for the Mets and basically everyone who follows them kind of got off to a morose start when the word came down that David Wright was going to have surgery on his neck that would basically end his season, and for all we know could end his career altogether.

I don't especially feel this is the proper place to eulogize Wright's career, whether this happens to be it or not. That's a different story for another time. Right now, the Mets still have a season to worry about and at this point, I'm not entirely convinced that they're not better off without Wright in the lineup. Think about it. 2006 David Wright wasn't walking out of that dugout. We'd been getting creaky, old David Wright that can't move along runners, can't drive guys in, occasionally pops a Home Run and just isn't hitting those authoritative line drives that he made his name with. To say nothing of the fact that he's been a walking strikeout most of the season anyway.

I know that Wright is the captain and there's a whole morale thing at work here but there's only so much that morale can do when the guy who's supposedly providing it isn't making a meaningful contribution. The larger issue for the Mets has been the compounding injuries. It's not just Wright out that's problematic, it's him, combined with Duda, and d'Arnaud, and Walker, and Conforto and even Lagares, and all the depth in the world can't compensate for so many missing pieces. But the remainder of these guys will be back at some point. Which is why I'm comfortable saying what I said last year when the Mets didn't trade for Tulowitzki: I remain all in on Wilmer Flores.

Of course, then Flores went out and got hurt in tonight's game, leaving after getting hit by a Juan Nicasio pitch. But the Mets won anyway, and part of the reason is that two of these hurt guys, Neil Walker and Michael Conforto, hit Home Runs and Conforto actually looked like a hitter again after a few days to recoup and clear his head. This, in support of Bartolo Colon, who had his usual solid effort and even chipped in with a double that brought the house down. The game, then, seemed mere scenery from everything else going on, but that's now two days in a row where the Mets offense actually looked like an offense and scored some runs, so that's a step in the right direction. Now comes a number of games against Atlanta, so if the Mets want to cut into this deficit they've gotten themselves into, now would be a good time to do that.

This Guy's Good

...and then, y'know, on Sunday, they throw Syndergaard at you and your day's basically over...

That's pretty much the case these days when the Mets send Noah Syndergaard to the mound, or at least it's the case more often than not. Fresh off his demolition of the Nationals, the Brewers were more or less minor irritants for Syndergaard, who allowed an unearned run in the 1st inning and nothing thereafter, as his teammates once again gave him minimum support in a 3-1 victory.

There's not too much you can say about Syndergaard at this point that everybody else hasn't already said several times over but as I mentioned before the season, I had a feeling he was going to step up and become the real Ace here and that's basically what happened. I know I'd harped on Harvey a lot and I still do to some degree but that's because as far as stature and tenure goes, it's still Harvey that started this ball rolling. He's not as good as Syndergaard right now. In a year and a week Thor just blew right by him for internal supremacy.

So, yeah, the Brewers basically scored by accident thanks to a 1st inning Error by David Wright that led to an RBI hit from Jonathan Lucroy, but the Mets fired right back, as Michael Conforto smoked a long Home Run off of Chase Anderson to even the score. There things stayed until the 4th inning, when Asdrubal Cabrera singled home the two runs that would be the difference in the game. This is particularly gratifying considering Cabrera was sort of brought in here as an afterthought. The move came in the shadows of the Niese/Walker trade and so nobody really noticed it but Cabrera's been an absolute gem so far. Solid defense, key hits, rarely needs rest, and accomplishes everything within relative obscurity. Sort of like another Mets Middle Infielder who wore #13 a generation ago.

OK. The Mets basically needed to sweep the Brewers and they swept the Brewers. It wasn't at all pretty, but they did it. Sometimes all you need is a few wins in a row to just get things going because the schedule doesn't ease up at all for the next few weeks. First, it's back to Washington, where the Mets can try to undo some of the mess they created for themselves this past week. Essentially, these are rematch games, beginning tonight with Bartolo Colon against Gio Gonzalez. Hopefully this one goes better than the last one.

The Minimum Necessary

Any time one of these Mets pitchers has some kind of an ailment, obviously the worst is feared. Steven Matz is probably as susceptible to panic as anyone, given his injury history and the fact that he already had a season undercut by improper handling. So, when he had elbow soreness last week, all sorts of alarm bells were sounded. But, an examination came back clean, Matz took his start this evening against the Brewers and pitched like nothing had ever been wrong. After allowing a 2-run Home Run to Chris Carter (not to be confused with Ballclub Favorite Chris "The Animal" Carter of 2010 fame) in the top of the 1st inning, Matz locked the game down and allowed the Brewers nothing thereafter, giving his teammates time to shove 3 runs across the plate and earn themselves a 3-2 victory.

Matz's strong outing was a much-needed antidote for the Mets, whose bullpen was run ragged after Harvey's foibles on Thursday night. Following the 1st inning, Matz allowed the Brewers all of one hit, a single by Hernan Perez in the 6th inning, and he was subsequently thrown out stealing 2nd. Over his 7 innings of work, Matz was exceptionally clean, allowing no walks and striking out 8 before departing after 88 pitches. Perhaps he could have gone further. But why tempt fate?

It was, of course, on the offense to try to make up the early deficit against Wily Peralta, Milwaukee's de facto Ace. Peralta hasn't pitched especially well, but he's also been pitching in mostly hopeless situations. The Brewers, a rebuilding team, boast a roster littered with obscure names you'd never heard of, among them names like Jonathan Villar, Keon Broxton and Ramon Flores. They also seem to have a bevy of old friends from lost seasons on their roster, former Mets who were kicking around in seasons like 2011 and 2013, like Chris Capuano, Carlos Torres and Kirk Nieuwenhuis, who feels like a sage veteran on a team like this. Ryan Braun and Jonathan Lucroy are still kicking around there, but Braun still has some PED stink on him and additionally is now constantly injured. So, yeah. You draw the conclusion of what the Mets should be doing here. But it was a struggle. Nobody's going particularly well of late, and with Wilmer Flores on the DL and Lucas Duda and David Wright both battling assorted ailments, we end up subjected to more Eric Campbell than is necessary. It feels a little like the early half of 2015 at times.

Then, Michael Conforto comes up and swats a 2-run Home Run to the opposite field in the 6th inning and everything is right in the world.

A game like this is important to win, even if the Mets truly did the absolute minimum they could possibly do in order to win. I don't necessarily call games like this encouraging, even if there's encouraging individual performances like we saw from Matz and Conforto. It helps, but the better games are when you really can't single out a particular contributor, because everyone plays a role in some form.

A Popular Attraction

I was not on hand at Citi Field on Saturday, which I've been hearing was probably a good idea. That's not to say I didn't make an attempt to do so. See, I had a pair of seats from a game late last season that was rained out, and usually, the rain check policy is that rainout tickets are good for one year. So I hung on to them thinking I basically had time to exchange them out. But earlier this month, I'd heard somewhere that these tickets could only be exchanged in April, and so I contacted my account representative (Yes, I actually have one of those) and she confirmed that yes, because the game had been made up as a day-night doubleheader, they made the rain check good in April only.

This created some trouble for me, because I could only attend certain games, and there were only certain home dates, and as it turned out, I'd had tickets on every possible April date I could attend except for April 30th. So I mailed the tickets back to the Mets, Byzantine as that may seem, and requested April 30th. I figured that shouldn't be a problem.

A few days later, I received a call from someone with Ticket Services (not my account rep), telling me that they "were out of inventory" for April 30th, and would I like to pick another date. I asked if there was anything available, and they told me that the only available seats started at $108 per ticket. I passed on that, since the only time in my life I've ever paid over $100 for a ticket was a World Series game. Instead, I exchanged the tickets for Friday night, the 29th, and shrewdly exchanged the tickets I'd originally had for that night to another game later in the season. As a result, I got two free shirts and a 12-run inning.

The reason, of course, that April 30th was so popular was the allure of the Noah Syndergaard Garden Gnome. I've talked in the past about how I, and many other Mets fans, have this bizarre attraction to some of the kitsch they pass out at games. I have, over time, acquired a host of Bobbleheads, rally towels, beach towels, calendars, fandinis and the like, and most of it has either been sold or sits in a closet collecting dust. I've developed a distaste for these promotion dates in recent years because for whatever reason, they've been limited in quantity and only doled out on weekends, when I don't usually go to games anyway. Because the Mets had been lousy for so many years, I was able to collect on some limited-amount giveaways when I was on hand, even if I was slightly on the late side of arriving.

I've heard grumblings that this is now no longer the case.

In watching the game yesterday afternoon, I heard Gary Cohen make mention of the fact that people were lining up as early as 9 or 10AM to be one of the first 15,000 people in the building and receive the Syndergaard Gnome. If I'd gone to this game, I can assure you there was no way in hell I was arriving at 9am and for a 4pm start time, it wasn't likely that I would have been there any earlier than 3pm. Had I done that, of course, I would have probably been stuck on line indeterminately, and shit outta luck when it came to getting a Gnome. And had I plonked down upwards of $100 a ticket with the intention of getting a Gnome and not received one, I would have been livid, to say the least.

So in this case, the joke isn't on me, but I have to say I wholeheartedly agree with Metstradamus' assessment of the situation. This is, of course, "the way things are done" now in the sense that any sort of business practice can't be done without in some way fleecing your customers, but it's really not proper or fair to the people that pay enough money for tickets and are probably going to spend even more on concessions no matter when they get in the building to get shut out on the promotion because they didn't show up ass-early. Complaining about these things in general is more or less like talking to a wall sometimes, but I wonder if this is one of those things where if enough people make enough of a stink, the Mets might start to listen and not limit these giveaways so much. I have so many Bobbleheads because when this whole thing started, it was given out to everyone who came to the game. But then, at some point, everyone turned into the first 25,000. Then 20,000. Now it's 15,000. At the rate we're going, they're just going to turn it into door prizes for the first 100 people and it's going to be some demented version of a Black Friday sale. I'm not sure how else that can be described when you're holding an event when you expect 44,000 people to show up and you're giving something special away to only the first 15,000. I'm sure some people were more than just a little upset about this. I can only imagine Ratso Wilpon is behind this crap. This seems like the sort of thing only a jackass like him could cook up.

But I digress. I played no part in this particular michigas and as such my only concern about the game was the game, and that went well enough, at least early on, when Jacob deGrom was cooking and the Mets jumped Matt Cain for 4 early runs, thanks to the usual suspects, Neil Walker and Michael Conforto. Conforto later hit a Home Run, because I guess he was getting tired of all those RBI doubles, or maybe because he's the hottest hitter on the planet right now, as did Wilmer Flores, and things seemed perfectly under control. deGrom had a 1-inning hiccup as a result of an ill-timed Flores error but for the most part things were fine, the Mets had a 3-run lead and everything was hunky dory.

Then, Addison Reed had a hard time of things in the 8th inning, and all of a sudden the Giants had come to life and appeared primed to steal the game away when they loaded the bases with no outs and the always irritating, always awkward Hunter Pence coming to the plate. Reed departed for Hansel Robles, who gave up a pair of fly balls that were a bit too deep for comfort, but not deep enough to accomplish anything further than a Sacrifice Fly, and thus the score sat at 6-5, and the Giants would ultimately get no closer than that as Jerry Blevins finished the 8th and Jeurys Familia, unavailable on Wednesday and unnecessary on Friday, worked a clean 9th inning.

So, the Mets have now won 8 in a row and that's 8 games where they've really controlled the proceedings from beginning to end. This is really how you expect a first place team to play, and yes, I know the Mets aren't actually in 1st place, but at half a game back they're close enough and they're playing the way we expected them to play. They totally wasted Atlanta and Cincinnati and they've stuck it to the Giants in the first two games in this series. So if they're not getting slowed down by the really good teams either, then you know things are going really well.

In fact, things might be going so well right now that you don't need to give away limited Garden Gnomes to the first 15,000 fans as some hackneyed ploy to get people to show up early.