Better Off Forgotten

Usually, during these weekday afternoon affairs, I click on the game on my computer while in my office. However, I was out of the office on Thursday, for the celebratory affair of my other half's College Graduation and subsequently I was pre-empted for the day. Couldn't follow, didn't know what was going on.

Based on the end result, I see I was probably better off.

Perception vs. Reality

Sometimes, you go to a Mets game and you have a really good feeling about things, and you arrive at Citi Field a little earlier than usual, and you have some time to consider food choices, and then mill around a little and sit and finish eating before the game starts, and then things get going and everything is awful and you want to leave by the 4th inning.

That's basically what happened to me on Wednesday night.

I'd figured with Jacob deGrom on the mound against a somewhat-floundering Brewers lineup, I was in for a good show. deGrom was great his last two times out. Last night, he was basically the exact opposite and it was evident by time he was 12 pitches in.

Eric Sogard, the nebbishy Brewers 2nd Baseman and Oakland castoff, led off and deGrom quickly got ahead of him 1-2. But he couldn't get a damn thing over after that. Either he barely missed or Sogard nicked anything close, and eventually he walked after 8 pitches. Eric Thames followed. Thames, from all I can tell, was a judy hitter who couldn't hack it, went to Korea, started blasting Home Runs all over the place, and then came back to the US this year and hit 11 Home Runs in April, and all of a sudden he's going to be an All Star Game starter and trade high off of a fortuitously hot April for the rest of his life, ignoring the fact that he'd hit 2 Home Runs for the month of May. However, once deGrom was through with him, it was 3 Home Runs for the month of May because deGrom hung a slider right over the heart of the plate and Thames parked it in the Brewers bullpen.

And from there, as they say, the rout was on. deGrom gave up another moonshot Home Run to Keon Broxton in the 2nd, and in the 4th, the Brewers finished him off as he slogged through a miserable 31-pitch inning where everything that could have possibly gone wrong did. He walked Sogard—and that was the 3rd time he walked Sogard in the first 4 innings—gave up a double to Jesus Aguilar that Granderson couldn't catch, and some more hits that I can't remember because I'd given up.

deGrom managed to make it through 4 innings, and they were 4 eminently forgettable innings, as he threw 105 pitches, allowed 7 runs on 8 hits, walked 5, including three to Sogard in case you weren't already outraged, and just to kick us all in the nuts, he struck out 6.

Ostensibly, the game was finished before a Mets player ever had a bat in their hands, but just to make sure, the Mets managed to do very little against Junior Guerra over his 6 innings of work. That's not to say they didn't have opportunities to chip away a little bit, but you just knew it wasn't happening on this night. By time the 8th inning rolled around and there was a Neil Ramirez sighting—perhaps the only particular scenario where a Ramirez sighting is acceptable—I'd made my way downstairs in preparation for a quick exit once the game ended. And yes, I waited until the game ended, so I did get to see the Mets at least score a run with 2 outs in the 9th, so instead of getting shut out, they lost 7-1. Woopie.

I'd like to say that there was some moral lesson here, about not going into a game with your hopes too high, or always prepare yourself for what might go wrong, or whatever self-defeating Mets fan thing people like to throw around at times like this when everything is terrible, but basically, this was just one of those nights where a very good pitcher came out and laid an egg and got whacked around by a middling team. I don't care if the Brewers are in 1st place, they're middling. The larger problem is the volume of times these very good pitchers have laid eggs this season, because it's getting a little tiresome.

That's Nice Of You

The Mets had one of those "in spite of themselves" wins on Tuesday night. First of all, they started Tyler Pill, who's one of those Dillon Gee-types (in fact, I believe Gee was name-checked on more than one Mets broadcast) in that he's a pitcher who doesn't "trade high" because he doesn't have "great stuff" but he manages to overachieve because he's a "Gamer." That's a polite way of saying Pill has an excellent chance of being a spot-starter or #5 starter for a while, and he might have a hot month here and there, but don't expect too much.

But Pill surprised us all on Tuesday by working his way into and deftly out of some jams against a tough Milwaukee lineup (that's tough in spite of the fact that you haven't heard of any of them but we learned that when the Mets played them in Milwaukee). Pill gutted his way through 5.1 innings allowing just one run and departing with a 2-1 lead that became a 4-1 lead when Lucas Duda hit a Home Run in the bottom of the 6th. But, of course, since the Mets bullpen is a consistently dicey proposition, they found themselves in a sticky situation in the 7th inning when Fernando Salas loaded the bases and then had to turn things over to Jerry Blevins in order to rescue him. Blevins did his job; he struck out Travis Shaw and in spite of issuing a run-scoring walk to Domingo Santana, got Jett Bandy (still not to be confused with Jaff Decker) to pop up for what appeared to be an inning-ending out. But Asdrubal Cabrera had a moment with Baseball and did not catch the popup, and to everyone's abject horror, two runs scored and the game was tied. Goodbye, Tyler Pill Win, Hello, references to woebegone Mets Middle Infielders who should not be mentioned in polite company.

Then, of course, came the bullpen parade. Neftali Feliz begat Josh Edgin, begat Jacob Barnes, begat Addison Reed, begat Corey Knebel, begat Josh Smoker, and so on, and so forth. Mets relievers handed Brewer batters walks seemingly at will. The Mets batters did a good job of not doing much of anything. Finally, it seemed that Smoker was going to go the limit for the Mets, as the only "available" reliever was Neil Ramirez, whom nobody wanted to see. So it became somewhat imperative that the Mets figure out a way to score, particularly against Wily Peralta, deposed as a starter due to repeated ineffectiveness that seemed to disappear whenever he faced the Mets. So in the 11th, Peralta set the Mets down in order.

But finally, the Mets managed to break through in the 12th, the last possible moment before a Ramirez sighting. T.J. Rivera, whom we haven't heard much from lately (he was falling victim to the curse of overexposure anyway) hit for Smoker and singled. Michael Conforto walked. Jose Reyes moved up Rivera by grounding into a Fielder's Choice. That brought up Jay Bruce, who mercifully singled to center to score Rivera to win the game, probably about 75 minutes later than it should have ended. Irregardless, the Mets did manage to win, which is probably the most important thing. After all that, it's nice that the Mets could figure out a way to win a game like this.

One for Two

Much like every game from the past weekend, I didn't see much of Monday afternoon's Memorial Day affair against the Milwaukee Brewers. Under other circumstances, perhaps I might have been at the game. I did have tickets at one point, as a part of my ticket package, but knowing that it was highly unlikely I'd actually be at the game, I took advantage of the perks afforded me by the Mets and swapped out the tickets.

The Mets won the game I swapped to, so I already had that in the bank, but they won yesterday as well, 4-2 over the Brewers, behind Robert Gsellman. As such, they accomplished something they could not do while they were in Milwaukee—beat the Brewers. Again, not that I saw much, but Gsellman basically won the game by himself. In addition to pitching 7 innings—a luxury given how porous the starting pitching has been of late—and also drove in a pair of runs without the virtue of picking up a hit. This, of course, provided him with his margin of victory. After falling behind 1-0 in the top of the 5th, Gsellman found himself at bat with runners on 2nd and 3rd and no outs after an RBI double by Rene Rivera tied the score. Rather than attempt a squeeze play or give himself up, Gsellman poked a fly ball to right for a sacrifice fly that scored Wilmer Flores.

One inning later, Gsellman found himself ahead 3-2 and at bat with the Bases loaded and 2 outs against Rob Scahill...and he worked out a walk to force home a run and make the score 4-2.

Having done whatever he possibly could and then some to get himself a win, Gsellman turned the ball over to Paul Sewald for the 8th and Addison Reed, who survived a hairy 9th and the Mets finished out a victory to start off this series and actually put the Mets on a 2-game win streak, something they've been hard pressed to accomplish over the past month.

Exasparation

There have been seasons, or maybe I'm remembering wrong and it's just season, where the Mets were kind of dancing and jabbing, and then they went to Milwaukee and their entire season just got the life sucked out of it.

I know it's still May but after the way this past weekend played out I feel like I watched the same thing happen to the Mets. They had early leads both Saturday and Sunday, their starters gassed themselves way too early, the Brewers came back and then lit the Mets bullpen on fire.

Saturday, things seemed to be perfectly nice early in the game. Though Robert Gsellman struggled early, he settled down, got some runs thanks to Kevin Plawecki, who came through with a rare double, and from Neil Walker, who Homered, and everything was hunky dory until the 5th when Gsellman just lost it and the roof caved in. Brewers hitters started stringing hits together, guys I'd never heard of were coming off the bench and hitting (Jesus Aguilar? Didn't he surface with the 2010 Mets?), Gsellman was pulled for Hansel Robles and Robles just made things worse, capping things off by essentially throwing Travis Shaw a Bugs Bunny fastball so Shaw could hit it out and cap off an 8-run nightmare that put the Mets to bed for the night.

Sunday was basically Saturday's game, just magnified and slower in developing. Michael Conforto hit everything in sight, Neil Walker and Rene Rivera hit some more and the Mets ran out to a 7-1 lead for Jacob deGrom, who looked OK, if less than economical. But the Brewers kept pushing the envelope and pushing the envelope, and 7-1 turned into 7-3, and then relievers were involved, and Jerry Blevins couldn't get anyone out, and Fernando Salas couldn't get anyone out, and guys like Keon Broxton and Jonathan Villar were hitting Home Runs, and there was this Jesus Aguilar again, and who the hell is Manny Pina and what the hell is he doing hitting a Home Run off of Addison Reed to finish off this debacle because it was 7-1 and now it's 11-9...

I usually can find the solution hiding somewhere behind the story and the problem right now is I can't find the solution. The Mets hit all weekend but couldn't outhit their pitching and I'm not sure what the hell happened. I know guys are hurt and/or inconsistent, but maybe this is just my old theory of The Stink coming back to bite the Mets in the ass again. It starts with the Mets not tacking on runs last Wednesday and creeps into a blown save, and then a Jeurys Familia injury, and then a Matt Harvey meltdown, and then Hansel Robles and that miserable puss on his face, and then the utter collapse on Sunday. Nobody that's pitching for the Mets right now seems to be inspiring any sort of confidence.I don't know.  Sometimes you just need to get a town out of your system and maybe it's just Milwaukee's year and they'll go to Arizona and the change of scenery will help. Or is that just me trying to convince myself it's something else and not The Stink.

No photos today. That's how much this weekend troubles me.

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.

Go Home Already

I know that the medically-induced pregame departure of Terry Collins was probably weighing on the minds of the Mets as they went through Sunday afternoon's mess of a game in Milwaukee. That doesn't necessarily excuse them from their performance, which I'd consider something that more closely resembled the Pittsfield Mets than Major League Baseball.

By time I gave up on the game, I'd seen no less than 4 balls thrown not especially close to their intended targets, 2 bungled batted balls that were charitably scored hits and one pitcher visibly lose his shit on the mound. I'd also seen the Mets fall into a 5-0 hole against one of those irritating pitchers that looks like he should be going to Social Studies class, not a pitcher's mound.

But, there are days like this, and sometimes you just need to vomit it out of your system all at once. You knew that trouble was abound when Wilmer Flores butchered Ryan Braun's grounder in the 1st inning, kicking it into Left Field and allowing Braun to take 2nd, and then 3rd when Alejandro De Aza basically fired the ball into the front row seats behind 1st Base. Somehow, this was scored a Double and an Error but the writing was on the wall. Later, Steven Matz would throw away a bunt attempt leading to two runs, Flores would throw away another bunt leading to two more runs, and in the process Matz had a Brad Lesley-level meltdown on the mound and only fortunately did he regain enough composure to keep the score at 5-0 and grit his way through 6 innings.

Not that the offense helped much. Zach Davies, who pitched reasonably well against the Mets in New York, completely stifled them on Sunday, getting out of a bases loaded jam in the 1st inning and then allowing nothing thereafter, so that by time the Mets did mount a cosmetic rally, it was already too late. They'd lost me by that point anyway. After 6 innings, with little hope in sight, I threw in the towel. Sometimes, you've just seen enough.

So, this 10-game road trip ends with the Mets going 5-5. They probably should have gone 7-3 or 8-2 if they'd managed to hit and not just melt down completely yesterday. On the other hand, this road trip felt like they'd gone 3-7. Regardless, this is the second time they've gotten to the end of a long road trip and just fallen completely flat, so that's something I might be a little concerned about going forward. A nice day off today should help. I hope.

Gone Shopping

I've been known to do a bit of errand-running on Saturday afternoons. This can become complicated by the Mets' proliferation of 4:10pm start times on Saturdays. I could try to go out beforehand, but often other things get in the way, or I sleep too late, or I just can't get my act together. Usually, the 5-6pm hour is prime time for me to go out.

This happened to me again yesterday. I had a whole assortment of things to do in the house, and with my other half out of town for the weekend, this meant a healthy dose of housecleaning (we have a bit of a Felix & Oscar relationship. I'm Felix). I'd finished up cleaning at around 3:45 or so, right around when I'd be sitting down to watch the game. So I decided I'd do that for a few innings, and then go out around the 4th inning, and then be back in time for the latter part of the game.

So, I'd left with the Mets down 3-2. Asdrubal Cabrera hit a 2-run Home Run in the 2nd, Logan Verrett promptly handed it back and then Ryan Braun hit a moonscraper of a Home Run into the greenish abyss of Miller Park (in my opinion the second ugliest of the "Old New" Stadiums, a ballpark with more space than they seemed to know what to do with, and so in Center Field is a giant green wall with nothing on it. The puke-green Hell Hole in Miami is, of course, the ugliest). No harm, no foul, and you figured the Mets would find a way to shoot a few more runs across against Wily Peralta.

I returned, of course, to a 5-3 score, with Verrett gone after suffering the indignity of surrendering a Home Run to Peralta in the 4th. Peralta, I'm told, is a bad hitter even for a pitcher, which of course might get him lumped in with Bartolo, except that Peralta isn't nearly as entertaining. Verrett was done for the day after that, allowing 5 runs in 4 innings and kind of wrecking the afternoon for the Mets. I figured I'd missed enough, but then Antonio Bastardo gave up a Home Run to Scooter Gennett and then another one to Ryan Braun, and at that point I figured I probably should have stayed out longer. Or maybe I'd jinxed the team by going out during the game in the first place. Either way, when you allow 5 runs in a game, it's not good.

You know, there's bad wins like what happened last night and I know some people kind of wanted to shove it under the rug and forget it happened, but I'll take 10 games like last night instead of games like this, that are just boring to watch and even worse to blog about because you have to come up with something more profound than "This Game Stunk." Or maybe I don't. This game stunk.

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.

Not As Good As It Appears

If you were casually watching the Mets/Brewers game on Thursday, only paying attention in bits and pieces, you probably would have figured the Mets won the game 10-0.

It felt like the Mets probably should have won the game by that score, or at least scored that many runs in the process of winning, but they only managed to plate 5, and it took a pair of late-inning rallies to push their tally to that high a number as they beat the Brewers in the opening game of their 4-game series, 5-2.

The Mets jumped on hapless Brewers starter Jimmy Nelson early and often. Curtis Granderson does what he usually does and hit a Home Run to lead off the game, and the Mets generally had a lot of men on base, as their 13 hits for the game would indicate. But even though they were getting hits, they didn't score much in the way of runs, which is of course the ongoing problem that the offense has had. They hit tons of Home Runs, which is great after years upon years of the Mets not being a team that hit with a lot of power, but while this is a departure from years past, the inability to get hits with men on base and 2 outs seems a bit of the same old story. No, it's not always the case, and even this season they've had stretches where those hits do fall, but by and large it seems like the Mets have a problem killing their own rallies. The Mets had a runner in the 2nd, 2 men on in the 3rd (when in their defense they did score a run), and the bases loaded in the 4th, and none scored. And Nelson, who appeared Headed for an early exit, somehow managed to weather his way through 6 innings.

But, of course, the Brewers were little more than a minor irritant for Bartolo Colon, who gave them a healthy dose of Cheesele Gum en route to yet another strong 7-inning effort, in which he was basically cruising the entire way and only hiccuped right at the end, when his pregame block of cheese finally caught up with him Kirk Nieuwenhuis reached him for a double and then scored when Hernan Perez basically hit a line drive through Neil Walker.

The larger issue, of course, was that once the Brewers scored, it was then a 2-1 game and kind of a dicey situation. All those missed opportunities appeared primed to bite the Mets in the ass. In the 8th, against Corey Knebel, the Mets again got men on base, and in fact had the bases loaded with none out. Unfortunately, Kevin Plawecki, who's lost in the Keith Hernandez Dark Forest, the Pitcher's spot and Granderson were to follow, so nothing was guaranteed. In fact, I was waiting for the 5-2-3 DP followed by a strikeout or something similarly horrible like 3 straight pop outs. But Plawecki shut me up this time by grounding a ball through the left side for a 2-run single. In the 9th, there were more baserunners and an RBI single from Matt Reynolds, pushing the Mets run total to a mighty 5.

This was, ultimately, enough to net a victory. Even though Addison Reed allowed a run in the 8th (and he was due after not allowing a run in about a month), Jeurys Familia came in and this time worked a perfect 9th inning to close things out.

After a JoFer-induced 3-game slumber, the Mets now have come back and scored 5+ runs in 2 straight games, which feels like a bit of an avalanche in the grand scheme of things. Yes, the Brewers porous pitching does help things, but again, the Mets have faced plenty of porous pitching and not hit at all. You take advantage of the situation as much as possible.

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.

Old Reliable

The saga of David Wright's mostly lost season hasn't been an especially pleasant story. But, for one shining moment, we got a little glimpse of the David Wright we once knew so well as he took a calculated gamble on a 3-0 pitch, swung, and drove home the winning run in the bottom of the 9th of the Mets 5-4 victory this afternoon.

Wright's dealings with spinal stenosis have been well-documented, but this has been building for a few seasons. Wright, without the lineup protection he had in his younger days, and with now 14 Major League seasons on his odometer isn't what he used to be. Last October, when he was reveling in the spoils of finally making it to a World Series, I noted that Wright looked old. Heck, Wright's been looking old in the Baseball sense for a few years now, but, you know, most of us look the other way because it's David Wright and he's the Mets Guy. At least one person I know feels differently. His stance is that Wright was really good early in his career, but never as good as the Mets wanted us to think he was. He'd been spoonfed to us as the Face of the Franchise for so many seasons that we just accepted it, sort of in that John Franco vein except that Wright isn't a complete ass like Franco. He also didn't like the fact that Wright was boring and a bad interview, although I personally wouldn't damn him for that. It is to the point that, when I attend games with him and Wright comes to the plate, he immediately starts screaming "RETIRE!!!"

Harsh, yes. Illogical, not so much. But with 4 years left on that contract, I'm not sure if that's actually going to happen.

Regardless, there are still little glimpses of that young fellow, and one of them happened to be this afternoon. This, after a game where the Mets appeared to literally be sleepwalking, like last night's game ended, they went home and just forgot to show up. Jacob deGrom again weaved his way through another uneven outing, this time only managing to parse his way through 5 innings while the Brewers hen-pecked him for 4 runs. Two of those runs came when Ramon Flores took him out in the 2nd inning. Another two came in the 4th, one of those irritating innings where you could see deGrom just trying to throw whatever he could past a Brewer hitter to get through the inning only to see another dunk hit fall in. Combine deGrom's issues with Harvey's issues, and you can see why a Mets fan might be apoplectic right now.

Fortunately, the Mets got off the mat and came back from this 4-1 deficit. They'd already plated a run off of Zach Davies, the Brewers' 15-year old starter, when Curtis Granderson hit a leadoff Home Run in the 1st. Asdrubal Cabrera did what he seems to do just about every day now and drove home a run with a 4th inning single. Finally, Yoenis Cespedes dragged the Mets back into the game kicking and screaming by essentially one-arming a Davies Changeup over the Left Field wall for a 2-run Home Run that tied the game at 4.

Then, of course, the rain came and I had visions of extra innings and suspended games dancing through my head, probably because that's what usually happens in instances like this. The crowd, from what I could gather on TV, seemed sparse to begin with, probably because of an ominous forecast, and thus had forsaken the allure of the pristine, eBay condition Bucket Hat to the point where I have a feeling there might have been some Bucket Hats left over at game time. And once the rain started falling that number appeared to dwindle. Sometimes, in games like this, the rain starts and the bullpens take over and the bats just decide to stop. That's basically what happened. Hansel Robles, Addison Reed and Jeurys Familia stopped the Brewers--although stopping the Brewers isn't a terribly tall order--and the Mets did nothing against Carlos Torres and others of lesser acclaim, except that the fact that they can't hit Carlos Torres is galling to me.

But then, Michael Blazek came in for the 9th and the Mets awoke, as Eric Campbell hit, and Kevin Plawecki got on with a walk, and there was a sacrifice and then an intentional walk to get to David Wright. In prior years, intentionally walking the guy in front of Wright led to imminent disaster. Now, I would have been happy if Wright managed to not hit into a DP. But Blazek couldn't find the plate and it appeared was all to happy to make this easy for Wright by nearly wild-pitching the winning run home. Nonetheless, at 3-0, you figured Wright would take, so of course he swung and lined a single to Right Field to bring home Campbell and all of a sudden it was like 2006 again, when Wright would do things like this on a regular basis. And there were no rain delays or suspended games necessary.

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.

deGravy

Finally, the Mets were able to provide enough offense to back the latest in a string of dominant outings by that day's starting pitcher, in this particular case Jacob deGrom, as they salvaged the final game of a thoroughly embarrassing and humbling road trip that saw them lose 7 out of 8 games, 5 of them to teams they probably should have been wiping the floor with, and score all of 11 runs over said 8 games.

The game's hero is all deGrom, who's actually been pitching like he's the ace of this pitching staff, and not Harvey. Harvey gets the acclaim and Syndergaard is the phenom, but it's been Jacob deGrom who's had the best season of the bunch to this point. He's been great for the better part of the last two months now, although his record at 8-5 doesn't necessarily speak to that, some of his other numbers, like the 2.15 ERA, 100 strikeouts in 100.1 innings, and 0.93 WHIP, are better indicators of his success. More telling would be the 63 strikeouts and 6 walks he's allowed in his last 8 starts, where he's pitched to an ERA of 1.23. I know I said you can't go by the record but I suppose I have to mention that he's 5-1 over those 8 starts, although he shouldn't have lost the 1, and in the other game the bullpen blew his lead.

Basically, deGrom has been so good that more often than not he's able to outpitch his miserable offense, and yes, he's benefited from games where he got backed with 14- and 7-run outbursts, but those are infrequent occurrences. Most days, deGrom has had to work with nothing, like he did last Friday in Atlanta and again today in Milwaukee. Last week, deGrom left a 1-0 game in a tight spot and could only watch as the bullpen blew his lead and hung him with a loss. Today, the Mets backed him with a veritable deluge of 2 runs, and when deGrom found himself with men on base in the 7th and 8th innings, he shooed away coaches and finished the job himself, plowing through 8 sterling shutout innings without walking a batter and striking out 7 on 4 hits. Jeurys Familia returned from his lack of a Save opportunity groin injury to pitch an incident-free 9th inning, thereby sealing the deal on this Mets victory that feels just a little bit like too little too late. But that remains to be seen.

With the offense floundering, the Mets of course responded to this by calling up pitching prospect Steven Matz to slot into another attempt at a 6-man rotation, which I suppose will last for a week or two until they sufficiently alienate Jon Niese. Matz will start Sunday against the Reds (Meet the Matz?), where I assume he will be the latest Mets pitcher to enjoy the high pleasure of stopping the opponent cold and taking a loss because the offense didn't score any runs and Daniel Murphy caught some bad vibes on a ground ball.

The Follies

This once-promising Mets season has now dissolved into a circus that nobody really wants to watch, because instead of it being like the circus of, say, the Omar Minaya/Willie Randolph era, this circus is a complete and utter bore. There's no jolt, no fire, no drama, no intrigue, just the Mets kind of sleepwalking their way through these games, usually ending up scoring 2 runs on 6 hits and making 1-2 errors of varying consequence.

Tuesday night, with the Mets, who can't win on the road, playing in Milwaukee, who can't win anywhere, something had to give. Unfortunately, it was the Mets. Jon Niese pitched decently, because all the Mets starting pitchers have pitched decently of late, but he was the latest in a long line of Mets pitchers to pitch decently and lose because he gave up 2 runs and the Mets offense had no means of recourse.

Niese gave up a run in the 1st inning and looked like he was going to melt down into one of his trademark Jon Niese innings where he starts glaring at nobody in particular, snatching at the baseball and giving up 4 runs. The Brewers helped him out by being the Brewers, but then again, the Mets did a good job of helping out Mike Fiers on the other side by being the Mets. Somehow, the Mets grabbed a lead in the middle of the game—I must have passed out at the sight of them scoring one run and so I hadn't regained consciousness when they scored again—but Niese ran out of steam in the 6th, the Brewers tied the game, and then when Michael Cuddyer made the Mets daily Error in the 7th, the Brewers took the lead and the equilibrium had returned to the game.

The Mets then had the indignity of going down in the 9th inning against Francisco Rodriguez, only being able to counter with Johnny Monell. Monell, of course, was up earlier in the season and if I'm not mistaken had about 30 At Bats and hit into 13 Double Plays. Fortunately, he did not hit into a Double Play last night, but that's only because there was nobody on base ahead of him. Instead, he simply Josh Thole'd to end the game, which I suppose was a fitting way for this game to end.

Johnny Monell? This is who's getting an At Bat with the game on the line? Travis d'Arnaud is back on the DL, of course, because Terry Collins said on Sunday that he'd be back in the lineup good as new by Tuesday. This has been going on with the Mets for 6 years now, so should we really be shocked by this? Collins said before Tuesday's game that he expected d'Arnaud to be out for the minimum 15 days with his elbow injury or his shoulder injury, so you can forget seeing him back in the lineup until late August, I'd guess. Dilson Herrera had a mishap in the 2nd inning when Jean Segura ran over him on a play at 1st. Herrera looked like he did something unpleasant to his wrist, but then he shook it off and stayed in the game, probably because even in his short time here, he's become wise to the fact that maybe he ought to not spend too much time around Ol' Ray "Cortisone Shot" Ramirez.

This is the circus. Same shit, different year and now the Mets are back at .500 after running out to a great start and with Washington unable to get out of their own way. If I were the upper management, I'd be ruing the lost opportunity here if I weren't too busy doting over the team's A-ball affiliate. 

Spit And Polish

I'd batted around getting my act together and going out to Citi Field yesterday for Noah Syndergaard's home debut. The last time I rearranged myself and went to Flushing for the first home start of a Hotshot Pitching Prospect's career was two years ago when Zack Wheeler first said Hello to the Mets Faithful. That game went about as badly as any game could possibly have gone, ever. I should have known better. The Mets were playing the Nationals, and the Nationals lit Wheeler on fire to the tune of 8 Home Runs and 37 Extra Base Hits and inflicted a beating so badly on the Mets that Anthony Recker had to take his lumps and pitch an inning.

Noah Syndergaard's home debut did not go quite as poorly. I stayed home, but for no other reason than I was tired and wanted to do little more than park myself in front of the TV and watch the game, and so watching Syndergaard up close will have to wait for another day. If the results from his first two starts are any particular indication, that day should come sooner rather than later.

Syndergaard is another one of these prospects that will probably end up a little more Wheeler and a little less Matt Harvey, which isn't a knock on Syndergaard at all. Noah might have better stuff than Wheeler, but let's face it. Matt Harvey is his own beeast. Because Wheeler and Syndergaard have both been lumped in with him as this sort of holy triumvirate of Mets Pitchers, it's easy for a faction of fans to feel let down when he doesn't take the mound, snarl in fury and strike out 14 batters a game. Most pitchers don't arrive in the Major Leagues with that sort of polish. That being said, Syndergaard's first two starts have certainly been as good as advertised, even if the results haven't necessarily worked out in his favor. Tuesday in Chicago, he got rooked by Daniel Murphy's general Murphiness in the 3rd inning, had to throw about 20 more pitches than he should have to finish the inning, and the result was that he ran out of gas in the 6th and the Cubs got to him for 3 runs when he probably should have been out of the game. Yesterday, against the Brewers, he had no such troubles. His teammates got him some runs and he basically cruised from there. He didn't allow a hit until 2 outs in the 4th inning, and the Brewers scraped out a run in the 6th after Syndergaard beaned Carlos Gomez, something that clearly rattled him a bit, and he followed that up by giving up an RBI single to Ryan Braun, but nothing beyond that. Thanks to the offense picking up where they left off on Saturday and peppering 5 runs over the early innings, they were able to pick up a relatively easy victory and a series win from the Brews.

So, after two starts, I think it's pretty obvious that Syndergaard belongs here and this appearance should be more than simply a cup of coffee in Dillon Gee's stead. He needs to be here and be able to build off of a pair of starts that have been just fine from where I've been sitting. After all, this is the year that the future was supposed to ascend for the Mets,

This Is What Happens...

...when you actually get your act together and hit the ball.

It took one more night of the Mets getting their not hitting out of their system, which they did to a tee on Friday night, but Saturday was a vastly different story. The 14 runs they hung on the Brewers, to the delight of a fedora-waving crowd represented basically the total amount of runs they'd scored in the last 14 days squashed into one 9-inning bucket of fun.

This sudden and quite welcome outburst came after a lifeless Friday night affair where Bartolo Colon for the first time all season didn't have it and got jumped on for multiple Home Runs and the mostly moribund Brewers rode the pitching of Kyle Lohse and stuck it in the Mets ear, 7-0. This game, another that I fortunately didn't watch, struck me as the kind of game that was over before most of the crowd had even made it to their seats, and had I been in attendance and had I been running late, I might have turned around at the gate and gone back home (but not really—that goes against my religion). A more depressing scenario I cannot imagine.

Saturday was the exact opposite. After some middling performances, Jacob deGrom got his act together, which was the first necessary step to victory. Not only did he do so on the mound, where he spun 6 solid innings, but also at the plate, where he picked up 3 hits. He did so while batting 8th in the lineup, and not only was he hitting 8th, but his counterpart Matt Garza was as well. The whole batting the Pitcher 8th thing seems to be becoming vogue now in the National League, much to my chagrin, not because I have a particular dislike for the strategy, but because it means that people are going to kiss Tony LaRussa's pompous ass even more. But I digress. deGrom and Garza batting 8th put the indignity of hitting 9th on Rookie Luis Sardinas, making his season debut for Milwaukee, and Wilmer Flores, who for all his foibles in the field actually leads the Mets in Home Runs.

Clearly Flores took the slight to heart, since his 4th inning Grand Slam turned a 2-0 Mets lead into a much more comfortable 6-0. But the Mets were just getting warmed up in the 4th. They re-loaded the bases immediately, and Michael Cuddyer, Daniel Murphy and Eric Campbell summarily drove all the runs home and before you knew what was going on, 10 runs had scored and the Mets had blown the doors off of Garza and his hapless replacement Brandon Kintzler to open up an 11-0 lead. Later, Kevin Plawecki and Curtis Granderson added Home Runs, because on this night, why not (although I'm sure everyone was probably yelling to save it for the next game), and in the end the Mets finished off with season highs for runs and hits and general good vibes.

So, yes. This team does have some offensive life in it, although yes, perhaps it is better to spread things around a little bit. But maybe they're starting to get their act back together a little bit, what with Washington now right up their asses.

A Corner Turned

One of the more pleasant surprises that's come about for the Mets in recent weeks is the fact that Lucas Duda has finally woken up, started getting a little aggressive at the plate and begun to get some real big-time clutch hits. Friday night was easily the most obvious example of this; his 2-run Home Run in the 9th inning flipped the game completely. With the Mets having put forth a mostly lifeless effort for 8 innings against Yovani Gallardo and the Brewers, the Mets went out against old friend Francisco Rodriguez and lit into him with a ferocity they haven't displayed much of of late. In the span of 3 batters and 8 pitches, the Mets turned a 2-0 deficit into a 3-2 lead that eventually turned into a 3-2 win that you can more or less say they stole from the Brewers, because they had absolutely no life whatsoever going into the top of the 9th.

The game had, up until the 9th inning, shaped up like another of those games where I'd have to sum up by talking about how well the Mets starter—in this case, Zack Wheeler—pitched, and how he did yeoman's work keeping the Mets in the game, but ultimately it was an effort made in hopeless circumstances. Wheeler continued on his recent hot streak, throwing shutout ball into the 6th, only breaking a sweat when Daniel Murphy made one of his patented spastic fit errors, yakking on a ground ball and then chasing it into the Outfield and making an ill-advised throw to 1st. In the 6th, Murphy gagged once again, letting a Ryan Braun grounder go through his legs completely, and in this particular instance, it ended up costing Wheeler the first run of the game. One inning later, Carlos Gomez took one of his 8-mile swings and hit a Home Run to make the score 2-0, and at that point, Wheeler was done for the night; his 6.2 inning effort was at times dazzling, but to that point not good enough to earn himself or the Mets a win. And that wasn't because of anything he did wrong, it was because his teammates couldn't get a hit off Gallardo and because Murphy had a fit of himself at an inopportune moment.

But then came the 9th, and in came dear old K-Rod, excommunicated from the Mets, shoved into a setup role with the Brewers, traded to the Orioles and then returning to the Brewers and falling into the closer's role by accident when Jim Henderson came down with a case of Being-A-Major-League-Closer-Itis. Somehow, this seemed like one of those nights when the Mets had a rally in them, and I'm not quite sure why I felt that way, and it seems I wasn't the only one who felt that way, and, quite fortunately, the first three batters in the 9th inning for the Mets seemed to feel that way as well. Enough was enough, let's get up there and get some hits, and that's what they did. First, it was Daniel Murphy, who hit an opposite field double to get things started. David Wright followed with the key at bat in the sequence, an at bat where he seemed to have a handle on whatever K-Rod was throwing him, like all those years being his teammate might have worked to his advantage. Whatever it was, it worked, Wright eventually got enough of a pitch to flair it out into Right center to score Murphy, and set the stage for the suddenly clutch bat of Lucas Duda, who perhaps a month or two ago might have taken two strikes before flailing at a slider 10 feet off the plate, but on this night was up there hacking at a first pitch fastball and slamming it out into the Mets bullpen for a lightning-like Home Run that gave the Mets the lead.

If I were Daniel Murphy, I would be taking Lucas Duda out to dinner for the remainder of the road trip, and perhaps for the first couple of nights of next week's homestand for bailing my ass out like that. But more than that, how about the fact that somehow, Lucas Duda has become a trusted power bat in the middle of the lineup? When the hell did that happen. He's more than proved that Alderson was justified in keeping him and dealing Ike Davis, and he's making me look rather foolish for flogging him for as long as I did, but I'll happily admit that I was wrong, particularly if he keeps this up. Very quietly, Duda now has a club-leading 17 Home Runs and 53 RBI, which isn't an eye-popping number, but considering how sparingly the Mets score, it's not a bad number, and a 25-90 season would be a delight. Moreover, the fact that he's now consistently hitting for some power is a much-welcome sight on a team where nobody seemed to step up and take on that role. Imagine how he'd do if he had a little protection around him in the lineup. Hint hint...

Clean Shaven

A lot has been made over the last couple of seasons about Dillon Gee's pitching results when he's bearded as opposed to clean shaven. His performances in general are better when he's shaved before the game. Early in the season, Gee sported a babyface and was off to a fine start until the dreaded lat injury shelved him. When he returned, he had one good start but since then, last night included, he's pitched rather badly and it seems that part of the problem is that Gee's still pitching with a little bit of moss on his face. This clearly doesn't work for him. He got lit up by a poor-hitting Padres team last weekend, and last night, the Brewers knocked him around but good, running out to a 6-0 lead after 3 innings and rendering the game completely unwatchable from there.

You kind of had a bad feeling about this game from the outset. The Mets did win 2 of 3 in Seattle, but they didn't exactly light up the scoreboard. They've gone about a week now without topping 3 runs in a game, only managing to win on the days where their starting pitching has been particularly great. However, this isn't exactly a recipe for extended success. Gee gave up an early Home Run to Jonathan Lucroy and then a series of long hits to Ryan Braun, Carlos Gomez, and Jean Segura, who's basically Carlos Gomez Lite, and before you looked up, the game was out of reach. The Mets had no particular answer for Matt Garza, who continues to be one of the more mercurial pitchers in the Majors, looking like a top-dollar pitcher on one night and a bearded Dillon Gee on other nights, but that's scarcely the concern here.

The Mets, as comprised right now, putting up 3 runs a night, aren't going to draw much excitement. Unlike most years, however, the farm system is currently rife with decent prospects at some key positions, which has created something the Mets haven't had in several years: Tradeable depth. For years, the Mets probably would never dream of doing something like dealing Daniel Murphy, who's proven himself to be the best Daniel Murphy he can be, sometimes making rather annoying hiccups but generally hitting modestly well at a premium position. But with no decent replacement on the horizon, what benefit was there for the Mets to deal him? Now, the Mets have players like Dilson Herrera, pilfered from the Pirates in the Marlon Byrd trade last season to push Murphy and, perhaps, make him tradeable for some sort of commodity that might provide more immediate help. That's not to say that Murphy should be dealt now, but that he can be dealt and the Mets seem to have a plan in place to replace him. It's just some food for thought.