Let Me Drown

Sometimes, I miss games even though I'm home and just have other things to do, and it's just as well when that happens.

Sunday, I was, in fact, home for a majority of the Mets game. I'd been out when the game started, but it was still on when I got home, it being a Sunday game on the West Coast, which starts under sun-soaked Pacific skies at 1pm there, but 4pm here and can drag out into the early evening if things go a certain way.

However, while I was out, I did check the score on my phone and of course saw that the score was Mariners 5, Mets 0 in the 2nd inning. At that point I'd determined that the game was not worth watching, and, well, I was right. Seth Lugo got cuffed around early and often, allowing Home Runs to Nelson Cruz in the 1st and Leonys Martin in the 2nd, and the Mets basically stood around and did nothing against James Paxton, the Mariners starter who reinvented himself last season and went from kind of ragtag to one of the top pitchers in the American League. Paxton shut out the Mets through 6, the Mariners tacked on four more runs against Mets relievers after Lugo departed and the final score was an eminently forgettable 9-1. And I'm not sorry I missed it. I'm sure anyone else that did the same agrees with me.

Indifference

Saturday was, as usual, one of those afternoons where I was out of the house and not watching the game. But I see I didn't miss much.

Though the Mets did have Jacob deGrom on the mound, deGrom had some early inning struggles, got rattled by hitting Mitch Haniger in the face with an errant pitch, gave up a pair of runs in the 2nd, was victimized by a Neil Walker error in the 3rd that led to another run, and then sat back and watched as his offense could not muster the effort to match those three runs against Yovani Gallardo and company. In spite of entering the game having won each of his last 8 starts, that streak came crashing to a halt in a rather boring 3-2 loss that was more symptomatic of the Mets undoing themselves rather than deGrom's pitching poorly.

The Mets certainly had opportunities. Against Gallardo, they rallied in the 6th to load the bases and scored when Tony Zych walked Wilmer Flores to force home a run. In the 7th, they had two men on and nobody out and Asdrubal Cabrera short-circuited everything by hitting into a Double Play. And they got the tying run on base in the 9th when Michael Conforto, who seems to enjoy playing in front of his hometown fans, singled home a run off of Edwin Diaz. But, no further. And when you squander rallies in a relatively low-scoring game, well, that's boring baseball. And the Mets seem to be pretty good at boring lately.

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.

Hard To Imagine

In spite of the fact that yesterday's 3:whatever pm start time precluded me from seeing any of the game live, it did, in fact, allow me to see more of the replay of the game last night than I did of any of the other two games the Mets played in Seattle this week combined. I made it up until the 8th inning of the game before other activities took precedence; by that point I'd seen the story of the game, which was Bartolo Colon rather quietly and effortlessly setting down the first 20 Mariners that came to the plate, finally surrendering a hit to the 21st man, Robinson Cano.

It was mentioned that this was only the 5th time in Mets history that a starting pitcher had retired the first 20 batters that had faced him in a game. One such effort came just last season, when Matt Harvey had perhaps the single best game of his career to this point against the White Sox, a game I was fortunate enough to witness in person. Tom Seaver did it during his "Imperfect" game in 1969. Then, there were the two times in June of 1998 that Rick Reed accomplished this feat, both of which happened to be nights I was in attendance at Shea Stadium. Colon was the first Mets pitcher to carry a Perfect Game into the 7th inning on the road, and this, combined with the bizarre start time, may have served to ensure that this game is kind of lost in the shuffle when it comes to great Mets Pitching Performances. It also doesn't help that Colon unraveled slightly in the 8th, and eventually had to be rescued by the suddenly stellar Bullpen tandem of Jeurys Familia and Jenrry Mejia in order to close out a tenuous 3-2 win over the Mariners. That's not to take anything away from Colon. When you retire the first 20 batters that face you in a game, no matter when it happens or whom your opponent is, it's still an accomplishment.

Colon's effort was backed by a minimal offensive output. The Mets scored a run early off of Taijuan Walker courtesy of Daniel Murphy and at some point other runs were scored but I can't say I remember how they happened. Somehow, the Mets ended up with 3 of them, which was enough to win the game. It would have been a bit of a burn if, after Colon had pretty much stuck the bats in the Mariners' ears all afternoon, they came back and stole the game. But that didn't happen, and thusly, almost 10 years after their first trip out to the great Pacific Northwest, the Mets came away with a series victory in Seattle, evening up their record on the West Coast to 3-3. That's fine and dandy for a West Coast trip, and certainly beats them doing something disastrous like going 1-5 and completely falling off the cliff, but if they're going to prove that they have some life in them for the remainder of the season, 3-3 against teams like the Padres and Mariners isn't necessarily going to cut it. Particularly since they're now leaving the land of Pearl Jam in favor of Jaegermeister and Bratwurst in Milwaukee. We'll see how this goes.

Even Flow

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

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

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

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

Sleeping In Seattle

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

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

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

Don't be Fooled

Last night's victory wasn't anything for the Mets to write home about. For about 4 innings they looked rather good in spite of themselves and then reverted to their usual offensive power outage against a bullpen to rival in quality the 2007 Cincinnati Reds.

John Maine continued what has been a rather disturbing trend of throwing too many pitches and had himself gassed after 5 innings. There are 8-2 victories that look outstanding on all fronts, and then there are 8-2 victories like the Mets just had, where you're wondering why they didn't win 13-2 and why they had to use 4 pitchers to get through the game.

When you are playing a team, a real quality team like the Mariners (my pick to win the AL West!), it's important that you put your best foot forward, and, for the most part, the Mets didn't do that this week. They looked tired on Monday, patently awful on Tuesday, and I guess they won last night because they had to win eventually. They seem to have games like that, in the midst of stretches where they're playing miserable baseball, where they come up with an "Accidental Victory," a game where they sort of forcibly string a bunch of hits together, or the opposing team or the opposing pitcher is just so bad that the Mets can't help but rally.

Such is the case of last night's game. David Wright, after taking perhaps the most talked about day off in Mets History, came back and, not surprisingly, popped a pair of HRs, Jose Reyes followed up with one of his own, and the Mets were on their way, having sufficiently beaten up Jon Cunnilingus or whoever the hell was pitching for Seattle (note: I'm in the midst of my summer show, so these games pretty much happen on a rumor level for me) for 8 runs on a grand total of 5 hits, which I know the Mets somehow managed to accomplish earlier this season. I often think that when something like that happens, it's usually a case of the opposing team having a particularly shitty game, or the Mets just happening to come up with a clutch hit.

One out of 3 from the worst team in the league. Two out of three from the best team in the league.

This team makes me want to scream.

Statistical Bullshit

It's a good thing I wasn't watching the game last night.

There are many reasons why the above rings true. Watching the first Grand Slam by an American League pitcher in 37 years hit off of the $20,000,000 ace pitcher actually isn't so high up on that list. There's a lot that can be said about that, however I'll come back to that later.

The larger problem is, once again, the surfacing of the Impotent Offense that has plagued this team on a continuing basis.

In the 4th inning, Jose Reyes led off with a single. Luis Castillo followed by grounding into a Fielders Choice. David Wright followed that by hitting into a Double Play.

In the 5th inning, Carlos Beltran stole 3rd with Trot Nixon batting and 1 out. With Beltran on 3rd, Nixon struck out. Beltran scored on a dumb-luck Wild Pitch.

In the 6th inning, Luis Castillo walked. David Wright then struck out looking.

With the tying runs on base in the 9th inning, Carlos Delgado and Damion Easley struck out to end the ballgame.

When Hernandez's HR sailed over the wall, and it really did sail, it basically nailed the Mets coffin closed right there. There was no way they were going to score 4 runs, against Hernandez or whoever Seattle was throwing at them. After rolling through Colorado and scoring 11 runs in 3 games in a hitter's paradise (7 in one game, mind you), there was little reason for optimism. And, as the results above indicate, the feelings were well-justified.

It once again makes me ask the question: Why, then, when the starting pitching has been doing well, and the offense has been horrible, did it make sense for the Mets to fire the Pitching Coach and not the Hitting Coach?

I'd like someone to give me a good reason, and I mean a good reason, not, "Well, he's the Great Ho-Jo, he's a True Met, an organizational guy!" why this joker still has a job. I'd love to hear anyone's explanation. Please, feel free to comment with this. If someone can present me with an even halfway convincing argument, I will shut up about this. Otherwise, I'll continue to bitch about the offense and how a Good At Bat does not equate to scoring runs in the clutch.

While I'm on the topic of Bullshit, let's re-visit that Grand Slam. With 2 on and 2 out in the 3rd, David Wright, as he does sometimes, made an error, kicking the ball around at his feet and allowing the Mariners to load the bases. The photo on the left, I believe, is pretty self-explanatory. Johan Santana subsequently threw an absolute Meatball to the pitcher, Felix Hernandez, who took a Whac-a-Mole swing and hit the ball over the fence.

That is what it is. What really gets me is that the runs were unearned. So, you could argue, Santana pitched a great game. Only 1 earned run in however many innings he pitched, just a victim of bad luck.

Is it bad luck that he basically set the ball on a TEE for Hernandez to hit it out of the ballpark? Is that the biggest crock of shit you've ever heard? It's the pitching equivalent of a Good At Bat. This drives me nuts. The fact remains that Johan threw a sucker pitch and got burned, and instead of getting an out, he gave up 4 runs. That David Wright made the error was academic. Santana is supposed to be a good enough pitcher to get the opposing pitcher, especially an American League pitcher, out.

My co-worker called me after the game and asked if I was going to wear a bag over my head to the Sunday afternoon Mets/Yankees game. The more I think about it, the less crazy it sounds.