Don't Feel Like It

Sometimes, the Mets play a game and you just don't feel like watching it. It's usually during a season like this that's become a total trainwreck and you end up starting Tommy Milone again because Steven Matz has come down with another season-ending injury and some warm body needs to toe the rubber. Milone, who was last seen literally getting bombed off the mound against the Anaheim Angels in May, returned and was not particularly better. By time I was even aware the game was going on I think it was 6-0 or at least it felt like 6-0.

The Mets right now are, on most nights, boring, which is even worse than being bad. You can only draw so much juice from Amed Rosario (who did Homer and triple), Dominic Smith and Michael Conforto because three guys do not a team make. There's other young guys around that are trying to distinguish themselves too, but when you mix in a useless stopgap veteran like Milone who's just going to bury the team before they get started, it sort of makes you forget that there's still some things worth paying attention to. Even in a blowout loss.

Quick Out

You could almost feel a game like Sunday's brewing for the Mets, just based on the way Saturday night's game ended. After nearly blowing a large lead but hanging on to win Saturday, the Mets got their doors blown off before most of the crowd had even settled into their seats on Sunday. Tommy Milone was the victim on this particular day, as the Angels lit him up like the Crash Davis proverbial Christmas Tree early and often and then tacked on some more runs late against Hansel Robles to win the final game of this series, 12-5.

I know no Mets fan was probably expecting great things from Milone, but if nothing else, I'd like to think he's capable of more than the basically non-competitive effort he threw out there yesterday afternoon. He'd already done himself no favors by loading the bases with no outs, and then walking .154 hitting cleanup batter Jefry Marte to force in a run. Then, of course, he laid a meatball out there for C.J. Cron to whack in the seats for a Grand Slam and that basically was the game right there. I know that Terry Collins would have preferred to let Milone at least eat a few innings in a lost cause, but he allowed two more Home Runs in the 2nd, one of which was to Mike Trout, and I suppose if there was ever a good time to give up one to Trout, it was when the Mets were already behind by 5. Mercifully, Milone was pulled at 8-0, although one would have thought Rafael Montero wasn't exactly a marked improvement.

The Mets did make some kind of thinly-veiled effort to make the game respectable against Jesse Chavez, who I thought was some up-and-coming hotshot prospect for Oakland before he got traded 3 times and I realized he's actually 33 and has been in the Majors since 2008. The Mets did reach him for 3 Home Runs and cut a 9-0 deficit to 9-5 by the 6th inning, but then Hansel Robles came in for the 7th and set the record straight by puking up another 3 runs, thanks to an Andrelton Simmons Home Run. And for whatever reason, probably because I've had my fill of Robles, this bothered me more than Milone's stink bomb. With Milone, there are no expectations, and as such when he gets battered around the ballpark, you can't be too surprised and he probably won't be here much longer. With Robles, there is no excuse. He's been here 3 years and he still can't get his shit together and learn how to pitch, and even Keith Hernandez has started calling him out on that. The Mets used to have a pitcher named Manny Acosta,—Remember him? I'd rather not but I'm forced to invoke him here—and Acosta was one of those pitchers who kept hanging around and hanging around in spite of the fact that he was totally useless. We kept getting spoonfed tales about how he had "great stuff," and yet every time he came in a game, you could literally see him blindly rearing back and heaving the ball as hard as he possibly could in the general direction of Home Plate, and the results were generally disastrous. And it seems to me that Robles is basically doing the same thing. He's just heaving it up there as hard as he can without any particular regard for strategy or situation. I can't trust him in a key spot. Would you? I know I'm nitpicking and the Mets probably weren't going to win this game anyway, but you want to have the starch totally taken out of your sales? Try trimming 9-0 to 9-5 with 3 more at bats against an awful bullpen and have your own guy give up another 3 runs to negate the work you've done.

Bleh. Enough railing on Robles. Who has the energy? Just wipe this one off and come back Tuesday ready to start clean.

Tuesday Night Ennui

I know the final score of Tuesday night's game was 5-4, which means the Mets were very much in it to the end but sometimes, you have close games that really don't feel very close. This was one such game.

The Mets seem to have a habit lately of scoring a single run very early in the game and then just kind of standing around while the other team blows by them. This happened on Tuesday as the Mets went ahead in the 2nd, and then the Diamondbacks, resplendent in their toothpaste-colored jerseys, blew up for 4 runs in the 3rd off of Tommy Milone. I guess this shouldn't be of much surprise to anyone. There were a string of ringing hits and even a steal of Home by Paul Goldschmidt that resulted in the Keith Hernandez trademark apoplectic shit fit. You know, as opposed to the Mets fans trademark apoplectic shit fit that's been going on for most of the season.

I give Milone credit for, if nothing else, not folding his tent after the sky fell in on him in the 3rd. He managed to make it into the 6th before allowing a Home Run to Yasmani Tomas, which I can't really fault him for since Tomas appears to be the NL West's version of Ryan Howard and allowing a Home Run to him is basically a rite of passage.

By that point the game had sort of dissolved into nothingness, to the point where the highlight of the game was probably Ed Lynch visiting the SNY booth and waxing poetic with Keith Hernandez. I don't remember what inning it was, only that it happened and, well, my stance on Lynch has always been that for whatever he lacked as a Pitcher, he more than made up for in personality. Anyone who read Keith's first book knows that they were and continue to be good friends (Lynch being the infamous "itinerant ballplayer" that crashed on Keith's couch for the first month of the '85 season).

That was more interesting than the game itself! I know that Curtis Granderson hit a Home Run and later Rene Rivera, who mysteriously has turned into a world-beater over the past week, also hit a 2-run Home Run against Zack Greinke and that cut the score to 5-4, but you kind of had this feeling that the Mets weren't going to get anything further and surprise, surprise they didn't. The bullpen—tonight consisting of Paul Sewald, Fernando Salas and Jerry Blevins—didn't allow anything further, which was nice, but the Mets offense had already put away their bats for the night and off of hillbilly Archie Bradley and ancient Fernando Rodney the Mets did little more than strike out a bunch of times and lost to the Diamondbacks for the second night in a row and ran this current streak of misery to 6.

I'd like to think the Mets won't go 0-for-this road trip but I'm not confident in that feeling. I keep dropping these barbs about the Mets needing a little humiliation in order to get to the bottom of their problems, but really, such an instance shouldn't be necessary multiple times before June.

Not Sorry

Wednesday afternoon was one of those "working man's specials," and as such I didn't see any of the game, so I have to subject you to one of my "less informed" summaries.

It was good until it sucked.

That seems about the best way to sum this game up. The Mets had a perfectly good opportunity to steal a win with their Plan H starter Tommy Milone, sweep the Giants and hop over the .500 mark. They slogged their way through against Matt Cain, got a Home Run from Jay Bruce, an RBI single from Milone himself, and a 3-2 lead was handed to Jeurys Familia in the 9th.

Now, of course, I only know what transpired from there on Gamecast, so I don't know just how egregious Wilmer Flores' tide-turning error actually was. But it fucked everything up good and proper. Still, Familia ought to have been game enough to get out of this. We've seen him do it before. Then again, we've seen him come completely unglued against this opponent as well. Instead of getting another ground ball, he gave up a hit to Hunter Pence to tie the game, because, well, Hunter Pence was genetically engineered to get a hit in that spot, and then he gave up a 3 run double to Christian Arroyo to torch the whole thing. Flores then, of course, came within mere feet of atoning for his sins in the bottom of the inning but it was a day late and a bounce short and instead of a sweep, the Mets fell 6-5 and now go on the road once again a game under .500.

These do happen sometimes, irritating as it may be. If the Mets weren't so undermanned right now maybe they wouldn't have been in this situation in the first place but such are the vicissitudes of Baseball. It's still irksome. I'm not sorry I missed it.