Who is Jake?

Friday brought the Mets into Washington for the first of a 4-game series and, well, if there was ever a time when it seemed like the Mets would go into Washington and get absolutely murdered, this would be it.

But that didn't happen. The Mets are totally neutered at this point, but Washington, who I have always felt to be kind of a paper tiger, doesn't look so great either. Take Bryce Hairdo out of that lineup and it seems a little more pedestrian. But I digress. I hate the Nationals so why the hell would I have anything nice to say about them ever?

With the backdrop of this partially amusing, partially embarrassing, mostly silly Player's Weekend thing going on, the Mets played the Nationals and actually won on Friday night, mostly because Jacob deGrom pitched like Jacob deGrom, even if he couldn't be bothered to come up with a more inventive nickname to put on his jersey than "Jake." "Jake" did what he needed to do, pitching into the 8th inning, striking out 10 batters, crossing 200 strikeouts for the season and allowing 1 run and 5 hits.

On the other side, A.J. Cole started for Washington and looked every bit like he was ready to hit the showers. He was walking guys and giving up hits, but the Mets kept letting him off the hook. They scored a run in the first and probably would have had more had Dominic Smith's single not hit the umpire and, subsequently, led to Yoenis Cespedes coming up lame once again with another hamstring injury. "La Potencia," of course, was done for the night right then and there and the way things are going I'd be surprised if we see him at all the rest of the season. And maybe the Mets should just wrap his legs in bubble wrap and tell him to keep off them for a month or so until everything heals up and he doesn't do this again next season. Because that's a problem.

So the Mets had 1 run when it felt like they should have had 4 or 5 off of Cole, but then they did plate two runs in the 8th, thanks to Rey Rey (playing Left in place of Cespedes) and Dominic Smith, and another in the 9th to ice away this Pyrrhic 4-2 victory. This season, even the good ends up being kind of ugly.

Eyeroll City

These Mets/Nationals games seem to make me far too aggravated nowadays for me to give any sort of rational exegesis on the game itself. All I know is that the Mets, in particular Steven Matz, played their heart out for most of the night only to once again end up with their jocks in their hands while the Nationals came away with a victory.

The game began at a rather incongruous 6:05 and as such I tuned in about an hour late, but I'd missed nothing as Matz and Stephen Strasburg threw zeroes at each other for most of the night. At some point, I stepped away but returned just in time to see Jerry Blevins give up a 2-run Home Run to Michael Taylor. I figured that was the game right there, but then the Nationals awful bullpen reared its head and gave the Mets a minor window. Still, Matt Albers had 2 outs and 2 strikes on Curtis Granderson, but, undaunted, Granderson hit a 2-run Home Run to tie up the game.

For a few brief, fleeting moments, it seemed like this could be the jolt the Mets needed as they started off their statistical second half of the season, but then the Mets awful bullpen showed that the Nationals aren't the only team with late-game issues. Paul Sewald walked the leadoff hitter, which is like basically saying to the Nationals, "HERE PLEASE HAVE THIS GAME," Josh Edgin walked another and then Ryan Raburn hit a dying quail of a single that Yoenis Cespedes couldn't catch and if that wasn't bad enough probably hurt himself trying to catch, and the Mets lost the game anyway, 3-2. Fuck you, Nationals. Just, fuck you. That's my summation. Fuck you, Nationals.

* * *

On vacation for the next week plus, which will overlap the All Star Break. So let's just assume that the Mets will lose this morning's game, because why the hell would the Mets win a game that starts at 11:05am, but they'll win on Wednesday because deGrom is pitching. Thursday, they're off, so they can lick their wounds and get the Nationals stink off of them. Then, it's a weekend in St. Louis, and I don't think the Cardinals are having a good year for once, so maybe the Mets can take 2 of 3. Or lose 2 of 3. One or the other. Go with that. Happy 4th, stay out of the aisles, and take your hat off.

Pray For Rain

I'd mentioned yesterday that the Mets games had become totally formulaic. At least for this week this was not the case when Jacob deGrom pitched. On the heels of a masterful Complete Game against the Cubs, deGrom again pitched sterling baseball for 8 innings against the Nationals, allowing the Mets to win, 5-1 and salvage at least one game out of this debacle of a series.

deGrom did not complete the game this time out, although he certainly seemed like he could have, but we'll forgive him as he made up for this shortfall by hitting his first Major League Home Run in the 3rd inning. This, then, is usually a winning proposition for the Mets, as Gary Cohen mentioned at some point during the game that the Mets hadn't lost when their pitcher has hit a Home Run in 21 years. I gave it some thought and came up with a number of times I'd seen a Mets pitcher hit a Home Run, and I could name among them Armando Reynoso, Mark Clark, Johan Santana and Jeremy Hefner, and the Mets did not lose any of those games. So deGrom going deep definitely bode well for the remainder of the afternoon.

Fortunately, deGrom's pitching was just as good as his bat on this day as he allowed an unearned run in the 1st inning and basically cruised the rest of the way, something most Mets pitchers have not been able to do. But his Home Run merely tied the game and he did need some support from the rest of the team in order to get the win, and he got that, as Michael Conforto had what I'd hope are a couple of slump-snapping RBI hits and T.J. Rivera had 4 hits of his own.

In the grand scheme of things, I know this really doesn't make up for the three games that the Mets vomited up prior to this, but at least the Mets can go on the road with a good taste in their mouth. This may not help since the Mets are playing The Hot Dodgers. Maybe we should just pray for four days of rain and just play the games when deGrom is scheduled to pitch. Since, you know, 4 days of rain in Southern California is a totally realistic wish.

More Of The Same

I feel like Saturday's game was more or less a carbon copy of Friday's game. The Nationals attacked the Mets early, hit a bunch of Home Runs and basically kept putting the game just enough out of the Mets' reach for them to mount anything more than a paltry attempt at a comeback.

Once again, the Mets were behind 4-0 before they actually woke up and did something against Stephen Strasburg, and by then there wasn't much worth doing. While they did manage to get Strasburg out of the game in the 6th inning, their offense is so cocked up that they managed to make the Nationals horrendous bullpen look reasonably decent, or as decent as a team can look wearing these ridiculous Father's day jerseys that look like something out of the 1996 Marlins, which is an insult to my palate in addition to being a shameless marketing ploy.

This seems to be the general formula for every Mets game, or at least every game that they lose. The starting pitcher, in this case Seth Lugo, gives up a leadoff Home Run, the opponent tacks on a few more, the Mets fight back late but ultimately the bullpen just gives up more runs and they can't make any more headway. The names change on a day-to-day basis but it seems as though the result remains the same. And so it goes. This season just gets more and more depressing by the day.

Bad Feeling Friday

Friday Night at Citi Field was one of those nights that had all the makings...of abject disaster.

I was talking to a friend on Thursday night about how I'd be going to the game on Friday, and he was talking about the Mets going up against Max Scherzer and how it didn't look good, and I mused about how the Mets had, in fact, beaten Scherzer previously and actually roughed him up. He pointed out to me that Scherzer also threw a No Hitter against the Mets. Given the state of these two teams heading clearly in opposite directions, it seemed as though the latter was more likely. Still, I forged on, it was Friday, I'd already exchanged into the game, and, well, how bad could it be?

The upshot, of course, is that Scherzer did not no-hit the Mets again. Unfortunately, the Mets managed little of consequence against him through 8 innings. Steven Matz, making his home debut did his admirable best, but was victimized by three Home Runs, putting the Mets into a Scherzer-proof hole and the best they could muster was getting Scherzer out of the game after 8.

It was a pleasant night, if nothing else, and I was early enough to the game that I actually milled around downstairs and stopped at Fuku, which I enjoy but don't get to very often since it's not at all in my particular Citi Field path of choice. I suppose that was the highlight of the evening, and when the meal was the highlight of the evening, you know it wasn't a very good game.

Matz had already allowed back-to-back Home Runs to Matt Wieters and Michael Taylor when he led off the 3rd inning and banged a single up the middle, which was the Mets first hit, and thus ensured that Scherzer would not get a No Hitter. However, by that time he was strutting around the infield and generally keeping the Mets from doing anything meaningful. But at least at 2-0, the hope was that Matz could hold the Nationals and the bats could wear down Scherzer and give themselves a chance to come back against Washington's awful bullpen. Unfortunately, in the 6th, Anthony Rendon hit a 2-run Home Run to make the score 4-0, and just in case there was any suspense left in the game, the Nationals tacked on three more runs in the 9th inning in an excruciating procedure that turned what had been a brisk 2+ hour game into a 3-hour slog that ultimately ended in the same result.

Sigh. The Free Shirt Friday shirt wasn't even any good. That was depressing. So much for the positive vibes coming off of the Cubs series.

These Freakin' Guys

So because of work commitments, I neither heard nor saw any part of Thursday night's game, which I suppose is just as well because it was terrible. Robert Gsellman was lit on fire by Bryce Harper early and later the entire Mets roster apparently turned to mush, because I guess the Nationals willed it so, and they once again fell meekly to the Nationals, 8-3.

It's mid-June and the Mets haven't managed to beat the Nationals at home, and now sit at 2-5 against them for the season, which is some 2013 shit. How the hell do the Mets expect to make any headway into that deficit they've dug for themselves if they can't do anything against their chief rivals? They've lost here, tomorrow they face Scherzer, then Strasburg and before you blink this whole thing could be out of hand.

I don't know. This whole thing makes my head hurt right now.

Total System Failure

It's just as well that the Mets dropped into full-on asshole mode yesterday as the Nationals blew their doors off by the score of 23-5. They'd already made asses of themselves by the 2nd inning when Noah Syndergaard left the game grimacing and grasping his armpit. You know, after he brazenly pronounced himself as "fine" and refused an MRI to see what exactly was bothering him after he was scratched twice last week.

I could go further into just how mind-numbing the stupidity is that permeates through this organization sometimes but really, why waste my time? The #LOLMets-ers and the "BACKMAN, BABY!" jackasses, the closeted Yankee castrati folks do a good enough job for me. I've gone over plenty of times just how tiresome these people have become, and how the Mets have been enough of a laughingstock over the years that maybe it's just time to leave it alone, but then something like this happens and I remember that in so many of these instances the Mets seem to invite this treatment on themselves. Their best pitcher wants to pitch, who can blame him? But he needs to remember that he's neither a doctor, nor is he invincible and maybe he ought to listen to the team trainers if they think he should have an MRI. Even if it means listening to Cortisone Shot Ramirez. Because rather than just nipping this in the bud, Syndergaard decided to be a hero, went out and immediately got lit up for 5 runs in the 1st inning after basically allowing 5 runs all season to that point, or something like that. So that right there ought to have told you something was up. Syndergaard just doesn't get torched like that out of the gate. I didn't even watch and I probably could have told you that he was screwing around with his mechanics to overcompensate for his ailing giblets. And then in the 2nd inning it all came crashing down as he threw one pitch too many and started grimacing and grabbing his armpit, and of course that sent every Mets fan off the ledge. Fortunately (SILVER LINING ALERT) this wasn't the absolute worst case scenario since the Big Boy Surgery is everyone's ultimate fear for him, but when you go out there and mess up your mechanics to mask an injury, this is what happens. You get hurt and now the Mets have to deal with the consequences since he's probably going to be out for a couple of months. To say nothing of the fact that he's getting destroyed in the court of public opinion in a manner to rival Matt Harvey.

After that the wheels basically came off, and again I think the Mets needed to have this happen because sometimes you just need to get completely and totally humiliated in order to wake up and acknowledge your problems. The Nationals have broken from the gate like a house afire and this just another feather in their cap, but teams with championship aspirations aren't supposed to get their asses handed to them like this and in reality, that it happened is just scenery. What's most crucial is how they respond to this. If getting lit on fire and losing your best pitcher and your best hitter in the span of 4 days sends the team into a tailspin, well, then they deserve to be laughed at. We all to. This is supposed to be a Championship-caliber team and if they crumble after 4 weeks of the season then I guess we all fell for the bill of goods again and this is just another season where we end up with our dicks in our hands. I'm kind of sick of it. Learn from this and work forward. It's happened before with this group, believe it or not.

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?

dEscape

The Mets won on Friday, in Washington, if you can believe it. I'm still sort of trying to process it myself. But it's true. They won 7-5, thanks to Travis d'Arnaud hitting a pair of long Home Runs off of Max Scherzer. They won thanks to Jacob deGrom ratcheting up another double-digit strikeout game. They won thanks to their offense stringing together some key hits and tacking on runs late in the game. Most notably, of course, they won because Terry Collins had the foresight to remove a struggling Jeurys Familia from a 9th inning jam, and replaced him with Josh Edgin, who managed to induce Bryce Harper to hit into a 1-2-3 double play to end the game.

This being a Friday evening game, it started with me getting home and falling asleep as opposed to turning on the game, and as such I didn't actually see either of d'Arnaud's Home Runs, and I didn't see deGrom have a 2nd inning hiccup and then go into lockdown mode from there. And that seems to be deGrom's season to this point. He's not the leading man like Syndergaard, he's not the ballyhooed reclamation project like Harvey or Wheeler and he's not a Rookie trying to prove himself like Gsellman. So it's easy for deGrom to fly under the radar and I think he likes it that way. Without anyone paying much attention, deGrom's had three very good starts in a row, he's throwing like he used to throw and he's been blowing guys out of the box outright.

So deGrom departed after 7 innings and 10 strikeouts and turned things over to the bullpen. By this point, I'd woken up and put the game on, and watched as the Mets had ran ahead to 7-3 and now had to try and negotiate through the final two innings of the game. Jerry Blevins got the first two outs and, in an indication of how much attention I've been paying or an indcation of how much the Mets have been struggling, or perhaps both, Addison Reed came in with 2 outs and a runner on and I thought "Jeez, Collins is going to him for the 4-out Save?" This feeling of course got a bit tenser after Reed gave up a 2-run Home Run to Ryan Zimmerman on his first pitch, and then a hit to Daniel Murphy, although the hit to Murphy seems to be a payment of penance for all Met transgressions nowadays, and I guess around this point I remembered that Jeurys Familia was the closer again and Reed was actually pitching where he was supposed to be pitching.

So Reed survived his hairy 8th and Familia came in for the 9th and started giving up hits and walks and then there was an infield hit by Adam Eaton in which Eaton tumbled over the bag in such a way that I couldn't watch the repeated replays, so whatever happened to him can't possibly be good, and then Familia finally stopped throwing his sinker or his slider, because it's just not working for him, and instead struck out Trea Turner with fastballs to finally get an out. And then Collins came and pulled him in favor of...Josh Edgin? I mean, I can get pulling Familia there. He's just not pitching well and it's been more than a week so I can't blame rust. He's struggling. He's pulling his sinker and burying it and hitters aren't buying that. And in a spot like that, well, I'm not sure how confident I felt in him going after Harper. I'm not certain that Edgin would have been my choice since he's basically been reeling from a Home Run he gave up to Howard 5 years ago, and of course if Harper got a winning hit the move would have been second-guessed for years, but instead Harper hit a comebacker to Edgin, who threw home, and d'Arnaud threw to 1st, and just like that the Mets had won. And of course with that everything was OK again.

Now, of course, the next thing would be to win another game and maybe use this as a springboard forward from the morass. 7 runs seems like a wealth of offense for this team so it's a start.

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?

Done With You, Finally

The Mets finished out their season series with the Washington Nationals yesterday in one of those weird 4pm games, where the field is half-bathed in shadows and Pitchers tend to have an easy time of things. Not surprisingly, the final score of the game was 1-0. Unfortunately, it was the Nationals who came up with the 1, thanks to a Home Run by Fire Hydrant Head, of course, off of Fernando Salas in the last of the 7th inning.

There is, like many games I had no opportunity to see, not much to say about the game itself, so instead I have to think larger picture here. The Mets lost two of three in this series, which isn't great, but also hasn't been ruinous to their chances, because it seems like every time they lose, the Cardinals and Giants also lose, and when they win, both of them also win, and so the Mets now head into their final homestand of the year half a game ahead of the Cardinals for the 2nd Wildcard, and half a game behind the Giants for the 1st Wildcard.

That the Mets remain in this heated position of contention given everything that's gone on is amazing in and of itself and of course it makes you think what if all these guys were healthy, but then again, the Mets may get some of their wounded back shortly, as I keep hearing bandied about. That being said, it's one thing to have these guys back, but they need to come back and be effective. Robert Gsellman on Wednesday was effective. Seth Lugo has been effective. Rafael Montero...not so much.

There's 16 games left in the season now, and the Mets will have 10 of them at home and none of them against a team with a +.500 record. The Mets are absolutely battered and look nothing like the team that took the field all the way back in April. If they can pull this off, it's going to be a minor miracle, but I'm hard-pressed to see how this translates in the Postseason. They'll probably have to take on 1 game against Madison Bumgarner or some similarly intimidating pitcher for the entire season, and of course if they parse their way through that, they face America's Darlings, the Cubs, in the NLDS. That, of course, is a whole other beast and I'd rather not go too much into that unless I have to.

Of larger import, the Mets are done with Washington, done with Daniel Murphy for the regular season. The Mets were 7-12 for their 19 games (all 19 of which involved a hit from Murphy), which actually is better than I thought it was, but still not especially great. It's certainly better than when Washington used to annihilate the Mets to the tune of 4-15, but not as great as last year, when the Mets went 11-8, and 6-0 when the games really counted. It's also been enough to give Washington a rather insurmountable lead in the division and more than likely the 2nd best record in the NL going into the Postseason. But that's not our issue at this point. I'm just glad I don't have to think about them anymore for this year. I think...

Drivera Me Crazy

Several years ago, during one of those years where the Mets were a contending team that wasn't really a contender, Braden Looper became the first Pitcher to successfully blow two Saves in the same game, in an instance where the Mets had a lead in the 9th inning, blew it, took the lead in the 10th inning, blew it again, and then lost the game altogether (I had to go to the internet to look it up, but I've successfully found it).

Last night's game had that sort of eerie reminiscent feeling. Fortunately, Jeurys Familia didn't equal Looper's feat (Terry Collins being slightly the wiser than Willie Randolph, Familia didn't actually get the chance to blow the Save again). But in a harrowing affair that ran into an Extra frame, the Mets managed to emerge victorious thanks to the exploits of T.J. Rivera. Rivera picked a fine moment to hit his first Major League Home Run, in the 10th inning of a tie game off Mark Melancon, which ultimately proved to be the winning run in the Mets 4-3 victory in Washington.

This was another one of those games where I was late in tuning in, and as such I missed Noah Syndergaard's 7 scintillating innings of work. This was April Syndergaard, where he basically stoned the Nationals cold, giving up 1 run and striking out 10, while the Mets scratched out a run here, a run there, and by time I'd tuned in, they had a 3-1 lead and everything seemed just fine.

Then, of course, the 9th inning happened and Daniel Murphy interjected himself into the proceedings and everything kind of turned to mush from there. It wasn't an especially hard hit ball, and lord knows that Murphy probably spent at least 25% of his Mets career hitting ground balls towards Second Base like that, and 9.75 times out of 10, he was thrown out. But this newfangled Daniel Murphy beats the play at 1st, and the next thing we know, Jose Reyes is airmailing throws and Ryan Zimmerman is bunting, and there's more hits, and Fire Hydrant Head is involved, and my head was spinning, and Keith Hernandez wasn't making sense, and the game was tied and I was waiting for Danny Espinosa to hit the Walkoff Grand Slam and put us all out of our misery. Except that Familia managed to induce someone to hit into a Double Play, and I think the Nationals hit for Espinosa. Regardless, the game hadn't ended, and the Mets were still alive. Barely.

Then, of course, there was Rivera hitting his first Major League Home Run to put the Mets back on top, which as I already mentioned was good timing on his part but just another in a string of fine performances he's had so far in the Major Leagues. He is, perhaps, Murphy-lite, in that we don't know very much about him other than he's from the Bronx, and he can hit a little bit, and nobody's really sure what his best position is in the field so we just have to throw him somewhere and hope for the best. But if he comes up with hits like this, it's all good.

Of course, the Mets had to survive the Nationals again, and Fernando Salas was in to try to pick up his 1st Save as a Met, and he got the first two guys easily enough, but then Jayson Werth singled, because Jayson Werth always singles at inopportune times, and that brought up Murphy. Of course it did. Jerry Blevins was then summoned to try to get his first Save as a Met, and I'm sure every Mets fan had some horrible image of Murphy getting a hold of one and skipping around the bases. That would be a fitting epitaph for this mess, wouldn't it. But it didn't happen. Blevins made it as hairy as possible before finally slipping a 3-2 curve past Murphy to end the game, and that, coupled with a late-night Giants loss has now sandwiched the Mets equidistant from their Wildcard competitors. Half a game up on St. Louis, half a game behind San Francisco. 17 to play, and after tomorrow afternoon, none of them against teams that are over .500. That's a mighty fine Pennant Race.

Turn It Off

I was slightly late and out of sorts in getting home on Monday night, and by time I did so, much to my dismay, the wheels had long ago come off the Mets for the night. It was only the 5th inning, but the Nationals had slapped Rafael Montero all over the yard. Fire Hydrant Head had hit a Home Run, Montero was walking guys, and he'd even suffered the indignity of having the opposing pitcher, Mert Lagos go deep against him. With the game not worth sticking around for, and with the broadcast having dissolved into the Keith Hernandez Follies, I took my leave for the night and clicked over to ESPN.

I know that it's still the middle of a pennant race, so don't think this is going to be like past seasons where I essentially threw in the towel come September and started writing more about the 49ers than the Mets. Last season, of course, I barely had anything to say about the 49ers. It didn't help that the Mets played Baseball into November, but by time I would have chimed in, the 49ers season was beyond hope. This season doesn't exactly pose to be much better. Sure, the 49ers have a new coach in Chip Kelly, but the team is kind of a random mishmash of reclamation projects combined with raw talent. And Colin Kaepernick and the social lightning rod he's now become.

Suffice it to say, I'm not expecting great things from the 49ers this season. Unlike the Harbaugh years, they're not even on TV here in New York that much, but they did make an appearance on Monday Night Football this week, albeit at 10pm New York time, facing the Los Angeles Rams, who returned to Los Angeles after a 21-year purgatory in St. Louis. I never liked the Rams regardless of where they played, but I have to say that the 49ers/Rams rivalry makes a hell of a lot more sense with them in LA than in St. Louis.

And for this appearance on National TV, the 49ers represented themselves well, as they shut out the Rams, 28-0, to get their season off on the right foot. The 49ers didn't exactly play well, but as compared to the Rams, they looked like a Super Bowl contender again. The Rams appear completely clueless and undisciplined on both sides of the ball, in stark comparison to the 49ers, who while lacking in talent at some key spots, still played a clean game, not committing a penalty until the 4th Quarter and not making any mistakes. Blaine Gabbert, who's now the Quarterback after washing out in Jacksonville, showed some flashes, but for the most part only survived, which works against the Rams, but probably not against a better team.

So, in the end, at least I got a win out of one of my teams on Monday night. In fact, Monday Night continues to be kind to the 49ers, who won on the solo stage for what seems to be the 8th consecutive time, and each time they've handled their opponent with relative ease. However, I have a feeling this might be one of the higher points of the 49ers season. The Mets will probably have better days before the curtain falls on 2016.

The Lesser Guys

The last time the Mets were on The Biggest Game In The Galaxy, I felt like they won purely to spite ESPN. I don't feel quite the same way about what went on last night, I suppose because the Nationals are currently sitting in victory formation with an 8-game lead, and without a clear story or player on their side to leech on to. Perhaps, I suppose, they could have rammed their heads up Daniel Murphy's ass just to annoy us (and on some level I'm surprised they didn't). Without a real "interest" story, this stood to be even more of a boring, content-free game than usual. Joey McTalkinghead and Eric Byrnes Aaron Boone were useless and the token woman had even less to say than she usually does. I watched the game from start to finish, amazingly, and I'm not sure she spoke more than once every three innings.

Pennant Race Baseball at its finest.

So if you could follow the game beyond ESPN's camerawork, which seemed to go out of its way to make sure you couldn't see the game (to wit: somewhere in the 1st inning, I believe on Reynaldo Lopez's Wild Pitch, we were treated to a shot of the 1st base umpire, who was nowhere near the play, as opposed to any shot of the action on the field), you saw the Mets once again ride one of these lesser guys to a much-needed victory, as Seth Lugo spun 7 sterling innings, allowing 1 run, 6 hits and no walks to guide the Mets to a 5-1 victory and a series win over the Nationals.

For this we can partially thank Dusty Baker, yes, as he moved Scherzer off this game, but really, the credit needs to go to Robert Gsellman and Seth Lugo. After the Mets lost the game Noah Syndergaard pitched, and the Mets were back on their heels and falling into the same pattern of ineptitude that's befallen the Pirates and Marlins, they needed some big time starts and these guys delivered. It's kind of uncanny that these lesser prospects have come up and performed as well as they have, but considering that the top tier prospects, Harvey, Syndergaard, Wheeler and Matz all burst onto the scene with such hype and furor, well, it's easy to forget about these mid-level guys that find themselves once they hit the Majors. There's no better example than Jacob deGrom, who really had no hype coming to the Majors and then got here and hasn't looked back. Now, we have Gsellman and Lugo coming up with no hype whatsoever and performing well. Maybe it's just that they're all pushed by the success the big guys have had, relatively speaking, or maybe they're all just slept on. Whatever it is, they're keeping the Mets afloat.

Meanwhile, the Mets still had to hit to get the job done, and they did enough of that against Lopez and the Washington Bullpen Parade, as Curtis Granderson continued his recent resurgence with a Sacrifice Fly and a 2-run Home Run to put the Mets ahead, and later Jay Bruce contributed a 2-run Home Run of his own and so maybe things are starting to fall for him as well. That would be nice.

Then, of course, I remembered why ESPN probably wasn't picking on the Mets tonight. They screwed the Mets just simply by televising this game period. They moved this game to Sunday Night, the night before the Mets have to pack up, go on the road and play this afternoon at 1pm in Cincinnati. So, you know, they can be nice and rested for that. They're probably in midair right now, I would imagine and one can only guess who will be starting today, but I have a feeling it won't be pretty...

Summer Drive

Saturday was another chapter in my "Summer of Long Island," which is a longer story than is worth going into, really ever. The short of this is that circumstances have, on several occasions this Summer, made it necessary for me to spend entire days on Long Island, and as such it's meant I haven't seen or heard much, if any, of these weekend games over the past several months. This, in spite of driving directly past Citi Field on the Grand Central Parkway as games are about to, or recently, end. But, just as the season is winding down, so is the "Summer of Long Island."

What isn't winding down (SEGUE MASTER) is the Mets, who rebounded from a pair of losses and more injuries to beat the Nationals on Saturday night, 3-1. I didn't see the game, except for a few brief seconds while at a diner in Hicksville, so essentially what I know is the main bullet points; Robert Gsellman pitched quite well, got through some early trouble against the Nationals annoying lineup, got a lead when Curtis Granderson picked up a key 2-run single in the 3rd inning, and an insurance run in the 6th thanks to a James Loney RBI double. For 6 innings, Gsellman allowed 6 hits and walked 3, not exactly clean, but he only allowed 1 run and as such this was good enough to win.

Jim Henderson, Josh Smoker, Addison Reed and Jeurys Familia finished it off for the Mets, and if you think it's a lot for the Mets to have used 4 relievers to cover 3 innings of game, look at the Nationals' side of the Box Score. With the expanded September rosters, Dusty Baker seems to have taken it upon himself to just play matchups on a batter-to-batter basis, as after Tanner Roark was removed after 5 innings, he used 14 6 relievers to cover 3 innings, most of them retreats who wouldn't be on a Major League Roster were it not September.

In the end, though, it doesn't matter how many pitchers it takes or how many runs, but so long as you win the game, and unlike last night, the Mets were able to take advantage of both the Cardinals and Pirates losing, and the Marlins...well...they were a cute little story, weren't they?

Flat Team Friday

After the elation of my last game on Monday night, I was feeling pretty good as I headed out to Citi Field for my 17th game of the season. After all, the Mets were rolling along at a pretty good clip, gearing up for a nice weekend grudge match with the Nationals and a well-rested Noah Syndergaard pitching. And for once, I was going to a game where he was actually pitching. I hadn't seen a Syndergaard start since back in May, against these same Nationals and the results were pretty good. Since then, I've seen him pitch once in relief, and also had him twice scheduled to pitch when I would be in attendance only for him to be scratched for one reason or another.

Not that Syndergaard pitched at all badly; after a hairy first inning where he threw a ton of pitches and had to deal with Nationals players bedeviling him with Stolen Bases and bloop hits, Syndergaard instead began pitching to contact and managed to navigate his way through 7 innings, allowing only 3 hits, walking 1 and giving up 2 runs. Certainly an outing good enough to get him a victory. Problem was, the Mets did nothing of any consequence against Rookie A.J. Cole, who gave up a 4th inning Home Run to Asdrubal Cabrera and nothing further. Cole, combined with Marc Rzepczynski, Hoda Kotb, Drew Storen, Craig Stammen, Oliver Perez, Chad Cordero and Mark Melancon lulled the Mets and basically everyone at Citi Field to sleep as they faded into the night amid a string of ground balls and pitching changes, as the Nationals won the opener of this series, 4-1.

I realize that, at this point, the Mets are not going to catch the Nationals, and although the Nationals aren't lighting anyone on fire, they also don't have to. Essentially, they're doing what the Mets did last season down the stretch and pulling the Baseball version of running out the clock. But they also took advantage of their opportunities in this game, while the Mets didn't. In the 1st inning, Trea Turner, who looks to be no older than Michael Taylor, their 15-year old Outfielder, blooped a single to right on an 0-2 pitch to start the game, stole second, stole 3rd, scored on a Bryce Harper sacrifice fly, and the Nationals just took it from there. They led 2-1 going to the 9th, and the Mets certainly had every good opportunity to come back and win, but Jerry Blevins, brought into the game specifically to get Daniel Murphy and Harper out, instead gave up a single and a double before being removed for Hansel Robles, who promptly allowed a 2-run single to Anthony Rendon that incinerated the game.

This game seemed emblematic of the games I've attended this year. Though things seem to favor the Mets, nothing goes right, they come out flat, they get great starting pitching, they hang around and then the bullpen torches everything and they have no recourse. This was my 10th loss of the season and in order for me to finish over .500 for the year, they essentially have to win all 4 remaining games I have tickets to. It's just been that kind of year.

Go To Hell, Murphy

In the top of the 1st inning on Sunday, Daniel Murphy teed off on a Steven Matz curveball and whacked it into the Pepsi Porch Coca Cola Corner for a 2-run Home Run, which if you're keeping score gave him 33 Home Runs and 121 RBI this season against his former team.

At that point, I realized what the Mets needed to do: They needed to dust him. Not hit him, not hurt him, just, dust him. You know, like what Syndergaard did to Escobar last October. Just put one under his chin and knock him on his ass. Get him uncomfortable.

Of course, given how this has played out, Murphy will probably hit another 3 Home Runs and run the bases backwards.

I and basically every other Mets fan continues to maintain that letting Murphy go was still the right move, because come on. Who the hell thought this was going to happen? This is a guy who once spent an entire season grounding out to 2nd base, and another season getting thrown out trying to stretch a double into a triple 39 times. And now, as I said yesterday, he's Dork Jeff Kent. It almost figures that this would happen, because it's the Mets and this is the sort of shit that happens to them. Why the hell couldn't the Anaheim Angels have jumped in, offered him $50 million and saved us from this? It wouldn't bother me as much if he were hitting like this in the American League because a) we wouldn't have to see him skipping around and waving his towel in our faces and b) everyone does that in the American League anyway.

So, yeah. That happened, that sunk Matz, sunk the Mets, sunk the weekend and sent us into the All Star Break not feeling so good about things. The Mets over the last 3 games looked like a team that needed a break, and, well, now they've got one. They finish out the first half 47-41 and tied for the 2nd Wildcard, but a rather distant 6 games out of 1st place behind a team that's gone back to thoroughly pounding them to the tune of a 4-9 record. I mean, given everything that's happened to the Mets this season, with a constant stream of injuries and a whole host of inconsistencies, I suppose we should be fortunate to be in this position hanging tough, but come on. The Mets have looked outright miserable against a bunch of teams they should have beaten soundly, and those are games they're not going to get back. It makes it that much harder to make up the ground between them and Washington, even the ground between them and the Dodgers, who hold the first Wildcard spot.

I don't know what the second half of the season will hold here, and I suppose I felt the same way last season. The only difference here is that there probably isn't a Yoenis Cespedes trump card that can be brought in to save the day. I don't know if there's enough chips left in the system to pull something like that off, and, well, I don't know where an additional piece would fit here? I have a feeling that what we're seeing here is what we're going to the whip with the rest of the way. I hope it works. Otherwise, I'll be trashing Murphy even more. If that clown could have performed like this when he was here, maybe we wouldn't be in this mess.

The Unraveling

After a week's worth of battling and hitting and doing mostly everything right, the Mets seem to be undoing all the work they did at the 11th hour leading in to the All Star Break. After dragging themselves back into the race for the NL East, the Mets have promptly turned back into pumpkins against the Nationals, and nobody's been doing more carving to them than Daniel Murphy.

I didn't actually see much, if any, of Saturday's game, which is just as well because I'm told that the FOX broadcast essentially turned into the Daniel Murphy ass-kissing festival. I'm dumbfounded. Murphy was regularly viewed as a joke by National broadcasters during his time with the Mets, and if you didn't know better, you'd assume he was some C-level utility guy that was forced into way too much playing time. Of course, most of the time, Murphy obliged them by playing his own unique brand of Baseball, which involved leaping into outs, throwing to wrong bases and clanking ground balls. And now, all of a sudden, he's turned into Dork Jeff Kent. I can't understand it.

Logan Verrett was the latest victim of the Murphy revenge tour, as a relatively decent outing for him was submarined by Murphy at basically every avenue. The Nationals took an early lead, the Mets kept it close for as long as possible, and then Murphy hit a Home Run and was literally skipping around the bases. And that basically sealed the Mets fate for the night. I don't think I needed to watch the game to know this, and I certainly didn't need to hear Joe Buck (and I can only assume he was announcing) bury his head up Murphy's ass.

Ho hum. One more chance to get this right.

Continued Carnage

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

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

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

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

In The Soup

I'd been feeling as though I was missing out on all the fun over the past week since I didn't go to any of the games in the Cubs series or the Marlins series. But I did go to Citi Field last night for the opener of a 4-game series against Washington, and the Mets were kind enough to cram about a week's worth of excitement into one sweaty, intense, 3 hour and 39 minute affair.

It was disgusting out at Citi Field. I've been to games on excessively hot, humid nights and they're often tough to sit through, which I'm sure is of no surprise. Usually, it's accompanied by a rather tepid matchup, or a tepid game, or a sparse crowd that's been mostly kept away because really, who wants to sit out in that kind of weather? Not that I've ever actually done this, but if I were to take a bath in a pot of steaming hot pea soup, it felt something like that. There was some threat of rain and in fact when I got off the 7 train, it was raining at Citi Field, but not especially hard and not at any kind of degree that would have caused a rain delay. So at least there was that. There were plenty of people, too, since the Mets and Nationals is now a marquee matchup and nobody seemed to want to miss this one. So, already, it was a different kind of hot night.

The game ended up getting pretty heated too, as you might have noticed. For as much as it often seemed like the Nationals were going to impose their will on the Mets, the Mets kept firing back, finding answers and eventually taking control themselves as they came back from three separate deficits to take the series opener in a 9-7 affair that immediately ranks as one of the better games I've been to in quite some time.

This one had a little bit of everything. It started innocuously enough, with Bartolo Colon, who's always entertaining by himself, surrendering a leadoff triple to Ben Revere, which wasn't quite the start anyone wanted to see. Two batters later, Revere scored on a Daniel Murphy hit. The Mets tied the game in the 3rd when James Loney singled with 2 outs against Lucas Giolito to score Yoenis Cespedes.

That ended the normal part of the proceedings. Things went haywire from there.

The middle innings of the game were where things got kind of frustrating. In the top of the 4th, Bryce Harper led off by hitting a rocket of a Home Run to Center Field, and being the jackass he is, Harper shushed the crowd as he crossed home plate. That wasn't so surprising. I started getting annoyed when Clint Robinson and Anthony Rendon both hit what were essentially pop flies that, in that disgusting humid air, just kept carrying out to Left Field until they nestled themselves just barely over the fence for a pair of what appeared to be backbreaking Home Runs. This left the Mets down 4-1, the sparse assortment of Washington Fans (they exist?) blowing their kazoos and me in a real bad mood.

But the Mets seemed bound and determined to not let the Nationals kick them around again. They came back in the last of the 4th and attacked Giolito, as first Travis d'Arnaud hit a Home Run, and then two batters later, Jose Reyes delighted everyone by doing the same, launching one into the Coca Cola Porch Corner to make it a 1-run game. By this point Giolito, who I know is a really good prospect and in time will justify his hype, was really struggling. The Mets had already done a good job of making him work, pushing his pitch count to 60 after 3 innings. Curtis Granderson followed Reyes' Home Run with a double, moved to 3rd when Giolito balked, and then scored when Cespedes smoked a double of his own down into the corner, and just like that, we were tied once again, and Giolito's night was through.

But Washington came right back in the 5th, because they're annoying like that. After all the work the Mets had to do to tie the game twice, Washington kept getting people on base against Colon. Oliver Perez, who relieved Giolito, singled to lead off the inning, which was totally galling because Oliver Perez doing anything is galling. Perez moved up on a Revere single and a Jayson Werth ground out, and when Daniel Murphy hit into a Double Play—proving that he can, in fact, make an out against the Mets—he was stranded there. Except he wasn't, because after a Dusty Baker challenge, Murphy was ruled safe (and he was safe) at 1st and Perez scored. Colon, by this point, had already unraveled into fat and sweaty Colon and that overturned call basically sealed his fate for the evening. Harper singled, Wilson Ramos singled to score Murphy, who was basically skipping around the field like the spastic child he is, and that was it for Colon. Jerry Blevins followed and of course walked the one guy he was in there to get, but Hansel Robles managed to get Rendon to fly out, which was good because I was having this horrible feeling that the way the ball was flying, he was about to park one and incinerate the entire game.

Instead, the Mets did the parking, which was nice. In the last of the 5th, the Mets finally made Oliver Perez look like the schmuck he is. Asdrubal Cabrera led off with a single and Brandon Nimmo followed with one of his own. d'Arnaud struck out, but that brought up Wilmer Flores. Flores hadn't started the game, but through the machinations of things ended up at 1st Base on a double switch, which was good, because Flores had been hitting everything in sight recently. I again had the feeling like something big was going to happen, and this time it did, because Flores went after the first pitch and clanged it off the 2nd deck in Left Field. And I mean this ball was smoked. I looked at Werth and he was doing one of those courtesy runs, where everyone knows the ball is gone but he's making a half-hearted attempt to go after it. So after all that, the Mets now led 7-6, fans were bouncing off the walls like it was the Playoffs, Flores got himself a curtain call, and Oliver Perez was once again Oliver Perez.

Now with the lead, the Mets now had to hang on, which was easier said than done given the way the game was unfolding. Robles held Washington down in the 6th, in spite of giving up a double to Perez, because what the fuck. Perez hit but didn't pitch in the 6th, instead Matt Belisle came in and gave up a Home Run to Cabrera, the Mets 4th of the night (which may or may not be a personal record; I haven't had a chance to go through the scorecards of the now 391 games I've attended to check) to put the Mets up 8-6. Antonio Bastardo came in for the 7th and made his own bed, first by giving up a Home Run to Murphy because, again, what the fuck, and then later fielding an easy comebacker from Robinson and firing the ball not especially close to 1st Base. Addison Reed then bailed out Bastardo by striking out Rendon and preventing Washington from making things even more ridiculous.

In the last of the 7th, the Mets got their final run thanks to a 2-out rally against Sammy Solis that saw Reyes walk, attempt to steal 2nd, decide against it and then get picked off trying to go back to 1st. It might have been helpful if he'd stayed put, since Granderson singled, Cespedes walked and Neil Walker got the RBI hit that would have plated 2 but instead only scored one.

Reed worked a clean 8th—only the second time in the game either team went down in order—and turned it over to Jeurys Familia in the 9th. In keeping with the general vibe of the game, Familia was wild, just all over the place, and walked Werth to start the inning. He then went 2-0 on Murphy and everyone was sitting on their hands because this wasn't going well. Those visions were coming back, of Murphy hitting one into the bullpen and peeing his pants in joy. d'Arnaud went to the mound after that second ball and I can only assume said to Familia "I don't give a shit what you throw, just get it over the plate and make sure he hits it on the ground." Fortunately, this worked, and Murphy did what we're used to him doing: slapping a ground ball to the Shortstop. Cabrera got the out at 2nd, but Murphy was clearly safe at 1st, until he wasn't, because the Umpires invoked the Chase Utley rule on Utley's partner-in-douchebagginess Werth. Instead, both were out, and Werth was left grousing and groaning, and ultimately started kicking his helmet around the field like the petulant child he is while Baker demanded a futile replay. Harper followed and did no further shushing as he struck out to end the game.

Whew. That was about as exhausting to recap as it was to watch. Usually, when a game runs as late as this one did, ending close to 10:50, I'm eager to just get the hell out of the stadium and get home as quickly as possible. Not on this night. This was the kind of game that really gets you fired up, and for as long as it ran, it seemed like very few people left early. Never mind the soupy conditions, or the fact that at times it appeared like the Mets were going to end up in the soup themselves. This is one of those games where the Mets just refused to let their opponent keep the control. The Mets haven't had a string of games like this in a couple of months. But I think right now, they have That Look again.