Next Generation

The Mets of course made news with two moves on Monday, one of which was expected and the other of which had been long anticipated.

The first was the departure of Addison Reed to Boston for a trio of Pitching prospects whom none of us have ever really heard of so we just let them marinate in the Minors for now and hope for the best, because the hope is that they turn out to be more useful than many of the relievers the Mets have blindly been trotting out this season. As for Reed, we wish him well. He did some excellent work here; in spite of being somewhat iffy in his brief cameo in 2015, he put it all together and was outstanding in 2016 and for the most part again this season when he was shoved into the Closer's role.

The other news, of greater import, was the promotion of Amed Rosario to the Major Leagues after months of clamoring and clanging and wondering when it would actually happen. Well, now that time is here and we can see just what, exactly, Rosario is or will be. I expect he'll take a few days to get his sea legs under him; it helps that he'll be debuting in Colorado, but nonetheless that he was ready skill-wise was not in doubt. Let's see how ready he is mentally. The hope with these guys is, as always, that you have someone who will grab the position and stay there for the next 10-15 years. Sort of like the guy he's basically replacing, Jose Reyes. We'll hear that comparison made a few times, I'd think.

So...yeah. Reed out, Rosario in. Excitement abound for the last two months of a basically lost season. Let's go.

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.

Fare Thee Well

Thursday night's Mets/Padres game was sort of emotionally pre-empted by the pregame news that Lucas Duda had been traded to the Tampa Bay Rays. Granted, a move like this was forthcoming and certainly Duda's life span with the Mets was limited at best given his impending Free Agency, but, still, when a home-grown player that's been in the organization for years moves on, there's still a little bit of sadness attached to it. Certainly, Duda's time with the Mets had its ups and downs, and I picked on him maybe a little more than I should have, but for once, someone I really ragged on quite a bit in 2012 and 2013 shut me up good and proper when he emerged for a career year in 2014, and came up with several key hits in big spots during 2015. More than that, Duda was a favorite of my other half, who had a Duda shirt and usually stopped whatever she was doing to watch an At Bat, and was always happy to see him when she went to games with me. She was particularly distraught over this; the news of the trade broke as I was leaving work, and when I arrived home, she greeted me with a scowl and said "I'm not going to the games anymore! THEY TRADED DUDA! HOW COULD THEY TRADE DUDA?!" and of course any logical explanation about the business of Baseball went out the window.

Duda, himself, handled himself with particular class on his way out the door. Others (Curtis Granderson) had a harder time of things. Irregardless, Duda is off to Tampa, where we wish him all the best for the remainder of this season, and wherever he may end up in 2018.

There was still a game to be played, however, and it featured the Major League debut of Chris Flexen, a young righthander who was one of those named I'd heard of but didn't know much about. Flexen was up from Binghamton to make this start in the Wheeler spot in the rotation. You have starry-eyed fantasies about guys like this coming up and setting Baseball on fire in spots like this, but sometimes these sorts of things can backfire. The Mets got him a 1st inning run against Luis Perdomo, which helped, but you still can never tell until you the kid on the mound. And whether it was nerves or whatever, Flexen looked very much like what he was: a young pitcher that kind of got overwhelmed by the moment. It's never helpful to have your entire family in the seats watching (and his poor mother looked like she was ready to pass out the entire time) but, well, we know what happened. Flexen gave up a Home Run to Manuel Margot, his first batter, then walked the next batter, then gave up a hit. Disaster seemed imminent but for a pair of slick plays to tag out Padre baserunners at Home Plate, and Flexen escaped his first inning only having allowed 1 run.

Flexen did not fare nearly as well in the 2nd inning, when, after loading the bases, he allowed a long double to Margot that ultimately scored 3 runs and kind of sealed Flexen's fate. To his credit, he came back and worked a clean 3rd inning, but by that point the damage had been done and this game, which was just creeping along, was headed for a repeat of last night where I turn it off and go to bed early. Tyler Pill emerged after Flexen and made things worse, allowing a 3-run Home Run to Dusty Coleman that made the score 7-1.

I was about to throw in the towel, but then the Mets rallied in the 7th, scoring 4 runs off a trio of Padres pitchers, and involved a long double by Yoenis Cespedes and an even longer Home Run by Jay Bruce. This got the score to 7-5, and, well, this was the Padres...

...but it was also the Mets and they got no closer than 7-5, going down meekly in the 8th and gonged out of the stadium in the 9th.

So, the Mets leave San Diego, where they did not get swept, and they did not lose every game 2-1, but they also leave in no better shape than they were when they arrived, which is basically the same old story here. Actually, you could say they leave in worse shape since they've now officially started to break down the roster a little bit and by time they return to New York, who knows who's here and who will be gone.