Fill The Glass

And, once again, the Mets played just a sterling boondoggle of a ballgame in The Hulk's Lair in Plasticville, Florida, one of those places where things never seem to go right no matter how good things might look on the surface. The Mets came in to the Mystery Machine humming right along. They'd had their hiccup the prior weekend, got it out of their system, and now back to business laying the smackdown on a team that richly deserved it. The Marlins came into Citi Field last week and the Mets fed them their lunch repeatedly in a 4-game wipeout.

But, things have a tendency to never happen as you'd expect it, particularly when you're going into Miami. This is a place where the Mets have played a seemingly endless string of winnable games that get away from them, annoying games where they blow leads, games where they don't score and lose on 40-foot singles and, then there's games like last night, where they look ready to strike and then puke it up before they have a chance to come back.

I'm not sure what kind of Miami-induced loss I like the least, not that any of them are preferable to any other, but at least we weren't subjected to the 40-foot single loss where the Marlins start prancing around the field like they just won the pennant (I'd assume they're saving that for the next time the Mets come to town in August). I suppose Tuesday's game was pretty objectionable, because it seems like that begat what happened Wednesday night. Off of Monday, if the Mets had come back the next night and rode the crest of Juan Lagares' game-tying double to a 9th inning victory, you come away feeling a whole lot different even if the Mets had lost last night.

But instead, they lost Tuesday, and played a see-saw of a game Wednesday that saw Bartolo Colon throw his usual Bartolo Colon kind of game, which is to say he was unspectacularly efficient. Problem was, the Mets couldn't extend their lead against Mat Latos, who looked mediocre and then got hurt, and ultimately the Marlins scraped back and tied the game on—guess what—an infield single by Giancarlo Stanton that Daniel Murphy gloved, but couldn't convert the throw. A typical Marlin play that tilted the game in their favor. Two innings later, they grabbed the lead by manufacturing a run, and though the Mets certainly could have had an opportunity against the Fish's B-closer in the 9th, down by a run, they wouldn't get a chance to come back because Alex Torres surrendered a game-incinerating 3-run Home Run to Ichiro Suzuki, the ageless wonder. Ichiro isn't known for his power, but even in his 40s and homing in on 4,200 worldwide hits, he's still someone to be reckoned with and he always had the ability to dial 8 when he really needed to. And this was one such instance.

So, instead of coming back home with the feeling that the Mets resolve continues to will them to victories and this is going to continue to carry them, instead, there's a little ennui going on because when you think about it, if Daniel Murphy doesn't hit that Home Run on Monday night, the Mets get swept and right now everything's terrible and I'm writing about how the Marlins should be disembowled by a land shark or something. So, at least it's somewhere in between, but I don't necessarily feel good about things coming off a series like this. Now, the Mets get to come home and face a Nationals team that's started to wake up and usually bludgeons the Mets at Citi Field.

On the other hand, the Mets haven't lost a game at Citi Field all season, so there's that.