Feeling Surly

Given everything that's been going on and going haywire for the Mets lately, you'd think that the team had either just blown a 7-game lead or, worse, playing out the string on another 74-88 season. It's enough of a distraction when you're focusing on a pennant race and you have your ace pitcher's meddlesome agent cocking up the team's mellow. Add The Biggest Game In The Galaxy against that other team from the same town and, well, it seems like a recipe for disaster.

For 5 innings, on Sunday night, everything was going wonderfully. Matt Harvey was pitching great and looked like he could have stopped the Yankees cold for another dozen innings if he needed to. His location wasn't perfect by any stretch of the imagination, not that anyone really noticed, but all things considered, he looked great. But, of course, we all knew that turd in the punchbowl was going to come up, and when Dan Sveum interviewed Terry Collins in the 4th inning, Collins pulled no punches in saying that Harvey was done after the 5th.

And, of course, everything went to shit from there.

Collins, I'm sure, had a set lineup of how he wanted to get through the remainder of the game and maintain his lead, which was slim at 1-0 and probably should have been more since C.C. Sabathia was ripe for the taking all night. Hansel Robles got the first call, and his first batter, Jacoby Ellsbury, hit a ground ball behind second base that Daniel Murphy picked and probably should have put in his pocket. But, of course, this was the perfect Daniel Murphy storm, because with the whole world watching, Murphy tried to be a hero and bare hand the ball and throw in one motion. And, of course, the result was that Ellsbury ended up on 2nd. Fire Hydrant Head followed and his bunt was fielded by Hansel Robles, and what ensued was basically the exact moment I knew the Mets were screwed. Robles fielded the bunt cleanly, but much like Murphy, Robles decided HE needed to be a hero and instead of taking the sure out at 1st base, he wheeled and threw to 3rd base. This play probably works about 1 in 50 tries, and that's when it's a force play at 3rd. When it's a tag play, well, you do the math. Either way, you know what happened, and from that point forward everything was one long nightmare.

I've sort of tried to avoid reading anything beyond a recap of the game, but even that seems to take a dig at basically everyone involved in this Harvey mess. I'm tired of hearing about it but it's one of those stories that just isn't going to go away, particularly as the season has dwindled down to its final 13 games and nobody knows what will happen from there. The fault lies with Scott Boras. He's the one who made this whole thing public and I'm sure he wanted it that way. Now he and Harvey get all the attention and the Mets look like schmucks.

Well, everyone on the Mets did a fine job of looking like a schmuck tonight, probably everyone except for Harvey since he did his job, but nobody else did theirs. The best part, of course, was that this was in front of a National TV audience so everyone got treated to one more episode of "The Mets Look Like Schmucks" in eye-popping HD.