Days Like This

There are few things that are more galling to me as a Mets fan than losing to the fake-ass, Mickey Mouse Marlins. I feel like this hatred I have of their very existence has reached epidemic proportions because now it's pissing me off when it happens in the 6th game of the season. Maybe it's magnified because of how everyone is creaming over the Marlins because they have the Celebrity Manager and the Celebrity Batting Coach, or because everyone loves their mouth-breather 1st Baseman and their slugger who's guaranteed to miss 60 games a season. I don't know. What I do know is that last night, the Marlins battered Steven Matz in his season debut in a wholly embarrassing performance and then took their sweet time playing out the rest of the game, handing the Mets a 10-3 defeat in a miserable 3 hour and 50 minute game that felt every bit as long as it was.

Usually, when a team runs out to a big lead early in a game, both teams start hacking away just to get out of there quick. Usually. But the Marlins, because they are who they are, just had to drag this out. It was bad enough that they hen-pecked Steven Matz to death on a bunch of infield hits and bloops before he got fed up and basically set one on a tee for Giancarlo Stanton to hit it out. Then, Jarred Cosart decided to stop throwing strikes and give everyone some false hope by allowing the Mets to string together a little rally. But for as much as Cosart tried to let the Mets back in this game, the stagnant Mets bats weren't taking the bait. All they really did was just delay the inevitable and get Cosart out of the game before the end of the 5th inning.

Enough has been said about the offense not hitting and after 6 games of this the talk is probably only going to get worse. I've even heard some "What's Wrong with Matz?" talk which is completely asinine. He hadn't pitched in 10 days, which can often throw a pitcher completely out of whack, and for all the talk about his ability, really, it's a side effect of his being lumped in with the rest of the starting pitchers. Of the "Big 4," Matz is really the unknown commodity and it's easy to forget that even figuring in the 3 starts he made in the Postseason last year, he boasts all of 10 games of Major League experience. He's going to have nights like this. He doesn't have Harvey's fire, Syndergaard's poise or deGrom's cool, or at least he doesn't yet. These things take time and the reason Matz can be a #4 is because those other three are there. The game he pitched tonight was a little more Jon Niese than anything else because you could sort of sense him losing his bearings a little bit as the 2nd inning started to get away from him. The key in this instance would be to try to minimize the damage, but Matz didn't do that and the end result was what happened with Stanton, and that spelled the end of his night. Really good pitchers have games like this, but what separates them from the Jon Nieses of the world is that they learn from these outings and get better. Niese never did that. Matz still has a chance.

This probably had to happen to Matz. I just wish it didn't happen against the effing Marlins. Those guys are such a joke they can't even win right.