Puss

I made some mention about Hansel Robles and the great big puss on his face he walked around with all night on Saturday in Milwaukee, and on Monday, he came out of the bullpen in a 1-1 game in the 8th inning in Arizona and he had that same stupid puss on his face before he even hit the mound. So you knew right then and there the Mets were screwed.

They'd managed to get to this point by getting good pitching from Zack Wheeler for 6 innings. Somehow Wheeler has become the most reliable, stabilizing presence on this staff which is alternately great if you consider what he's been through to get back to this point, and terrible because that means the Mets' best pitcher has a 120-inning cap that he's going to blow through by the All Star Break. But for now he's pitched quite well, and he managed to make it through 6 innings allowing nothing beyond a Jake Lamb Home Run.

Unfortunately, the Mets left their offense in Milwaukee and against Zack Godley, whom I only know from Baseball cards but apparently pitched a game against the Mets last season, they only managed one run themselves.

So it was 1-1 in the 8th and Robles came in and immediately allowed a screamer to Paul Goldschmidt that looked like it was a Home Run. But replay reversed the call and Goldschmidt was sent back to 2nd base. Essentially this was just delaying the inevitable as Mr. Puss just cocked around a little bit before allowing an actual Home Run—this one of the 3-run variety to Yasmani Tomas—and then turned to mush from there. Jeff Mathis, whom we were constantly reminded is a career .195 hitter, homered off Robles as well, and 1-1 very quickly turned into 7-1 and everything was therefore horrible once again.

I know everyone in the bullpen at this point is culpable and I prefer to point my fingers at them than at Terry Collins, because every team has a bullpen that they need to use basically every night as it's no longer 1975 and pitchers cannot throw complete games. Your bullpen is only as good as the pitchers you have in there and if it seems as though the bullpen is overused, well, maybe they are but I think "overuse" is sort of loaded in this instance because just consider if the guys in the bullpen were pitching as often as they were and doing well? Would they still be "overused?" Point is, I'm not totally certain that these guys are overused so much as they're mediocre and at the forefront of this is Robles, who got torched on Saturday, torched again last night and more often than not he gets torched and then stomps around with that puss on his face. So, enough. He's gone from having Jeurys Familia-like potential to ending up with Erik Goeddel-like results, so I'm slapping the "Trades high/Good stuff" label on him until he proves to me different.

I have a feeling I could be waiting a while.