Brief Excitement

Generally, any time the Mets can sweep a series on the West Coast, it's cause for some degree of excitement because as a general rule, these West Coast games are just a difficult proposition. Whether it's games that start at an excessively late hour, or are played under that blazing California sunshine, or the Woody Allen chronic California sickness, the Mets just have a hard time out there. But, at least for three days, the Mets overcame it all and swept the Giants, finishing the weekend off with an 8-2 victory behind, of all people, Rafael Montero.

This was another one of those games that I only saw briefly, and by briefly, I mean out of the corner of my eye at a restaurant during the late innings. If there wasn't enough strange about a West Coast game, this series of course finished off with a 4pm Sunday start time, which can often drag out into the evening hour and as such, this game crept on close to 8pm, clocking in at a creaky 3 hours and 44 minutes.

It was already late in the game when I "saw" what was going on, and the Mets had already built a sizeable lead thanks to a pair of Home Runs from Rene Rivera, off of Matt Moore. Rafael Montero, who I believe was probably the leading cause of the length of this game, was gone, departed after making his way through 5.2 innings that were good, though I feel like they were more a product of the quality of the opponent as opposed to him actually turning the mythical corner that he's probably not capable of turning. But nonetheless he made it through those 5.2 innings allowing just one run over 104 pitches, and the offensive backing was enough to net him his first win in the Majors since 2014.

I can't get too particularly excited over this outing from Montero because, well, the Mets were playing a team that's just caved in on itself. The Mets could be accused of looking the same at many moments this season. It's probably the same reason that I can't get too excited over the Mets sweeping the Giants and "picking up some ground" on the teams they're trailing in whatever meaningful race there is here. It seems like a bit of too little, too late as far as saving the season and what's further is I can't say that we're getting any particular glimpses of the future, because it seems like those guys we're waiting on aren't even on the roster as yet. Perhaps, I guess, this is OK because if nothing else impending Free Agents playing well become more attractive to those teams that are contending and make them more likely to hand over young, cheap, talented players come the end of July. It's something worth considering.