That Old Ace In the Hole

I mused the other day to nobody in particular that I missed the old Matt Harvey, who used to come out with smoke coming out of his ears ready to throw the ball through a brick wall and would snarl at anyone that deigned get in his way or, worse, attempted to remove him from a game.

I keep this blind hope that someday the old Matt Harvey will come back, and maybe that will happen, but the more I watch, the less likely it seems. Twice spotted a lead against the Pirates, Harvey fell victim to the irrepressible Elias Diaz, who drove in 6 runs, and to his own bullpen, who melted down once again as the Mets fell to the Pirates at home 12-7.

This was another one of those games that was thrown at me as part of my original plan, but as seems to have been the case many times this year, I've swapped it out for another game. A couple of times, this has happened and ended up biting me in the ass, because the Mets won the game I missed, but I suppose if there was ever a game I was going to be glad I didn't go to, this would be it. Were it two years ago, or even four years ago, knowing I had tickets to a game when Harvey was on the mound, I don't think I would have been so quick to pass (although to be fair, I was prodded to swap out this game by my other half, still reveling in the graduatory afterglow). Hell, there were nights when I specifically swapped in to games I knew Harvey would be pitching. It was can't-miss Baseball.

Now? It's If ya got the time, and it seems like that attitude has overtaken the whole ballclub. The Mets find their way back to within some sort of shouting distance of .500 and then go out and lose 3 games in a row. It's not improving. I'm still not sure how it can improve and the chatter I'm hearing now is a little more of what can we trade guys away for as opposed to what can we get to shore up the team. It's depressing. This season wasn't supposed to go down like this.