Refreshing Result

San Diego is a place where the Mets go once a season. I've never been there myself but I hear it's lovely basically all times of the year. However, the Mets seem to not enjoy themselves much, particularly since they opened Petco Park back in 2004 (?). I've mentioned it before, as I have about many Self-fufilling Met Prophecies or Met Hexes that crop up, but it bears mentioning since this is a four-game series, but the Mets in San Diego is generally a losing proposition. I know that this is the place where Bartolo Colon broke Baseball last year, but otherwise, the Mets have played approximately 60 games in Petco Park over the last 14 seasons and their record is something to the effect of 18-42, and of those 42 losses, 34 of them were by a 2-1 score, and the other 8 were of some variety of either almost being no-hit by pitchers making their first or second Major League start, or a walk-off Grand Slam.

Point is, for the Mets, for whom consistent play has been a dicey proposition this season, a trip to San Diego isn't going to help much. San Diego has been having a miserable season, but they still managed to take two of three from the Mets in New York. Now we're here in San Diego.

Monday night, the Mets won, and, well, they probably should have won given that Jacob deGrom was pitching, and yet they managed to almost blow it at the end. deGrom, as has been the case over the past several weeks, was brilliant, striking out the side in the first and just humming along from there as the Mets offense provided him with a modicum of support. Wilmer Flores hit a Home Run against Clayton Richard and his irritatingly jerky delivery in the 2nd, Yoenis Cespedes tripled home a run and scored another in the 3rd, and Jay Bruce and Travis d'Arnaud also drove home runs. That eliminated the fear of yet another 2-1 loss, which was nice, and behind a cruising deGrom seemed to give the impression that the Mets had the game well in hand. deGrom allowed two runs late, a bomb of a Home Run to Hunter Renfroe in the 7th, and then back-to-back doubles with 2 outs in the 8th. Otherwise, he was his usual quietly efficient self.

Then, of course, we got to the 9th. Addison Reed, whose name has been one of the leading ones bandied around in trade talks, took the mound and gave up another Home Run to Renfroe. Again, I'll take that with a grain of salt since Renfroe has been killing everyone lately. Then, of course, he gave up a hit to Manuel Margot and another hit to Hector Sanchez, and that brought up Jabari Blash. I don't know much of Blash other than he's one of these really tall, wiry types who hasn't amounted to much in a limited role in the Majors, so it stands to reason that if anyone was going to whack a 3-run Home Run and fuck up a perfectly good game, it would be him, and damned if he didn't almost do that, hitting a ball that just barely slipped to the foul side of the foul pole and required a replay review to make sure. Following that scare, Reed then got his shit together and struck out Blash. Matt Szczur followed, and, well, wouldn't it have to be Matt Szczur, then? He hit it well, but right to Bruce and that ended a 5-3 victory that was probably significantly hairier than it needed to be. But, then again, that's the Mets in 2017. Much hairier than it needs to be.