Trojan Win

The Mets won their second straight in San Diego on Tuesday, one of those gritty games where they battle behind and come back to win. I'm always happy with a win, but sometimes it's amusing when they have to peck and scrape and claw against a terrible team. But that's sort of emblematic of the way the season has gone.

Tuesday night, the Mets were in trouble from the start when the Padres Trojan Horse'd them. They were supposed to face Jhoulys Chacin. When they faced Chacin in May, they fed him his lunch good and proper and he didn't make it out of the 1st inning. But whether Chacin actually had back spasms, or he just had "back spasms," he didn't start and instead the Mets would face Kyle Lloyd, a young fellow making his Major League debut, and on short enough notice that they had no advance scouting. Seems legit.

So there's Lloyd, standing out there looking like he's just been kicked out of a space shuttle without a helmet on, facing the Mets. Meanwhile, and I didn't notice it yesterday, but the Padres seem to have changed their uniforms again, from the mustard-yellow monstrosity that they used to sport to something that now seems to be a replica of the 1984 Tigers. I don't necessarily like watching a team whose jerseys make me feel like I'm watching a different team. I felt the need to point that out.

But at any rate, Lloyd gave up a Home Run to Yoenis Cespedes in the 1st. But then he sort of settled down. Seth Lugo, on the other side, had his own troubles. He gave up a Home Run to Hunter Renfroe in the 2nd, again, no great shakes since Renfroe is clearly destined to be one of those Met Killers. He also gave up a 2-run Home Run to Allen Cordoba. This put the Padres up, 3-1.

Usually, when the Mets face a guy making his Major League debut, it has a tendency to not go well. The Padres have a history of proving this in execution. But Lloyd seemed to run out of steam around the 4th, and the Mets managed to fight back and tie the game in the 5th thanks to an RBI double by Asdrubal Cabrera. This knocked Lloyd out of the game altogether, and then when Cespedes followed with another RBI double, the Mets had the lead and Lloyd was actually in line for a loss. However, his teammates, specifically Matt Szczur, got him off the hook and tied the game in the last of the 5th.

The Mets regained the lead in the last of the 7th on a play that seemed to typify the fortunes of these two teams. Granderson singled with 1 out against generically-named Jose Torres, and with two outs, Phil Maton (I will be sorely disappointed if Maton is not from Quebec or at least of French Canadian descent) was summoned to face Cespedes. And he fooled Cespedes, if only to get him to put an ugly check swing on a ball that nonetheless rocketed down the Right Field line. A troika of Padres then picked up the ball and threw it not particularly close to bases or players, and as such a Cespedes triple turned into a Cespedes Little League Home Run, giving the Mets a 6-4 lead.

From there, Paul Sewald had a Good Paul Sewald night and Addison Reed again gave up a run and made things unnecessarily stressful but still managed to close out a 6-5 victory. Another one of those kind of 6-5 victories. I'm not sure if this is something worth celebrating or not.