Comic Book Farce

In this late part of the Summer, my co-workers (all two of them) have been in the office sporadically for one reason or another. I of course had taken my vacation earlier in the Summer, and as a result I've had several days where I've been in the office by myself. I have passed these days by harkening back to my old days and putting on the radio for a little while. It had been some time since I'd heard Mike Francesa, but Thursday was the first time that the Mets had a game on a day where I was in the office by myself. I didn't have a physical radio, but I did have a computer and an MLB.com subscription, so I was able to listen along with Howie and Josh while I worked.

I was, much like I did in the old days, listening with half an ear until about the 4th or 5th inning when I heard Michael Conforto batting and Howie say something like "And Conforto goes down!" and then, of course, my first thought was "Now What!?" Of course it wasn't good, and it looks as though Conforto has separated his shoulder and I'd assume this is the last we've seen of him for 2017. I assume. I'd like to hope otherwise. But doesn't it figure that the guy who's been one of the few legitimate bright spots for the Mets would g

In this late part of the Summer, my co-workers (all two of them) have been in the office sporadically for one reason or another. I of course had taken my vacation earlier in the Summer, and as a result I've had several days where I've been in the office by myself. I have passed these days by harkening back to my old days and putting on the radio for a little while. It had been some time since I'd heard Mike Francesa, but Thursday was the first time that the Mets had a game on a day where I was in the office by myself. I didn't have a physical radio, but I did have a computer and an MLB.com subscription, so I was able to listen along with Howie and Josh while I worked.

I was, much like I did in the old days, listening with half an ear until about the 4th or 5th inning when I heard Michael Conforto batting and Howie say something like "And Conforto goes down!" and then, of course, my first thought was "Now What!?" Of course it wasn't good, and it looks as though Conforto has separated his shoulder and I'd assume this is the last we've seen of him for 2017. I assume. I'd like to hope otherwise. But doesn't it figure that the guy who's been one of the few legitimate bright spots for the Mets would go down doing something as benign as SWINGING A BAT? It's just indicative of the farce this season has become. It's no longer 2001 or 2013 where everyone is sluggish and the team never got going. This is turning into 2009 where its not enough that everyone gets hurt, but people are now getting hurt in ridiculous ways. I at least give the Mets management some degree of credit for throwing in the towel and trying to build forward instead of trying to kid us into thinking this season was salvageable, which it's not. But what is next year going to be? That's what I find worrisome because 2009 happened and you figured. oh, it'll be OK, the injured guys will come back and 2010 will be better! and instead 2010 stunk just as bad.

Sigh. After all that, who really gave a shit about the game? The Mets lost anyway.

o down doing something as benign as SWINGING A BAT? It's just indicative of the farce this season has become. It's no longer 2001 or 2013 where everyone is sluggish and the team never got going. This is turning into 2009 where its not enough that everyone gets hurt, but people are now getting hurt in ridiculous ways. I at least give the Mets management some degree of credit for throwing in the towel and trying to build forward instead of trying to kid us into thinking this season was salvageable, which it's not. But what is next year going to be? That's what I find worrisome because 2009 happened and you figured. oh, it'll be OK, the injured guys will come back and 2010 will be better! and instead 2010 stunk just as bad.

Sigh. After all that, who really gave a shit about the game? The Mets lost anyway.

Don't Feel Like It

Sometimes, the Mets play a game and you just don't feel like watching it. It's usually during a season like this that's become a total trainwreck and you end up starting Tommy Milone again because Steven Matz has come down with another season-ending injury and some warm body needs to toe the rubber. Milone, who was last seen literally getting bombed off the mound against the Anaheim Angels in May, returned and was not particularly better. By time I was even aware the game was going on I think it was 6-0 or at least it felt like 6-0.

The Mets right now are, on most nights, boring, which is even worse than being bad. You can only draw so much juice from Amed Rosario (who did Homer and triple), Dominic Smith and Michael Conforto because three guys do not a team make. There's other young guys around that are trying to distinguish themselves too, but when you mix in a useless stopgap veteran like Milone who's just going to bury the team before they get started, it sort of makes you forget that there's still some things worth paying attention to. Even in a blowout loss.

Mediocre Team Monday

I was back at Citi Field on Monday night for my 15th game of the season, but my first since it seems like the Mets had really thrown in the towel on the season. The Mets came into the game with a record of 54-68. 54-68 is one of those "benchmark" records for abject medoicrity, because that's the record the Mets had in 2001 before making a late charge that made their season look cosmetically better than it probably deserved to. While I don't see them running off a 28-12 finish, if there's ever a season where the Mets looked like a 54-68 team, this is it.

However, the Mets aren't drawing like a 54-68 team, as in spite of the fact that I was on a basically empty 7 train heading out to the game, there was still a reasonably healthy crowd for a Monday night against an Arizona Diamondbacks team that appeared to have shown up for the night's game while still in their pajamas. So you had all the fixings. An underachieving Mets team that looks like they've been sleeping through the season against a Diamondbacks team that literally looks like they're sleeping. And, unsurprisingly, I watched a 54-68 effort out of a 54-68 team that by the end of the evening sat at 54-69.

While the Mets collected plenty of hits against Taijuan Walker and a passel of relievers, they could manage none at moments where it really would have helped. Meanwhile, Robert Gsellman pitched admirably well and kept his baserunners to a minimum, but still found himself behind a run when J.D. Martinez singled home a run in the 4th inning. The Mets continued to get hits and strand runners until the 7th inning, when they loaded the bases with one out against Archie Bradley and his ferocious Relief Pitcher's beard. Yoenis Cespedes was up and finally picked up that key hit to drive home the tying run, and perhaps could have drove in the lead run were Asdrubal Cabrera a bit faster.

Having required 10 hits to score one run, the Mets then stopped hitting as both bullpens shot zeroes at each other through the 8th and again in the 9th. The game, in spite of being 1-1, was drifting and dragging along, well past 3 hours and to the point where I was running out of steam. My other half multiple times texted to see if I'd left yet. I hadn't, although by time the Mets went down in order against Jimmie Sherfy in the 9th (and, really, if there was a point in the game where you knew the Mets were screwed, it was when they couldn't manage a hit off of Jimmie Sherfy), I headed downstairs where I figured I'd watch for an inning and hope for a quick ending. Or maybe I figured that a quick ending was imminent when the Mets went to Erik Goeddel. Sometimes you have premonitions. Mediocre pitcher + Mediocre team = you get the picture. Goeddel played the part by walking the leadoff hitter, getting an out that advanced the runner, and then allowing a 2-run Home Run to A.J. Pollock, who himself has been perfectly mediocre.

In the 9th inning, I was sort of hoping that the Mets could get Michael Conforto to the plate because I have a fairly solid track record of him hitting Home Runs in games I've been to this season, but he didn't get to bat in the 9th. He did bat in the 10th, against Fernando Rodney, and he did hit a Home Run, but that only made the score 3-2, and there the score stayed and off into the night I went. A fitting end for a 54-68 kind of night.

Gets Late Early

I know last week I didn't see and barely followed the midweek afternoon game against the Giants and my conclusion was that it was just as well since the Mets spit up a lead and lost the game. I think the same could basically be said of yesterday afternoon's game in Arizona. The only difference being that as it was on the West Coast, or as West as Arizona can be as they float between time zones for reasons I am not meant to understand, the game started at the bizarre time of 3:40 and ended up dragging out long enough that it ended as I was getting home at around 7.

What did I miss? From the end result, another 5-4 Mets loss that took 11 innings to negotiate, I would assume not much. I've mentioned innumerable times that I follow, often halfheartedly, the game on MLB Gamecast so I knew that Michael Conforto hit an early Home Run—which seems to be an almost regular occurrence—and Matt Harvey summarily tried to hand it back rather quickly. I'm not quite certain whether this outing is going to be spun as a "building block" game for Harvey or whether we just have to temper our expectations for him that this is just going to be the norm and he's turned into another Marcum. I of course hope that it's the former but every time he seems to take a step forward, he short-circuits himself. He gave up a run in the 1st, a 2-run Home Run to Jake Lamb in the 3rd, and yet was in a position to win when he left in the 6th, because Juan Lagares hit a rare  Home Run in the 4th and spurred a rally.

But, Arizona tied the game against Robert Gsellman, who mysteriously appeared in relief when I was expecting to see him start back at home on Friday, and maybe that's a bit of a relief as well since I wasn't exactly relishing the thought of his mixed bag. And then I left work and as the game was tied I wasn't quite certain what to expect other than at some point I figured I'd get a final score buzz. Eventually, I did, and it was the eye-rolling result of F/11 ARZ 5 NYM 4. That was all I really needed to know, but the backstory of course was that Jerry Blevins and Addison Reed pitched well, and then as the game moved into extra innings Rafael Montero got the call and when Montero gets the call, well...you know. He was at least courteous enough to allow the walkoff Home Run to his first batter, Chris Herrmann, but it still took him 7 pitches to get there, so I guess he can't even blow the game right.

Ugh. Is there anything else that can be said? I thought the Mets might have been able to wash the stink off in Arizona but they've instead just managed to make it worse. At some point I'm going to have to stop kidding myself into thinking they'll snap out of it. Unless they actually snap out of it.

Tuesday Night Ennui

I know the final score of Tuesday night's game was 5-4, which means the Mets were very much in it to the end but sometimes, you have close games that really don't feel very close. This was one such game.

The Mets seem to have a habit lately of scoring a single run very early in the game and then just kind of standing around while the other team blows by them. This happened on Tuesday as the Mets went ahead in the 2nd, and then the Diamondbacks, resplendent in their toothpaste-colored jerseys, blew up for 4 runs in the 3rd off of Tommy Milone. I guess this shouldn't be of much surprise to anyone. There were a string of ringing hits and even a steal of Home by Paul Goldschmidt that resulted in the Keith Hernandez trademark apoplectic shit fit. You know, as opposed to the Mets fans trademark apoplectic shit fit that's been going on for most of the season.

I give Milone credit for, if nothing else, not folding his tent after the sky fell in on him in the 3rd. He managed to make it into the 6th before allowing a Home Run to Yasmani Tomas, which I can't really fault him for since Tomas appears to be the NL West's version of Ryan Howard and allowing a Home Run to him is basically a rite of passage.

By that point the game had sort of dissolved into nothingness, to the point where the highlight of the game was probably Ed Lynch visiting the SNY booth and waxing poetic with Keith Hernandez. I don't remember what inning it was, only that it happened and, well, my stance on Lynch has always been that for whatever he lacked as a Pitcher, he more than made up for in personality. Anyone who read Keith's first book knows that they were and continue to be good friends (Lynch being the infamous "itinerant ballplayer" that crashed on Keith's couch for the first month of the '85 season).

That was more interesting than the game itself! I know that Curtis Granderson hit a Home Run and later Rene Rivera, who mysteriously has turned into a world-beater over the past week, also hit a 2-run Home Run against Zack Greinke and that cut the score to 5-4, but you kind of had this feeling that the Mets weren't going to get anything further and surprise, surprise they didn't. The bullpen—tonight consisting of Paul Sewald, Fernando Salas and Jerry Blevins—didn't allow anything further, which was nice, but the Mets offense had already put away their bats for the night and off of hillbilly Archie Bradley and ancient Fernando Rodney the Mets did little more than strike out a bunch of times and lost to the Diamondbacks for the second night in a row and ran this current streak of misery to 6.

I'd like to think the Mets won't go 0-for-this road trip but I'm not confident in that feeling. I keep dropping these barbs about the Mets needing a little humiliation in order to get to the bottom of their problems, but really, such an instance shouldn't be necessary multiple times before June.

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.

That Familiar, Flummoxed Look

Jon Niese had started 177 games for the Mets between 2008 and 2015. Sometimes, he was quite good. Others, he was OK, if not great. Then, there were times when he was really bad. Something would go wrong and he'd just lose his shit and start throwing slop all over the place and get raked all over the yard. Then, he'd get pulled from the game and walk around the dugout yelling and pouting and moping. By 2015, this sort of Jon Niese outing had become so commonplace that everyone stopped listening to Niese, and so we'd have shots of him after getting his ass kicked again just sitting in the dugout screaming at nobody in particular. He'd have some slight amount of redemption pitching in relief in the Postseason, and as someone who did survive the Six Years of Met Wilderness that was kind of nice, but there really wasn't a place for him on the team going forward.

And now, mysteriously, that space has reappeared and he's back and starting games and nothing's changed. Niese is getting raked over the coals, the Mets are getting sunk and here he is screaming in the dugout again.

I guess it typifies the way this year has unraveled for the Mets that we're back to Jon Niese in the rotation because it wasn't supposed to happen this way. We were done with Niese. Now, we're not done with him. What we are done with, fortunately (SEGUE MASTER) are the Diamondbacks. And not soon enough. I know that the Mets can have a "thing" with a certain team during a season but this year's season series with the Diamondbacks has just been ridiculous. This is a team that's been a total bottom-feeder all season long. Somehow, they saw the Mets and it's like their switch flipped. They started stealing bases and banging doubles and just embarrassing the Mets. Then, they went to Boston and turned back into pumpkins. But when the Mets came to visit them in Arizona, same thing. At least the Mets won a game on Tuesday but Wednesday was just the coup de grace, as not only did the Diamondbacks beat up Niese, but they also beat up every reliever en route to a 13-5 humiliation that only ended up 13-5 because Rene Rivera hit a 3-run Home Run in the 9th inning. When it counted, the Mets did nothing. For the 6 games, Arizona I believe hit about .440 against the Mets, and slugged .874. They hit 41 Home Runs and stole 27 bases, while outscoring the Mets 66-10.

These are the sort of things that happen when your season has just gone off the rails. But I hope the Mets as a team remember this the next time they see the Diamondbacks and their cake frosting-colored jerseys. This really shouldn't sit well with anyone.

Unable To Finish

Monday night, I got home, took a rest, and got up just in time for the beginning of the game.
Tuesday night, I got home, took a rest, and got up just in time for the top of the 2nd inning.

Clearly, I'm slipping.

I was slipping pretty hard by time the 4th inning came around, and I'd finished making dinner. My other half and I then sat down to eat, but she started yammering about how she wanted to watch something else instead of the game. I can't say I blame her, given how lousy the Mets have been lately, but I would have preferred to watch the game as opposed to the alternative. But, I relented and let her have her way. At the time, the game was scoreless.

And, as such, when she'd finished watching her program, I put the game back on and saw that it was 4-1 Mets. Little did I know that I'd missed the real show, Noah Syndergaard smoking his 3rd Home Run of the season to stake the Mets to a rare lead. On the mound, Syndergaard was making it stand up, looking better than he had in weeks before he tired in the 6th and his defense betrayed him.

For Syndergaard, this is, perhaps, a bit of a corner turn, since he looked much fresher. He hasn't exactly been suffering for velocity and really the stuff looks OK, but that little extra something he had early in the season hasn't been there. We've talked about him dissolving into Leiteritis far too often, but it seems like he had it back, somewhat. After the Diamondbacks beat and kind of embarrassed him last Wednesday, he got a bit of revenge, holding the Diamondbacks down into the 6th. He probably could have made it through the 6th, but for a pair of errors by T.J. Rivera that not aided a 3-run rally but forced Syndergaard to waste more pitches until he was ultimately unable to finish the inning.

At that point, it being late and I still being tired (and with an early morning today) I shut the game off altogether. Whatever was going to happen would happen, and, well, if it was going to be bad, I didn't want to be around to see it. A 7-1 lead had shrunk to 7-4 and given the way the Mets have handled the Diamondbacks this season that didn't really sit comfortably with me.

But, as I rose this morning, I see that the Mets did, in fact, hang on to win the game 7-5, so that's something.

1-10 In The Shade

When the highlight of the game for the Mets is Bartolo Colon's first career Walk, well, it probably wasn't a very good game. The Mets essentially picked up right where they left off last week, laying an egg which immediately cooked on the broiling Arizona turf and once again losing to the miserable Diamondbacks, 10-6.

The Mets, being on the West Coast this week, kind of accidentally fell into my schedule. Of late, I've been coming home and if I don't knock out completely I come very close to it and therefore a large swath of the early innings of games have been lost to me. I'd blindly assumed that this would happen again; not so much because I forgot the Mets were playing in Arizona (who is sometimes on Mountain time and sometimes on Pacific time and because I'm not in Arizona I don't care), but because I'd incorrectly assumed the game started at 9, and not 9:30. So I got up to make dinner, assuming I'd be turning things on in the 2nd inning, and instead was greeted with a boisterous greeting from cheerful Gary Cohen and crotchety Keith Hernandez, who probably isn't the best choice to send to Arizona but then again, I'm not the travel director. Shots of Cactii gave way to the inside of Global Domination Bank One Chase Field, airplane hangar that it is, and the start of the game.

And that's about all anyone should want to remember here. Bartolo Colon didn't have it, he looked tired and sweaty and when he looks tired and sweaty that's never a good sign. He somehow gutted his way through 5 innings, giving up 7 runs and 22 extra base hits, most of them by Welington Castillo and Michael Bourn, and, really, the game was cooked before it started. Robbie Ray, who has absolutely no business torching the Mets like this, didn't stifle them quite as hard as he did last week, and even gained the ignominious honor of being the first pitcher to walk Bartolo, but he still kept them in check and by time the bats awoke, it was far too late for anything meaningful to happen.

And, as such, all we should remember from this one is that Bartolo Colon continues to do miraculous things on the Baseball field, even on nights when he pitches like a normal 43-year old.

Good Grief

I know that the Mets got their asses handed to them by an awful team for three consecutive days. I also know that for as much as we want to sugarcoat things, the 2016 season is probably in the toilet. With the Mets now caught up in a giant mess of teams and games in the standings, there really isn't much positive to say about what to expect over the final 6 or so weeks of the season. Terry Collins can throw one of his apoplectic shit fits, fans can call for his head (and the "BACKMAN BABY!!!" morons have crawled out of their caves once again—I thought we were done with these closeted Yankee fans) and, well, the rest of us more sensible types can go back to that same level of low-lying depression that seemed to infect us between 2009 and 2014.

What I really get concerned about is what the reaction here ends up being going forward. As I mentioned, I keep likening the 2016 Mets to the 2001 Mets, and really, that's what this season has unraveled into. But the larger issue is that the 2001 Mets begat the 2002 Mets, which were assembled mostly by several reactionary and ill-advised trades and signings that looked good on paper but never gelled, ultimately imploding upon itself in an embarrassing season that set the Mets back 3 years. It was 2005 before they sniffed .500 again and another year before they were a contender with teeth.

And that's just a primary example of how hard it's been, historically, for the Mets to sustain their own success. This is a franchise that has gone to the Postseason in back-to-back seasons once in 55 years. Every time the Mets find some form of greatness, for some reason the following year the air comes out of the sails, whether it's due to injuries, inconsistency, complacency or a lack of desire to improve. I don't know if the Mets, as composed on Opening Day, would have fallen into this pit just as much, but what I can say is that I know they wouldn't have gotten swept, and really embarrassed at home by teams like Arizona, or the Colorados, and they probably wouldn't have gone back to being 4-15 against Washington.

But is that just me trying to draw an excuse for all of this? The 2016 Mets pinned their hopes on several question marks, among them David Wright's ability to play out a full season, Lucas Duda's ability to find more offensive consistency and the continued health and strong performance of the starting pitching. These are three failures that the Mets have only partially been able to recover from, and only because even while injured, both Noah Syndergaard and Steven Matz can still pitch reasonably well. Everything else has just been a disaster, and it seems like it's come to a head here. It may be too late; the Mets seem to be well on their way to another 8-20 August death spiral, but what I'm worried about is that this is just the beginning of yet another descent into laughingstockdom.

At Least I Wasn't There

Tuesday's game stunk. I know, because I was there. But when the Mets play a game on Wednesday, and my takeaway is that at least I was at the game on Tuesday and not Wednesday, well, Wednesday's game must have been absolutely putrid.

And it was.

I've been to no less than 3 separate and distinct 13-inning games between the Mets and the Diamondbacks and two of the three have been detailed explicitly in the annals of this blog. The Mets won all 3 of those 13-inning affairs. Wednesday night's game did not go 13 innings. Perhaps if the Mets had been able to extend the game that long, things might have ended up better for them. Though, the way things have been going for the Mets, I'm not so sure of that. Regardless, the Mets lost, 3-2 in 12 innings and, really, the only person I can blame for this is Kelly Johnson. Because if Kelly Johnson hadn't gone and hit a Pinch-hit, 2-run Home Run off of nervous Rookie Closer Jake Barrett in the 9th inning to tie the game, the Mets would have lost 2-0 in 9 normal innings and instead we could just talk about how boring and horrible everything is.

But instead, Johnson tied the game and extended things for another hour or so so that the Mets could still lose the game and we're still talking about how boring and horrible everything is.

Bartolo Colon and company did their admirable best to try and keep the game somewhat respectable. Colon, who was sweatier than David Dinkins in his prime, allowed a run, which is as good as you can hope for from a 43-year old. Addison Reed allowed a run, and we'll forgive him for that because he's given up like 4 runs all season. Jeurys Familia threw 2 innings, and hairy innings at that, so you can forget seeing him on Thursday afternoon. Even Erik Goeddel and Jon Niese split a clean inning. Jerry Blevins allowed the winning Home Run to Oscar Hernandez, which is bad, but then again should Blevins really have been in that position in the first place? The Mets offense is totally devoid of respectability right now. They should be throttling the Diamondbacks. Robbie Ray, who is at best a future journeyman, no-hit the Mets into the 5th, shut out the Mets through 7, and looked a lot better than he deserved to look in general. Then again, the Mets made it easy for him, throwing out a lineup featuring Ty Kelly, or, 2016's version of Danny Muno, T.J. Rivera in his Major League debut, where he was clearly going 180mph, and for all I know they had Darrell Ceciliani and John Mayberry in the lineup too, because they did literally nothing for 8 innings, and then for the subsequent 3 innings after Johnson tied the game. In the 10th, Rivera picked up his first Major League hit to start the inning, and then Travis d'Arnaud followed in a clear bunt situation, but he popped up the bunt, didn't advance the runner, and Rivera remained glued to 1st. That play right there seemed to typify the entire night for the Mets so I can't blame everyone for picking on it.

Meanwhile, I could focus on everything else that went wrong, like the D'Backs stealing another 5 bases off a totally befuddled d'Arnaud, but who has the energy? There's another game in 12 hours. Maybe the Mets will get it right. I'm not optimistic.

Blue Frosted

The Mets season has reached a bit of a dangerous crossroads. It's pretty evident that the upcoming week, where they'll play the two worst teams in the NL West, is going to say a lot about where this season is going.

If tonight was any indication, the 2016 Mets are not going very far.

It was my 15th game of the season at Citi Field and, really, most of them haven't been very good. I'd sat at 6-8 through the first 14 games and after a number of years in a row where I'd placed out .500 or better, it seems like this season is just a total stinker.

Tonight seemed to epitomize everything that was terrible about the Mets. Ostensibly, the game was a carbon copy of one I attended on another Tuesday night, back in May against the White Sox. Steven Matz started the game, had an early struggle, threw too many pitches early, but in the end left the game with an opportunity to win. The Diamondbacks, a team that's probably been even more disappointing than the Mets, came in and clearly they have to give partial credit to their advance scouts, because they basically robbed the Mets blind, stealing 5 bases and essentially embarrassing Travis d'Arnaud completely. Still, in spite of the fact that there were men on base, and runners running and a Catcher that was totally befuddled by everything going on around him, Matz buckled down after a 30-pitch 1st inning, settled down and ended up with 9 strikeouts in 6 innings. Still, a pair of Home Runs, one to Brandon Drury in the 2nd, and one to Paul Goldschmidt in the 6th (basically a pop fly to Right Field that landed in the seats because that's what Goldschmidt does) resulted in a 2-1 deficit for Matz, because aside from a 1st inning run off of Zack Greinke, the Mets offense was its usual, inept self.

Then, Neil Walker hit a 2-run Home Run in the bottom of the 6th and everything was great.

Then, Hansel Robles came in in the top of the 7th and took a giant dump on the mound.

Usually, you can tell when Robles doesn't have it right away, because he'll have missed horribly with his first couple of pitches, and then just grooves one. This time, he grooved one to Chris Owings that got hit for a leadoff double. Then, he walked Phil Gosselin. Then, they pulled off a double steal where d'Arnaud was caught with his pants down so badly he had no clue where to throw the ball. And at that point, you could just take a bite out of the inning. Sure, Robles struck out Jean Segura, but then Michael Bourn tripled to drive home both runs and let the air out of the building so fast that you could hear Bourn clapping and whooping in the Upper Deck. And then, you know, Goldschmidt singled to drive in Bourn, just to rub it in. Then, Collins removed Robles.

The rest of the game was academic. The Diamondbacks, who for some reason are wearing these terrible all slate-grey uniforms with piping that appears to be Cake Icing blue, looked fast and loose and confident, and even their rookie closer Jake Barrett, who appears to be in the Heath Bell mold, felt unhittable. But that's because the Mets just don't hit. I don't think the Diamondbacks are at all of a good team and they struck out 13 times for the game, but the Mets look worse. It's not just me. If they can't beat a team that's dressed like a birthday cake, well...you can draw your own conclusion.

"He Did WHAT!?"

What happened yesterday at Citi Field is truly a testament to just how random Baseball can be sometimes.

Kirk Nieuwenhuis has, at best, been a marginal player for the Mets. He arrived a game into the 2012 season and had some beginner's luck, and a really hot first few weeks kind of endeared him to the fans for a bit longer than it should have. Once the book on him got around the league, Nieuwenhuis regressed, ended up back in the minors by June, and by July was out for the season with a foot injury. Since then, Nieuwenhuis hasn't improved. He had a brief, shining moment in 2013 when he caused the downfall of Western Civilization, but otherwise, he's basically been one of those 4-A guys that the Mets keep calling up whenever they needed a warm body. By early this season, with no particular sign that he would ever prove to be more than this—and with his batting average below .100—the Mets finally cut bait, waiving him and eventually trading him clear across the country to the Anaheim Angels for cash considerations. The Mets couldn't even get a player for him.

Except that Nieuwenhuis proved himself to be equally inept in Anaheim, so once it became apparent that a change of scenery was not the answer, Anaheim cut bait on him as well. Not surprisingly, the Mets scooped him back up, because Nieuwenhuis clearly just seems to be one of those players that would only have a Major League job with the Mets (I've said the same of other players, like Mike Baxter, except that Baxter caught on with the Cubs). I figured after this, Nieuwenhuis was just going to be organizational depth, but a few weeks ago, here he was again; because the revolving Mets bench of Muno, Ceciliani, Mayberry, Monell, Curly, Larry and Shemp weren't hacking it, well, why not give Ol' Kirk another crack. He couldn't be much worse, could he?

Coming in to Sunday afternoon's game, Nieuwenhuis had all of 7 hits for the season. Somehow, 5 of them were doubles, but still. Even for a bench player, that's comically bad when you're at the All Star Break.

So, then, you'll agree that the Beauty of Baseball is that you never find the Moment, the Moment always seems to find you. I talked about this last year during the Postseason, but perhaps nothing defines this more than what happened on Sunday, when Kirk Nieuwenhuis, who was deemed worthless by the Mets, and even moreso by the Angels to the point where they ostensibly paid the Mets to take him back, hit 3 Home Runs against the Arizona Diamondbacks. It happened. I wasn't present to see it, but I certainly watched it on TV.

Not only did Kirk Nieuwenhuis hit 3 Home Runs in a game, he put his name in the Mets Record Books by becoming the first Met to hit 3 Home Runs in a Home Game.

Think about this for a second. The list of Mets who have hit 3 Home Runs in a game includes, for the most part, guys you would expect it from. Carlos Beltran. Gary Carter. Dave Kingman. Darryl Strawberry. Ike Davis. Edgardo Alfonzo. Not surprising names. Even Jose Reyes isn't surprising, because he always thought he was a Home Run hitter. I don't know much about Jim Hickman but he probably seems as likely a candidate as any. Claudell Washington certainly had some pop, too. Now, not only is Kirk Nieuwenhuis on this list, but he was the first to do it in a Mets Home Game! Everyone else did it on the road. The Mets' tradition of pitcher's parks really prevented this from ever happening, except now it's happened, and it happened to someone who's probably on the short list of "Guys least likely to hit 3 Home Runs in a game."

But that's Baseball. Sometimes, things happen that don't make logical sense. I guess in a season where, to this point, not much that the Mets have done has made logical sense, it's a fitting way to finish things out before we disperse for the All Star Break.

One-Man Show

Matt Harvey, for the first half of this season, has pitched for the most part like a guy coming back from major elbow surgery. That's not really any kind of news. There's days where he's looked great, there's days where he's looked sweaty and uncomfortable, and days where he's been somewhere in between. Not great, not awful, but not anything particularly special. For someone who's set a rather lofty bar for himself where he expects to dominate every time out, and where everyone watching him expects him to dominate every time out, this can appear somewhat frustrating. But, this is how it's going to be this season. We just have to accept it. Or, more appropriately, he just has to accept it.

Harvey finished his first half with one of his better outings on Saturday; a 7-inning effort against Arizona where he found himself in a quick 2-run hole but got angry, got tough and fought back. It wasn't his cleanest effort, as he gave up 5 hits and 4 walks, but he did register 9 strikeouts, most of which was accomplished as he was breathing fire. This seemed to carry over to his plate appearances, as he also stole the show with his first career Home Run off of Patrick Corbin in the 5th inning, a 2-run shot that put the Mets on top for good as they registered their second consecutive 4-2 win over Arizona.

Usually, when a pitcher pitches well and that's the story of the game, there's not much more to write that could be construed as really interesting and insightful beyond "[the pitcher] pitched well and the [team] won the game." Enough games over the course of a 162-game schedule could be described as such that it makes you wonder how columnists and bloggers can fill their shingle for 6 months. But we always find ways. On a day like this, everyone only wants to talk about Matt Harvey's hitting and how the Mets pitchers, who for so long have been a mostly useless unit, are now a strength. Harvey's Home Run was the second by a Mets pitcher this season, following Syndergaard's Home Run way back in May.

Think about this. Syndergaard and Harvey each have Home Runs. deGrom and Matz have also proven themselves difficult outs. Even Jon Niese can knock a single when he needs to. Of course, nobody has turned hitting into an Art Form quite the way Bartolo Colon has, but that's another story entirely. But after years of doing nothing, and starting the season 0-for-64 last year, these Met pitchers are now not to be slept on when they come to bat.

A Home Run from a Mets Pitcher used to be a rare and celebrated occurrence. Harvey's yesterday was but the 50th in team history, and prior to this season, Home Runs had come from Jeremy Hefner in 2012, Johan Santana in 2010, and before that John Maine way back in 2007. I've seen my share of Mets Pitcher Home Runs, in addition to being present for Hefner's and Santana's shots, I also have seen Dwight Gooden, Armando Reynoso and Mark Clark hit it out. I also once saw Dontrelle Willis hit a Grand Slam off Jose Lima in a scene I'd rather forget. But usually when this happens, there's this rather unique roar that comes from the crowd, less a emphatic roar and more of a "Holy Shit!" kind of scream. You don't see Pitchers do things like this very often, but now that Mets pitchers have registered multiple Home Runs in a season for the first time since 1997, maybe this might become a bit more of a regular occurrence. I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for them to sock one out, but it might start happening more often than you'd think.

Smackdowndergaard

I wasn't technically supposed to be at Citi Field on tonight. I only say that because it wasn't one of the games on my plan. But through the magic of the plan holder benefits and some rearranged schedules, here I was, for my 13th (or perhaps 14th) game of the season, and the 3rd time in my last 5 games that Noah Syndergaard was on the mound for the Mets, which perhaps qualifies him as my Pitcher du Jour for 2015.

I was uncharacteristically early for this game, so much so that I miscalculated when the gates to Citi Field actually open and somehow ended up stuck waiting outside the stadium. It seems that there are plenty of people that will show up at 4-4:30pm and wait. I was under the impression that the gates opened at 4:40, but it seems this has been changed to 5:10. I'm not sure why. But people do wait, probably because there's just nothing else to do out there, except watch the security guys have a pow-wow, get their metal wands and then at 5:10, their leader yells "OPEN UP!" and everyone springs into action. I got my Free Shirt Friday shirt, I got a Dunkin' Donuts card (which you can surprisingly get a decent return for on the open market), and an opportunity to actually walk around the parts of Citi Field I don't often get to visit since I'm usually making a mad dash to get to my seat before 1st pitch.

Syndergaard has gotten better and better each time I've seen him, which makes sense because he's gotten better and better each time out. At first, he'd been markedly better at home, but his last start, in Los Angeles was great, that on the heels of an outstanding game against Cincinnati (the game I was supposed to be at, but wasn't). This followed a game in Atlanta when he wasn't so hot and got pulled early. Then, the two games I attended, one of which came against Toronto, where he was excellent, but threw too many pitches too early in the game and only lasted 6 innings, and, of course, the night where he ended up on the wrong side of History. He's gotten better as he's gone along; this culminated in his outing tonight, in which he took a very good Diamondbacks lineup and basically crumpled them up like he'd stepped on a beer can and stuck it in his back pocket.

This was the kind of game that really makes you excited about the future of the Mets, at least as far as the pitching is concerned. Syndergaard is obviously one of the guys that the Mets are planning on hanging their hats on going forward, so you want to see how he handles himself when the Big Boys come to town, and although Arizona's record might not indicate as such, their lineup tonight featured 3 or 4 guys hitting over .300, among them hulking slugger Paul Goldschmidt, who's among the league leaders in HR, RBI and eyebrows. But Syndergaard simply overpowered Goldschmidt, striking him out twice and generally making him look silly. Noah treated the rest of the Arizona lineup with similar regard. A.J. Pollock reached him for a leadoff double, stole second and scored on a sac fly in the 1st inning. From there, Syndergaard put on his Matt Harvey pants, got angry and spent the rest of the night lighting the D'Backs on fire to the tune of 4 hits, 2 walks and 13 strikeouts over an 8-inning, 116-pitch effort to finish out his first half with panache.

The Mets bats, who bear but an honorable mention when measured against Syndergaard, gave him the support he needed for once. After breaking their 9-game homerless streak on Wednesday in San Francisco, the Mets continued their longball resurgence by hitting 2 in the 1st inning off Chase Anderson. Lucas Duda, who's gotten himself into some bad habits over the last month, didn't swing at a pair of bad pitches with 2 men on base, got himself into a 2-0 count, and then hit the 2-0 pitch clear to the Apple for his first Home Run in close to a month, giving the Mets a 3-1 lead. Michael Cuddyer followed by working himself into a similar count before basically one-arming a pitch just over the Left Field wall for his first Home Run in about as long. This, of course, upped my personal Home Run total for the season from 3 to 5 and also represented all the scoring the Mets would do on the night. This a far cry from most nights, when the Mets were hard pressed to score 1 or 2 runs, but when you give these pitchers 4 runs to work with, usually they can run with it. Syndergaard got his 4 runs early, was able to settle down and basically took the game from there.

Syndergaard's strength, perhaps, is that he seems to get better as the game progresses. After allowing Pollock's double and a Yasmany Tomas single in the 1st, Syndergaard then allowed Arizona 2 hits for the following 7 innings, a 3rd inning double to Peralta and a 5th inning single by Anderson, but that was about it. After the 5th, though his pitch count was up because he again threw too many pitches in the 1st inning, Syndergaard basically looked like he was toying with the D'back hitters. They weren't catching up with his fastball, and then he would lull them to sleep with his curve and changeup. In the 6th inning, Goldschmidt led off by watching a curve, fouling off a pitch, taking a slider off the plate, and then was completely frozen when Syndergaard zipped a fastball by him for strike 3. The following two batters met similar fates, giving him 10 strikeouts on the night.

In the 7th, Syndergaard struck out two more, giving him a career high 12 strikeouts and earning him a standing ovation as he came off the mound. Certainly, with Mejia and Parnell warming up, he was done, particularly after he'd gone over the magic 100-pitch number. But, then, he's got a week to rest with the All Star Game coming up, and this 6-man rotation seems designed to squeeze an extra inning out of these guys. So, back he came for the 8th, as I started thinking about high-strikeout games I'd attended. I couldn't quite figure out what my best was (and, of course, I had to consult UltimateMets.com for assistance), only that I knew I'd seen Dwight Gooden strike out 14 once, and I know I saw Randy Johnson strike out 13 at one point. The answer was that Gooden does hold my personal best with 14 back in 1991. I did see Randy Johnson K 13 in 2000, in the same game that Joe McEwing raked him all over Shea Stadium. After that, there was Matt Harvey's imperfect game in 2013, when he struck out 12, and then a quartet of 11-K games, one of which was authored by Syndergaard himself.

Syndergaard cruised through the 8th with little drama, save for a 1-out walk that went nowhere, and picked up his 13th strikeout in the process, putting him tied with Johnson for #2 on my strikeout list, and of course providing his own bridge to Jeurys Familia. Familia was reached for one run, if only because Tomas squeaked out an ill-advised triple and scored on a Welington Castillo single, but that was it for Arizona, and the Mets were able to close out a 4-2 victory.

This Just In...

...Jacob deGrom is good. Did I say that before, because it's true. But in order to find that out, the Mets needed to slog their way through the weekend to get to his turn in the rotation.

The Mets usually find a good deal of success when the visit Arizona, however this weekend appeared headed down a rather miserable path. Though they won on Thursday night, when Matt Harvey got pissed off and inspired his teammates to fight back, the subsequent starting pitchers failed to provide similar impetus. Jon Niese took the mound on Friday night, and, let's face it, Jon Niese hasn't been inspiring anybody to do anything except track the latest outing by Steven Matz in AAA ball. Niese took the loss, which isn't anything new, in an effort where he allowed 3 runs and 6 hits with 8 strikeouts over 6 innings, and somehow this outing was deemed a success. That's a good indicator of how badly things have been going for Niese lately. All confidence in him has been abandoned, which is kind of sad because we all know he can do so much better.

Niese would have been wise this weekend to take a look in the opposing dugout, because he'd see a left-handed pitcher with a similarly high level of talent, and a very similar lack of mental ability, and perhaps he might learn the cautionary tale. Particularly since that left-handed pitcher used to be his teammate, your friend and mine, Oliver Perez. Amazingly, after all the headache Ollie caused the Mets and the general embarrassment he caused himself, someone was still willing to give him a job because he's left-handed and has some life in his arm, even though at this point he's a total caricature on the mound. Nobody could wean him out of the weird, bad habits he'd develop, so at this point it was determined the safest place for him was to come out of the bullpen and face left-handed hitters and hope for the best. And if Jon Niese doesn't get his act together, a similar fate will likely befall him.

Saturday, Bartolo Colon was handed a similar fate, though not because he's an idiot like Niese. Colon just fell victim to some bad luck, in the form of his offense not scoring any runs for him (surprise, surprise), and an errant pitch to Welington Castillo that sunk him. Colon is a caricature in and of himself, probably because he not only continues to succeed on the mound, but also because he continues to surprisingly get hits, as he pinged out his 4th of the season. Nonetheless, this and 9 other Mets hits were not enough to offset his one bad pitch, and thus the Mets lost a San Diego Special, 2-1.

So, it came down to Sunday, with Jacob deGrom on the mound to try to salvage the series and, for that matter, the road trip. deGrom found himself helped out early by Curtis Granderson, not helped out, and then helped out by Eric Campbell, and helped out some more by Wilmer Flores, but mostly he did the job himself. After Campbell's miserable error opened the door for Arizona in the 1st, deGrom settled down and delivered a pitching performance about as crucial as Harvey's was three days prior. His 7 inning effort was enough to put the Mets in position to win the series finale 6-3 and save the team from a completely disastrous 2-5 road trip, instead bringing the team back home with a partially passable 3-4 road trip. Actually, 3-4 isn't terrible considering they were on the West Coast, where they play games in the middle of the night and generally things just tend to go haywire for them. To put things in an even better perspective, the Mets come home from the West Coast in 1st place, if you can believe it, because for as much as the Mets have scuffled, Washington can't get out of their own way either.

For a season where they've had to battle a 2009-level number of injuries to key players, the fact that they've managed to keep themselves near the top of the standings to this point is a bit of a moral victory. But, then, how long can they keep this up...and when the hell will some of these injured players start to come back?

Preceeding Reputation

I have this general impression of Matt Harvey. I've never met the man personally, but just based on the way he carries himself. I base this on the way he speaks about his craft and his desire to do well, not just for himself, but for his team at large. The impression I have is that Matt Harvey, on the days he's pitching, takes the mound as though he'd just slept on a bed of nails. And the only thing that will soothe his inner savage is by simply obliterating his opponent. Remember, this is a pitcher who will throw 7 innings, allow 2 runs, 5 hits, no walks and strike out 10 and say he didn't have a good game. So you can imagine that after his effort last Friday, in which he threw 8 innings, threw one bad pitch to Meat Loaf and ended up with a loss, he must have been absolutely steaming.

Cut to last night in Arizona, the setting in which he forcibly interjected himself onto the Major League landscape like a freight train three years ago. The Mets have sort of been muddling along. They get great pitching most nights, but win infrequently due to a general scarcity of offense. And Matt Harvey gives up a second inning Home Run to Jarrod Saltalamacchia.

Saltalamacchia apparently caught Harvey at the wrong moment. Or maybe he just snapped. Whatever the reason, Harvey pitched the rest of the night with smoke coming out of his ears.

From that point forward, Harvey allowed little more to the Diamondbacks, stopping them cold while we waited to see if the Mets offense could generate something against Robbie Ray. They got hits, but no runs. Finally, Ray departed after the 5th in favor of Dominic Leone, and finally, the Mets managed to break through and get Harvey a lead, thanks mostly to a long double by Kevin Plawecki, a rally-extending hit from Harvey himself, and a Ruben Tejada Sac Fly.

Harvey did allow a Home Run to Paul Goldschmidt, but that's no great shakes, because Goldschmidt hits Home Runs off of everyone. By that point, Harvey had done what was necessary on his end to get the Mets a lead. He gritted his way through 7 innings of work, and then the Mets, in a rare late-inning explosion, put the game away, thanks primarily to the efforts of John Mayberry Jr., whose 4 hits easily represented his best game since joining the Mets, and whose 9th inning Home Run was the icing on this much-needed 6-2 victory.

So, now that the dust has settled, we can get to the real argument. Harvey, after the game, said that the Saltalamacchia Home Run got him pitching angry. I've been virtually glued to every start Matt Harvey has made in the Major Leagues (by hook or by crook) and from all I can gather, Harvey almost always pitches angry. It begs the question: Did Harvey need to give up that Home Run in order to get angry? Had he been letting his guard down? Or had he simply had enough of giving up Home Runs to Marlins, Marlins castoffs and Chase Utley? He gave up a Home Run to Utley earlier this season and 4 innings later drilled him square in the numbers. Pretty sure that's a Bob Gibson move, and Gibson used to drink a cocktail of horseradish and white vinegar before every game, so he was already punchy. The game is a bit more genteel now, so Harvey isn't likely to go around decking batters, but then again it might teach these hitters to not dig in too hard against him.

Point is, I don't think this is the first time Harvey's pitched angry. It may be the first time he's admitted it, but it's far from the first time this has happened.

Flip Twice

The single-admission Doubleheader, for as pure and innocent as it may be, is still a long day of Baseball, and yesterday's at Citi Field was definitely a long day of Baseball, even if it wasn't exactly a stimulating pair of games. The Mets lost one low-scoring game by virtue of poor defense and the re-emergence of the Double Play Brigade, and won the nightcap by virtue, I suppose, of being less tired than the Diamondbacks, after essentially playing 3 games in a 1-day span.

The Opening game on Sunday came on the heels of an eminently forgettable game on Saturday (that I didn't even see) and Friday night's rainout that necessitated the Doubleheader, and featured the Mets having one of those games in which the only thing they managed to do well was hit into Double Plays. The Mets hit into 5 Double Plays in the first game, which is really impressive because in the bigger picture, the Mets had a double play in more than half the innings in which they came to bat. This did not serve to benefit Rafael Montero at all, because after giving up a 1st inning Home Run to Chris Owings, Montero was brilliant for the remainder of his 7 innings. It's only fortunate, I suppose, that the Mets managed to scratch across a run for him in the second inning, so instead of leaving in line to lose, he left a tie game, but that was mere scant consolation. The Mets couldn't hit Bronson Arroyo, which isn't anything new, and old buddy Oliver Perez came out of the bullpen much to the chagrin of those in attendance and threw a scoreless inning of his own. Only in the 9th did the Diamondbacks break through by virtue of, you guessed it, one of Daniel Murphy's periodic spastic fits, where he yakked on a throw from David Wright on what would have been an inning-ending Fielder's Choice and allowed the lead run to score. The Mets offered little in response and ended up with a 2-1 loss that drove most of the audience to the exits.

Fortunately, the Mets won the second game 4-2 and avoided being swept by the lowly Diamondbacks. Unfortunately, I had to go out and missed the game, but I hear Bobby Abreu and Ruben Tejada did good things and Daisuke Matsuzaka continued to pitch well in a spot-starting role. The length of this recap befitting the second game of this particular Doubleheader, because it just felt like the kind of game that nobody was around to watch. Sort of like the second game on this particular day, a generation ago it seems.

So, the Mets can go from hosting one former club headache whom nobody liked much in Oliver Perez to hosting a former club headache whom everybody liked when Ike Davis and the Pirates come to town. I'd like to think the crowd will give Ike a much more cheerful welcome back than they did to Perez. Ike deserves at least that much.

This, by the way, is the 1,000th post here, innocuous as it may seem. Thanks to everyone for reading over the past 7 years, and here's looking forward to the next thousand!

Can We Stay Here?

Maybe the Mets should just stay in Arizona.

It was a quick turnaround, after flipping the mostly lifeless D'Backs and inflicting a rare beating on usual Met-Nemesis Bronson Arroyo on Tuesday night, the Mets came out on Wednesday afternoon and won again behind Dillon Gee to sweep Arizona, go over .500 for the first time this season and finish what looked like a hellacious road trip with a 6-3 record.

It helps that, as I mentioned yesterday, the Mets were going up against a pitching staff that basically had its guts cut out before the season started and a team that just generally looked more and more befuddled as each game drew on. After letting up a single run in the 8th inning on Monday night, Met pitchers allowed the D'Backs offense nothing until Jose Valverde served up a pair of Home Runs in the 9th inning this afternoon, a fine accomplishment in its own right, but one made somewhat easier by the fact that the Met offense scored plenty of runs for the pitchers to work with.

Tuesday night, with the entire roster clad in the symbolic 42 jersey in honor of Jackie Robinson (but, of course, with every bit of respect to Mr. Robinson, I still can't look past a Mets player wearing 42 and not think of Butch Huskey—which I suppose is OK considering Huskey wore 42 in deference to Robinson), the Mets cruised. Jenrry Mejia basically got to coast through his outing after the Mets ran out to a 9-0 lead after 4 innings. Things started with Eric Young, Jr. reaching base to start the game, which kicked off a sequence in which the Mets jumped on Arroyo with a ferocity, mostly swinging at first pitch fastballs and ringing hits all over the ballpark. This generally isn't how the Mets have fared against Arroyo, but on this night, the hits kept falling, 12 in all. Young had 3 of those hits, and 3 more were had by, of all people, Kirk Nieuwenhuis. Nieuwenhuis had basically become a forgotten man in the Mets system. He was shoved out of consideration by flashier or more consistent players and left to languish in the Minor Leagues after barely batting his weight last season (his only noteworthy moment for 2013 being when he caused the downfall of Western Civilization). But after the Outfield Massacre on Monday night, it was Nieuwenhuis, and not the ancient Bobby Abreu, who got the call, and given the opportunity, Nieuwenhuis took it and ran with it, driving home a run with a 1st inning hit and following up with a 4th inning Home Run that keyed a 6-run rally, sent Arroyo to the showers, Kirk Gibson to the latrine and the game mostly to bed. Mejia left after 5 innings with a blister issue (fairly benign as compared to Monday's drama) and Gonalez Germen played the Carlos Torres role from there, closing out the game with relative ease.

Wednesday, Dillon Gee did most of the heavy lifting, throwing shutout ball for 7 innings and departing well before he could get himself into any particular trouble. By that point, the Mets had scraped out three of their five runs for the game, the first coming courtesy Anthony Recker's second Home Run of the road trip in the 2nd inning. Recker, who continues to play better than a backup Catcher, joined Lucas Duda as the only Met players with more than 1 Home Run. This, combined with his 13th inning lightning over the weekend and the fact that most of his Home Runs have come in similar key circumstances have led to some talk that maybe he ought to get some more playing time, but let's not get ahead of ourselves. Anthony Recker's a great backup catcher, but give him 400 At Bats and he'll look like Omar Quintanilla. Nonetheless, he got the Mets started and chipped in with another rally-extending hit later on in the afternoon, and the Mets put the game away in the 9th when the D'Backs decided they'd had enough of trying to field the ball. Jose Valverde came in after not appearing since his Saturday night debacle and did his best to make things unnecessarily hairy, but the best he could do in that endeavor was to turn a 5-0 game into a 5-2 game.

So, now the Mets return home and have the high pleasure of getting to play America's Sweethearts, the Braves and the Cardinals, before Miami comes in, and they haven't exactly been a picnic for the Mets either. Last season, the Mets had this bizarre thing about winning on the road and looking stupid at home. I really hope this season doesn't hold more of the same. Especially since I have tickets to 4 games on this 10-game homestand.