Sometimes Sunny in Cleveland

So, OK. One pitcher bad, everyone complains, next pitcher good, everyone's happy again.

After getting his ass lit on fire on Monday, Steven Matz came back on Sunday in Cleveland and basically did the exact opposite. Being staked to a 3-run lead before he hit the mound I'm sure helped, but mostly Matz did the job himself, striking out 9 over 7 shutout innings as the Mets left Cleveland victorious, 6-0.

It was one of those painfully sunny days in Cleveland, the sort of sunshine that might be reserved for a Sunday in Atlanta. But here it was in Cleveland in April, and I can tell you that although it's not often Sunny in Cleveland, when it does get sunny, it gets really sunny. My lone experience at Jacobs Field was on a sunny day and I can tell you I basically cooked out there down the 1st base line, that's how glaringly bright it can get. Though the stadium is situated in downtown Cleveland, there's no real tall buildings around to speak of and I guess the field is actually built below ground level, so the top tiers of the seating bowl aren't quite as high as, say, Citi Field, and so when the sun is out, that can create some tough conditions for an Outfielder.

That being said, I'm merely stating this as fact, I'm not really coming to the defense of Rajai Davis. Davis, of course had a rather embarrassing 2nd inning meltdown that led to 3 Met runs and put the game essentially out of reach. Corey Kluber had already dug himself a hole in the 1st inning thanks to Michael Conforto, who has risen to the occasion of being the #3 hitter rather nicely, and Lucas Duda, who drove home the first 3 runs. But it was that second inning that really took the cake, because with 2 out and nobody on, Curtis Granderson hit a drive out to left-center that appeared catchable. Slightly difficult, but catchable, and when Davis went back toward the wall, it seemed like he had it lined up until he didn't and the ball landed not particularly close to him. Granderson being Granderson ended up on 3rd Base. The Mets capitalized on this immediately as Asdrubal Cabrera laid down a beauty of a bunt and caught everyone napping, particularly Kluber, who fielded the ball and hurled it into Right Field for an error. Conforto did what seems to be the norm for him and smoked another double down the right field line, and then Yoenis Cespedes capped the inning by hitting a routine fly ball to Center, and right off the bat you could see it was trouble because Davis looked just as uncomfortable as he did on Granderson's fly. This time, Davis crumpled completely before the ball landed not especially close to him as Conforto scored.

Mercifully, that was the end of Davis' sun escapades and the scoring for the game. Regardless, the damage was done and in particular I'm mystified as to how an Outfielder can have so much trouble with the sun in his home ballpark. The Mets, on the other hand, looked rather comfortable all day, probably because Matz had the Indians on a sleeperhold through his 7 innings of work, looking rather in rhythm in spite of Keith Hernandez yelling about him tipping his pitches. Tipping your pitches isn't great, but sometimes you're in such a good groove that you could let the batter know what pitch is coming and they still won't hit it (I believe Sandy Koufax made his living that way).

So the Mets are now done with American League parks until August, and can now worry about taking care of teams in their own division. They're hitting, the pitching is rounding into form, now keep it going.

An Untenable Situation

For as much as I wanted to deny it, I had a really bad feeling about the Mets opening their season in Kansas City. It was bad enough that the Royals wiped the Mets out last October, but now they'd be having their coronation party right in the Mets faces, and then going out with their crowd of kazoo-blowing fans and throwing the same looks at the Mets. It seemed an untenable situation. The Royals predictably made the Mets stand around for an hour while they patted themselves on the back (I'm sure what I heard about them showing a consolation video for the Mets was little more than a token gesture) and damned if it took less than an inning for that Royals Mojo to rear its ugly head once again.

The World Series started with Matt Harvey on the mound and Yoenis Cespedes botching a fly ball leading to an early Kansas City run. The 2016 season started the same way. Harvey got Mike Moustakas to hit an eminently playable line drive to left with 1 out that clanked off of Cespedes' glove for an error. 3 batters later, Moustakas had scored and thus started a game that may as well have been Game 6 of last year's World Series. The majority of the game followed suit. The Royals created breaks, got close calls, made solid contact and ultimately knocked Harvey from the game in the 6th inning, while the Mets could make no breaks, advance no runners, and didn't make much of a peep against Edinson Volquez.

This wasn't a pretty outing for Harvey, and his final line would indicate that, but I can't say I thought he pitched badly by any stretch. But if anyone needed to be reminded—and I don't think any Mets fan actually needed to be reminded—about just why the Royals are the defending World Series Champions, they went out and did it. In a game where, against basically any other team, Harvey likely would have been pitching shutout ball or 1-run ball and cruising through 6 innings, the Royals just singled him to death, taking extra bases, forcing the issue, you know, the same annoying stuff we had to live through last year, and slowly that 1-0 deficit turned into a 4-0 deficit and the game seemed pretty much nuked. But, as I've recently mentioned, and of course as the media will dictate, you're remembered by the final result, and, well, Harvey lost. So that's the endgame.

Offensively, there wasn't much to say about the Mets. They couldn't take advantage of the limited opportunities they had against Volquez, and until they managed to rally against Joakim Soria in the 8th inning it seemed pretty certain that they wouldn't push anything across. But they did have a spirited rally in that 8th, as Soria lost the plate and the Mets finally managed to catch a couple of breaks when flair hits by Lucas Duda and Michael Conforto landed safely, and suddenly that 4-0 deficit became 4-3...but they got no closer. Wade Davis looked ripe for the taking in the 9th inning, and certainly the Mets had the opportunity to tie the game after a great AB by Travis d'Arnaud and some clutch hitting from Curtis Granderson, but David Wright struck out, and Yoenis Cespedes struck out and that was the end of that.

I did like what I saw from Conforto, in particular, and also from Granderson and Duda, who put up some nice ABs and Conforto ended up finding himself on base every time he came up, something that might be lost in the overall effort. But it was overshadowed by Cespedes, who whiffed in the field and whiffed at the plate, and by David Wright, whose 9th inning strikeout seemed almost predictable. For as much as I hate to say it, Wright batting 2nd in this lineup might end up becoming a liability before all is said and done. He didn't get the necessary game action in Spring Training and it showed, as Davis made him look silly on 3 pitches and the only way he could have looked sillier would have been if Davis had thrown a slider 10 feet off the plate so David could have flailed away at it.

So, not the world's most encouraging start for the Mets, but again, the Mets aren't going to play the Royals 162 times this year, and they also don't have to play any more games in the home stadium of the defending World Series Champions anymore after Tuesday. It's easy to lose perspective because it's one game and because the Mets looked like a bunch of idiots on National TV (once again), but again, consider all the circumstances surrounding the game before jumping to conclusions. It almost seemed predestined that the breaks weren't going to go the Mets way on this night. They'll have plenty of days where they'll get the breaks they need.

Deeper South

It seems that no matter what state the Barves might be in, the Mets still have a hard time going into Atlanta and winning a game.

Despite the fact that the Braves basically waited half the offseason (and signed Nick Markakis) to decide that they were going to rebuild, and despite the fact that they waited until the night before the season started to deal "unhittable" closer Craig Kimbrel to the Padres, the Braves have shot out of the gate, sweeping the Mickey Mouse Marlins and last night took a game from the Mets based on the exploits of a bunch of players I've never heard of.

I know Turner Field has a long and storied 20-year legacy as the home of the Barves, and it's going to truly be the end of an era when it closes, but I'm sure every Mets fan agrees with me when I say that they can't burn that hell hole of a ballpark down fast enough. I know I saw some stat on the Mets record at Turner Field over the years, but it said that the Mets had won something like 55 games there over the years, but that can't be right. I've seen a majority of the games the Mets have played at Turner Field and I'm pretty certain the Mets record there is about 23-145. And many of those losses seem to be of the variety of those we witnessed last night.

Once again, the game started late thanks to weather, and once again I was not anywhere near a TV at the outset. But the delay did mean the game ran late and I did manage to find myself able to catch about half an inning of the action. Unfortunately, that half inning was an excruciating half inning where everything that could have gone wrong for the Mets did.

The Mets, with Jon Niese on the mound, who now feels like kind of a non-entity on this staff, fell behind 3-0 early. Cameron Maybin, who's now on his 4th team in 8 years and still feels like a "prospect" (perhaps a perfect fit for the Barves), led off the game with a Home Run. But the Mets fought back and tied the score when David Wright and John Mayberry Jr hit back-to-back Home Runs in the 4th inning, accounting for the Mets first two Home Runs of the season. Mayberry, starting against the lefty Eric Stults, did what he's here to do, which is belt left-handed pitching. But it still seems like a bit of an incongruous platoon situation developing, as Mayberry played Left, Michael Cuddyer played 1st Base, and Lucas Duda got planted on the bench. I know, I know, it still feels weird actually advocating for Duda to still be in the lineup and maybe he should have been, but then again, the results seemed to dictate otherwise.

But I digress. The game stayed tied 3-3 into the 8th inning, Erik Goeddel and Sean Gilmartin, a pair of newcomers, held the line and turned things over to Rafael Montero, who's slid up the ladder in Jenrry Mejia's stead in this new-look Bullpen was entrusted to keep things where they were. This, of course, is where I found a TV with the game on, and where things went haywire. Certainly, a fine time to watch my first live Baseball game of the season. It started with a flare hit by Chris Johnson that Juan Lagares for all his brilliance couldn't catch up to. Montero got a strikeout, but then Andrelton Simmons (who'd already made one of his wonderful defensive plays earlier in the game and gave all of Baseball a collective orgasm) grounded a ball to Wright at 3rd. Conventional Wisdom dictates that Wright should have thrown the ball to 1st. The ball wasn't hit especially hard but still he probably had a shot to get Simmons. Instead, Wright vaporlocked and decided it a better idea to try to tag out the Pinch Runner Jace Peterson, who'd broke for 3rd. This didn't work, Peterson beat the play, and while the rest of the Mets defense stood and stared at Wright, Simmons took off for 2nd. After that, you could pretty much stick a fork in the inning. Montero admirably tried to salvage things, intentionally walking the next hitter before getting a strikeout and running a full count on Phil Gosselin or Kate Gosselin or whoever it was, but he tried to sneak one more fastball by him and Gosselin, whoever he is, punched home a 2-run single that for all intents and purposes ended the game. The 9th, with Dirks Bentley closing for the Braves instead of Kimbrel (whom as you know the Mets generally handle well because unlike most teams, they grow a pair and hit the ball when he comes in), was academic and the Mets lost another annoying game in Atlanty, while the Braves, who appear to not even be trying, ran their record to 4-0.

Such are the vicissitudes of Baseball, as we often see during the course of the season. The Mets now sit at 2-2, where the two wins came at the benefit of great pitching and advantageous opportunities, and the two losses came at the benefit of no hitting when it was needed and a bad-luck inning. The point is, at this point, we know nothing yet.

Royal Mess

I missed large swaths of what ended up being a mostly lost weekend for the Mets against their most ferocious of rivals, the Kansas City Royals. I had, for a split second, batted around going to Sunday's game, simply for the novelty of seeing a game against the Royals (something I have never actually done) and also to see Zack Wheeler pitch (since I was rooked out of the chance to see him tomorrow night). But, I was tired and felt like sleeping in on Sunday, so I passed. Ultimately, I made the right call because although I missed out on a beautiful sunny Sunday, I also missed out on the latest episode of Mets Follies.

I didn't see any of Saturday's game, which was just as well, since I was spared the 2013 Mets Special: An Extra Inning game. I don't have much to say about it, but sometimes, I feel better for not having seen a game at all as opposed to sitting through and watching while it keeps on going and then sucks me in to the point where I'm stuck watching a game for 5 hours. I realize that Saturday's game wasn't 5 hours—it wasn't even 4 hours—but an Extra Inning game is an Extra Inning game and, let's face it, I saw one on Friday night. At least the Mets won that one.

Sunday, Zack Wheeler started out OK, but then again he always starts out OK. But then the clown car arrived in the 5th inning and the Mets forgot how to field. We've seen Right Field at Shea and now at Citi Field play havoc on Outfielders when the sun is out like that, but, let's face it: When you play your home games in said Outfield, you probably should be used to catching fly balls in any condition. What's beside the point is that I didn't see any of the Royals Outfielders battling the sun the way Byrd was. I realize that sometimes you just have those moments of vaporlock, but twice in one inning is pretty bad. Particularly when it turns a 1-run game into a 4-run game. Then again, Wheeler didn't help himself by going all Shaun Marcum on us and throw 3 Wild Pitches in that inning either. Also, the Mets didn't hit, but they never hit, and without David Wright around to regulate, the Mets really didn't hit. The end result was that I spent the latter half of the game occupying myself with other activities and I see I missed little of consequence.

I mean, I guess this weekend might have taken a bit of the starch out of the Mets, but, really, how much starch did the Mets have in them? The Royals are also on a bit of a roll of late, and boast a really good young pitching staff, loaded with a lot of guys you've never heard of unless you're really into Fantasy Baseball, most of whom seem to throw 95+MPH. So, maybe it's not just the Mets. Then again, maybe it is. We'll see this week when the Colorados come to town. Last August, the Colorados came around and swept 4 games in a row from the Mets in a series that sent the entire season swirling down the proverbial toilet. The Colorados seem in a bit better a shape this time around, but they still have one of the worst pitching staffs in the NL. We'll see tomorrow night, where I'll be on hand for my first game in over a month (not counting that game in Toronto).