Shit Show Week

Imagine, if you will, that the Subway Series is not simply a set of games between the two New York teams. Instead, picture the Subway Series as some horrible, demented green, or perhaps eggplant-colored blob, something like a cross between Shrek and Mr. Bighead. It isn't present except during these games this week, and usually it causes things that rarely, if ever, happen in a Baseball game to occur. Or it makes a player do something totally out-of-character. Or it makes a baseball bounce in such a way that defies general logic. Once again, the Mets and Yankees proved why the Subway Series is a horrible, wretched thing and needs to be stopped.

In spite of the fact that for a hot second, the Mets had a lead and things looked to be in a steady place, the Subway Series reared its ugly head and a series of dumb shit began happening to the Mets, culminating in the Yankees tying and eventually winning the game 6-5 in a miserable, predictable 10-inning crapfest.

The game had that dumb Subway Series thing going right from the start. Fire Hydrant Head hit Logan Verrett's second pitch of the game over the head of Justin Ruggiano and off the wall, and ultimately the ball caromed back towards the infield. Gardner appeared to have an easy triple, but he had an attack of Subway Series and decided to score, and fortuitously, Curtis Granderson and Neil Walker made perfect relay throws home to Travis d'Arnaud, who blocked the plate and tagged Gardner out.

But the tone had been set. The game was one of those back-and-forth affairs. Wilmer Flores homered of C.C. Sabathia in the 2nd. The Yankees struck back tied it in the 4th on a Verrett Wild Pitch. In the 5th, the Yankees grabbed the lead when they started hitting a string of 2-out doubles. At 3-1, conventional wisdom would have it that the Mets were going to fold their tents, but they can have an Attack of Subway Series too, and after a Michael Conforto RBI double cut the deficit to 3-2, Matt Reynolds had his Kaz Matsui moment by hitting a 3-run Home Run in the 6th to turn the game in the Mets favor, and everything, for the moment, was great.

But, lest we forget, this is still the Subway Series, which meant that even if the Mets were ahead 8-3, they weren't immune from the Subway Series. By this point, Erik Goeddel and Hansel Robles had worked clean innings, and Jerry Blevins came in to start the 8th, and of course he walked Fire Hydrant Head to start the inning, because Subway Series. With 1 out, Addison Reed came in and appeared to restore order by striking out Mark Teixeira's Carcass. Mr. Morality singled, and then was run for by Ronald Torreyes, who nobody's ever heard of, and appears to be no taller than 5'3" and of course is the embodiment of Subway Series so you knew he was going to do something to screw things up. It appears his mere presence gave Addison a Subway Series, because he then labored through an 8-pitch At Bat by Didi Gregorious, in the midst of which Torreyes predictably stole 2nd, before Gregorious hit a dying quail of a single to left to score both runs and tie the game.

The Mets, at this point, had packed up their bats for the night, since 5 I guess was more than enough for them. The game, however, was not over. Jeurys Familia came in for the 9th and somehow managed to fight off the Subway Series, but in the 10th, Seth Lugo, oddly the last man in the Bullpen for the Mets on this night, entered the game and the Subway Series literally ate him alive.

First, Lugo dug his own grave by walking Ellsbury on 4 pitches, which is just about unconscionable in that spot. Then he got 2 strikes on Teixeira's carcass, before he singled to left. Then some dude with a mullet was batting, which instantly meant that a Subway Series was about to attack, and of course it did because Mullet laid down a bunt back to Lugo, and instead of at least trying to get the sure out, Lugo threw to 3rd, and of course Ellsbury was safe because THAT PLAY NEVER WORKS AND IT ESPECIALLY NEVER WORKS IN THE SUBWAY SERIES!

You know what happened from there. Yankees take the lead, Yankee fans start smacking Mets fans with rubber chickens, the Mets get James Loney to 3rd with 1 out in the last of the 10th and strand him there when Curtis Granderson has a Subway Series and takes a pitch that Dellin Betances basically set on a tee for him to hit out of the ballpark.

So, I mentioned that Lugo was the last man in the bullpen for the Mets and that's of course because the roster was totally cocked up by this afternoon's trade deadline, which saw the Mets make a pair of deals, which were both totally necessary and completely puzzling at the same time.

First, there's the Jay Bruce trade, which seemed to unfold in typical Metsian fashion: complete, then almost dead, then done in totally backwards fashion. Initially, the deal included Brandon Nimmo, who I like but could understand moving here. Somewhere, the Reds balked at some medical records and so the Mets had to go back and figure out something else, eventually closing the deal at around 3:45 by sending Dilson Herrera and youngster Max Wotell to Cincinnati. I like moving Herrera even less, just based on the fact that he's so young and has, I think, a ton of upside. But then again, he also strikes me as one of those guys that the Mets just don't like, because they never gave him a real chance to earn his keep in the Majors and then kept blocking his path. Then again, the perfect scenario would have involved Neil Walker leaving and Herrera taking over next season. We won't see that now, which is a shame, but again, the Mets need something resembling a legitimate bat in the lineup right now, someone who will hit behind Cespedes and provide some protection. Is it a perfect fit? Hardly. But I also trust Sandy Alderson to make trades that have a purpose, so I'm going with it. And as far as the Herrera situation, well, Gavin Cecchini appears poised to ascend soon, too, and could slide over to 2nd Base. So, too, could Jose Reyes if he sticks around.

Then, of course, there's the trade the Mets made with Pittsburgh that somehow ended up with Jon Niese coming BACK to the Mets. Once you're done laughing your ass off over this one, you can shrug, and then laugh some more. I don't know if I can even call this trade addition by subtraction. Yes, the Mets got rid of Antonio Bastardo, which is probably the most operative thing here, but I guess the moral to this story is that sometimes, you have to take something lousy back in order to get rid of something lousy. So...yeah. After leaving and running his mouth a little bit, Niese is back and I believe the first thing he's going to do is sit down with Terry Collins, and Collins is going to give him a towel so that he can wipe all the egg off his face.

And then Bruce and Niese can turn around and dive right into the shit show.

Faith Rewarded

I found myself home on a Saturday night, something that seems to be a moderately rare occurrence of late, and happily, my quiet evening was accompanied by Mets baseball. More appropriately, winning Mets Baseball, because a Mets loss wouldn't have been much fun at all, considering a) they were playing the awful Phillies, b) the Phillies seemed all too happy to hand the game to the Mets by throwing their D-lineup out there, and c) They'd already lost on Friday night to the awful Phillies, and come on.

Jon Niese took the start for the Mets and continued what for him might almost be considered the Golden Age of Jon Niese. Quietly, Niese has held serve on the back end of the rotation, while sort of getting a little lost amidst Harvey/deGrom/Colon to very quietly place himself among the ranks of the best lefties in the NL. You know, where we thought he might be heading three seasons ago. I suppose it remains to be seen where this goes because Niese has been known for being mercurial and pissy, but to this point, now 6 times through the rotation, he's had, what, one bad start? For Niese, that's pretty good, particularly for a guy I've been ready to place on The Ballclub's Shitlist.

So Niese hummed along through the early part of the game, getting the same amount of run support that the Mets offense has been providing its starting pitchers lately, which hasn't been much. There was a run scoring error in the 5th inning, I want to say Lucas Duda hit the ball and Cesar Hernandez, playing in the stead of Chase Utley, who's 9-for-91 start to the season has landed him on the bench, pulled a Daniel Murphy and the Mets had a lead. But Niese ran into trouble in the 6th, where a Dilson Herrera error set up a Jon Niese inning, in which he got dinked and dunked to death by his opponent and started moping around the mound. 2 runs crossed the plate for Philadelphia, and it appeared Niese was done for the night in line for a loss.

But for whatever reason, Terry Collins let Niese hit leading off the 7th inning. Niese responded to this particular windmill by singling to center for his first hit of the season. This seemed to set off a chain reaction of general positivity across the Mets roster. Two batters later, Juan Lagares slammed a Home Run into the seats in Left to give the Mets a 3-2 lead. Niese cruised through the 7th, but after a Multiple-Torres-Induced bases loaded situation in the last of the 8th inning seemed certain to end in instant disaster, Buddy Carlyle came in the game and got Carlos Ruiz to ground into a Double Play. In and of itself, that's just fine, but it took a fine play in the hole by Ruben Tejada to start things off, and an even finer play by Dilson Herrera, who atoned for his error by hanging in to catch the relay throw, avoid a sliding runner and fire a throw off to 1st to get Ruiz by a step and end the inning. Jeurys Familia survived Utley's 10th hit of the season and a cameo appearance by Ryan Howard's carcass to lock down his 12th Save and a 3-2 Mets win that made my night that much better.

It comes back to Niese and Lagares who get the attention, but let's give Tejada and Herrera some credit here too. Herrera, after a throwing error pretty much nuked the 6th inning, shook it off and made a key play on the DP in the 8th. Tejada, on the other hand, had one of the best games he's had in probably the better part of a year, because, given a spot start for the struggling Wilmer Flores, Tejada played a flawless game in the field and even chipped in with a pair of hits and scored the Mets' first run of the night. Granted, this is one game and he's been known to have decent games amidst the general dreck he puts out, but it's at least a positive sign that he's got a pulse and wants to take advantage of whatever opportunities he has left with the team. He's apparently going to get a start today as well, or at least that's what Gary Cohen said at the end of the night, spelling Herrera at 2nd Base, so maybe he'll make something of it. Maybe.

Dilson's Pickle

There's several position questions that have cropped up for the Mets, and looking beyond the obvious one (SS), and the pleasant problem (Catcher), there's this developing issue at 2nd Base, where the Mets have a popular, albeit limited incumbent, Daniel Murphy, and a young, almost-ready-for-prime-time challenger, Dilson Herrera.

Currently, both are in the lineup because David Wright is hurt. That's not news. But at some point over the course of the season, and nobody seems quite sure when that's going to be, but eventually, David Wright is actually going to come back and play Baseball, as most Baseballers tend to do. Obviously, this means someone, between Murphy and Herrera, will have to take a back seat. Conventional wisdom would dictate that the 21-year old Herrera would return to AAA and Murphy would reassume his spot at 2nd Base, where he will provide slightly-better-than-cringeworthy defense.

Here's why that's probably the wrong choice.

Never mind the defense. Murphy has already proven that he's as good as he's going to get, and not just with a glove, but overall. Daniel Murphy was an All Star last year, and yes, he's one of those guys that came up and played really well as a Rookie, and that sort of endeared himself to all Mets fans forever, but since that stretch run in 2008, he's been mostly underwhelming. Not that anyone ever thought Daniel Murphy was going to turn into Chase Utley or anything (or maybe people did—although I can't imagine why) or at best maybe a low-rent Neil Walker, but I tend to look at the year Murphy had in 2009 and think that's about his average level of play. .266 average, .313 OBA, .427 SLG, 12 Home Runs, 63 RBI, 38 Doubles. And if you go down his career, he really hasn't deviated from this baseline. And this, of course, is his output for a season where he started hot, finished hot, and spent about 3 months in between pulling Josh Tholes 3 times a night while hitting .248. But that's not just 2009, it's every year for Daniel Murphy and at age 30, he's not going to do better than that. Defensively, well, we just shake our heads and hope for the best. After 5 years now trying this Second Base thing, he's still making those same yipesy, awkward mistakes and perhaps no play better exemplified his fielding prowess than the incident last night where he managed to tag a runner out at 3rd base basically by accident, after he charged a ball he shouldn't have charged and then backpedaled into the path of the baserunner while catching a throw. That's Daniel Murphy.

Dilson Herrera, on the other hand, also made 15 Errors as a second baseman last year, which is the same number Murphy had. Herrera, however, was also 20 years old and splitting time between High A and AA ball. He also made up for that by hitting .323/.379/.479 with 13 Home Runs and 71 RBI. In High A and AA ball at Age 20. This earned him a callup late in the season where he managed to hit .220/.303/.407 with 3 Home Runs and 3 Errors in 18 games, but again, 20 years old and a small sample. Before getting called up to the Majors this season, Herrera was only hitting at a .370/.402/.506 clip in AAA. This is mostly to illustrate the point that at Age 21, Herrera has proven he can get the job done offensively all the way up the ladder, so that he hasn't done so at the Major League level over a handful of games shouldn't be of great alarm just yet. His defense will probably improve over time to a level of less suspect than Murphy.

Big picture, Herrera has that one thing that everyone loves: Upside. Murphy won't make the Mets any better than he does right now, and that's not saying much. Herrera, who multiple talking heads say will be an All Star for years, potentially could make the Mets better. That's the point here. Let's face it. With Free Agency impending, Murphy stands a good chance of not lasting the remainder of the season with the team, and that's fine. Murphy can do some nice things for a nice little ballclub, but if the Mets want to act like a contender here, they need to show a little teeth. Showing up in St. Louis with Daniel Murphy hopping around isn't going to change anyone's opinions. Dilson Herrera might never end up any better than that, but the potential exists that he could be that kind of a player. That's what the Mets need right now. A little juice. Herrera could bring that to the table, instead of grounding out to 2nd Base for 3 months straight.

Wednesday Surprise

The Mets swept their brief but spirited two game series with the Baltimore Orioles by relying mostly on their starting pitching, which may as well be the story of their season thus far. Aside from the occasional hiccup, this group has been as good as they've been hyped to be, and when that happens, it shouldn't be too surprising that the Mets remain ahead of the pack in the NL East.

Jacob deGrom was the story tonight, following up Bartolo Colon's sterling effort on Tuesday. After a pair of starts in which deGrom was unlucky, but also not especially good, he made his necessary adjustments and righted the ship, navigating his way through the Baltimore lineup for 7 innings giving up 1 run and striking out 9, while his offense exploded for all of 5 runs to pave the way to the 5-1 victory.

It seems, more often than not, that when the Mets win games this season, they do so with heavy contributions from some of the lesser names in their lineup. Though they did get a 3rd inning Home Run from Curtis Granderson, tonight it was Dilson Herrera who brought his bat to the game, driving home 3 runs and essentially icing the game with his 1st Home Run of the season in the 6th inning.

But it comes back to the job deGrom did on the mound that really tells the story, doesn't it? His Steroid Field II escapade begat another poor outing last week against Washington. Although his story was aided by an untimely error in that game, he still had opportunities to fix the damage and didn't, and ultimately the Nationals chased him from the game with a string of ringing hits. Tonight, Baltimore didn't fare quite as well. Their best opportunity came in the 5th, with the Mets down 3-0. Though deGrom got himself into trouble, hitting a batter and then allowing a hit, he worked his way out of trouble. First, Alejandro De Aza tried a squeeze bunt, but deGrom deftly bounced off the mound to pick it up, and then alertly threw to 3rd in an attempt to get the runner, Evereth Cabrera, who'd strayed too far off the base. This might have been a disastrous play, but for once, Daniel Murphy shit a diamond and his somewhat clueless attempt to catch the throw led him directly into Cabrera's path, blocking him from returning to 3rd Base and allowing Murphy to for all intents and purposes accidentally tag him out. Later, with the bases loaded and Goldschmidt-like Chris Davis at the plate, deGrom stoned up and struck him out to end the threat. The Orioles did nothing of note the rest of the night.

So, now, the Mets find themselves somewhat back on track, although they haven't exactly been lighting it up, they're doing what needs to be done in order to win games. They get good pitching just about every night nowadays and when their defense holds up and they can scratch out some runs, this can be enough to tally up the W column. Still, you'd like to see some more consistency from the position players before you can really start to feel comfortable.

Hitting Sticks

If the Mets hit all season the way they hit last night in Cincinnati, maybe we wouldn't be in this mess.

Friday night saw the Mets break out for a season-high 14 runs on a season-high-tying 18 hits, blasting a season-high 5 Home Runs in the process as they pasted the hapless Reds and their legion of Rookie Pitchers 14-5.

The Reds have suffered through about as lousy a season as the Mets have. The fact that they came into Friday night's game with equally terrible records of 66-74 speaks for itself, although on the end of the Reds, it's probably markedly more disappointing than it is for the Mets. The Reds, who have been to the Playoffs 3 out of the last 4 seasons and whom I picked to make it to the World Series in 2013, haven't been able to get out of their own way this year and injuries to key players like Joey Votto and Brandon Phillips combined with lousy seasons from Jay Bruce have combined to sink the Reds ship as they've muddled through about as lousy a second-half as you can have. They haven't been able to find any kind of consistency and the Mets seemed to take advantage of this as well as anyone in last night's game.

The Mets jumped on Alfredo Simon early and often, scoring twice in the 1st thanks to RBI hits from Travis d'Arnaud and Curtis Granderson, once more in the 2nd when Lucas Duda walked with the Bases Loaded, didn't score in the 3rd—the only inning in the game which they did not do so—and knocked Simon from the game in the 4th when d'Arnaud mashed a 3-run Home Run after Simon dared to intentionally walk Duda ahead of him.

d'Arnaud's Home Run seemed to be a mere prelude to the ensuing fireworks, as Wilmer Flores Homered in the 5th off of J.J. Hoover, Granderson Homered in the 6th off Ryan Dennick, and hapless Rookie Daniel Corcino surrendered two more blasts in the 8th and 9th, to Dilson Herrera and Lucas Duda, respectively.

Bartolo Colon was the beneficiary of this outpouring of support, as he generally tends to be. I'm not sure what the numbers are exactly, but it seems like just about every time the Mets have one of these games where they put up 7, 11 or more runs, Colon tends to be on the mound. On a night where Colon himself didn't seem to have his best stuff, he still managed to carry the game into the 7th inning, another one of the solid outings we've come to expect out of him over the course of the season, before turning things over to Buddy Carlyle and, in the 9th, Eric Goeddel. By that point, the Mets had opened things up enough that we actually had sightings of players like Josh Satin and Juan Centeno, truly indicative of how the night was going for the Mets.

You'd like to think the Mets could keep this going for a couple of days, at least while they're in hitters haven Cincinnati, but something tells me that they're going to end up pecking and scraping for runs the remainder of the weekend after all this. After all, they've already had games this week where they scored 8, 6, and now 14 runs, so let's not get crazy here.

Unexciting Excitement

A lifeless 6-1 Met loss to the Beautiful Barves was followed with the news that the Mets had called up Dilson Herrera to replace the disabled Daniel Murphy. The general consensus, or at least my general consensus is, well, why not? Nothing else has sparked the Mets offense on a consistent basis. The 20-year old Herrera to this point has had a very under-the-radar great season between A and AA ball. He may be known to most as "the other guy" the Mets got from Pittsburgh in the Marlon Byrd trade last season, and he may be completely in over his head making the jump from Binghamton to New York, but there's no particularly good reason for the Mets to not call him up. Wilmer Flores hasn't hit with any real consistency, Ruben Tejada is what we thought he was and David Wright is lost in the Keith Hernandez Dark Forest and battling through an injury that needs a good offseason's rest. So, why not Herrera now? See what he can do.

The news on Herrera is a good distraction to make everyone forget about the shit show that was tonight's game. Jon Niese had a good game that ended up being yet another good bad game thanks to some wind-aided extra base hits in the 8th inning, and after he departed, the bullpen did their part to ensure that the Mets would have no opportunity to come back or even attempt to face Craig Kimbrel. Daisuke Matsuzaka returned from the DL and promptly surrendered a monstrous Home Run to Ryan Donuts and that was pretty much the end of that.

The Mets are now done with the Barves in Citi Field for the season, and so they depart and the Phillies come in for their final visit of the season this weekend. I'm away visiting my Cleveland relatives so the weekend series may be glossed over entirely from where I'm sitting. The Indians are also out of town, so I won't even have a chance to see a game at Jacobs Field. This looks to be a rather sparse weekend from a Baseball standpoint, although I'm sure I'll get Dilson Herrera updates from someplace.