Encore, Encore

After the breathless exuberance of Thursday night's game, the Mets, one would imagine, would be hard-pressed to come up with a fitting encore. And although it required far fewer players and two fewer innings than it did on Thursday, the Mets still did what was necessary in order to win on Friday. A 3-run Home Run from Michael Conforto capped off a 6-run 5th inning that brought the Mets back from an early deficit, and in spite of Gabriel Ynoa only pitching two innings and the bullpen figuring out the rest of the game, the Mets still managed to beat the Phillies 10-5 to keep pace in the standings for another day.

If you blinked, you missed Ynoa on this night. I did my usual Friday Night trick and came home and fell asleep, so I missed him entirely. I'm told, although I haven't seen for myself, that he wasn't especially good, and gave up 2 runs in the second inning before Terry Collins started stirring his Pot-o-Ballplayers and pinch-hit for him in the bottom half of the inning with men in scoring position. The ploy didn't work there, and in fact Logan Verrett followed Ynoa to the mound and allowed a Home Run to Maikel Franco in the 3rd, but that was it, as he pitched two innings before turning things over to Josh Smoker in the 5th.

The Mets didn't managed much of anything off of Jeremy Hellickson early, although they'd had some earlier success against him. Travis d'Arnaud's RBI double represented his first RBI in close to a month, but until that 5th inning, the Mets hadn't done much. But then they started hitting, and it turned into one of those groundswell rallies, where they load the bases, and then start moving the chains. Curtis Granderson singled to drive home a run, Kelly Johnson singled to put the Mets ahead, Hellickson was done for the night, and his replacement, Frank Herrmann, allowed the 3-run Home Run for Conforto that extended the Mets lead to 7-3.

These Phillies, as I've said all season, are game though, in spite of their porous pitching staff, and they fought back in the 6th against Smoker. Darin Ruf hit a 2-run Home Run to make the score 7-5, and in the 7th, both Erik Goeddel and Josh Edgin had a hard time as they loaded the bases and brought Tommy Joseph to the plate. Collins then went to Hansel Robles, who is an adventure in and of himself, but Robles on this night was game to the challenge and induced Joseph to ground to Reyes, who started the 5-3 Double Play to end the Philly threat.

From there, it got easier, as the Mets took advantage of the awful back end of Philly's bullpen to tack on 3 more runs, and Robles ended up pulling a reverse of what he did in an emergency against KC and finishing out the final 2.2 innings himself en route to his first Major League Save.

Then, of course, it was on to watching the scoreboard, since this game, while not as lengthy as Thursday's 4 hours, 23 minutes, ran a good 3 hours and 40 minutes, overlapping the start of the Giants in San Diego. The Padres did what they needed to do in order to help the Mets, winning 7-2, and once again giving the Mets a lead in the Wildcard race, however temporary it may seem. And with now 8 games to go, it all has a temporary feel to it. Tomorrow will bring what it will.

Literally, Tired

As can sometimes be the case on Fridays, after a full week of work, I'll come home and proceed to fall asleep for about 60-90 minutes. Game be damned. And lately, most of the games have been damned. Tonight was no different; I came home and after tooling around for a while, I started to nod off. But as I was about to fall asleep, I glanced at my phone and MLB At Bat to see how the game had been going. I saw that Logan Verrett had managed to load the bases with no outs, and some fellow named Detlef Schrempf was batting, and a little blue ball pops up, accompanied by that dreaded phrase: "IN PLAY, RUN(S)."

Schimpf, of course, had hit the Grand Slam, and from there I fell asleep, because I knew that nothing good was coming out of this game. After the bluster from Terry Collins yesterday, and after the roster shakeups of this afternoon, the same stupid thing was going to happen anyway. I suppose it makes no difference whether or not Michael Conforto is here. The Mets have once again managed to take a really promising young kid and screw him up so badly that he's now incapable of performing at the Major League level. They can toss him back to AAA where he'll inevitably hit .360, and then call him back up, jockey him around from position to position in order to placate whoever, and then shrug as he continues to hit .200. Then they'll trade him to Baltimore for Darren O'Day and two retreads and watch as he develops into a .320 hitter.

Meanwhile, Logan Verrett continues to start, and for Verrett the pattern tends to be one good start, one middling start, one completely putrid start and tonight was the putrid. Against a Padres team that, like Arizona, is barely trying, he allowed a Steve Trachsel-esque 4 Home Runs in 3 innings, shuttling the Mets off to an 8-2 deficit.

By time I woke up, the Mets had actually cut that deficit to 8-5. Somehow, this was enough to get me up and get me to turn the game on, even if I knew I was setting myself up for more misery. I know that we're all trying to finesse this one into something positive by saying that the Mets could have died after the score hit 8-2 but somehow battled back to make it 8-6, but what's the point? The loss counts the same whether it was 8-0, 8-2 or 8-6. You want to talk about the Mets being gritty and gutty, talk to me when they come back from an 8-2 deficit and win 9-8. There's nothing fluffier in Baseball than touting offensive statistics that come in meaningless situations. It's like when everyone would yell about that guy who retired hitting Home Runs late in games when his team was already up by 4.

So, yeah. I'm tired. Literally, tired. Of this team, of this season and in general.

Treading Water

Let's just punt Saturday's game, shall we? After a long day of hooting and hollering, I returned home at around 6:30 and promptly fell asleep, in spite of a loud, obnoxious block party being held directly outside my window. I woke up some time later and instead of watching the game or even checking the score, my other half insisted we go out to dinner, not so much because she wanted to go out, but she wanted to get away from the party. So, what I ended up missing was the sort of game I hate the most, the game where the Mets fall hopelessly behind, but then start mounting some thinly-veiled comeback that ends up falling short, and so the only thing accomplished was making the game longer.

Sunday, then, was going to be Waterloo for the 2016 Mets. They have been, as I keep saying, teetering on the brink of 2012 but yet every time that perilous loss seems to be at hand, they end up fighting back and winning a game, and that's what happened on Sunday. Jacob deGrom was his usual brilliant self, and I know at the end of the season his numbers aren't really going to tell the story, but no need to sugarcoat: He's been the Mets best Pitcher to this point this season. He was once again on top of his game on Sunday, keeping the Tigers off the scoreboard, which was fortunate because the Mets did squat against Anibal Sanchez and his 6.06 ERA. Sanchez, whom we've seen plenty of in his days playing on the Fake Team, has been patently awful this season, to the point where he lost his job and only got it back thanks to someone else's injury (you know, sort of like Nate Eovaldi). So of course the Mets couldn't hit him.

Until Michael Conforto got a hold of one in the 7th and hit a Home Run out to left-center field, the kind of ball it seems like he hadn't hit in months. I know that the Mets have basically done just about everything possible to screw up Conforto, but after all this he's still here plugging away and he might actually be starting to find his swing again. He's looked reasonably good over the past several games and now he drove one out of the park, so that's a good sign. A better sign would be if he starts doing it on a more regular basis.

But, alas, the Tigers tied the game in the last of the 7th thanks to a pair of 60 foot singles, one of which, by Austin Romine, loaded the bases with 2 outs and knocked deGrom from the game, and the second, by Ian Kinsler, "drove in" the tying run. The situation seemed ripe for the Tigers to then get a long hit or a Grand Slam from Jose Iglesias, but Addison Reed came in and would have none of it, so instead Iglesias was kind enough to pop out.

In the last of the 8th, the Tigers again threatened, and in fact Casey McGehee, another ex-Marlin, probably did the most Marlins thing he's done in his life, skipping an 87-hop single to right with 2 on and 2 out, that somehow got past 4 Met Infielders and appeared primed to score the lead run. But, fortunately, the Mets were playing the Tigers and not the Marlins, and instead of the run scoring, the Tigers managed to run, or not run, themselves out of the inning when J.D. Martinez decided to not run and Justin Upton decided to keep running, so the Tigers had two men on 3rd base and instead of scoring the lead run, Martinez and Upton basically just had to take a bite out of 3rd base and cut their losses.

In the 9th, Francisco Rodriguez came in for the Tigers and promptly hit Alejandro De Aza to start the inning. Rodriguez, who left New York in abject shame, continues to do the job since he's closing games, but he seems to be making things as difficult as possible. Just like a Good Closer should. He came perilously close to blowing Saves on Friday and Saturday, and on Sunday the Mets finally got him when Neil Walker hit a 2-run Home Run to win the game, 3-1.

So, the Mets somehow managed to not get swept in Detroit, which was nice of them, and now they get to come home to play Arizona and San Diego. I have no idea what will happen to them from here. I don't even know what to say anymore.

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.

Self-Aggrandizing Pricks

Citi Field on Wednesday night was hot, sweaty and full of Cardinals fans. It was a perfect storm of awful and it seems that the Mets were all too happy to oblige in the misery. After mostly muddling their way through the early part of the game, the Mets exploded to life in the 7th, finally running Adam Wainwright out of gas and taking the lead on Yoenis Cespedes' absolute missile of a Home Run. But the roof ultimately caved in on the Mets in the 9th as Jeurys Familia blew his first save of the season, allowing the Cardinals to tie and ultimately take the lead. Instead of getting to revel in a steely victory, I was subjected to a bunch of Right-wing, underwear-sniffing Cardinals fans squealing and humping each other in the aisles. My Citi Field record for the season once again slipped under .500 in this 5-4 debacle of a game.

It was headed down a bad road from the start. Wainwright was eminently hittable all night, but for all the hitting the Mets did against him, nothing resulted in any runs. This is, of course, the ongoing problem. Neil Walker drove in a run in the 2nd inning and until the 7th, that was it. The Cardinals grabbed a lead in the 3rd because they, unlike the Mets, actually hit the ball with men on base and the result was a 3-run inning against Logan Verrett. So you think that Verrett somehow battled through the night. Wrong. Verrett, outside of that one inning, was just fine. The rest of the team just couldn't get out of their own way. Twice, Michael Conforto came up with a runner in scoring position and 2 outs, and even a measly single would have made some kind of a difference, but each time, he did nothing. It was so bad that Mets fans couldn't even muster the energy to react.

It took until the 7th for the Mets to finally get their asses in gear. Travis d'Arnaud singled, and Alejandro De Aza singled, and the Mets had their opportunity with men on the corners and no outs. But this hasn't been a sure thing by any stretch, and sure enough, Curtis Granderson struck out, and then Asdrubal Cabrera struck out, and George and I were just sitting there in muted agony, while the Cardinals fans were hooting and hollering. One fellow, in particular, was sitting in front of us, by himself, wearing headphones and after each strikeout, he jumped up and did some weird Frank Drebin strikeout impression. That left it up to Yoenis Cespedes, probably the only savior left in this godforsaken mess of a lineup. And Cespedes was game to a tiring Wainwright, and worked the count a bit instead of squeezing the bat into sawdust. Finally, on 2-2, Wainwright bounced his trademark curveball and it skipped past Yadier Molina, and d'Arnaud scored. Amazing. After all that, that was what it took to get a run home. I wasn't complaining, but this was beginning to border on the criminal. Two pitches later, Wainwright again tried to slip a curve in there. We've seen that before. But this time, Cespedes was in full hack mode and he just smoked it. And I mean he Smoked it. Off the 2nd deck, Home Run, and somehow the Mets had taken the lead. You know, after all that mess. As soon as the ball landed, the jerkoff with the headphones stood up, gave me a nasty look, and left. I assure you, for all the epithets I wanted to scream at this turd, I bit my tongue, because I'm far too diplomatic and I try my best to be a good host, even if the houseguest keeps doing things like leaving the toilet seat up and eating all the Frusen Gladje. So I said the nicest thing I could: "One pitch too many!"

In the 8th, Addison Reed did his job and retired the Cardinals without a peep. Now, the Cardinals fans were sitting on their hands, if they hadn't departed altogether. The Mets again had an opportunity to pad their lead in the 8th, but didn't, but that didn't bother me much. They had Familia in the 9th.

And, of course, we know what happened from there. It figures that Familia blows a Save for the first time in a year the night I'm there. It figures that Molina was the one that did it to him. It figures that instead of holding the Cardinals there and keeping the game tied, he gave up a double to Judy-hitting Kolten Wong to give the Cardinals the lead. It figures that the remaining Cardinals fans started standing and grab-assing again. It figures that the Mets went down meekly against Seung Hwan Oh once again. It figures that all the way down the stairs, and outside the building, and on the Subway, Cardinals fans were holding a virtual mosh pit.

The bitch of it all is that it didn't have to go this way. Pick any inning between the 1st and the 6th, and if the Mets could have managed one more hit, it would have meant another run and maybe we wouldn't be in this mess. But noooo. That seems to be too tall of an order for this group. I mean, this is the 4th year in a row I've been to a Mets/Cardinals game, and every year I have to deal with the Cardinals and their obnoxious fans who basically expect us to bow down to them. They really have no clue as to how they appear. Cubs fans are annoying like a 10 year old with bad manners. Fans of the other team in town are annoying like your generic frat bro. Cardinals fans are a different level of annoying and after last night I'm feeling more convinced that they might be the worst of the bunch. And if I say your fan base is worse than that other NY team, well, that's saying something. But at any rate, each of the last 3 seasons, I went to a Mets/Cardinals game and the Cardinals won 9-0, and if they didn't, it felt like 9-0. Sometimes, after games like this, I almost wonder if we're better off if the Mets just didn't score and lost 3-1. But that's besides the point. Then I'd just be writing about how the Mets were simply noncompetitive and the Cardinals Fans were jackasses. What's the use?

At least we're done with the Cardinals here for this season, but more importantly, we're done with their fans. I think I've seen enough of Cardinals fans for the next decade.

Dusting And Dusting

After 6 games out of the All Star Break, the Mets had proved nothing other than they're good at not being able to figure themselves out. This was kind of problematic considering that they were going into Miami, where stupid things always happen, to play the Mickey Mouse Marlins, who specialize in doing stupid things. In spite of this, and in spite of Celebrity Manager walking around with this smug, shit-eating smirk on his face, silently demanding preferential treatment, and in spite of Logan Verrett once again having a solid outing fall apart at the end, the Mets beat the Marlins 5-3.

They won this game primarily based on Jose Reyes, who at least tonight looked like 2006 Jose Reyes and forcibly interjected himself into the middle of everything important. He started the game with a double off of Adam Conley, stole 3rd and scored on a sacrifice fly. In the 4th, he pulled the anti-Met move and singled with 2 outs to score Travis d'Arnaud. And in the 7th, after Hamburgers Yelich tied the game with a Home Run, Reyes started the inning with a single off David Phelps, moved to 3rd on a Granderson hit, and socred on another Yoenis Cespedes sacrifice fly. That's 3 hits, 2 runs, an RBI and a stolen base.

Remember when Reyes used to have games like that on a daily basis?

It seems so long ago in a place so far away when that would happen. The Mets and Marlins play in stadiums now that didn't even exist in 2006, and Reyes has bounced around, from an ill-advised season with these same Marlins, to Canada, to the Colorados, and now back to the Mets, and yes, he's older, and he's rusty, but you can still see that spark is still there and so maybe now that he's getting back to game speed he can run off some more games like this. Maybe.

The more operative thing here is that the Mets had to beat the Marlins, particularly since they'd slipped behind the Marlins in the standings, and I have no idea how this happened because the Marlins are a joke of a team and a bunch of turds. They need to be put in their place a little bit and nobody to this point seems to have been able to do that. And, of course, nothing would be more Marlin than to use the Mets as the springboard to success. Point is, the Mets needed to win this game and they did, and when it was close in the 9th, they put the game away against Fernando Rodney. First, he hit Yoenis Cespedes with a pitch, so in my opinion someone on their side needs to get dusted at some point, but then again James Loney did the dusting himself by hitting one into the upper deck for a 2-run Home Run. This set up a much easier 9th inning for Jeurys Familia who once again did not make it easy on himself, and the more the Marlins kept their irritating rally going, the more I had visions of Greg Dobbs coming off the Bench and hitting a 6-run Home Run and the Marlins running around slapping themselves with salami, but Familia's trademark continues to be to bend but not break, and so the Mets finished out the game.

That's good. Now do this two more times. Then come home and do it some more. That's called consistency. The Mets need some of that.

And This Continues To Be The Problem

As is usually the case on Summer Saturdays, I was out all day and didn't actually see any of the Mets Phillies game, but based on the results, a 4-2 Mets loss, I see that even after a few days to rest and get their heads straight, the Mets still have a hard time getting out of their own way against lesser opponents.

Logan Verrett, whose entire season may be that he's just the victim of these kinds of games, started for the Mets, pitched passably well, kept the Mets in the game (and became the 143rd Met pitcher to allow a Home Run to Ryan Howard), and the Mets offense, in his support, got plenty of runners on base and went 0-for-18 with men in scoring position.

This is a continued problem for the Mets, who over the past several years have turned stranding runners in scoring position into some sort of stupid art form. I keep writing about this, and I think about 85% of Mets Bloggers keep writing about this but what difference does it make? The same dopey thing still happens. I can't even single out a culprit here because basically everyone is guilty, except maybe Yoenis Cespedes and he didn't play, so maybe it's his fault for being hurt, and also I can't blame Wilmer Flores, because he didn't play either, and I can't really understand why since he usually does reasonably well in those spots. But the rest of the bunch, come on! I know there's still a bunch of games left to play but it feels like this whole season has been Mets fans saying "I'm not panicking, there's still a lot of games left to play." I'm still not panicking, but the point here is I'm tired of talking about it. I said it yesterday, I'll say it again, and I feel like I'm going to say it a lot more over the remaining games this season: Do Better.

This year still feels like 2001, even if the Mets probably aren't going to run up to 54-68. I didn't like 2001, though. I like this less, probably because in 2001 we were still in the stone age and there wasn't so much information readily available and there weren't happy-talking Nationals fans that are already acting like they've won the division and last season was a fluke. It's like listening to fans of that other team in this city. There's too many people with too much to say. Perhaps that's the real problem.

The Unraveling

After a week's worth of battling and hitting and doing mostly everything right, the Mets seem to be undoing all the work they did at the 11th hour leading in to the All Star Break. After dragging themselves back into the race for the NL East, the Mets have promptly turned back into pumpkins against the Nationals, and nobody's been doing more carving to them than Daniel Murphy.

I didn't actually see much, if any, of Saturday's game, which is just as well because I'm told that the FOX broadcast essentially turned into the Daniel Murphy ass-kissing festival. I'm dumbfounded. Murphy was regularly viewed as a joke by National broadcasters during his time with the Mets, and if you didn't know better, you'd assume he was some C-level utility guy that was forced into way too much playing time. Of course, most of the time, Murphy obliged them by playing his own unique brand of Baseball, which involved leaping into outs, throwing to wrong bases and clanking ground balls. And now, all of a sudden, he's turned into Dork Jeff Kent. I can't understand it.

Logan Verrett was the latest victim of the Murphy revenge tour, as a relatively decent outing for him was submarined by Murphy at basically every avenue. The Nationals took an early lead, the Mets kept it close for as long as possible, and then Murphy hit a Home Run and was literally skipping around the bases. And that basically sealed the Mets fate for the night. I don't think I needed to watch the game to know this, and I certainly didn't need to hear Joe Buck (and I can only assume he was announcing) bury his head up Murphy's ass.

Ho hum. One more chance to get this right.

Gone Shopping

I've been known to do a bit of errand-running on Saturday afternoons. This can become complicated by the Mets' proliferation of 4:10pm start times on Saturdays. I could try to go out beforehand, but often other things get in the way, or I sleep too late, or I just can't get my act together. Usually, the 5-6pm hour is prime time for me to go out.

This happened to me again yesterday. I had a whole assortment of things to do in the house, and with my other half out of town for the weekend, this meant a healthy dose of housecleaning (we have a bit of a Felix & Oscar relationship. I'm Felix). I'd finished up cleaning at around 3:45 or so, right around when I'd be sitting down to watch the game. So I decided I'd do that for a few innings, and then go out around the 4th inning, and then be back in time for the latter part of the game.

So, I'd left with the Mets down 3-2. Asdrubal Cabrera hit a 2-run Home Run in the 2nd, Logan Verrett promptly handed it back and then Ryan Braun hit a moonscraper of a Home Run into the greenish abyss of Miller Park (in my opinion the second ugliest of the "Old New" Stadiums, a ballpark with more space than they seemed to know what to do with, and so in Center Field is a giant green wall with nothing on it. The puke-green Hell Hole in Miami is, of course, the ugliest). No harm, no foul, and you figured the Mets would find a way to shoot a few more runs across against Wily Peralta.

I returned, of course, to a 5-3 score, with Verrett gone after suffering the indignity of surrendering a Home Run to Peralta in the 4th. Peralta, I'm told, is a bad hitter even for a pitcher, which of course might get him lumped in with Bartolo, except that Peralta isn't nearly as entertaining. Verrett was done for the day after that, allowing 5 runs in 4 innings and kind of wrecking the afternoon for the Mets. I figured I'd missed enough, but then Antonio Bastardo gave up a Home Run to Scooter Gennett and then another one to Ryan Braun, and at that point I figured I probably should have stayed out longer. Or maybe I'd jinxed the team by going out during the game in the first place. Either way, when you allow 5 runs in a game, it's not good.

You know, there's bad wins like what happened last night and I know some people kind of wanted to shove it under the rug and forget it happened, but I'll take 10 games like last night instead of games like this, that are just boring to watch and even worse to blog about because you have to come up with something more profound than "This Game Stunk." Or maybe I don't. This game stunk.

Revenge of the Torres

I didn't actually see Saturday night's game, or at least I didn't see much of it as I was out and about doing a vast assortment of deferred errands and therefore I caught about an inning or two of the game while eating dinner at an establishment somewhere in the midst of Suburbia but nothing beyond that. Only later did I Find out that the Mets not only lost in another debacle of a game at Coors Field, but that Logan Verrett had a 3rd inning meltdown that was precipitated by an egregious blown call that resulted in Terry Collins getting thrown out of the game.

And, of course, I then found out that the Umpire that ejected Collins was named Carlos Torres. Which seems fitting, because even though the Mets now have a Torres-free roster, they're still finding a way to get screwed over by a Torres.

The play, which I still haven't seen, involved C-level backup Catcher Tony Wolters, who's probably in the Major Leagues about 2 years too early, striking out on a pitch in the dirt with the bases loaded, 1 out and the pitcher on deck in an eminently-salvageable 3-1 game. For whatever reason, Torres insisted that Wolters tipped the ball. Mass chaos ensued, Collins got ejected, Verrett then subsequently gave up a 2-run double to Wolters that blew the game open and the Mets had no particular recourse. Eddie Butler, another one of these young-ish starters for the Colorados that pitches well on the road but is a mystery at home, mastered the Mets for most of the night and for the second game in a row, the Mets lost in Colorado, this time 7-4.

The Mets, it could be said, at least hit a little bit, or at least more than they had in the past few days by plating 4 runs, but still, 4 runs on most nights doesn't cut it in Colorado, so if you want to point your finger, sure, Carlos Torres is the easy target for your ire for this night, but the lack of offense on this West Coast swing that's mercifully almost over is really the best group to be annoyed with.

This series so far has just been another annoying series in Colorado against the irritating Colorados, a team that they should be handling easily but haven't done so. Handling the lesser teams is something that the Mets had been doing well in the early going this season but this has deserted them recently. As a result, their slim stay in 1st place is now over, and they've been leapfrogged by both Washington and a resurgent Phillies team that I told you was going to be a problem. They've already shit the bed for the road trip, now they have one more chance in Colorado this afternoon to prevent it from being a total debacle.

Forget The Old Guy

Citizen's Bank Park, or as I've called it, Steroid Field II, due to that weird jet stream that was built into the stadium that causes baseballs to fly out of it, has played host to some memorable Home Run performances by the Mets, most recently last season, when they hit 8 in one absurd August game. Last night, the Mets only hit a paltry 6 longballs, but the result was still the same: they won in a rout.

Two of their Home Runs came from Neil Walker, who's now got 6 in the early going and has, at least for now, made everyone forget about the dude he replaced at 2nd Base. This isn't much of a surprise to me; for as much as the Postseason explosion Daniel Murphy experienced last season was an amazing thing, that wasn't his career. Home Runs aren't necessarily Walker's thing either, but if anyone was skeptical over replacing Murphy with Walker, well, maybe they should think differently. The Mets aren't really losing anything by not having Murphy around anymore; if anything Walker's been a better, albeit less flashy player over the past several seasons. Of course, by less flashy, I mean Walker tends to not be the kind of player who's going to field a ground ball and immediately turn and take a flying leap to try and throw a runner out at 3rd, and he's not going to try to score from 2nd base on an infield single. Mostly, he'll make smart plays that don't leave you scratching your head. At least that's what we've seen so far.

Let's see. Other Home Runs came from Michael Conforto, whose 1st inning shot basically let the air out of Vince Velasquez's sails. Yoenis Cespedes got the rout in order with a 3-run shot in the 3rd. Lucas Duda hit his 2nd in as many days. Curtis Granderson joined the fun in the 8th inning. All this in support of Logan Verrett, who threw his second consecutive 6-shutout-inning-start, once again underscoring the embarrassment of riches this Mets pitching is. Verrett will be rewarded by going back to the bullpen as deGrom is set to return on Sunday with a happy and healthy heart, but he can also take heart in knowing that his spot was kept warm by Verrett's solid work.

This Home Run thing that the Mets are on, what is it, 17 in the last 5 games, is nice, but it's not always my favorite thing. Yes, the Mets can blast you off the field on their best nights, and sometimes it's good to remind people of that. But what would be nice is a little more balance, more innings where they score 2-3 runs and bang out 5 hits. They have this in them, I know. I guess when you're at Steroid Field II it's sort of hard to resist swinging for the downs. Especially when you're up by a wide margin and finally did some damage against these annoying Philly starters.

Just Standing Around

The Mets finally had one of these 2-1 games against the Mickey Mouse Marlins go in their favor on Wednesday afternoon, which was about damn time because I have the feeling that if they had another one of these games where the pitchers gave up 1 or 2 runs and lost they might have revolted and staged a hostile takeover of the lineup (Syndergaard in CF?).

Actually, if the Mets had managed to lose and get swept, there might have been a fan revolt altogether. It's become a bit of a divisive thing among fans; I understand why some people might feel a need to panic, this not-hitting thing can become epidemic real fast, plus look, even though it's not possible, and even though the Mets are inevitably going to lose at least 70 or so times this season, you still want them to go out and win every game. This sort of knee-jerk panic doesn't really sit well with the hard-liners, though. I consider myself in this faction of fans, based on tenure and the fact that I've seen this sort of thing go on so many times. Still, it worries me that the Mets have broken from the gate kind of slow; it sort of gives you the slow, sinking sensation that this season could dissolve into 2001 or 2007.

But the Mets continue to get wonderful pitching, which sort of stems that panic from really taking hold. Logan Verrett, getting the start in the Jacob deGrom spot, did a fine job, as has been his wont over the past couple of years. Verrett did what Syndergaard accomplished on Tuesday, which is keep the Marlins at bay for 6 innings, while everyone else just sort of stood around and waited for someone to do something on offense. They didn't mange much off of Adam Conley, whom I believe threw a similarly strong game against the Mets last season and has all the makings of one of those Randy Tomlin-types whose career is defined by several middling seasons on bad teams, but just eats the Mets for lunch every time out. The fact that the Mets had their weekday afternoon lineup didn't help either; I was shocked that David Wright was playing at all, after slogging it out on a frigid night on Tuesday, but there he was, with Wilmer Flores at 1st, and Juan Lagares in Center.

It wasn't until the 7th inning of a scoreless game that I finally had a moment at work to pull up MLB Gamecast at my station, and when you pull up a game mid-stream, you sort of have that moment of trepidation because you hope you're not going to land on a page that says MIA 6, NYM 1, top 7. But it was 0-0, which I was relieved by, because although the Mets weren't hitting, they also weren't losing. By this point Verrett had left, replaced by Jim Henderson, who was clearly reeling from his unsuccessful performance on Tuesday (and clearly isn't quite yet fit for heavy work on back-to-back days), and whose poor performance yesterday required Hansel Robles and Jerry Blevins to bail him out. Which, fortunately, they did.

Finally, the Mets broke through in the last of the 7th in a rather excruciating 2-run rally that took forever to develop and took a hit from Kevin Plawecki for the Mets to cash in, and even then Plawecki got thrown out trying to steal an extra base on the play. Regardless, it gave the Mets the lead and by that point you figured that would be it for them. Blevins got part of the way through the 8th before Collins went to Jeurys Familia for a 5-out Save after using him in each of the previous two games. So already that was playing with fire a little bit, and Familia gave up a couple of hits and an RBI single to Nickleback but managed to survive that and the 9th, and the Mets managed to salvage a win to close out a less-than-impressive homestand.

So, now the Mets go on the road for the next several days, to Cleveland, Philadelphia and Atlanta. This should be a good thing for them. The Mets have a long and storied history of going gangbusters on the road whenever they struggle at home, and sometimes it seems like whatever camaraderie develops on a road trip seems to carry them through games. It might wake up the offense. Who knows.

Regular Eye-Coverer

I was expecting a night much like last night this evening, where I was out living my "other life" hanging around a Theater and I would get home much too late to see any of the Mets game. But it seems that the Mets and Phillies decided that I'd been a bit too deprived these past few days and extended their game much longer than necessary so that I arrived home in time to catch the last few lousy innings.

I got home just in time to see Hansel Robles whiz a pitch up around Cameron Rupp's eardrum, which was followed by Rupp pulling his "Big Man" act and yelling at Robles, and the benches emptying and people milling around the infield and Phillies trying to look tough and Mets trying to peacekeep and eventually everyone walked off. Robles was ejected, Collins was ejected and then I was filled in on what I'd missed.

I'd heard some unsettling rumblings about Yoenis Cespedes taking a Justin DeFratus pitch off his knuckles early in the game and being sent for X-Rays, which fortunately came back negative and saved us from a total fan base meltdown, and later Kirk Nieuwenhuis was hit by a pitch as well. Logan Verrett hit Odubel Herrera at some point, although when I think of retribution, Verrett isn't quite my first choice to deliver it. Nonetheless, it seems I'd missed a heated affair.

I'd also missed a sloppy affair, as the Mets roared out to a 5-0 lead and slowly but surely let the Phillies pull a 2008 on them and come back; it was 5-3 when I got home and by time that shit show of an inning ended the Phillies were ahead 6-5. This was because after Robles got ejected, the succession of Bobby Parnell, Dario Alvarez and Carlos Torres managed to allow 3 runs and get two outs.

Still the Mets had a chance to come back and when the Phillies brought that Dalier Hinojosa fellow in the game I thought their chances were good, based on my theory of "guys who wear #94," but that didn't happen. Instead of winning and keeping the pedal to the metal, the Mets lost their second game in a row in Philadelphia 7-5.

I mean, I guess I can't get too worked up because the Mets can't lose their Division title after having clinched it, but the last two nights they certainly aren't earning themselves any style points. This game ended up being close to 4 hours and the score was only 7-5, which ought to tell you what was going on. The Mets had, at loose guess 43 men on base in this game and most of them ended up stranded, and their pitching staff handed the Phillies an astronomical 24 walks, and when you have that happen, the resulting shit stew isn't very good. The Mets now have to regroup and come back in about 12 hours to play a game that's been unceremoniously moved up to a noon start time because of impending weather. So not only will they be playing on short rest, they'll also probably be playing in front of about a dozen people because they gave people about 18 hours' notice about the time change. I also don't think the Mets know who's starting this game either, since this is the now-vacated Matz slot in the rotation. Maybe at this point they've just decided to wing it.

Idiot Time Revisited

As the Mets were in the midst of causing me to have a nervous breakdown in September of 2008, I deemed the final two weeks of the season "Idiot Time." Idiot time is what happens when the Mets lose a game to a team they should be stomping and then the Manager and the players give interviews after the game where they're making uncomfortable jokes and trying to act as though everything's great. They play like idiots and then they act like idiots. Idiots idiots idiots.

For as much as I thought the Mets were beyond this sort of stuff now, because it's a new regime and a totally different roster, they did a really good job of making it seem like it was 2008 on Tuesday night. Logan Verrett got bombed out of the building, the hitters couldn't solve Matt Wisler, the Mets lost and Terry Collins gave a jovial postgame conference where he did everything short of referring to himself as Charlie the Tuna.

I'm trying to not let these things bother me too much because this is a different era, and the team that's in pursuit of them still has a hard time getting out of their own way and is running out of time to catch up, but the Mets aren't doing a particularly good job of putting this thing away. Nor are they doing a good job of inspiring confidence if and when they do wrap this up.

Right now, Tyler Clippard is taking a lot of heat because he gave up two key runs in the 9th inning, but I don't think this is really about Clippard. Clippard shouldn't have been in the game altogether. Clippard still needs to be resting that "sore back" or "sore neck" that he has for another week or so and let the other guys negotiate this stretch. But he's a very convenient scapegoat here. Really, the issue is that the Mets offense, which was carrying the team for weeks, stopped hitting. Granted, they were generating runs at an unsustainable pace and they were guaranteed to come back to Earth, but it doesn't help that basically everyone has gone cold at once. It can make a team look rather pedestrian when that happens.

I wouldn't go so far as to say the Mets are playing tight because for the most part they don't look tight. They're making the same dopey mistakes they usually make; it only causes more concern because, as I said, it's idiot time.

Drawing Ever Closer

The Mets hacked another number off their magic number on Monday night by hacking the Miami Marlins with a trio of longballs, all of which left the field of play, two of them on the fly. These three swings produced the runs necessary to pull off yet another, albeit much less dramatic, comeback win as the Mets won 4-3.

It was kind of a mild crowd at Citi Field, where I was out for my 19th game of the season, and my first that didn't involve one of the "conventional" Mets starters. On the season, I've managed to spread my pitchers out pretty evenly, Harvey has been on the mound 5 times, Colon 4, Syndergaard and deGrom 3, Niese 2 and Matz 1, and now I can add Logan Verrett to this bunch since he took the ball in the Harvey location. Granted, Verrett possesses neither the repertiore nor the élan of Harvey, and perhaps this sort of put the crowd, at my estimate a good 20, maybe 22,000 strong, in a rather lethargic mood. Not that it was a bad night for a game, it just wasn't a very lively game.

The crowd probably wasn't helped by the fact that both Verrett and his Marlin counterpart Justin Nicolino worked at a Trachsel-like pace in the early going. The Mets got a 1st inning double from David Wright that went nowhere, and had two men on in the 2nd, but came away with nothing. In the 3rd, Juan Lagares led off with an infield hit, but when David Wright followed with a fly ball to center, he had the ill-advised idea to tag up and take off for 2nd, challenging the arm of Christian Yelich who threw him out by a good 10 feet. Lagares would have been wise to stay put, particularly after Yoenis Cespedes hit the next pitch to the Whitestone Bridge. Cespedes has deserved all the superlatives laid upon him since he's arrived here in New York; I don't think he's actually going to win MVP but considering that the Mets have gone from dead to not dead rather dramatically, well, there's something to be said for that. At this point Cespedes is so hot it's comical. This particular Home Run had the height to reach the upper deck in Left Field but didn't quite have the legs to get there but then again it left the field in about 2.6 seconds. It then took Cespedes a good 45 seconds to round the bases, because, clearly, he don't give a fuck.

This, then, was the offense in the game, at least until the 5th when Verrett ran out of steam and the Marlins Marlined him to death, getting two singles from Derek Dietrich (aka Cody Ross 2.0) and J.T. Realmuto (second coming of John Baker) and then a run scoring ground out. Sean Gilmartin entered the game in the 6th and was promptly greeted by Dee Gordon bunting on him and only by some good fortune did he not go further after Gilmartin heaved the ball into Right Field. Nonetheless, this wasn't a good start and after the Marlins did their usual Stupid Marlin Tricks they scored two runs. Guess who drove them in. Dietrich and Realmuto.

So, now it's 3-1 Marlins and this crowd that already kind of seemed bored was about to fall asleep. Nicolino had been hittable but the Mets were falling into their old habit of not getting that finishing hit. But, they did when they needed to. After Nicolino got the first two men out in the last of the 6th, Juan Uribe did a very Juan Uribe thing and doubled to left. Travis d'Arnaud followed and fouled off a bunch of pitches before finally locking in on something and blasting it out over the Center Field fence to tie the game. Woo hoo!

In the 7th inning, Kyle Barraclough (Bearoclaw?) came in and immediately made his own life difficult by walking Wilmer Flores, and then walking Curtis Granderson, but he'd managed to get himself two outs and David Wright up, but Wright got the better of him, hitting a long drive over Yelich's head in Center Field that one-hopped over the wall. This, of course, proved to be one of Baseball's annoying little wrinkles because Granderson on one leg would have scored on this hit, but of course he ended up getting sent back to 3rd. I believe that there's some rule that says an umpire can send the trail runner home if he deems that said runner could have scored on a ground-rule double. If such a rule does exist, this would have been the place to invoke it. But that didn't happen and so the score remained 4-3.

Addison Reed took the ball in the 8th inning rather than Tyler Clippard, which was a good thing because as I'd mentioned over the weekend, Clippard could use a few days' rest. Reed did what was necessary and in the 9th inning Jeurys Familia also did what was necessary and the Mets as a team did what was necessary to win the game, shave another day off the clock and maintain their lead in the division. So, all in all a good night. Perhaps not the most exciting night, but at this point I'll take a win no matter how it's achieved. I think anyone will.

Bizarro Scenario

The Mets have had a long and storied history of losing excruciating, high scoring, stupid games in Colorado going back to the very first game at Coors Field and a night we'd love to forget. The Mets go to Colorado once a year (some years it may be twice, whether planned or not) and usually what happens is they get the rug pulled out from under them. You can count on one, sometimes two games in a series in which the Mets run out to a big lead and then the Colorados come back against the bullpen and someone makes an error or someone walks in the winning run, or someone hits a Home Run clear out to Colorado Springs.

But that didn't happen this past weekend. For the first time in the 21-year mostly miserable existence of Coors Field, the Mets actually swept a series. Friday and Saturday, the Mets played typical Colorado games. They ran out to enormous leads and then had to cringe as the Colorados chipped away and hoped that the inevitable stupid play didn't happen. And Dammit, the stupid play never happened. The Mets won both games 14-9 which ought to tell you the kind of game it was.

That set up Sunday and the game that everyone who's still hung up on how stupid the Mets are were screaming about all week. This, of course, was the game where Matt Harvey's turn in the rotation came up, but Harvey wasn't scheduled to pitch. Instead, Logan Verrett was summoned to the mound and I'm sure everyone who was ripping the move was waiting for the Colorados to eat Verrett alive and score 13 runs in 2.2 innings.

But that didn't happen. Verrett instead gave everyone a giant shitburger by throwing 8 brilliant innings at the Colorados and allowing just 1 run as the Mets offense, in what I guess is now an off day for them, plated 5 of their own in assorted varieties, as the Mets wiped out the Colorados for the second time in 3 weeks. The 5-1 victory was not only Verrett's first in the Majors, but it gave the Mets a 7-0 sweep of the season series over the Colorados (in stark contrast to their performances against the Cubs and Pittsburghe).

Verrett obviously isn't replacing Harvey by any stretch of the imagination. But he was given an opportunity to show what he's got and he ran with it. True, the Colorados are a mess right now. They've been playing an especially stupid brand of baseball all weekend, with myriad mental mistakes and guys getting thrown out on the bases and what have you. The kind of stuff you expect from a last place team. But they still have a fairly potent lineup and outside of a 4th inning Home Run by Carlos Gonzalez, who, again, can hit Home Runs off anybody, Verrett basically stopped the Colorados cold. Sort of like Harvey did last week. Anyone paying attention would have been happy if Verrett could have worked his way through 6 innings. But he went beyond that and gave the Mets 8, allowing 1 run and 4 hits while striking out 8. So not only did he pitch well, but he preserved the Mets bullpen, which was needless to say taxed after a pair of absurdist shit shows.

The Colorados were, of course, all too happy to help the Mets out. David Hale, a Barves castoff that had the poor fortune of landing in Denver, basically handed the Mets two runs when he and Dustin Garneau (not d'Arnaud) decided, I suppose, to just wing it and the result was a pair of really Wild Pitches that plated a pair of runs. Later, in the 6th, the Colorados had Verrett on the ropes after he hit Charlie Blackmon to start the inning. With 2 out, Nolan Arenado lined a single to right. Nothing out of the ordinary, except McCharlieman decided to be a hero and take 3rd base, where he was promptly thrown out to end the inning. This killed the Colorados in this game, but it seems that this sort of fundamental abandonment has been going on for a while. Again, the trademark of a bad team. Contrariwise, it's the sign of a good team that they can beat you 14-9 or 5-1, and right now that's what the Mets are.