Groundhog Day

Wednesday night's Subway Series game was basically the antithesis of how stupid this chore of a series has become. The Mets scratch out an early run, the Yankees tie the game. The teams then trade 1-2 runs back and forth. The Mets are usually battling and clawing and score runs on ground outs and Sac flies. The Yankees score on monumental Home Runs by their biggest names. The game gets late, the bullpens take over, some Mets reliever gets attacked by Subway Series gremlins, the Mets try to rally and then someone else has their own Subway Series and the Mets lose again.

I saw maybe an inning or two of last night's game and I already knew how to sum it up. The Mets had an early lead, Robert Gsellman gave up an 800 foot Home Run to Mike Judge that broke Baseball, the game was tied late because the Mets scored two runs on Sac flies, and then Paul Sewald came in for the 7th, was one strike from getting out of a jam and instead gave up a 2-run double to Didi Brontasaurius and the Mets had no recourse in a 5-3 loss.

I throw up my hands at these games now. I said on Monday just don't get swept and now I'm not sure that that's not better for them. Probably because I have no confidence in them winning, particularly when you have to throw the Gremlins on top of the odds.

BAI

I only managed to catch an inning or two of Thursday night's game, which is more or less how I'd been watching this series. I think it could only be stomached in small doses. But at any rate, the Mets were behind when I turned the game on, which stands to reason given that the Dodgers had hit 44 Home Runs in the series to that point, half of them by Cody Bellinger, the other half by Corey Seager, and another half by Justin Turner because the Mets needed more reason to look like assholes. I'll give Steven Matz a little bit of credit for only allowing two Home Runs, instead of the requisite 6 that the other Mets starters had given up in this series, which meant that when I tuned in, the Mets only trailed 3-2 instead of 11-2.

But at any rate, Lucas Duda hit a double to score Jay Bruce and tie the game 3-3 in the 6th inning, and that gave me some blind hope that maybe the Mets could salvage something here, but that was not the case. I shut it down around the 7th inning because, you know, it was late and I was tired, and of course everything went to shit from there.

This series reminded me of those years when the Mets were terrible and Washington would come in to Citi Field and hit 87 Home Runs, most of them by Rendon and Fire Hydrant Head. But the Mets lost all four of these games not so much because they'd quit or weren't trying, it seems more a matter of the Dodgers are to 2017 what the Cubs were to 2016 or something like that. I do realize that based on the last 7 games the Mets season is probably toast and we're probably going to start seeing some of these pieces get traded off in the coming weeks. It's sort of the curse of the middle ground. Not good enough to hang with the big boys, but dammit, I still think the Mets are better put together than the Fucking Marlins. Not that it counts for anything at this point but you take what little victories you can get.

That Old Ace In the Hole

I mused the other day to nobody in particular that I missed the old Matt Harvey, who used to come out with smoke coming out of his ears ready to throw the ball through a brick wall and would snarl at anyone that deigned get in his way or, worse, attempted to remove him from a game.

I keep this blind hope that someday the old Matt Harvey will come back, and maybe that will happen, but the more I watch, the less likely it seems. Twice spotted a lead against the Pirates, Harvey fell victim to the irrepressible Elias Diaz, who drove in 6 runs, and to his own bullpen, who melted down once again as the Mets fell to the Pirates at home 12-7.

This was another one of those games that was thrown at me as part of my original plan, but as seems to have been the case many times this year, I've swapped it out for another game. A couple of times, this has happened and ended up biting me in the ass, because the Mets won the game I missed, but I suppose if there was ever a game I was going to be glad I didn't go to, this would be it. Were it two years ago, or even four years ago, knowing I had tickets to a game when Harvey was on the mound, I don't think I would have been so quick to pass (although to be fair, I was prodded to swap out this game by my other half, still reveling in the graduatory afterglow). Hell, there were nights when I specifically swapped in to games I knew Harvey would be pitching. It was can't-miss Baseball.

Now? It's If ya got the time, and it seems like that attitude has overtaken the whole ballclub. The Mets find their way back to within some sort of shouting distance of .500 and then go out and lose 3 games in a row. It's not improving. I'm still not sure how it can improve and the chatter I'm hearing now is a little more of what can we trade guys away for as opposed to what can we get to shore up the team. It's depressing. This season wasn't supposed to go down like this.