That Internal Fight

Something happened in the 4th inning of last night's game that kind of piqued my interest. And I don't mean Yasiel Puig taking too long to admire his Home Run and pissing off the entire Mets team, because those things tend to get overblown and players are often good at policing themselves.

It was, however, the initial source of the Mets ire that caught my attention. I know that if you make the rounds, most of the chatter involves something to the effect of "fweh fweh stupid Mets and cwybaby fwores," and "maybe don't throw a fastball down broadway stupit mutz." And in reality, I don't care much what Flores said or who he happened to be saying it to, but more that he did it. It's sort of his way of saying that he's getting a little sick of this shit. I think we're all getting a little sick of this shit, and, you know, you kind of want your players to show that sometimes. Flores has a history of not really being the "silent, methodical" type. You saw that two years ago when he was—and then wasn't—traded. And here the Mets are, getting their heads handed to them for the third day in a row, their overmatched Pitcher Tyler Pill just served another one up to an arrogant, underperforming headcase and he hot dogged it. I mean, didn't Wilmer Flores basically just do what every Mets fan wanted to do at that point?

Beyond that, you're starting to get a little bit of leadership out of Flores, which is important because the Mets seem to be kind of leaderless right now. David Wright probably won't be back unless some divine intervention occurs, and other guys are old, not playing well, injured, or have one foot out the door and in some cases all of the above. So it's incumbent on these younger guys to kind of make their case here. Flores to this point has had a very good season, which doesn't especially surprise me. People will listen to young guys if they're backing it up. I think you're seeing the beginning of a future leader.

This is sort of juxtaposed against an asinine article I read earlier on WFAN.com, the gist of which can be summed up as "dur dur dur stupid mets didn't sign turner and murphy and lookit them now." And, I mean, yeah. I get it. The past six games have just been a series of the Mets getting their heads bashed in by Justin Turner and Daniel Murphy, former Mets who were let go ostensibly because they hadn't proven themselves worth keeping around. I mean, Justin Turner was around for three seasons, and basically proved himself to be an inconsistent role player with a goofy personality who liked to throw pies in people's faces. At no point did he pose as a .330 hitter, because if he had, the Mets probably wouldn't have let him go. Murphy, of course, just makes me angry. Like, now, he makes me legitimately angry. I mean, think about it. We saw Daniel Murphy here for 8 years. Not a few cups of coffee. 8 years. And 8 years as a starting player. And if at ANY point in those 8 years, he'd shown that he was at all the kind of player he's turned into since he went to Washington, then the Mets would have given him a contract, and none of this would be happening, and everything would be fine. But nooooooo. We got 8 years of the anthropomorphic version of "the Yips," got tantalized by a well-timed two-week hot streak, and then an era that ended with two of the most egregious, Murphy-typifying errors in backbreaking spots in the World Series. And in case you forgot, nobody wanted him that offseason, he was probably Washington's 4th choice, and now he's Joe Fucking Morgan and the Mets are the jackasses.

Grumble. This is why it's important for guys like Wilmer Flores to get a little pissed off. It's just a reminder that these guys actually do care about this debacle of a season.

Quick Out

You could almost feel a game like Sunday's brewing for the Mets, just based on the way Saturday night's game ended. After nearly blowing a large lead but hanging on to win Saturday, the Mets got their doors blown off before most of the crowd had even settled into their seats on Sunday. Tommy Milone was the victim on this particular day, as the Angels lit him up like the Crash Davis proverbial Christmas Tree early and often and then tacked on some more runs late against Hansel Robles to win the final game of this series, 12-5.

I know no Mets fan was probably expecting great things from Milone, but if nothing else, I'd like to think he's capable of more than the basically non-competitive effort he threw out there yesterday afternoon. He'd already done himself no favors by loading the bases with no outs, and then walking .154 hitting cleanup batter Jefry Marte to force in a run. Then, of course, he laid a meatball out there for C.J. Cron to whack in the seats for a Grand Slam and...

Wait a second, just wait a fucking minute...you mean this wasn't the same game the Mets played on May 21st? There was a different opponent and a different starting pitcher instead of Milone? But the final score was basically the same, so you could have fooled me. In fact, hasn't this basically been the same game the Mets have played every Sunday afternoon this season?

I'm not convinced. I need legitimate proof that the Mets haven't decided to pull a Potemkin Sunday thing on us this year.

That's Nice Of You

The Mets had one of those "in spite of themselves" wins on Tuesday night. First of all, they started Tyler Pill, who's one of those Dillon Gee-types (in fact, I believe Gee was name-checked on more than one Mets broadcast) in that he's a pitcher who doesn't "trade high" because he doesn't have "great stuff" but he manages to overachieve because he's a "Gamer." That's a polite way of saying Pill has an excellent chance of being a spot-starter or #5 starter for a while, and he might have a hot month here and there, but don't expect too much.

But Pill surprised us all on Tuesday by working his way into and deftly out of some jams against a tough Milwaukee lineup (that's tough in spite of the fact that you haven't heard of any of them but we learned that when the Mets played them in Milwaukee). Pill gutted his way through 5.1 innings allowing just one run and departing with a 2-1 lead that became a 4-1 lead when Lucas Duda hit a Home Run in the bottom of the 6th. But, of course, since the Mets bullpen is a consistently dicey proposition, they found themselves in a sticky situation in the 7th inning when Fernando Salas loaded the bases and then had to turn things over to Jerry Blevins in order to rescue him. Blevins did his job; he struck out Travis Shaw and in spite of issuing a run-scoring walk to Domingo Santana, got Jett Bandy (still not to be confused with Jaff Decker) to pop up for what appeared to be an inning-ending out. But Asdrubal Cabrera had a moment with Baseball and did not catch the popup, and to everyone's abject horror, two runs scored and the game was tied. Goodbye, Tyler Pill Win, Hello, references to woebegone Mets Middle Infielders who should not be mentioned in polite company.

Then, of course, came the bullpen parade. Neftali Feliz begat Josh Edgin, begat Jacob Barnes, begat Addison Reed, begat Corey Knebel, begat Josh Smoker, and so on, and so forth. Mets relievers handed Brewer batters walks seemingly at will. The Mets batters did a good job of not doing much of anything. Finally, it seemed that Smoker was going to go the limit for the Mets, as the only "available" reliever was Neil Ramirez, whom nobody wanted to see. So it became somewhat imperative that the Mets figure out a way to score, particularly against Wily Peralta, deposed as a starter due to repeated ineffectiveness that seemed to disappear whenever he faced the Mets. So in the 11th, Peralta set the Mets down in order.

But finally, the Mets managed to break through in the 12th, the last possible moment before a Ramirez sighting. T.J. Rivera, whom we haven't heard much from lately (he was falling victim to the curse of overexposure anyway) hit for Smoker and singled. Michael Conforto walked. Jose Reyes moved up Rivera by grounding into a Fielder's Choice. That brought up Jay Bruce, who mercifully singled to center to score Rivera to win the game, probably about 75 minutes later than it should have ended. Irregardless, the Mets did manage to win, which is probably the most important thing. After all that, it's nice that the Mets could figure out a way to win a game like this.

Can't See

You'll have to excuse my once again totally half-assing this past weekend's games. My other half and I were away for the weekend, off to Boston, where it's All Red Sox, All The Time and if you're not the Red Sox you may as well not exist. So I didn't see much—or really any for the most part—of the weekend series in Pittsburgh.

Friday night, we were in transit, driving up to Boston and so the game was a mystery. Only when we stopped for dinner somewhere in Connecticut did I check my phone and see that the Mets were ahead by a sizeable margin, thanks to Neil Walker, who returned home and I suppose it could be said he Daniel Murphied the Pirates, hitting two Home Runs in support of Jacob deGrom, who's looking much more like himself lately and—gasp—pitched into the 9th inning! Mets win 8-1, malaise-induced losing streak stopped.

Saturday, we were out and about in Boston and although I entertained trying to see a Red Sox game at Fenway Park, I couldn't sell my other half on this and so I decided to pass. I ended up missing a Complete game Shutout tossed by Brian Johnson—something any Mets starter would be hard-pressed to accomplish these days—but I figured I'd at least get to see the latter part of the Mets game from my hotel since it was on FOX. Yes, for once, I was looking forward to a game on FOX. So I get back to the room, put on the TV, search for FOX...and find the Astros and Orioles. That's not the Mets and the game was a total bore, although the Astros seem to have a bunch of wonderfully enjoyable players, among them George Springer. who had a nice game. But no Mets. So I don't know what happened to the Mets up until the 9th inning, when Addison Reed blew a slim lead, the game went into extra innings, Rookie Tyler Pill was inserted in the 10th and immediately pitched like a Rookie making his Major League Debut on the road in an extra inning game, and the Mets lost 5-4.

Sunday was more of the same, although this time I knew I was guaranteed to see at least some brief snippet of the Mets game as they were scheduled for The Biggest Game In The Galaxy on ESPN and therefore wouldn't be subjected to a regional blackout. Further, we'd been taken to dinner by some local friends at a roadhouse with TVs. The TVs being the only redeeming feature of the joint because at least I could peer over and see what was going on. Matt Harvey seemed to look a little bit like his old self, and by time we left, the Mets had gone ahead 2-1 thanks to an Asdrubal Cabrera 2-run double. It was 5-1 when I resumed watching and only up from there. Harvey looked better than he'd looked all season through 6 innings, Lucas Duda hit a Home Run and the Mets did not make asses of themselves in front of a national audience, winning 7-2.

Still, the Mets went 3-3 in a week where they probably should have gone 6-0 and beat the tar out of some lousy teams. They continue to be unable to find a toehold or momentum off these wins and as such, the team appears about as boring as the teams they're playing. 21-27 on Memorial Day isn't what any of us were thinking.