How is it every time I look up I'm immersed in high batting averages? Even if the batting average has been devalued as a key determinant of offensive effectiveness, you'd figure a lineup in which six of the regulars are over .300 — Beltran and Castillo ranked 1 and 2 in the entire National League at the close of business Wednesday night — and a guy hitting .278, Delgado, is among the Top Five in RBI…you'd figure that team would be on fire, that it would be in first place or at least have a record that indicated they'd be there soon.
You'd figure wrong. Go figure.
Go figure 'cause I can't. The 2009 New York Mets are a page of imposing numbers in search of a bottom line. They don't add up, not on paper, not at all.
There's something missing, starting with wins, of course, but extending right into the way they play the game, every game, right through the most recent one, a bland loss to the Cardinals in which — despite the eternally suffocating presence [1] of Joel Piñeiro — St. Louis didn't seem particularly imposing, just better equipped to prevail. Could have said the same thing about San Diego last week, could have said the same thing about Florida the weekend before that. There but for the grace of Johan, you could say that about every series the Mets have played.
Sometimes, as Freud theorized, fourteen tepid games are just fourteen tepid games, with 148 left to play, smoke 'em if you got 'em. And sometimes you can see your team has no core, no center, no sense of purpose. They're all swell sorts and they're all talented guys, but they're not much of a team.
The Mets aren't much of a team right now. They have appeared lackluster and wan for their last three losses, even when they seemed in command of the score Tuesday. Wednesday, at least, was not 1962 reincarnated [2], but if the present they are showing us is the immediate future we can anticipate, it's going to be a long, blah summer.
Nice stats, though. And nice guys. Ramon Castro's the belle of the clubhouse, we've been told since 2005. Could he block a plate? John Maine's a sweetheart. Doesn't move anybody off a plate, though, as Ronnie noted from the booth (though I could swear John used to [3]). Doesn't emerge from trouble either. I was a little disconcerted after Maine batted in the fifth, trailing 5-1, and Mr. Darling recalled his own rookie season experience of being left in to fend for himself in a game when he was losing and he said it turned his season around. Next inning, Maine was perfect. Gary and Ron toasted this as a turning point for Maine '09, clear into the sixth…which was when John loaded the bases and had to be removed.
An isolated incident, but indicative, somehow, of the way this team (and it's not the broadcasters' fault), congratulates itself on achieving nothing in particular. Hey, John Maine retired three guys in a row! We're great! Well, sometimes a three-batter sequence is just a three-batter sequence. I'm not in Maine's head. Maybe he learned something Wednesday night the way Darling did in 1984 and he's on his way after coming back from injury. Or maybe he and we are stuck at square one. Maybe we'll keep not sliding into plates blocked by opposing catchers and maybe we'll keep not blocking plates being slid into by opposing baserunners and maybe we're going to keep congratulating ourselves for the way 80-pitch drills in Spring Training produced high batting averages the first two weeks of the season, but I wonder if maybe Jerry should have tried that exercise with runners in scoring position, because the Mets display a disturbing habit of stopping hitting in those situations.
On the other hand, Daniel Murphy didn't fall down and didn't drop anything in left field, so there's another little victory that won't show up in the standings — as opposed to the latest lifeless loss [4] that is ingrained there with all the others that have occurred and however many more seem likely to come if the modern-day equivalent of Donn Clendenon or Ray Knight isn't dropped into this house of empty stats soon. This team needs something or somebody to push it to another level, preferably up.
Don't despair! There's still Faith and Fear in Flushing: An Intense Personal History of the New York Mets, available from Amazon [5], Barnes & Noble [6] or a bookstore near you. Keep in touch and join the discussion on Facebook [7].