All right, people. We’ve all get better things to do with what’s left of our day than complain about this listless horrible team. Start reading and we’ll rip this Band-Aid off quick as we can.
Matt Harvey: He was clearly struggling — the fastball velocity was down and the location was off, leading to very few swings and misses. It wasn’t odd to see him out there grimacing and fuming, because that’s the way Harvey pitches even when he’s got all his pitches working and going exactly where he tells them to, but it was odd to see him out there in charge of a repertoire that qualified as merely good. But he toughed it out — he scrapped and scrambled and improvised and wound up with a very good pitching line. That’s impressive any time a pitcher has to do it; for a sophomore pitcher it’s even more so. The legend of Matt Harvey grows even when he has far from legendary stuff.
Everybody Else: What a horror show. Mets swinging and missing, swinging and missing, tapping out, hitting weak fly balls, swinging and missing, tramping back to the dugout looking sad, squinting as they pull off their batting gloves, swinging and missing some more. And don’t try to lay this on Dave Hudgens — it’s not the hitting philosophy that’s lousy but the quality of the student body. Offensively, this is a bad team with one star who does himself no favors by trying to do too much, two guys who might grow into complementary players but might not, and a bunch of guys who are one-dimensional, miscast, too old, Triple-A quality or some fretful combination of those things. The Pirates — the Pirates — just thoroughly outplayed this sad disaster of a club; one shudders to think what damage the Cardinals will inflict over the next four days.
What Not to Do: Bring up Zack Wheeler. First of all, what kind of a reward is it to be chained to an oar as this pathetic ship takes on water? Second of all, given the financial uncertainty around this team and the certainty that they’ll be nowhere near the 2013 playoffs, why put him on the road for escalating paydays in arbitration? Bring Wheeler up in late June or the second half. Perhaps by then his future teammates will only be striking out nine or 10 times a night.
Silver Lining: Uhhhh … Juan Lagares made a catch you’ll see on ballpark highlight reels long after Juan Lagares is forgotten? Seriously, it was neat.
Another Silver Lining?: Nope, that one was already kind of a reach. Go be nice to your mothers. None of this [1] was their fault.