There are worst things than living in Panic City. You could be stuck with an address in Disgust Township or Despair Junction or Apathy Falls.
All three of those sad little burgs would have been a suitable location for the wretched parody of baseball that the Mets and Cubs inflicted on defenseless fans for 11 embarrassing innings tonight.
The Cubs have won two in a row in the series (and eight straight against the Mets), but they didn’t exactly cover themselves with glory tonight either. They were awful against Bartolo Colon [1] and a parade of relievers and extended the game largely because of the timidity of third-base coach Gary Jones [2], last seen being hauled out of camera range for a conversation with Joe Maddon [3] that I don’t think Jones particularly enjoyed.
But while the Cubs looked somnambulant, that’s better than unbelievably awful, which would be a kind description of the Mets during a game in which I stopped throwing my hands in the air because I got too tired.
Besides the nonexistent hitting, led by a hopelessly lost and completely unprotected Lucas Duda [4], the Mets alternated not executing with executing stupid plays. Which was more aggravating, Darrell Ceciliani [5]‘s failure to execute a suicide squeeze or Ruben Tejada [6] doing his damnedest to get himself and Daniel Murphy [7] called out for sharing occupancy of third?
Murph chipped in by blowing a tag play on Anthony Rizzo [8] at third, Wilmer Flores [9] and Duda flubbed a critical attempt at a double play … the list goes on and on.
As the final batter, Kevin Plawecki [10] actually had a chance to give the Mets a lead with an extra-base hit, and had just witnessed Justin Grimm [11]‘s utter inability to throw his curve for a strike. So Plawecki stared at consecutive fastballs that caught a lot of plate. Three pitches later he was caught looking at a curve that actually broke where it was supposed to, and a miserable game came to a merciful conclusion [12].
Terry Collins [13] — who at this rate will soon be conducting his postgame interviews from Bellevue — muttered vaguely about shaking up the lineup tomorrow. That won’t work — in part because lineup construction means basically nothing [14], but mostly because because the Mets’ problem isn’t which lineup spots players are hitting in, but which players are available to hit in those spots.
Until something a lot more significant than the lineup changes, expect more of what we’ve been seeing — good performances from starting pitchers going for naught because of some combination of inept hitting, faulty defense and mental mistakes. So when will something change? Sorry, here in Apathy Falls our crystal balls have all gone cloudy. Maybe you could check with our neighbors up in Panic City.