It’s odd being away from your baseball team for nine games. Not to mention that being six hours ahead of behind the U.S. pretty much takes you out of seeing anything. While I was in Italy night games began at 1 a.m. I caught a couple of innings of the Mets and the Cardinals trudging through extra innings, but that was it — I’d get the final score in the morning. Sometimes I’d gape at the disaster that had occurred; sometimes I’d tell Emily with mild surprise that hey, the Mets won.
Tonight was the first game I got to see in its entirety since the finale of the West Coast trip, and I was excited … or at least I was until the storm clouds began to gather.
Let’s see….
1) While I was gone, the Mets effectively disarmed mean-spirited satirists by insisting on playing with 24 men. Michael Cuddyer [1], who hurt his knee on JUNE FREAKING 28TH, still occupies neither a spot on the DL nor a semi-regular spot in the lineup. Before Friday’s game Terry Collins [2] said Cuddyer’s anti-inflammatory medication was making him dizzy, not generally a sign of readiness to play. Honestly, if a Met was shredded by a combine the team would spend the next week and a half collecting pieces of him in a bucket and trying to sew things back together before deciding that a DL trip might be needed … but not quite yet. Why on earth does this baseball team continue to behave this way? Cheapness? Incompetence? Both?
2) Before the game, Sandy Alderson said the insurance money on David Wright [3]‘s contract made no particular difference in the Mets making a trade or not. Regarding the prospects of a deal, Alderson insisted he could add a player with a significant contract, then added that none of the reporters would believe that. He’s correct — no Mets fan who’s been paying attention since Citi Field opened believes him. Which is itself a pretty serious indictment of this organization’s chronic, self-inflicting dysfunction.
3) Why would an addition to the lineup possibly be a good idea? Well, after Sandy’s press conference, the Mets went out and faced Clayton Kershaw [4] with .170 hitter John Mayberry [5] Jr. batting cleanup, protected in the order by .179 hitter Eric Campbell [6]. Look a couple of more spots down and you found Anthony Recker [7], hitting .137. That’s not a credible lineup for a split squad in March, let alone a team that’s somehow still in a pennant race at the end of July.
4) Facing this brawny lineup, Kershaw fell asleep in the bullpen and had to be persuaded that beating the Mets would actually count. OK, that’s not true, but he was perfect for six innings, and it was honestly a surprise that the Mets didn’t go 27 up and 27 down against him. They mustered three entire hits — one on a low slider Curtis Granderson [8] golfed over the infield, the second on a Wilmer Flores [9] dunker misplayed by Yasiel Puig [10], and the third a single Lucas Duda [11] pushed through the shift. Hooray for the offense!
5) Bartolo Colon [12] pitched quite well in defeat, throwing one bad pitch all night — which, unfortunately, Jimmy Rollins [13] whacked over the fence for a 1-0 Dodger lead. That was enough to beat Bart, with poor relief by Sean Gilmartin [14] and Carlos Torres [15] giving L.A. two thoroughly unnecessary insurance runs. What were Gilmartin and either Torres doing in a 1-0 game? I have no idea either.
6) The Mets’ best chance at scoring came in the eighth, when Duda led off with a single. He then somehow managed to get picked off, perhaps because he’s barely been on first since the end of May.
7) The Nationals furthered their status as the worst first-place team in recent memory by losing to the Pirates, therefore cruelly extending the illusion that the Mets could win something if they magically stopped being run like a third-rate Romanian orphanage. Honestly, I wish the Nats would just rip off an 11-game winning streak. It would put an end to this farce and the attendant emotional assault and battery.
8) Good postgame news, everybody! Cuddyer is getting new meds. They’re TOTALLY going to work. He’ll be able to play tomorrow. In fact, his knees will now be invulnerable to harm, turning any baseball that dares approach within a yard to a few fluttering shreds of yarn and carbonized curls of horsehide.
9) Well, unless it turns out the Mets don’t actually have access to magical meds that don’t leave players dizzy, in which case Cuddyer might get DL’d nearly a month after getting hurt, to be replaced on the roster by Michael Conforto [16].
10) Michael Conforto, ha ha ha. We all know they’ll bring back Johnny Monell.