No wait — I kind of mean it.
The Mets were down 3-1 to the Rockies in the top of the ninth, following a bottom of the eighth that was depressing even by recent Mets standards. Colorado had two men on with Carlos Gonzalez [1] at the plate, and Antonio Bastardo [2], AKA the Human Curfew, was standing out there on the mound and occasionally throwing a baseball.
In the SNY booth, Gary Cohen and Ron Darling [3] had had enough, and were idly discussing what one could accomplish between Bastardo pitches. Their candidates included booking an airline ticket and writing a country song. (I am not kidding.) In the park, the Mets fans who hadn’t already shuffled out in dejection were looking for anything blue and orange to boo. It was getting dangerously close to the Mets equivalent of the soccer riot in “The Simpsons.” [4]
Then Bastardo roused himself to brush away the cobwebs and dust that had accumulated on his body since his last pitch and heaved a slider homeward. It only felt like Gonzalez had stood there long enough to attain free agency and be replaced by a lesser player; he was still present, eyed a slider that was doing no such thing, and hit it approximately to Portugal.
And with that, the Band-Aid was ripped off. Tragedy became farce, and this awful game [5] stopped hurting.
So yeah, thanks Antonio.
Before that … well, must we? Steven Matz [6] pitched inefficiently but pretty well despite that, Houdini-ing his way out of several tight spots, but wasn’t perfect and so lost. The Mets were awful again with teammates in scoring position: 0 for 7 on the night, which drops their season average to .202. If you’re wondering, yes, in fact that is the worst such mark in the history of the franchise, out-hopelessing even the ’68 club.
Still, even Don Bosch [7] and Jerry Buchek [8] might have found tonight’s eighth inning amazin’. With Jake McGee [9] on the mound, Alejandro De Aza [10] singled and Curtis Granderson [11] moved him to second with a bloop hit. With Mets fans murmuring in tentative, fretful hope, Scott Oberg [12] came in and threw … three pitches. Travis d’Arnaud [13] broke his bat on the first one, with the lumber actually conking De Aza in the helmet. Yoenis Cespedes [14] fouled out on the second pitch. And James Loney [15] — your hitting star of the night with a solo homer — grounded out on the third.
Does hitting a teammate in the head with part of a bat count as a hit with a runner in scoring position? Because that was as close as the Mets would get.
You can’t make this stuff up. And if you could, why would you?
Honestly, there’s nothing new to be said at this point. Go read yesterday’s post, or the one from the day before that, or too many others of recent vintage. The team can’t hit, they continue to ask players to play on one leg or to sit on the bench for a while before finally moving them to the DL, the pitchers have to be perfect and pay the price when they aren’t.
The Mets are too much of a mess to responsibly be buyers and don’t have much of anything to peddle as sellers. So they continue to muddle along telling themselves and us that things are different than they are: when the losing stopped tonight, Terry Collins [16] ordered that the clubhouse music be turned up. It was Bon Jovi, Adam Rubin informed us.
These days if you hear Jon Bon Jovi he’s touting the merits of being able to rewind live TV, and asking you to embrace the power to turn back time. Which would be nice, goodness knows — hell, I’d jam that button down until I had a chance to order Jeurys Familia [17] not to quick-pitch Alex Gordon [18].
But that button’s broken for the ’16 Mets. Grampy Tim’s not coming back, the gym membership’s expired, hairlines are retreating faster than glaciers, the salsa’s perpetually mild, and not a single one of these ill-considered second children can get a hit when you need one.