If you were looking for four hours that would renew your faith in the Mets, well, boy did you pick the wrong night.
First the Mets played a thoroughly inept game against the Yankees, one in which a) they were atrocious once more with runners in scoring position; b) Steven Matz [1] underpitched Chad Green [2] to put them in an inescapably deep hole; c) Wilmer Flores [3] looked awful at shortstop, a position there’s no longer any sensible reason for him to be playing; and d) Hansel Robles [4] suffered a mental breakdown in which he became convinced Mark Teixeira [5] was stealing signs, had conspired to kill JFK and was ordering airlines to spray mind-control chemicals on American citizens.
It wasn’t the most heartbreaking or tragic loss of the season — the Mets’ chronic shabbiness no longer deserves that emotional weight — but it was certainly an embarrassing one [6].
Oh, and then Yoenis Cespedes [7] was put on the DL. Yes, the same Yoenis Cespedes who hurt his quad in early July and could have been disabled for the All-Star break, but was instead allowed to play on one leg for nearly a month, with the kind of results you’d expect from a baseball player with three working limbs. So in addition to making a panicky trade that will leave them calling audibles for 2017, the Mets have now turned a two- or three-week absence for their only real hitter into a six or seven-week absence, one that will almost certainly doom their season. Fine work all around, gentlemen.
But then we should have seen that one coming, because this is the same way the Mets handled injuries all last summer. It’s what led to Clayton Kershaw [8] facing a lineup that looked like a time capsule from the ’94 strike. Heck, it’s the same way they’ve handled injuries for years, because of stinginess or incompetence or some combination of the two. I’d huff and puff that surely this can’t continue, but anyone who roots for this team will tell you it obviously can. At this point, the crazy thing would be to imagine that one day it will actually change.