Remember when the Mets were good?
Our once-promising team is now thoroughly rooted in all-time last place, behind such worthies as the 2018 Baltimore Orioles, the 1962 Mets, the 1875 Brooklyn Atlantics and the 1899 Cleveland Spiders. That seemingly pretty decent 17-12 record? An illusion born of sabermetrics or some other newfangled defacement of the grand old game. No, the stats lie. The Mets are terrible, they’re getting worse, and we all know it.
They’re terrible individually and yet somehow even less than the sum of their ill-fitting parts. If you want to know how Jason Vargas [1]‘s 2018 is going, he gave up six runs on 11 hits in 4 2/3 innings yet somehow lowered his ERA nearly six full points. Matt Harvey [2] came in and was awful, which is no longer news nor anything that anybody particularly cares about. Jose Reyes [3] started, presumably to keep a fuming Todd Frazier [4] from excoriating more umpires, and did his usual nothing. Michael Conforto [5] struck out some more.
It doesn’t end there. I have it on good authority that Mickey Callaway [6] opened a bag of sunflower seeds and carelessly dropped it five seconds later; that Jay Horwitz let a ballpoint pen explode in his shirt pocket; that Chuck in community relations got phished and now everybody needs new passwords and a visit from the IT guy; and that various Mets fans forgot to walk dogs, came home from the bodega with the wrong milk, just realized Wednesday was mom’s birthday, dropped phones in toilets, mistook shampoo for toothpaste, and sped off with grocery bags atop cars.
If you have anything to do with orange and blue, it was that kind of day [7]. Just like it was that kind of day yesterday. Tomorrow’s forecast? Iffy with a significant chance of horrific. Dress accordingly.
The Braves, on the other hand, are getting better a lot faster than we’d hoped they would. Freddie Freeman [8], a star in years both lean and kind, now has a supporting cast worthy of him. Ozzie Albies [9] and Ronald Acuna [10] Jr. both look like special players, with the ball making the kind of sound off their bats that Buck O’Neil once beamed and told us to listen for. Add in excellent complementary players such as Nick Markakis [11] and Ender Inciarte [12], and now just wait for Dansby Swanson [13] to relax and play up to his talent level. And I didn’t even mention Julio Teheran [14], who was coming off an injury so discombobulating that he only nearly no-hit the Mets.
The Braves aren’t this good; the Mets aren’t this bad. But the trend lines are disturbing, and being outscored 21-2 doesn’t lie. It’s said that when one door closes, another door opens. But that’s not so comforting when the door closing is yours and the one opening has your rival’s name on it.