Lame As It Ever Was

When the Mets are mired deep in one of their patented extended funks, I tend to be asked — given that I’ve been around and remember things — some variation on the question, “Has it ever been this bad before?” The fact that the Mets have patented extended funks pretty much provides the answer. Yes, it’s been this bad before.

Most of the Sixties; the final segment of the Seventies; the dawn of the Eighties; the balance of the Nineties; chunks of the Ohs (I never cottoned to “Aughts”); and, in case you are afflicted with an incredibly short memory, all but a cherished fistful of months of the Tens or Teens or whatever historians will call the current decade. Within the lifespan of this blog, every single season from 2005 forward, with the possible exception of 2006, has encompassed an extended funk during which somebody was certain it couldn’t have been this bad before.

But it has been, often. It’s not always fatal to the season in which everything seems suddenly all funked up, but we do have a nearly perennial knack for being shoved by our beloved team into pits of despair, which I guess speaks both to our contemporary misery seeming surprisingly unremarkable to me and the rate of our recurring misery being more alarming than we might realize. But we’re Mets fans anyway. It’s not like we were blinded by the glare of countless championship baubles when we signed up for this.

Now don’t get me wrong. This portion of 2018 shouldn’t get a pass just because we’ve been some version of here before. Just as every pennant race brings its own unique joys, every season racing in the opposite direction deserves to be felt for all it’s worth. And this one may be singularly awful for just how ordinary it’s begun to feel.

On Friday night, the Mets lost their seventh game in a row, their fourteenth out of seventeen and their thirty-second out of forty-eight. Don’t gloss over that last set of numbers: the Mets are 16-32 since starting the season far better than that. I won’t even print what their record was after twelve games because it offers a patina of competence to their overall 2018 effort. That initial dynamic dozen, while certified as official and etched into the record books as legitimate and permanent, is no longer relevant to the campaign in progress. The team that lost only once in twelve initial outings is not the 2018 Mets anymore. The 2018 Mets are the team that has lost two of every three games for nearly a third of the season and hasn’t won consecutive games in nearly three weeks.

The seven losses in a row, on the other hand, don’t seem like they constitute a significant losing streak. They do, numerically, but experientially, it has come off, to my view at least, has just what the Mets do. The Mets play, the Mets score next to nothing or perhaps nothing and the Mets lose. How many is it now? Are we still counting?

Seriously. I’ve lived through scorching seven-game losing streaks that have scarred my soul from top to bottom. I have lay awake nights tortured by seven-game losing streaks. Usually the Z’s take a powder when the L’s reach three. Here, this homestand, in which the Mets dropped all four to the Cubs, both of two to the Orioles and now their first to the crosstown rivals, I had to stop and add it up when it got to seven.

My god, we’ve lost seven in a row. This should feel more urgent than it does. It just feels like another night without a win.

That the seventh consecutive defeat came at the hands of the team we are conditioned to despise and resent more than any on the planet (spare me your haughty “I don’t hate the Yankees” folderol if you’re one of those people) seems incidental. Had I been at Citi Field, it probably wouldn’t. But I watched on TV, with a migraine. I guess that’s sort of like being surrounded by Yankees fans.

Jacob deGrom was great for eight innings except for one pitch. Joke’s on Jake — you can’t throw one bad pitch in eight innings and expect everything to be simply, well, jake. Brett Gardner got hold of that one pitch and stroked it over the right field fence. A runner was on base. Silly deGrom, mistakes are for Yanks. Or Nats. Or whoever will be in the postseason this fall. Jake will have to make do with consolation Cy Young runner-up votes (unless somebody makes the Mets an offer they can’t refuse, and we’re getting to the point where phone lines are open).

It had been 1-1 when Gardner — who I think came up from the minors under Ralph Houk — homered. The Yankees had scored an unearned run a couple of innings earlier. Again, deGrom’s fault for not striking out every batter he faced. At the risk of being unsporting, that run wasn’t so bad because the Yankee who scored it, Masahiro Tanaka, had to leave the game as a result of having to use his legs to transport himself from one base to another until he came home on Jay Bruce’s throw to nowhere in particular. Tanaka had been stymieing the Mets’ offense since the first inning. He’d given up a leadoff home run to Brandon Nimmo — who is now tied with Jason Bay for eighteenth on the all-time Citi Field Met home run list with ten — but then literally nothing at all through five.

Learn to play baseball, American League pitchers. Then I’ll be sporting about your mishaps.

Tanaka left, Jonathan Holder entered. “Take your time warming up,” he was told, as all relievers are when injuries arise. The Mets took advantage of Holder’s unpreparedness and heightened case of nerves to go down in order in the sixth. Same as it ever was. The seventh, eighth and ninth were given over to Yankee relievers I’d heard of. The Mets gathered three hits in those three innings off those three pitchers, none for extra bases, none in particularly useful proximity to one another, certainly none that caused a run to register. Not that it was needed by the nominal visitors, but Giancarlo Stanton added one for his side by belting a barely fair, barely gone solo homer off Paul Sewald. The Marlins are having a throwback weekend in Miami. Stanton honored his old franchise by slugging at Citi like he always has. The erstwhile Floridian has more homers in the Mets’ park (22) than Bay and Nimmo combined (20).

The 4-1 loss that perfectly complemented my headache was preceded by news that Noah Syndergaard won’t start Sunday as planned (his finger’s swollen) and Jeurys Familia won’t relieve for at least ten days (his shoulder’s sore). After the routine wounds of defeat were listlessly licked, word came that Yoenis Cespedes rehabbed with Binghamton and talked to reporters. He’s looking forward to returning to the Mets in Atlanta on Tuesday. Actually, “looking forward” may be an exaggeration. He said, “If the team remains playing this way, I don’t think it’s going to help, but I’m eager to get back.”

Yo may not make it as a motivational speaker, but he’s got a helluva future as a scout if he wants it.