You’ve heard the old expression “the inmates are running the asylum.” Well, that would be an improvement for the 2018 Mets.
Because nobody is running this asylum. Too many of the players can’t handle the basics of major league baseball. The manager doesn’t seem equipped to juggle the bedrock strategies and in-game preparation required. The front office — now an unwieldy triumvirate — wastes roster spots on old players with no future while letting young players rot on the bench. The new people in charge of injury prevention are as bad at their jobs as the old people were. Anonymous quotes continue to be stuck in unsuspecting backs. The face of ownership is a feckless, interfering twit who’s been given a license for negligence by his industry and is likely to outlive a good chunk of the fanbase.
The Mets just completed the third-worst month in franchise history. They are the worst team in the National League. There is no particular reason to believe things won’t get worse from here, and no reason whatsoever to think that anyone connected with this franchise is doing anything to address the top-to-bottom organizational rot.
I’ve lived through some bleak, bleak times as a Mets fan: the Lorinda de Roulet years when the Mets were baseball’s North Korea; the leaderless calamity of the early 90s; the undermanned embarrassment of the mid-aughts. All those teams were embarrassing and pathetic. I hated some of them and took a perverse delight in their chronic failures; others I just wanted to go away.
But I can’t remember a more toxic brew of underperformance, incompetence and negligence than what this team serves up each and every day — or feeling less hope that anything will change.
You got that right!
DeGrom is very much out of place on this ball club.
He has character.
Things will get better next season when Ces and Bruce and D’Arnaud are healthy again. We were good when they were healthy. There is no reason for them to come back this year to get injured further, so let’s not pine for their returns. David Wright will be back before they will. So let’s enjoy Reyes, Batista, and Tebow while we can.
We also expected a healthy and productive Noah, and so a big chunk was taken away by that freak injury. Not even more hydration would have helped in this case. We thought Harvey was going to be healthy, and it hurt us that he was not, and then needed to be removed from the scene.
Yeah well said jason. We all feel this way
I’m at the point where I want this team to dump everyone I like and play Reyes everyday. And rename themselves the “Jeffies.”
From the Sign Man, in much better times: There Are No Words.
Yet, you guys keep coming up with wonderful words to describe what’s going on here. This blog is the only remaining part of the 2018 season I look forward to every day.
Absolutely. I enjoy reading something that sends me to the dictionary every now and then. Feckless! Let’s Go Jason!
Feckless seems to be the word of the moment, popping up everywhere ever since Sam Bee famously used it to modify a word I’m certain we’ll never see on the pages of FAFIF.
Hear friggin’ hear.
Jason nails it as always. You don’t need a baseball PhD or know how to calculate WAR on a bar napkin to know what’s wrong with this bunch of sad-sack-sorry losers. The bullpen is a garbage heap, no one can get on base and when they do no one drives them in, their defense is an afterthought, the new manager does the same dunderheaded things the last one did and two of the team’s star players have seemingly vanished into the Mets weird injury vortex yet again. Aside from some pretty good SP this team just plain blows. No life, no fundies, no hustle…they’re not even shitty enough to be funny like the late 70s teams were.
I wouldn’t be surprised if management has already asked Terry Collins if he wouldn’t mind taking charge for a month or three.
At this point I think that one of Ed Kranepool’s shitty kidneys could play better than this team.
This team, as bad as it is, is not even the best at being the worst and most dislikeable Met team IMO. Surely the late 1970s seemed more hopeless…even though they actually were less than a decade to dominating. The early 90s Mets of Bonilla and Coleman were more dislikeable. I think the Art Howe Mets with Alomar and Vaughn in 2003 were more dislikeable too. I guess I don’t even care enough to dislike this team anymore…the whole organization is just too pathetic.
The fact that this is the result of a relatively recent “rebuild” effort make it sting that much more. Just five seasons ago the Mets system was loaded with future talent and the future looked rather rosy. They should be peaking right now, but instead we’re preparing for a “teardown” and a “prospect haul” which only proves that the “master plan” they hatched five-six seasons ago has been a huge bust. I have no confidence at all that the Mets FO will do any better the second time around.
Jason-
AMEN!
Happy Bobby Bonilla day! Today Bobby Bonilla gets his annual check for one million+ dollars. Just the cherry on the top of the Mets crappy cake.
I am pained that deGrom has to be a part of this calamity. I don’t want him to be traded, God no, but I can’t blame him for wanting out.
“They came and said, ‘Do you have much left?'” deGrom explained after the game. “I said, ‘I don’t have much left.’ And he’s like, ‘Well, do you want to go back out?’ And I was like, ‘I don’t think I have much left for you. I’m sorry.'”
It’s as if those words were meant for us.
The Crappiest Recap. Day after day after day. Sigh.
Well, at last tickets will be cheap for fireworks night.
“I can’t remember a more toxic brew of underperformance, incompetence and negligence than what this team serves up each and every day — or feeling less hope that anything will change.”
Yup. I didn’t watch yesterday’s game – something that NEVER happens when I am free. There’s nothing about this team that gives you hope for the future. I’ve enjoyed (or at least interested in) following bad young teams but we’re a bad old team.
Can’t recall exactly feeling this way before, and I’ve been following the Mets since 1974.
Thank goodness we here are “Mets fans who like to read.”
It’s all that is left.
It wasn’t until now that I realized that “who like to read” might be an alternative to “like to watch”.
I hope that Ed Kranepool is feeling better and is on the road to full recovery.
This Mets team is devoid of “gamers.” Guys like Kelly Johnson and Juan Uribe may not have been everyday starters but they played the game the right way and had a presence about them that other teams noticed and respected. These guys seem to only think about themselves and their stats and are lacking that “whatever it takes” mentality that good teams need. Oh, and they flat out can’t hit, field, or protect late leads! Just unwatchable.
This seems worse than the post trade of Seaver in ’77 and the aftermath of ’78. I was not paying much attention in the early 90’s but this feels worse. And if this hapless brain trust gets rid of de Grom and/or Syndergaard on the guise of rebuilding this sinking ship they assembled – My hope is lost.
Nah the late 70s Years of Misery were worse. Our current management is merely incompetent; M.Donald Grant was a nasty, unbearable creep who traded away a guy known as The Franchise for four schmucks because he didn’t like the idea of player salaries rising. They were actively trying to make the team worse, just to save money and show the players union who was in charge.
Not just the W-L record, it’s that this team is boring and irrelevant. Maybe there wouldn’t be as much at risk if they were playing in Cincinnati or Minnesota, but in the largest market in the country, this isn’t just bad for us, not just bad for the franchise, it’s bad for the sport.
For the record, I will root for anyone but this team if they trade their starting pitching away. It’s the only part of this team that is any good. This FO has no idea how to develop talent so trading for it will leave us completely barren at every level. Move the outfielders, fine. Get rid of expiring contracts if you can. Get rid of Ces and Bruce and you get a medal. But leave the starters alone.
I am not going to give TC any hosannas as a manager. At his best, he was average and generally was as successful as the roster he had to work with. Not creative, couldn’t manufacture runs, wore out his bullpen and made a lot of strange in game decisions. Had an extreme pecking order and didn’t get enough playing time for younger players. That said, TC looks like Billy Martin compared to Callaway.
mercifully i had a productive and enjoyable afternoon thinking yesterday’s game was at 7:00.
does one stop for a car accident if they’re not on the road?
did see reel of wilmer’s non-play at first…wow!
there is one unassailable gamer on this team…but he’s unfortunately been gamed by his decrepit team.
just heard the promo for today’s game: ” todd frazier and the mets look to slug…”
yea, right.
Lost my air conditioner from my second floor apartment window during the game yesterday. Nobody got banged up from that unhappy event, except for the unit. Still, I retrieved it, plugged it in, and it still worked! There’s a metaphor of contrasts in there somewhere- I’m just feeling too Wilmer-ish to find it. This team. 46 years of rooting. Ready to let them drop unless El Jeffy takes a dive.
Is it too soon, and too inappropriate, for me to note that I have also chosen to step away from the Mets for health reasons?
If so, I do apologize.
I’m giving strong consideration to only reading about this team through this blog.
It is not too soon to step away. I’d wager most of us have done that already. A green and glorious summer awaits those who walk in nature, tend their gardens and shut the door on this pathetic franchise. No pulse evident on July 1, all of June and most of May. These are not my Mets. Welcome to the New York Flatliners.
Well, the only solace we Met fans can muster, is to hope this roaring disaster of a season continues on it’s inevitable path to complete oblivion, and even the douche-bag Wilpons will be forced to fire the most incompetent manager to ever disgrace a dugout.
MLB should be ashamed of itself for allowing this travesty to continue.