For the life of me I can’t figure this Mets team out.
They’re built in a slapdash manner, with wildly optimistic Plan As and aw-shucks shrugs for Plan Bs. They can’t field. The hitting, relief and even the vaunted starting pitching are all inconsistent, lighting up and then going dark and making you want to bang on the side of the damn thing until it works. The manager, it’s all too apparent, is a dunderhead. You know about the owners. The result is a mediocre Mets team, the kind of outfit I should be thoroughly tired of after all these years of mostly futile fandom.
And yet, somehow, I find this half-assed patchwork weirdly compelling. When this baseball Frankenstein wins I’m thrilled, more than I should be as a 50-year-old fan who knows better. When they lose I shrug, because who expected otherwise?
The last two games have been Exhibits A and B in assessing this lovable, pitiable mutt of a team. Both times, the Mets fell behind, couldn’t get out of their own way, suffered some bad luck and then, just when we’d all given up on them, came roaring back to make a game of it … and then of course lost.
Friday night in Miami saw the lowly Marlins ambush Jacob deGrom [1], who looked sharp in the beginning but then shed command and location until he had basically nothing, culminating with a moonshot home run by Jorge Alfaro [2] that once upon a time would have dented that hideous Red Grooms Pachinko machine. (Derek Jeter [3] has been a disaster as Marlins jefe, but at least he disappeared that monstrosity.) It was another weird start in a weird year for deGrom, one he finds more baffling and infuriating than we do. The Mets didn’t help matters by slapsticking around, with Robinson Cano [4] not running hard to first and human white flag Paul Sewald [5] sent out to the mound to pass the time, except the Marlins have no bullpen and so the Mets pulled within two before inevitably losing [6]. Fittingly, the end came when former Marlin and current Proven Veteran™ Adeiny Hechavarria [7] — who should be in the stands watching his job performed by a player with an actual future — struck out.
Giving a job to Hechavarria is exactly the kind of half-assed notion that should make this team unbearable, yet I still find myself fond of these Mets. Maybe it’s that Pete Alonso [8] is ridiculously fun to watch no matter what — he hit a 417-foot homer essentially with one hand in the second, then a no-doubter in the eighth, and continues to have a wonderful time surprising even himself. And while the starting pitching’s inconsistency is maddening, deGrom, Noah Syndergaard [9] and Zack Wheeler [10] are all even bets to be spellbinding in a given start.
Or maybe I’ve finally attained what passes for baseball wisdom. The Mets are an assemblage of ill-fitting parts, a tinkerer’s mad garage creation that’s constantly spitting out gears and leaking oil and grinding to an unhappy halt. But now and again the thing actually walks and does something cool, and I find myself wondering if maybe it will happen again and eager to see if it will.