The Mets lost, this time not with the thunder of a bullpen avalanche but with the merest whimper. Steven Matz [1] had one of his games where he shows up for duty in the second inning instead of the first, the offense began and ended with a solo home run, and Amed Rosario [2] had a wretched inning at shortstop. That was enough for them to be beaten rather thoroughly [3], slinking home after a 2-5 West Coast trip that saw two agonizing bullpen collapses, the usual number of Mickey Callaway [4] head-scratchers, and altogether too much uninspired play.
Sure, you might, argue, take away those two bullpen meltdowns and the Mets would have been 4-3 on a tough West Coast swing. But that’s not the way this works. With June upon us, the Mets have the look of one of those bad teams that always has excuses within reach — they’re not so much hopeless at any one aspect of baseball as they are serially inconsistent at all of them. Iron out those inconsistencies and they could be good! Which isn’t wrong, and such a straightening out isn’t impossible — the 2015 Mets pulled off the trick and rode the results straight to the World Series, before tragically turning back into the team they’d been in the early part of the summer.
But it doesn’t happen very often. Teams like that tend to stay maddeningly inconsistent all season as they stumble their way to 74 or 76 or 78 wins, or else they get consistent the way you’d prefer they didn’t and lose for weeks on end.
In the meantime, well, a team that could desperately use a day off finally gets one. They could use a week off, honestly. Or a month, or a year, or the rest of eternity.
As could we all. Go do something with your Monday that makes you happy.