Six hits. Five for singles. Only two — the lone double, followed by one of the singles — were grouped in helpful proximity to one another, generating an entire run to cut the scoreboard deficit from gaping to yawning, but either way insurmountable most of the afternoon.
Sit indoors on a sunny Sunday in New York and watch the Mets play indoors on a sunny Sunday in Miami, and that’s what you get. One run produced by a bunch of batters not performing as hitters, few of whom you’d more than barely heard of or thought about weeks ago. Plus a pitcher who seems like a really nice guy, which wouldn’t be the first thing you’d say about him if he seemed like a really good pitcher. Or fielder.
Nobody’s really good among those who don uniforms indicating their affiliation with the New York Mets right now, including the few who’ve been here since the season began. We keep up with them anyway. It’s not hard. They’re only six hits better than us.
I kid. I kid because I love. Of course they could beat me and eight people off the street at a game of baseball. Implicit in that appraisal is the Mets come across as nine people off the street, but baseball is their profession. They’ve got that on we who note their shortcomings for free. They get paid for 5-1 losses to the Marlins. Theirs is not a performance-based compensation system from series to series. Thank goodness, for their sake.
Jordan Yamamoto [1] (who seems like a really nice guy) had a rough second inning, featuring a couple of misplays he had a hand in, and five runs crossed the plate against him. He also has a sore shoulder. All of the above is enough to make a pitcher at least the No. 4 starter on the New York Mets this week. The Marlins let him go. I can see why, if only because between Pablo Lopez on Saturday and Cody Poteet on Sunday, they wouldn’t have room for a righty who can provide three pretty good innings and one sorta unlucky frame in between. Lopez and Poteen pitched very well versus the Mets this weekend. I guess they did.
It was the Mets, after all.
Ouch! Again, I kid. Not really, but the Mets remain in first place, which is the preferred destination for any baseball team in any division, even this one. It is the National League East, after all. I doubt we can count on the prevailing mediocrity of our semi-circuit as a mitigating factor much longer, however. We also can’t point to the daily presence of the “C” team as a Met-igating factor much longer if we choose to take the Mets seriously as a contender in 2021. Games remain scheduled whether or not you come prepared with an optimal assortment of players. It’s not the fault of the journeymen who are populating the roster currently that they were nobody’s first or second choice to be “the Mets” of the moment. They arrived in the organization as depth. They hoped they’d avoid alternate sites and get a call individually, but they didn’t expect to ascend to the majors en masse. I doubt they rallied one another in St. Lucie or Syracuse or wherever they crossed paths and said, “Wouldn’t it be great if all of us among the overlooked, undernoticed and generally dismissed got our chance together?”
But they have. Sometimes, as on Friday [2], it works. Sometimes, as on Saturday [3], it almost works. Sometimes it’s Sunday, when Johneshwy Fargas [4] doubles, Wilfredo Tovar [5] singles him in and Yennsy Diaz [6] looks good for an inning…and that’s it, basically. Throw in perennial holdover Robert Gsellman [7] pitching some decent relief and that’s really it [8]. The Mets couldn’t withstand the Marlins defensively and they could barely bother the Marlins offensively and, geez, it’s the Marlins, though at this point who are we to overlook, undernotice or dismiss any opponent?