As baseball fans, we react. Unable to actually alter the course of events transpiring down there on the field, we overreact. And trying to outguess baseball is a surefire way to look like a fool.
Still. It’s what we do. We react, we overreact, we turn dots into lines and fill in pictures. Like this one: The Mets are in trouble. Red alert trouble.
Trouble as in their lead in the thoroughly mediocre National League East is down to a game and a half. That’s two bad days for a team that’s had a lot of them recently.
Trouble as in they’re now only a couple of ticks above mediocre themselves — once 10 games over .500, now just four.
Trouble as in the starters are hurt, erratic or may have run out of gas; the relievers are a nightly game of roulette; the offense is missing in action; and now the defense has started looking shaky too.
Trouble as in one can no longer hope the cavalry will ride to the rescue, not with forearm tightness and slow-to-heal obliques and pitch counts that need to be ramped up. Most of the cavalry’s here already, and wondering who’s going to rescue them.
Trouble as they’re in playing the Marlins in Soilmaster Stadium, a haunted house that’s never as empty as you wish it were, because everything that goes bump in the night turns out not to be a pet or the wind or the house settling but some deathless necrotic evil spirit that rips your face off and then drags you to Hell.
Trouble as in balls that didn’t quite go out of the yard, plays up the middle that weren’t quite made, liners gone just foul, enemy broken-bat hits carrying ridiculously far, balky hamstrings turning long outs into long hits, frustrated managers getting ejected and frustrated newcomers looking for someone to blame.
The Mets are in trouble. Red alert trouble. Don’t remain calm [1]. All is not well [2].