One Not So Shining Moment

Carlos Carrasco appeared forlorn, first on the mound, more so in the clubhouse when reporters asked him about his declining velocity, his difficulties adjusting to the timer and everything else that had gone wrong. Tommy Hunter had no choice but to wear a hit-eating grin when the camera found him at his lowest. The pitching pair who just didn’t have it do have in common the same earned run average: 11.25 in 2023. Luis Guillorme’s pitching was effective, but the conditions were in effect to have Luis Guillorme pitch, thus any emotion beyond stoicism would have been a bad look. Then again, a bad look would have matched the tenor of the game the Mets had just lost in Milwaukee, 10-0.

In college basketball terms, Monday afternoon’s debacle was as decisive a loss as national champion UConn pinned on runner-up San Diego State, except at least the Aztecs managed to score. The Mets’ pitching shortfall was the most glaring aspect of the matinee — eight walks, a pitch clock that moved too fast for Carrasco, a fastball that traveled too slow from Carrasco — but that zero on the Mets’ side of 10-0 sat there like a bagel on the road to Passover. You shouldn’t have one around, yet somebody needs to digest it or otherwise get rid of it before we can move on.

The offense never leavened. Three hits. Deceptively quick baserunner Daniel Vogelbach was not quick enough to stretch a single into a double back when it was still a ballgame. Heady Mark Canha was caught staring at the video board for helpful data (vainly searching for the previous pitch’s velocity, something hitters do) two seconds too long, which means a strike if you’re not in the box set to hit in a jif in 2023. Guillorme, after his franchise-most third career outing as not a pitcher pitching, came up to bat in the top of the ninth, which was the most remarkable moment the Mets’ lineup manufactured solely because Luis the infielder had pitched in the bottom of the eighth. Use a position player to pitch, you no longer get to use a DH. Thus, for the first time since the ordained demise of what was left of authenticity in baseball, a Mets pitcher could be said to have hit, if not successfully, as Luis lined out to end the damn thing. That contemporary curiosity, along with sparingly used Tim Locastro managing to get himself hit for a third time four plate appearances into his season (he leads the NL in HBPs), stood as the highlight of the day.

Unless you were the Brewers, in which case the day was nothing but a highlight. Unaligned, I’d say it’s nice to see a team opening its home season give its fans a win. I’m not unaligned and I was hoping the pregame tailgate would be all Brewervolk would have to remember fondly. They got more. They got a third-inning lead, a fourth-inning increase and fifth-inning explosion, cresting with a grand slam surrendered by Hunter to rookie infielder Brice Turang, whose career dates back to last Thursday. No, kid, it’s not always this easy.

The final score rang an atonal bell. Didn’t the Mets lose a Home Opener of their own, 10-0? Indeed, they did, 39 years ago. The 1984 Mets had opened eyes with a 6-3 start on the road and 46,000 at Shea was excited to greet their conquering heroes. Then the Montreal Expos excised all the excitement from Flushing, with a run in the first, a run in the third, another four in the fourth and four to rub it in in the eighth. Most of the damage was done to rookie Ron Darling, not enjoying a Brice Turang coming-out type of afternoon (except for coming out before the fifth). The biggest swing belonged to then-foe Gary Carter, the enviable All-Star catcher who delivered what we would now refer to a Turangian blast, a.k.a. a grand slam home run.

Two Home Openers, two 10-0 losses for the Mets, two four-ribbie four-baggers. Two? Do I hear three? Afraid I do. In April of 2003, after their own season-starting odyssey, the Expos, long after anybody expected them to be any trouble, began their home schedule at Hiram Bithorn Stadium in San Juan. Maybe Montreal’s odyssey wasn’t exactly over. This was during that dark period when the Expos were at sea and were assigned to play a segment of their home schedule on an island far from Quebec. Farther from Montreal than Prince Edward Island, even. By MLB’s reckoning, Puerto Rico served as the site of the Expos’ Home Opener.

By the scoreboard’s reckoning, it was another 10-0 loss for the Mets, with another grand slam allowed, this one thrown by comeback-trailing David Cone and walloped by left fielder Brad Wilkerson. Also homering for Montreal/San Juan was catcher Brian Schneider, who would eventually move on to the Mets like his Expos backstop predecessor Carter. The 2023 Mets have a former Brewers catcher already in Omar Narvaez. Narvaez has hit one career home run against the Mets, in 2021. It was in Milwaukee. It wasn’t a Home Opener. The Mets won.

Narvaez is hitting .300 as a Met. Before Monday, he was hitting .429. Drops and spikes of that nature will happen when the season is young enough to rattle your stats if not your nerves. Before Monday, Brice Turang had one career RBI. After Monday, he’s tied for sixth in the National League with five. Before Monday, Tommy Hunter had a pristine ERA of 0.00. Before Monday, the Mets had absorbed only one loss, a 2-1 affair irritating enough to mentally seek that one pitch or swing that might have turned it around. On Monday, they lost decisively. They lost, 10-0, and all you could do was shrug it off and, if you were so inclined, go to Baseball-Reference and look up how often you and they had experienced that score before. It’s one of those scores you figure has been inflicted on your team rarely enough to not require the deepest of searches.

The Mets are in their 62nd season. They’ve lost, 10-0, on thirteen occasions. Three of those have been Home Openers for one team or another. Another was in a team’s second home game of the year, at actual Montreal (not San Juan) in 2001. It was Steve Trachsel’s Met debut. Steve was known for pitching slowly, but he was in a hole pretty fast. “Steve Trackmeet” I wanted to call him because as soon as he started throwing, the Expos were off to the races. Another was also in April, to the Pirates. I was there that night in 1981. The scoreboard went dark for a spell. The Mets had already given up five runs and would give up five more without crossing the plate themselves. Under the circumstances, the scoreboard was more courteous than the usher who chased my friend and me out of seats we dared to slip down to with few outs remaining and even fewer in attendance.

Each previous 10-0 Mets loss in April could be rationalized away with “It’s early.” So can this one.