OK, Professor

Having recently conferred “visiting scholar” status upon one Maxwell Martin Scherzer, a righthander who earned his doctorate in pitching long ago, I’ll leave it to the old professor himself to figure out what the hell is wrong with him. If it’s not physical (he says he’s fine), not mental (he won’t use the pitch clock as an excuse), or not chronological (although 38 is 38, he was also 38 when he set down the Brewers last September in his playoff-clinching start), we’ll have to depend on Max and those assigned to coach around him to deduce what has gotten into him and how to get it out of him. “I’ve just got to pitch better,” the professor said in Milwaukee on Tuesday night after he couldn’t have pitched much worse.

Maybe it is physical (not every pitcher comes clean or immediately realizes something’s awry), or is mental (the pitch clock is screwing with literally every experienced player’s routines), or is chronological (38 is definitely 38, and he was 38 in October when he couldn’t withstand the Braves and was shot out of a cannon by the Padres in October). Whatever it is, he’s just got to pitch better. That’s a lot chase-cutting when you’re dealing with a human being who may have who-knows-what going on in his arm or his head or the rest of him. But when your current starting rotation consists of ellipses (Peterson and Megill are going to…); a question mark (how alarmed should we be by the drop in Carrasco’s velocity?); and a slash (Senga was spectacular in his first start/Senga will likely require an adjustment period regardless of his spectacular first start), you have to count on somebody to bring the exclamation point. The Mets signed Max Scherzer because he’s always been Max Scherzer! For almost all of 2022 when he was available to pitch, he was emphatically Max Scherzer!

At whatever Miller Park is now called on Tuesday, the exclamation points were proffered by Rowdy Tellez, Brian Anderson and Garrett Mitchell, three Brewers striking three homers in a row, setting off indoor fireworks (cough, cough) and donning their home run cheeseheads in celebration. It was enough to make a Mets fan lactose-intolerant. Before the sixth inning, Scherzer had overcome a two-run first to settle in competitively versus Wade Miley in a 2-0 staredown. In the sixth, it all went up in smoke for the Mets’ ace.

Worst. Smokeshow. Ever.

Following a walk, Max would be replaced by Denyi Reyes, who replaced Tommy Hunter on the roster. Hunter went on the IL with back spasms, a malady that may plague Mets pitchers as they attempt to carry a team that doesn’t score whatsoever. Reyes got the Mets out of the sixth. In the seventh, with Brooks Raley on, America’s Dairyland stirred to life again, with a three-run homer from Anderson and another solo job by Mitchell. That added up to a final score of 9-0 in favor of the Sausage Kings north of Chicago. The “9” was lavish in light of the “0,” a digit you might remember from the Mets’ 10-0 loss the day before. The Mets intermittently hit the ball hard and had a couple of balls fall in. They also batted into a couple of double plays and left eight runners on base. The defense was pretty sound, except for the inability of Messrs. Canha, Nimmo and Marte to leap high enough to reel in what their pitchers were allowing to be cast out.

Elsewhere in the Metropolitan system, Brett Baty’s thumb came up sore during his game in Syracuse. The youngster, dispatched to Triple-A to improve his fielding, had cultivated an OPS of 1.338 in four games down on the farm before the thumb on which he had surgery in the offseason acted up. Seems appropriate that this would happen to the Met prospect best positioned to respond to a potential SOS. Right now, a Met who could pound the ball consistently would stick out like Brett’s sore thumb.