Another night, another loss.
At this point the bad losses — like the two HBP gag job [1] in Philly — are hills breaking the flat endless plain of the more mundane losses, the ones where you have to furrow your brow and remember the details of what exactly sucked more than the background sucking that’s present all the time.
Like oh yeah, that was the one where Justin Verlander [2] once again looked like the $43 million fourth starter he’s inexplicably become, only he somehow emerged from an off-kilter, inefficient outing unscored upon. (I suppose you could say Verlander battled or found a way or some horseshit, but does anyone really believe that?) It was the one where Pete Alonso [3] and Tommy Pham [4] kept hitting bullets right at guys and Jeff McNeil [5] — let me check, yeah he really was a batting champ last year — once again didn’t hit a damn thing, which you could be angry at McNeil about except he’s already so much angrier about it than you are that what, exactly, would be the point?
All that sucked, but it was background sucking. No, the way to remember this mundane loss before it’s displaced in memory by tomorrow night’s mundane loss is it was the one where we got Drew Smith [6] back and Smith kept leaving pitches too high in the strike zone and the Brewers somehow didn’t hit them until oops one of them did — a two-run homer by Joey Wiemer [7], whoever the fuck that is, was enough to beat Smith and the Mets. Two runs. Ballgame. A 2-1 loss [8] sounds close except the 1 that went on the Mets’ side of the ledger was a gift and 2-1 in the ninth with the heart of our order felt like 20-1.
The Mets look not just bad but also meek and beaten. They have thousand-yard stares affixed to their faces before the horrors ensue, said horrors take place, the Mets slink away looking purse-mouthed and grim, and the next day it all starts again. How many games can slip by simultaneously horribly and in utter anonymity?
What’s the point of recapping this? Of watching it? Of being connected with it in any way? It isn’t fun or edifying, and even the flashes of hope for the future are hard to discern amid the dull smear of defeat after defeat after defeat.
I hate this team. I hate their chronic grinding failure, as inevitable as watching a glass that’s slipped out of your hand shatter on a tile floor. I hate their inability to get out of the way of each night’s slow-moving but inevitable disaster. And most of all I hate the way they make me feel about something I’m supposed to love.