Oh, so we’re back to this again.
On Tuesday night your bloggers were reunited at Citi Field and had a wonderful time [1], which we would have had anyway but was definitely enhanced by the Mets hitting homers by the bushel and David Peterson [2] being unexpectedly competent. Speaking for myself, I left the park with a certain smallish but real spring in my step and a willingness to entertain the probably ridiculous but still pleasant notion that the glass was better described as 1/20th full.
Wednesday night took care of that rather thoroughly.
Actually we should have seen it coming Wednesday afternoon, when Steve Cohen held a press conference that left you trying to hold two not entirely complementary ideas in your head at once:
- It’s good that Cohen isn’t going red wedding on his employees just because he’s mad — that would have been cathartic for a couple of hours and then revealed as corrosive and counterproductive.
- Was it really necessary to hold a 23-minute press conference to articulate that you’re frustrated but hey, sometimes life is frustrating?
It was a little off-kilter, which set up the night’s game rather well. There was Kodai Senga [3] pulling a Verlander, which is to say that the bottom-line results were not bad but the execution was annoyingly inefficient and nothing you saw was even remotely inspiring. There were Mets not named Tommy Pham [4] not disturbing baseballs while holding apparently ornamental bats in their hands. There was a rally of sorts that tied the game but still managed to be disheartening, as the Mets converted a pair of bases loaded/nobody out situations into a single run that scored via a base on balls.
And there was the thoroughly emblematic top of the eighth, the frame in which the Mets lost the game [5]. Adam Ottavino [6] entered the game with no one on and one out, secured the second out without undue fuss, but then gave up a double and a walk and hit Joey Wiemer [7] in the hand with a pitch. Lost in the moment was the fact that Wiemer clearly swung and should have been called out by multiple umpires whose entire reason for being present is to ensure things aren’t lost in the moment. Rather than being down 0-2 against Ottavino, Wiemer went to first; three pitches later Christian Yelich [8] slapped a ball slightly wide of second, not the kind of play you expect to be automatically made but one you can reasonably hope will be made. Jeff McNeil [9] didn’t make it, the Brewers led by three, Ottavino let his disgust be apparent, Buck Showalter [10] was ejected, and the only silver lining left was that T.J. McFarland [11] made his Mets debut, which actually doesn’t matter at all except Greg and I had tried to will it into being Tuesday night and so still got a mild kick out of it a night later when nothing else good was happening.
I mean, seriously, look at that top of the eighth and tell me it isn’t this star-crossed season in miniature: a couple of guys who were really good last year continuing to not be good this year, some horseshit umpiring (seriously, Carlos Torres is terrible at his job), a sprinkle of bad luck, and another day ripped off the calendar, balled up and hurled in the direction of the trash.
Crap, missed the can. Guess I better go pick that up. It’s been that kind of year, hasn’t it?