By one measure, Justin Verlander [1] looked pretty good after facing 16 Dodgers on Friday night at Citi Field to kick off the second half of the 2023 season: He hadn’t allowed a hit, keeping the Mets even in a 0-0 pitchers’ duel with Julio Urias [2].
And if that’s the extent of what you saw, well, maybe there’s a position available for you with the Mets braintrust, to stretch the definition of a word to the breaking point and possibly beyond.
Because Verlander had been maddeningly inefficient, as he has been so often this year. With one out in the fifth, he’d thrown 77 pitches — on a sweltering night, as an old power pitcher forced to deal with the relentless pace of the pitch clock. (Mark my words: This is going to be one of the lessons learned from the introduction of Rob Manfred’s new toy, with the Mets’ 2023 blueprint front and center in explanations of what no longer works.) What Verlander had done so far in Friday’s game strongly suggested he’d wind up trying to finish the fifth north of 90 pitches. And the combination of the heat and what Verlander had done pretty much all year strongly suggested viewing that at least as a yellow light and probably as a flashing red one.
But the Mets bullpen was quiet. And it stayed quiet as Verlander lost his command, walking the next three guys and indeed bringing that pitch count above 90. Eventually Jeremy Hefner [3] was sent out to try and offer some counsel and Mets relievers started milling around and limbering up, but it was too late: The Dodgers’ best hitters were coming up and knew they had Verlander on the ropes with no chance of rescue. In a four-pitch stretch Mookie Betts [4] singled and Freddie Freeman [5] doubled and the game was lost [6]. On my couch, I was sputtering in rage, not so much at Verlander having failed but at how he’d been fed into the meat grinder. Had Buck Showalter [7] really not seen that coming? Was anyone in the dugout paying the slightest bit of fucking attention?
After Verlander imploded the game degenerated into a farce, with Met hitters doing literally nothing and Met relievers walking guys and giving up hits and trudging around disconsolately while a weary crowd booed halfheartedly, disgusted by a game that had gone wrong pretty much from the jump. Let the record show that the Mets’ leadoff hitter, Brandon Nimmo [8], hit what was called a home run, then (correctly) revised into a double, and that was the only hit the Mets tallied all game. Their 1-0 lead was a phantom that lasted about 90 seconds.
What a way to start the second half: The Mets not only played badly but also looked badly led.
Look, baseball players fail all the time — it’s a cliche of the game that a hitter who fails seven times out of 10 is considered All-Star quality. The game can be capricious bordering on deeply unfair, and the ebbs of a season — those teeth-grinding stretches where nothing goes right — are brutal.
But there’s failure and there’s setting up your players to fail. What happened Friday night struck me as inattention bordering on negligence. And if that’s the way a team’s going to be run, why in hell should anyone watch?