There’s a post to be written about how the rest of the season is a chance for David Peterson [1] and Tylor Megill [2] — your last two Mets starters down in Baltimore — to show they belong in the starting rotation, to demonstrate that they’re more than just fill-ins for now-traded Hall of Famers, to add a new dotted line to their Family Circus plot of wanderings between prospect and suspect.
And you know what? The Athletic just wrote it [3]. You should go read it.
I’m not going to write my own because a) it would be duplicative and b) it would depress me. The Mets lost [4], as they’ve done routinely of late and seem likely to do routinely in the future. They’ve been reduced to the role of Generic Opponent, a sparring partner for good teams with something to play for. That’s quite a fall from World Series contender, the status they were handed by prognosticators in February and March and finally surrendered in June.
Quite a fall. It happens, and honestly I’m glad it can happen, because baseball would be a lot less interesting without Cinderella teams and wicked stepsisters getting their comeuppance — which is, let’s face it, is what our outsized payroll and underwhelming results mean we are. What rankles is finding myself left to wander the wreckage for two more months, compelled to remain by duty and habit and a stubborn love of both baseball and — despite it all — my dumb, deeply dysfunctional team.
Being stuck in this slow-motion train wreck rankles. It will continue to rankle. And so you can expect eruptions of pique, retreats into nostalgia (nailed by Don DeLillo as “a product of dissatisfaction and rage”) and occasional refusals to engage whatsoever. And nights like this one, where I let those getting paid to chronicle disappointments do the heavy lifting.