Kudos to the Mets for scheduling the finale of their series versus the Rangers tonight a half-hour earlier than usual. The 6:40 PM start time, slotted in deference to Texas’s travel itinerary, isn’t a secret, but it will no doubt take some habitual viewers and listeners by surprise. The Mets begin virtually all of their evening home games at 7:10 PM. Not a few people will tune in then only to find the Mets and Rangers already in progress.
Those are lucky people, and I’ve figured out a way to create even more fortunate souls. Just keep starting Mets games earlier than expected, a little bit more each night or day. Did we say 6:40? We meant 5:50. You thought first pitch was at 5:50? Oh, we went with 5:20. Listen, we know we said 5:20, but 2:30 seemed more convenient. We hope you don’t mind.
Mind? Mind? If you kept getting your games over with without what’s left of our attention directed at them, we’d thank you for flushing this dreaded 2023 Met habit from our system.
If we had no idea when their games start, we’d hopefully take the karmic hint and slither slowly but decidedly from our rut of seeking the Mets out in the name of some kind of bizarre fulfillment. So by all means, try to sneak these games in when we’re not looking and we’re not listening. The worst that will happen is we’ll have to find out about yet another low-scoring loss — like Tuesday night’s in which Jose Quintana [1] pitched wonderfully and the infield defense performed admirably behind him, only to have nobody score on his behalf and Drew Smith [2] enter and throw his patented home run ball — after the fact. The resulting fact on Tuesday turned out to be Rangers 2 Mets 1, typical for what happens when These Mets play some contender. The Rangers wheedled an additional run to set up an impenetrable two-run lead heading to the bottom of the ninth. Mark Vientos [3] proceeded to hit a home run with one out remaining, nobody on base and the Mets down by two. Hence, they lost by one [4].
Actually the worst that will happen will probably be tonight, when Kodai Senga [5] will be allotted additional rest and Denyi Reyes [6] will be brought up to quite likely reprise his performance from previous spot starts, and the loss won’t be so low-scoring. I take that back: the worst that will happen will be remembering to tune in at 6:40 so as not to miss a single pitch of Mets baseball, whoever throws how many it takes to finish losing.
Or, I suppose, winning. You never know. You pretty much do, but you actually don’t. I plan to tune in and report back, dammit.