A habit I’m trying to break as a baseball fan is the assigning of blame. If the Mets don’t win – even a stripped-down, playing-out-the-string version of the Mets – it can’t be that the other team won or something went wrong or an unlucky event occurred. No, it has to be someone’s fault.
For instance: Grant Hartwig [1] hung a pitch to Jonathan India [2], who hit it over the fence, and the Mets lost [3]. That practically has the elegance of a mathematical proof, and hey, it isn’t wrong. I could write that and then follow it up with a lot of grousing about Hartwig, which would probably open the door to complaining about Trevor Gott [4] and Drew Smith [5] as well. If particularly exercised, I might go on to note that David Robertson [6] hasn’t exactly been lights out down in Miami, turning the recap into a lamentation about relievers in general. Note the presence of Alexis Diaz [7] closing the game for Cincinnati while Edwin Diaz [8] watched from the Mets’ dugout and we’d have a full circle of misfortune, regret and simmering annoyance.
And again, none of this would be wrong.
Just maybe … incomplete? Too easy? Pointless?
Buck Showalter [9] was even-keeled when asked about Hartwig after the game, a stance that was probably wise even if it is his job. He noted that Hartwig has had some success and some lack of success and is working on things, learning at a level where he’s never been before. Which isn’t as satisfying as angry postgame lamentations about relief, but also isn’t wrong.
Hartwig relieved David Peterson [10], another guy whose had some success and some lack of success and is working on things. For Peterson it’s been his slider, which was sharp against the Reds on Friday night. That alone wasn’t enough to get Peterson a win, let alone put his promising turned puzzling career back on track, but Peterson’s quietly been pretty good since rejoining the rotation. And what are 2023’s dregs for, if not Peterson locking down that slider and learning (or relearning) how to make his other pitches work in conjunction with it?
The Mets got even after Peterson fell behind thanks to a three-run bolt from Pete Alonso [11] off the hulking Cincy starter Hunter Greene [12], one of those homers that’s so immediately and obvious gone that you just beam at the TV and wonder what it must be like to be able to do that. Alas, it was all the offense the Mets could muster, despite a string of pretty good at-bats for garbage time.
The Mets made some mistakes – in the field, and most glaringly with Hartwig’s pitch location against India. They did some good things too. The Reds made fewer mistakes and did more good things. Maybe that will suffice, and the blame game can wait for another day.