There’s honestly not a lot of insight to be had comparing a mediocre baseball team with a very good one. Very good teams make plays and get hits when it matters; mediocre ones sometimes do and sometimes don’t. Christian Scott, forced to cosplay as a chimney sweep for his first-ever Citi Field start, was pretty good: He showed an electric fastball, was aggressive in tackling the Braves’ lineup, and most importantly he threw strikes. Honestly, he made one bad pitch all afternoon, a fastball to Orlando Arcia that got too much plate and so became a souvenir.
But Max Fried was better, using his devastating curveball to set up all his other pitches. The Mets ground out some good ABs, leaving Fried out of pitches and forced to depart after seven despite not having allowed a hit. And with less exemplary glovework from Atlanta, the Mets might have been right in the game: Michael Harris II made two spectacular plays in center to deny extra-base hits to Pete Alonso and J.D. Martinez, Austin Riley snagged a low liner at third, and the Braves made all the routine plays.
After Fried’s departure, Joe Jimenez staggered through the eighth without an effective slider but survived, and with two outs in the ninth only Martinez stood between Raisel Iglesias and completing a combined no-hitter. After a near-miss in Friday night’s ninth, Martinez didn’t miss this time, slamming a homer over Ronald Acuna Jr.‘s head to spare the Mets the humiliation of a hitless day. Brett Baty came to the plate as the tying run and hit a ball solidly, but Harris was there in center, as he generally is, and the ballgame was over.
The Mets weren’t no-hit, which is good, but humiliation was still the order of the day. The Mets somehow took two of three in Atlanta last month, but these first two games at Citi Field (with the Phillies’ juggernaut in waiting, oh joy) have followed the usual formula for Mets-Braves tilts. These games feel like a living-room dispute between brothers on a rainy weekend afternoon, with Mom responding to cries of alarm to find the older brother has stiff-armed the younger with a hand on the forehead, leaving the junior partner in the dispute to flail impotently at his tormenter, unable to land a blow and dissolving into tears of rage. I don’t recall the exact numbers, but the Braves are playing .750 ball against the Mets in recent seasons, and the sample size is no longer small.
The Mets are trying to have it both ways this year, developing the young players they hope will be the future of the franchise while positioning themselves on the periphery of the wild-card race and hoping to get lucky. The jury’s out on the former but the latter looks increasingly unlikely; more and more I wish the Mets would quit kidding themselves and go all-in on the future. Instead they’re caught in between, and that’s a recipe for more sour afternoons spent facing futility and a chance of humiliation.
Every day, I look at the lineup, top to bottom, and think to myself, or actually out loud, this looks pretty good today. Then this continues to happen.
Are they really all no good?
Are our top 4 guys, this core, our usual suspects, really not that good, or past the expiration date?
Could our evil genius, David Stearns, be correct in wanting to trade the great Alonso, perhaps as a first domino to fall?
He patched together a decent pitching staff, when it appeared that we had nothing, for the most part.
At least DJ, or JD, or one of them, came through in the “clutch,” when we really needed it.
Sigh…
I can’t help but wonder this myself. The “core” has been together for a while now, and it feels like we’re forever waiting for one or more of them to go off on a team-carrying tear, like how guys like Darryl, Carter, Cespedes and Piazza used to sometimes do. But it just never happens. And it’s gotten to a point where you can’t help but wonder if maybe the problem is that they’re just not that good. Last season, the entire year went by with everyone waiting for the bats to wake up, and here we are in mid-May, still waiting.
Nimmo, Marte, Lindor, Alonso, Martinez, McNeil, Bader, Alvarez, Baty.
Pretty good lineup.
Severino, Manaea, Scott, Quintana, Butto (Senga, Megill in the wings).
Pretty good rotation.
Diaz, Ottavino, Garrett, Reid-Foley, Diekman, Lopez (Smith mending).
Good bullpen.
But – to date – the chemistry is lacking to put it all together.
I too thought the idea of trading the Polar Bear was unthinkable. But suddenly it’s becoming quite thinkable.This team is not going to the post season, and it’s time to start thinking about trading away all the key pieces; Alonso, McNeil, Marte, Bader. Without eating any of their contracts, nobody is going near Nimmo or Lindor. And what’s the point having an elite closer in Diaz when there is really nothing to save? I’m not sure this is what Mets fans thought the Cohen years would be like, but like Yogi said; “it’s getting late early.”
Sad to say I’m starting to agree with you. Nobody thought the Cincinnati Reds of the 1950s were going to be led to World Series glory by Ted Kluszewski…
…and Alonso is no Kluszewski, not even close.
Petey is one of the more maddening players in recent memory. He SHOULD be a franchise legend, and losing him ought to be totally unthinkable. Yet, when you look back on it, other than his magical rookie season, what’s he really done? Where are all the clutch heroic moments? So many terrible, awful, no good at-bats, and lots of them in big (relative to that day’s game) moments, too. How much different would they really be without him?
Starting to suspect that the loss of Francisco Alvarez has been critical to the success/failure of the Mets…
Never has humiliation felt like such a win. No Gary, the fans were NOT rooting for a no-hitter.
This “more and more I wish the Mets would quit kidding themselves and go all-in on the future. Instead they’re caught in between, and that’s a recipe for more sour afternoons spent facing futility and a chance of humiliation.”
As stated long ago. “No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other.”