If Shea Langeliers touches home plate with two out in the top of the fourth Thursday, two batters after JJ Bleday’s grand slam, the A’s completely make up the 5-0 deficit that stared at them when the inning started and they are on their way to an exhilarating victory. But Langeliers misses the plate, and after Carlos Mendoza realizes Scott Barry has misread the situation, the call is challenged and overturned, getting Jose Quintana out of the inning. Now it is the Mets with the momentum. They hang on to a 5-4 lead, Luis Torrens stands out as the headiest of catchers for tagging Langeliers despite Barry making with the safe sign, and once Mark Vientos launches his second homer of the day, it’s clear the Mets are the ones heading for exhilaration and victory. It was close there for a minute, but we’re up, 6-4, we’ve got the momentum, and everything’s obviously gonna work out for the contending Mets as they brush aside the also-ran A’s.
Sometimes the mood swings in a completely different direction than you anticipate.
Except everything you think you know about how a baseball game is going to play out based on swings in mood doesn’t show up in the box score if the competing teams don’t cooperate. The A’s didn’t cooperate, scoring a run in the fifth and then two in the sixth. The Mets didn’t do their part at all after Vientos’s second blast. No more runs for New York, and no help whatsoever from a pitching staff that left its control in its lockers. Quintana and five relievers combined to walk eleven. You walk eleven batters — A’s batters or any batters anywhere in the alphabet — you’re setting the table for a dish of well-earned defeat. Requiring three hours and forty-five minutes in this age of pitch clocks and other move-it-along innovations to certify the loss as official was simply the sadistic chef’s kiss to this matinee disaster.
So Shea Langeliers (nice name, nice backstory) was out at the plate when he first appeared safe. The A’s won, anyway. Buddy Harrelson was called out at the plate against the A’s in Game Two of the 1973 World Series despite video evidence to the contrary in the pre-replay rule era, and despite Willie Mays having a better angle on Ray Fosse missing the tag than Augie Donatelli. The Mets won that game, anyway, but it still irks.
We didn’t need fresh irk in 2024, but we have it in the form of A’s 7 Mets 6 in the finale to a series that carried echoes of another three-game set at Citi Field versus a California club we were pretty sure we were gonna take two from but didn’t. I speak of the 2022 Mets-Padres Wild Card Series, whose pattern was two-thirds replicated this week. Padres won easily the first night, the Mets won easily the second night. The comparison loses its resonance when one remembers we were bleeping one-hit by Joe Musgrove, Joe Musgrove’s ears, and whoever else came on after Joe Musgrove, but the same bottom line unfurled. We lost two out of three. That series ended our postseason.
This series and its ramifications? The well-honed fan instinct says we’re not going anywhere after playing as we did Thursday and have lately, losing nine of our last fourteen and looking like so many distinct forms of dreck when we lose. Dreck that doesn’t hit in the clutch. Dreck that doesn’t hit at all. Dreck that plays down to the opposition. Dreck that walks the ballpark. Dreck that blows a five-run lead.
Yet Thursday was just one game and the Mets are just two games out of a playoff spot. They keep making playoff spots, thus we are compelled to continue acting as if our proximity to one indicates we could be a playoff team. In the ultimately playoff-bound year of 2016, the Mets played more than a few games like this as summer crested, and my towel was summarily thrown. Soon I was reaching into the linen closet for another towel to clutch, because bad games and rough patches can be overcome across a season’s last quarter no matter that you’re absolutely sure there’s no way your team is capable of getting its act together. The Mets are doing themselves no favors at the moment. They can start being good to themselves by, you know, playing better on a consistent basis. Maybe all they need is one break to go their way…like a run for the opposition disappearing from the scoreboard because a slide is off, a catcher is aware, and the system works.
OK, bad example.
This was one you could see coming, for roughly the last 100 of the 225 minutes played. Maybe you could see it sooner – how often could Quintana walk the bases loaded after getting two outs and get away with it? As it turns out, the answer was twice.
Playoff teams don’t walk 11 in a game except, “They keep making playoff spots, thus we are compelled to continue acting as if our proximity to one indicates we could be a playoff team.”
Which means a mediocre team will make the playoffs. We are a mediocre team. In a contest with the Braves for Mediocre Team of the Year (MTOY). Maybe I’ll be able to get excited about that in September.
3rd best of the rest.
Winning is exciting. The Mets winning to get back into the wildcard race and even take hold of the 1st wildcard briefly was exciting. Being mediocre enough since then to stay in the 3rd wildcard race–in other words, not bad enough to fall out of it–has not been exciting. Still engrossing, though. I’m scoreboard watching.
Just read on Outkick that the Hawk Tuah girl threw out yesterday’s first pitch.
This organization never disappoints.
on Kids Camp Day no less.
Let’s Come Mets??
Management shouldn’t make a public show of it, but hopefully there’s an internal review of how that happened and how it was approved and scheduled for camp day no less. It was like a practical joke.
The reason given after the fact was that Welch was promoting a worthwhile charity. But from what I’ve seen, the charity aspect wasn’t part of how she was introduced as a “viral sensation”. If Welch had been introduced as a representative of the charity, even if her claim to fame was highlighted after the fact, the Mets wouldn’t look nearly as lol.
I have fresh irk.
“Buddy Harrelson was called out at the plate against the A’s in Game Two of the 1973 World Series despite video evidence to the contrary in the pre-replay rule era, and despite Willie Mays having a better angle on Ray Fosse missing the tag than Augie Donatelli.”
That was the first thing that came to mind.
How could it not?
And that dope Gary Cohen did not even mention it.
“Yet Thursday was just one game and the Mets are just two games out of a playoff spot. They keep making playoff spots, thus we are compelled to continue acting as if our proximity to one indicates we could be a playoff team.”
Just another emotionless day.
Before the WC we would be tearing our hair out over blowing a 5 run lead, but instead it is ho-hum, no big deal, and there’s another game tomorrow.
If the Mets fail to make the playoffs by 1 or 2 games, or even 3 or 4 games, there will be no shortage of losses to look back on that they should have won that made the difference. But that’s what these Mets are. One of the worst or one of the best, and let’s see what they are that night.
A question going into the season was the Mets starters, who weren’t aces to begin with, jumping up in innings. The scrapped 2nd half 6-man rotation plan wasn’t just for Senga and Scott. The reinforced bullpen is not proving itself to be reliable enough to make up for the starters wearing down. If they’ve worn down enough to lose the fine line of limiting the damage like they have for most of this year, we may not see another hot streak to seize a wildcard. In that case, we would just have to hope everyone else is worse by enough.
So far the other 3rd NL wildcard contenders aren’t dispelling that hope. Mets 5-8 in August, 13-13 2nd half. Braves 6-8 in August, 11-15 2nd half.
it feels like may again. especially compared to those heady, world-beating days that now seem so far away. another reason for me to detest the all-star break and the godawful HR derby.
(the latter would be workable if it was a contest between the best pitcher’s fastballs v. the best slugger’s swings, like the trainstop in The Natural)
almost as disruptive as the WBC, must-miss TV in my book.
i’m back to ignoring mets games as watching has become equal parts dull and frustrating.
if they have another great run in them they best start tonite, and carry it through the O’s and the pads.
and seriously: the hawk tuah girl?!
seriously bad karma and taste for a team on the ropes. and perhaps a miniature of the trajectory of the mets’ season (though somehow h-t girl is still enjoying her 15mins of fame)
hit or quit, mets!
June seems like such a long time ago.
Maybe the Mets should bring back Timmy Trumpet. Hey, he has a history of being a vibe changer…
On second thought, never mind.
I love the narrative that some Mets fans built up after last weekend: “don’t worry, they just ran into the best pitching staff in MLB, all is fine!”
That “best pitching staff in MLB” just got swept in Detroit and can’t seem to beat anyone but the Mets. Can we face reality, please?
This h-t girl, whoever she is, fits in perfectly with Profanity Pete.
Mets can put her in the middle of Pete and the infield doing their lower body bump after every victory.
Talk about a Happy Ending.