Futility Carries the Day

At about ten after one in the afternoon: “All right, a day game!”
At about ten after four in the afternoon: “Day games suck.”

OK, not all day games suck, but the one the Mets played in Minneapolis on Wednesday did. Certainly the Mets’ play sucked. That’s usually my litmus test for how good a game is, whatever time span it’s filling.

It didn’t require three hours to determine this matinee lacked the charms we associate with sunshine, green grass and sneaking glances at what qualifies most afternoons as an extracurricular activity. The Mets resisted excelling at any particular aspect of their sport. The offense was spotty at best. The defense created opportunities for the opposition. There was literally no starting pitching. Because Griffin Canning was under the weather (something anybody spending the previous two nights in Minnesota would figure to be), Carlos Mendoza was forced to go with a parade of relievers, from opener onward. Huascar Brazoban took the ball first and did OK. Justin Hagenman entered behind him as the bulk guy, one of those depressing terms of art designed to diminish the sparkle of a major league debut. Hagenman had never pitched in the bigs before. It required Canning’s illness and a touch of roster trickery — pretending Jose Siri is healthy and Max Kranick is unworthy — to get him to the highest level with the least ancillary fallout. The kid from the Pork Roll end of Jersey didn’t disappoint, giving up only one run in three-and-a-third, and that one was let in by the pitcher who succeeded him, Jose Butto.

Allowing an inherited runner to score wasn’t a sin. No, Butto’s misdeed came an inning later, though even then I wouldn’t pin what went wrong entirely on Jose. Down 2-0 with two out and Ryan Jeffers on second, Butto got a ground ball to Pete Alonso out of Willi Castro. The pitcher raced the runner to the bag. The pitcher beat the runner to the bag. Umpire Hunter Wendelstedt called the runner safe. The pitcher, acting from natural inclination (or inhabited by the spirit of David Cone from 35 years ago), began to argue with the umpire, engaging him just long enough to forget about Jeffers, who sure as hell noticed what was going on and what wasn’t going on. What wasn’t going on was Butto turning to throw home until it was too late to nab him. Three-nothing, Twins.

Wendelstedt made a horrible call, and there was no recourse. The Mets had previously used their challenge to bring about a reversal that never came, bringing to mind what an inane setup the challenge system is to remedy horrible calls. The camera saw Butto’s foot hit first base before Castro’s. Too bad Wendelstedt didn’t. (None of this detracts from one’s best wishes for the umpire who had to exit the game after absorbing a foul line drive to the head a little later.)

For whatever forces conspired against the Mets, they didn’t make it any easier on themselves. Their one early scoring threat was snuffed out when Jesse Winker just missed tagging the lowest point of home plate. Replays showed the only thing Winker did wrong as he chugged from second on Brandon Nimmo’s single to left was not be a scooch faster. Aggressive baserunning is cheerworthy when it works. I kind of wished he’d have stayed at third to begin with, but maybe you take your chances.

There weren’t enough of those for the Mets all day. There was one that shaped up pretty well in the fifth that ended with Juan Soto grounding into a double play. There were three unexpected runs in the eighth, but what would have been the go-ahead run wound up in Harrison Bader’s glove as the ex-Met dove and robbed Tyrone Taylor. For an instant, a person grumbled maybe we kept the wrong half of last year’s center field platoon. Nothing against Taylor (or his Ham), but the last two games suggested there are no friends like Old Friends™ who delight in reminding former employers they shouldn’t have been allowed to slip away. Bader, whose utility evaporated down 2024’s stretch, hit and fielded to his heart’s content. Somewhere Travis d’Arnaud enjoyed a good chuckle.

But there were those three runs, which I wasn’t anticipating because I’d already decided this was a lousy day game and, therefore, a lousy day. Now, however, the day game demanded my faith. I responded by pacing in the vicinity of the television for the first time since I can’t remember when. There’s a certain pacing one does when one invests himself in the outcome of baseball game. Make my devotion to this cause worth it. I can’t run, hit, hit with power, catch or throw. Will my walking back and forth in a veritable semi-circle help?

Not really. I got Edwin Diaz out of a slight jam (me and the Crew Chief Review loophole that allows for video replay when a team is out of challenges), but I couldn’t get a run across in the top of the tenth despite our having first and second and nobody out. Well, neither me nor Winker or Nimmo. Reed Garrett, the eighty-third pitcher of the day — I lost count — permitted the winning hit that gave the Twins their 4-3 victory and us our very first losing streak of 2025, though I’d finger fate as the culprit. It was one of those games that never felt right all day.

It’s night now and it still doesn’t.