Column A or Column B?

To review, these days the Mets play two kinds of games, which for simplicity’s sake we’ll tally up in separate columns.

In Column A, we record games like these, to quote some dumbass blogger: “ones in which they lose seemingly winnable affairs in horribly frustrating ways”.

Column B is the home for games like these: “ones in which they beat the absolute tar out of their opponents without breaking too much of a sweat.”

So let’s assess Monday night’s game against the normally downtrodden Chicago Cubs.

• The Mets faced Javier Assad, a rookie pitcher without much of a prospect pedigree, and did next to nothing against him. (Though, to be fair at the expense of a good narrative, from my tactically superior position on my couch this didn’t look like one of the Mets’ infamous Full Nabholzes against an unknown quantity — Assad had good stuff, built around a sharp cutter.
• Chris Bassitt had a rare stinker of a performance, reporting for duty with basically no command of anything. His expressions on the mound charted the Cubs’ lead as it grew from annoying to concerning to thoroughly dispiriting: a look skyward, a grim glower of self-loathing, an irritable snap of the glove, rinse lather repeat.
• The Mets failed to come through in big spots. Mark Canha struck out twice with the bases loaded, the second time making the first out of a bases-loaded-no-out fizzle that yielded zippo. But Canha had plenty of company, as Brandon Nimmo and Tyler Naquin and Eduardo Escobar and poor star-crossed Darin Ruf all failed to come through in big moments.
• Rearrange the game a little here and there and you can see a better one trying to emerge: Nimmo and Naquin and Ruf chip away at the Cubs’ lead and maybe Francisco Lindor‘s lipstick-on-a-pig homer in the ninth is a far grander moment. But that game belongs to some other reality, not this one.
• The last couple of innings were played in the rain, and I have to assume at least a couple of dogs went from Bark in the Park to the 7 train, after which they shook themselves (as dogs do) and spritzed Mets fans whose spirits were already a little damp.

So, quick review: Does this delightful game go in Column A or Column B?

Seems like it’s unanimous: Column A.