Hello, I'd Like to Pet a Therapy Ray

I don’t know if therapy rays are actually a thing (they probably are), but I’ve been to Tropicana Field, which has the affect of the world’s largest basement rec room and smells vaguely like pool cleaner, and the most interesting part of the stadium is the oft-shown pool where cownose rays swim around in a circle. You can reach in and pet the rays, and while I doubt it’s a fulfilling experience for them — this classic Onion bit comes to mind — I found it mildly diverting.

Not mildly diverting? Sunday’s Mets-Rays matinee at the Trop — or, for that matter, the entire series. Or for that matter, the Mets going to the Trop at all — I believe Gary Cohen said the Mets are winless in St. Petersburg since the reign of Elizabeth I. Sunday’s game brought to mind Wes Westrum and his go-to postgame comment: “Oh my God, wasn’t that awful?” You could see the disaster brewing early on, and when it arrived it still managed to be horrible, and now I never want to think about it again.

The Mets jumped out to an instant 2-0 lead on a Francisco Lindor homer — Lindor, at least, looks like he’s shaken off his woes at bat — but Luis Severino, like Jose Quintana before him, followed up a terrific game with a clunker, walking the ballpark. The teams went back and forth, exchanging leads or perhaps indicating they didn’t deserve them — the Rays are lucky they faced the Mets in one of their valleys, as the home team played both lethargically and dopily this weekend. Mets pitchers seemed studiously uninterested in looking runners back to their bases or even admitting they existed, letting basestealers run wild — at one point Lindor spoke for us all when he smashed his glove into the ground repeatedly in teeth-grinding annoyance. Pete Alonso looks absolutely lost at the plate, which because baseball is cruel of course meant he kept getting handed bases-loaded situations where he looked helpless. Even Brett Baty suffered, coming off his best defensive game with one where you could see him thinking again in the field, something Baty should never be doing.

But perhaps we should save the biggest concern for Edwin Diaz. Diaz arrived for the ninth to protect a 5-4 lead and started off his day by throwing sliders: He threw 13 in a row, in fact. Which was sufficient to retire Richie Palacios and Isaac Paredes, but the Lucky 13th slider was a 3-2 pitch to Randy Arozarena that got too much plate, and which Arozarena clobbered into the stands. (After the game, Arozarena said he was looking for another slider. Gee, you think?) Diaz’s post-layoff fastball velocity is down, but the slider has also lacked that extra little bit of bite it needs, and it’s officially a problem.

Farce followed tragedy, as it does. The Mets got a 10th inning reprieve from the baseball governor when a crew-chief review revealed Brandon Nimmo had crossed first base as Yandy Diaz was letting a ball that looked like it was in his glove bounce on the ground, turning the third out of the inning into a momentary Mets lead. But we all knew it was not to last, not with the pitchers opting for nonviolent resistance in combatting enemy basestealing. With runners on first and third and nobody out Jonny DeLuca lofted a ball to center, where Harrison Bader decided it was best not to prolong everyone’s misery and so dove for a ball when he should have stayed on his feet. He missed it by at least the length of a cownose ray and the pain was over, or at least it was for another day.