Ehh. Sometimes you get beat by a good pitcher. Believe me when I say that the following…
BOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!
…is intended to help finish the road trip on a good note, not a recrimination for Saturday's 2-1 loss. You didn't expect the Mets winning streak to reach infinity, did you?
Did you?
Good news is Philly lost, so it's still 1-1/2 between us and them. Marginal news is they now have Michael Fucker (you're right, it's always misspelled). I don't know if that's an impact trade, but Ramon should wear an extra pointy chest protector just in case.
A tip of the cap to our boys for shaking off a bit of that West-of-the-Mississippi Mud before coming home. The Dirty Thirty, even after succumbing to Jason Schmidt (and Armando Bleepnitez), is now a nearly respectable 10-15. The Mets are 9-9 in this geographic situation since I suggested they approach their remaining Denver, Houston, San Diego, Los Angeles, Phoenix and San Francisco dates the way Indians manager Lou Brown might have during Cleveland's miracle run to the A.L. East title in the late '80s (they made a film about it, you know). If the Amazins win this last Giant game, they'll be 11-15 Out Yonder with four games in St. Louis remaining.
It is still my belief that we need to enter that Cardinal series having garnered more than 10 wins west of the Mighty Mississip'. Busch Stadium is only a heartbreaking Jim Edmonds walkoff drive from said body of water, but to me it's part of what has been an expansive geographical and traditional trap for virtually every Met team, this one included (this week excepted). All the cities mentioned above, along with Oakland and Seattle in '05, always seem to kill us. This year all but Phoenix have, and I take nothing for granted in St. Louis. So grabbing the getaway game Sunday afternoon will ensure no worse than an 11-19 record in the Dirty Thirty no matter what happens in Missouri, which to my way of thinking is a lot less bad than looking back at the end of the season and saying “if only we hadn't gone 10 and 20 in those 30 games…”
Of course if we lose four in St. Louis in September, we're pretty well screwed. And I haven't forgotten about the other teams and towns and so forth, all of them deadly crucial at this stage. As Bobby V used to say (and probably still does, albeit in Japanese), this is the most important game of the season because it's the one we play today.
Today marks 150 consecutive days of posting at Faith and Fear in Flushing. We like to think of ourselves as The Rembrandts of this particular art form: We'll be there for you.
Tough loss. Wasn't on the “Extra Innings” cable package (I'm in Philly—blecchhh), so I found a reason to drive to Maryland and back so I could listen to it on XM. Jon Miller's announcing made it seem like NOTHING went our way. Sounded like every potential double into the corner or into a gap found its way into a Giant glove. 'Course, that might just have been faux drama for radio. (He also engaged in an extended, lightly pervy on-air monologue about a female fan. Can't say I cared for it.)
Time for another unfavorable viewpoint: I liked Benitez. Obviously, I wanted him to give up two bombs and lose it yesterday. But for us, he was deadly 90% of the time. He had two tremendous pitches that were close to unhittable when he was on. It was unfortunate that his lowest moments for us were usually when we needed him most—but at least they came against tough teams (Yankees, Braves, etc.). It was also unfortunate that he was booed as much as he was—-he was certainly not a loafing Robbie Alomar. He seemed to take his failures seriously (again, not like a loafing Robbie Alomar), and was often contrite.
I offer this testimonial because Braden LaVern Looper concerns me. Deeply. I fear “closers” with low strikeout rates and high batting avgs. against. They're time bombs. Sooner or later, the laws of probability will flat-out spank them, irrespective of the opposition—Kolb and Graves are great examples. Hopefully, Looper has an incredibly high “Clutch Rating” or some other metric that will put me at ease. (I also welcome any lies that'll make me believe he's not headed for a ditch soon.)
Don't worry about Looper. I found a witch who told me she would curse everyone who comes up against him for the rest of the season.