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This Is Looking Like a Problem

The quickest way a team can demoralize its fanbase? OK, actually it’s to have an arsonist bullpen that routinely sets fire to victories so that they burn down into defeats.

But the second quickest way? It’s to routinely get great starting pitching and have it undone by an absolute lack of hitting. Which is something the Mets have offered us way too often of late.

Chris Bassitt [1] was the latest victim, undone by a single bad pitch that led to a 2-0 Padres lead and a 2-1 Padres victory [2]. Manny Machado [3]‘s home run erased the fact that Bassitt struck out 11; ultimately, it also erased the Mets’ 1.5 game lead over the Terminator-like Atlanta Braves, now just half a game back after spanking the hapless Angels.

Half a game back as in could be half a game ahead tomorrow, but we’ll leave that bit of angst for a future post.

OK, I know what you’re wondering why I haven’t addressed yet. Yes, home-plate umpire Jim Wolf missed an 0-2 pitch on Machado that was clearly inside the strike zone. Instead of being out, Machado got another pitch — one he turned into a souvenir.

But these things happen. Bassitt missed his target by more than a foot, crossing up the umpire, and was philosophical about what had happened in postgame interviews: “It’s part of the game. It’s OK that he missed it, I just gotta make a much better pitch the pitch after that. That was a terrible pitch.”

The accountability is welcome, but more to the point, a guy who makes one bad pitch while fanning 11 shouldn’t be on the losing side of the equation. If that happens, the raised eyebrow shouldn’t be directed at the home-plate ump, or God, or anyone except his teammates — the ones apparently going to the plate holding their bats upside down.

The Mets put the leadoff runner aboard in six of nine innings, but said table-setting led to a run exactly once — a ninth-inning flurry that was more impotent pique than righteous uprising. It was a quietly infuriating night, emphasis on both qualifiers.

There have been too many of those double barrels — quiet bats, infuriating lack of results, great starting pitching gone by the boards.

All is not lost, of course. The Mets are still in first place, however tenuous their hold on said perch may have become. The team will almost certainly look different by Aug. 2, and in ways that involve more than importing various Pittsburgh Pirates. The players who remain after Aug. 2 will (presumably) revert to the mean and start putting up numbers more in keeping with what adorns the backs of their baseball cards.

But it would be nice if these things happened soonest. Because what’s happening now isn’t cutting it. It’s … well, quietly infuriating pretty much sums it up, doesn’t it?