As baseball fans, we react. Unable to actually alter the course of events transpiring down there on the field, we overreact. And trying to outguess baseball is a surefire way to look like a fool.
Still. It’s what we do. We react, we overreact, we turn dots into lines and fill in pictures. Like this one: The Mets are in trouble. Red alert trouble.
Trouble as in their lead in the thoroughly mediocre National League East is down to a game and a half. That’s two bad days for a team that’s had a lot of them recently.
Trouble as in they’re now only a couple of ticks above mediocre themselves — once 10 games over .500, now just four.
Trouble as in the starters are hurt, erratic or may have run out of gas; the relievers are a nightly game of roulette; the offense is missing in action; and now the defense has started looking shaky too.
Trouble as in one can no longer hope the cavalry will ride to the rescue, not with forearm tightness and slow-to-heal obliques and pitch counts that need to be ramped up. Most of the cavalry’s here already, and wondering who’s going to rescue them.
Trouble as they’re in playing the Marlins in Soilmaster Stadium, a haunted house that’s never as empty as you wish it were, because everything that goes bump in the night turns out not to be a pet or the wind or the house settling but some deathless necrotic evil spirit that rips your face off and then drags you to Hell.
Trouble as in balls that didn’t quite go out of the yard, plays up the middle that weren’t quite made, liners gone just foul, enemy broken-bat hits carrying ridiculously far, balky hamstrings turning long outs into long hits, frustrated managers getting ejected and frustrated newcomers looking for someone to blame.
The Mets are in trouble. Red alert trouble. Don’t remain calm. All is not well.
Thank goodness the Nats decided to start focusing on 2024. That should help the Mets finish no worse than a distant 3rd with about 77 wins.
The pandemic isn’t over. I have no idea why MLB thought playing more than 60 games this year made any sense.
as good as they looked these last two games those pesky marlins shouldn’t pass the mets.
of that we can take some cold-comfort.
AND if the season gets shut down (and wtf are the mets even *setting foot* in florida??), we’ll be glad it wasn’t the mets’ run that was cut short.
remember the 94 expos!
Maybe the Mets should bring back the bench mob and dump all the regulars back on the IL for “not being in the right head space.” (Hey, I hear that’s a thing now…)
Trading for Baez was the worst move they possibly could have made. Bryant would have made so much more sense. A guy who plays a position where we need help — 3B. Additionally, an occasional right handed hitter in the outfield. Also a nice right handed alternative to lock up long term instead of Conforto.
Worst of all, Baez is the exact type of player who is ruining the once beautiful game of baseball right before our eyes.
What a colossal mistake. Unforgivable really.
Oh. And Luis Rojas is nothing more than a script-following gas bag.
not fair pete.
“not time to panic”
“just a couple of losses in a row”
“we just need to start hitting”
to which i’ll add:
“that baez in taking some A swings there”
sure seems like the pitching woes coincided with the banning of the sticky stuff. perhaps the staff should have a manicurist come in to serrate their fingernails.
to their (dis) credit the starting hitters have mostly faile all season, save a few teaser laughers.
in baez we have another stylin’ middle infielder who really can’t hit, is hurt, and won’t be a difference maker.
GO-GO-GOODBYE FIRST PLACE.
by the end of the month the marlins may very well have passed this depressing bunch.
The walls are definitely closing in on us. We all feel it. Even if the offense suddenly turns a switch and starts scoring 6 or 7 runs a game, these 5-inning efforts from our starters is completely unsustainable.
I imagine the 13 consecutive games with the Dodgers and Giants coming up later in the month will be our official undoing. And it will be then that they decide to shut down Jake.
Sigh.
Baez about where I thought he’d be: 2 for 15. He did hit .203 just last year. And team traded for him despite ankle and heel woes, already re-emerging.
Lugo and Walker: a sticky situation.
Under the new St. Sandy and Uncle Steve regime: sex harassment scandals leading to temporary GM who bungled trade deadline deals and drafting of Kumar. Firing hitting coach early on and whoever (?) succeeded him failing.
And I left out training/medical staff with worst record in league in keeping players on field. At some point it can’t just be “bad luck” or “coincidence.”
Iowa Pete, Yes, it always seems that third base is the one position that bedevils the Mets one way or another.
Of course, those Mets fans of a “certain” age remember the disastrous trades for Joe Foy and Jim Fregosi. (I think Whitey Herzog said he wouldn’t have even traded the three minor leaguers in the deal, Leroy Stanton, Don Rose and Francisco Estrada, even-up for the aging and noticeably declining Jim Fregosi in the late Bob Scheffing’s worst trade of all time. Forget putting “No-Hit” Nolan Ryan in that colossal Met blunder.)
Also, I believe the usually shrewd and sage Frank Cashen protected journeyman third baseman Tucker Ashford over Tom Seaver in that major league free agent “pool draft” back in the mid-1980s, thinking no one would be interested in signing the late thirty-something Tom Seaver. Oops!
And, now, the Mets trade for another shortstop/second baseman instead of trading for a much needed right-handed power hitter at the hot corner, the site of SO much trouble during the Mets’ 59-year-old history, aside from David Wright’s superb, but relatively short career.
All I have to say is:
Bring back Roy Staiger!
“balky hamstrings turning long outs into long hits” — Good point that should be obvious, yet I didn’t think of it until I read you saying it. Nimmo isn’t a natural centerfielder to begin with and now he’s playing the position while compensating for a pinched hamstring.
Baez has played 3B. Though I imagine McNeil will shift to 3B and Baez will play 2B when Lindor is back, which may not matter either way by then given the Mets play now.
Kelenic is heating up for the Mariners, which makes me feel worse for trading top (though damaged) OF prospect Crow-Armstrong for a blatantly insufficient rental.
It is starting to feel a bit like groundhog day. Most of these games feel pretty much the same. I see Baez fits right into this powerhouse lineup…
yup. have been getting home a little after first pitch
lately, only to find we’re down 4-0.
but as the skipper says: “they keep fighting til the end”
winners never have to trot out that line.
cole hamels is going to the dodgers…was just wondering what happened to his showcase.
As they say in Star Trek, RED ALERT, RED ALERT!
Do we have any Klingon Ships nearby to help?
As a Met fan since 1963,I’ve seen this before (without this number of injuries) & I’ve had a sinking feeling for a month now–thought it was just me–but then I checked MLB team hitting stats and know our pitching staff is decimated now, I said to myself–UH, OH…
Well, ya’ never know–Let’s Go Mets!
Don’t worry Jason, we weren’t calm even before this unfolding disaster.
We knew this was comin’!
I don’t know
What it is
But it is
NOT gonna be great!
Chutes and Ladders, Baby!
Yeah, this is a truly frustrating bunch. Lord knows I’ve seen plenty of frustrating seasons in my day but this one is maybe the most perplexing one, at least in recent memory. If these guys were hitting even anywhere near expectations they’d be running away with that sad division right now. Nothing saps the enthusiasm of a fan base faster than a flaccid lineup does and boy oh boy are these guys limp. Petey is having a halfway decent (key word: decent) season and Nimmo looked like his usual self while healthy (key words: while healthy) but the rest of them are pretty much interchangeable now. Bad strikeout, weak first-pitch grounder to second…it’s like they’re running a charity geared toward letting mediocre opposing pitchers off the hook whenever possible.
And I hate it, I have no earthly idea how they could fix it and it makes me sick, quite frankly. I don’t remember another season where being in first place in August sucked this bad. Even the sad-sack (and eternally despised) 2007 and 2008 teams needed all 162 games to fail.