Not Our Problem to Fix

Baseball is a fine diversion in all its forms, with one of its bedrock pleasures how those forms change day to day. On Friday the Mets inflicted horrors on the A’s and the A’s inflicted horrors on themselves, leading to a 17-6 win unique in the annals of Met scorekeeping and verging on unique for the appalled reaction of viewers and listeners. Honestly, it’s the kind of baseball exhibition that probably attracts possums.*

A day later, what a difference! The Mets and A’s played a relatively taut game that ended with the forces of good triumphant, 3-2.

That wasn’t exactly the obvious prediction, considering Shintaro Fujinami reported for duty with an ERA north of 17. (!!!!) But Fujinami and the other A’s pitchers only walked two, with no position players having to moonlight and Mark Kotsay watching the proceedings without looking like a guy standing on the shoulder after plowing his car into a tree.

Not that all was perfect in Met-Land. Carlos Carrasco looked OK-ish, though calling it his best outing of the year makes me feel like an aunt half-heartedly talking up a basement-dwelling nephew as dating material. And you kept waiting for the A’s to self-destruct and having it not happen — it seems like a team like the Mets in their current incarnation can’t possibly lose to a team like the A’s in their current incarnation, but of course that happens all the time in baseball.

Happily, it didn’t, thanks to a Pete Alonso home run (not pictured for your chronicler, who was ZZZZZing through a much-needed midgame nap) and another homer from former A Mark Canha and then a Brandon Nimmo double off old friend Trevor May, who I hope really likes the Bay Area because his workplace seems like it isn’t a lot of fun these days.

The Met comeback held up thanks to stout relief from Drew Smith, Brooks Raley, Adam Ottavino and David Robertson. The eighth inning was the full Adam Ottavino Experience — two walks, runners pell-melling their way around the bases, and a fusillade of frisbees launched at Conner Capel, with the Ottavino-Capel confrontation of course coming down to a 3-2 pitch. Ottavino struck Capel out with that pitch, which will happen sometimes and won’t happen other times, and being Ottavino his expression barely changed during the AB and inning. Robertson then wrapped up, ending the game with a tragicomic K of Kevin Smith. Smith struck out on an 0-2 curve ball, with Robertson’s spread arms of triumph being replaced by the spread arms of consternation when the ump tagged him (correctly) for a pitch-clock violation. Smith, given another chance, looked at a called strike three.

What’s happening to the A’s on the field and off is both tragedy and farce: Ownership has stripped the team down to nothing, asked fans to pay to see it do horrible things that rarely if ever resemble baseball, then used those fans’ understandable reluctance to take part in such a transaction as an indictment of the team’s current economics — the classic “look what you made me do” move of abusers since time immemorial. It’s appalling, even more so when you reflect that it will of course work, yielding a new stadium on the Oakland waterfront or in Vegas or some city yet to be infected with Monorail fever. It’s disgraceful, but it’s not the Mets’ problem to fix, and for two days they’ve done what ought to be done.

* Possums are actually perfectly nice creatures that deserve neither your scorn nor cheap cracks from bloggers. Though they probably shouldn’t live in stadium broadcast booths.