Long Night in a Long Season

9:40 pm starts are to be regarded with suspicion even when the baseball they produce goes well — surely one could be doing something more worthwhile with one’s time, starting with sleeping.

And when the baseball produced goes badly, as it did Tuesday night? Then one feels like the guy from the old gambler’s adage, looking around the table wondering who the sucker is.

The Mets played butterfingered, uninspiring baseball against the Diamondbacks, with Mark Vientos, Francisco Alvarez and Tyrone Taylor (of all people) undermining David Peterson with misplays and Zac Gallen throttling the hitters for the second time inside a week — the Mets scored their lone run on a bases-loaded walk against Gallen, failing to do further damage when Starling Marte was punched out on three pitches in a depressingly futile AB.

Perhaps the best news was what didn’t happen: Brandon Nimmo came up favoring his knee in the fourth inning and talked Carlos Mendoza into letting him stay out there, though Nimmo looked like less than himself the rest of the way. The same could be said of the rest of his teammates; look back to the D.C. series and the Mets are officially scuffling, with their ledger featuring a split and two dropped series with an afternoon rubber game ahead.

Maybe scuffling was to be expected, given the tough stretch of calendar; the Mets haven’t had an off-day since April 24 and have been ground up by injuries, travel and what may be no more than the usual statistical bumps and bruises of what we’re constantly reminded is a long season. Come to think of it, early May is usually about the time that particular lesson smacks us in the collective face. It’s a long season; few things bring that home more than a dishwater drab game in which you realize, too late, that none of the other people at the table is the sucker. Maybe I should have gone to bed, you think as your money vanishes into other people’s pockets, never to be seen again.