Tylor Megill looked Niesean Friday night against the Yankees. If you know me and/or are a long-time reader, you know that’s pretty close to a deadly insult.
Megill suffered some bad luck along the way to giving up four earned runs in 2 2/3 laborious innings in the Bronx: In the fatal third inning (which took an interminable 27 minutes that felt like 27 days), Clay Bellinger hit a little roller that was too slow for Mark Vientos to turn into an out, followed by a Sotoesque (Luis, not Juan) billion-hopper up the middle by Paul Goldschmidt that brought in the first two enemy runs. But it wasn’t all bad luck: Megill also walked five guys, including the first and last Yankees he faced. And most damningly, nothing he throw seemed to have conviction behind it. To my admittedly annoyed eyes, he kind of trudged around while bad things happened, waiting for someone to tell him he was excused.
Disappointing, to say the least — Megill had looked like he’d figured something out and was finally harnessing his considerable talent, famously telling Jeremy Hefner in spring training to opt for tough love: “If I was pitching like shit, I wanted him to yell at me.” Tonight, he looked like Niese, the Alibi Ike of the 2010s Mets, who never met a bit of bad luck he couldn’t make into an excuse for why he’d fallen apart. (By the way, did you know Niese is only 38?)
Anyway, Megill pitched like shit and so hopefully Hefner will do as he was directed down in Port St. Lucie.
The rest of the game wasn’t particularly worth noting: With the Yankees out to a big lead and the Mets continuing to look flat, both teams pretty much went through the motions the rest of the way. And the Mets do look flat all of a sudden: I was at Wednesday night’s soggy sleepwalk and was so disgusted that I left after five, which I don’t think I’ve done since a 1999 debacle that saw Matt Franco take the mound. I’ll put up with dreary conditions and I’ll put up with dreary baseball, but it turns out I won’t put up with both.
Back to Friday, when much was made of Yankee fans booing Juan Soto in his return to the Bronx. But that struck me as performative New York sports opera, a fan molehill that the usual sports-talk grifters will make into a mountain. The Mets’ teensy moral victory was forcing Aaron Boone to call on closer Luke Weaver, which happened after Yerry De Los Santos pitched timidly with a five-run lead. Keith Hernandez and Ron Darling were disgusted with De Los Santos, and they weren’t wrong; I bet Boone wasn’t particularly pleased either. Maybe those Weaver pitches that shouldn’t have been needed will come into play during the rest of the series, but that seems like cold comfort now.
Oh, and everybody was forced to wear dumb-looking hats for Armed Forces Day Weekend. I don’t know how a day can also be a weekend, and I also don’t know how looking terrible shows support for a worthy cause. But now I’m making my own mountains out of molehills. That’s what happens when you’ve been forced to spend the evening thinking about Jon Niese.
Yes Niese is 38, in fact I always remember he was born the same day the Mets last won the World Series. Literally his only claim to fame.
Waiting for MLB to get players to wear hats honoring social workers or ER nurses.
Yet if Megill throws a couple more strikes and Acuna squares up a quarter inch better in the next inning we would have had ourselves a Ballgame. Didn’t happen, and I switched fully to The Knicks.
“Soto is hitting .252 with eight homers and 20 RBIs, and he’s 13-for-45 (.289) in his past 12 games.”
This is actually much better than the narrative. He will begin to hit .400 once he gets going.
With Manaea and Montas close to returning, perhaps Tylor will be finding work in the bullpen or Syracuse.