What Counts as Progress

Does it count as progress if the Mets lose but it’s merely discouraging and not actively humiliating?

Monday night’s game was more drab and disheartening baseball. Paul Blackburn was lucky not to get driven from the game down six or seven, as he got help from Braves baserunning mistakes and atom balls that found Met gloves. The relievers were solid and helped the Mets hang around, but they could do little against Spencer Schwellenbach, pitching with admirable efficiency on a brutally hot night.

The game was bookended by two Juan Soto ABs — the first in the sixth, the second in the eighth. In the sixth, Soto roped a Schwellenbach sinker into the left-center seats for a two-run homer that brought the Mets within one. In the eighth, Brian Snitker summoned Dylan Lee to face Soto after Raisel Iglesias got into two-out trouble, giving up singles to Francisco Lindor and Brandon Nimmo. Soto fought Lee through eight pitches, all but one of them sliders. The seventh in the sequence was a fastball, one Soto was somehow able to speed up his bat enough to foul off. But the eighth was another slider, perfectly placed by Lee at the bottom of the zone. Soto swung over it, the inning was over and so, essentially, was the game.

But it would be insane to pin this on Soto, AKA the entirety of the night’s offense. What happened in the fifth inning, the frame before Soto’s homer? The Mets went down 1-2-3. How about the seventh inning, the one between those bookend ABs? The Mets went down 1-2-3. And the ninth? The Mets went down 1-2-3.

It’s almost like there’s a theme at work.

In this dreary 10-game stretch the Mets have scored a grand total of 30 runs — and that includes their 11-run uprising against the Phillies. Toss that one out and they’ve put up 19 runs in nine games. I may not be a sabermetrician, but that seems suboptimal. Not to mention unwatchable.